Mediaboss Marketing

Feb 2

I launched my own LinkedIn group, Larry Brauner and Friends, as an experiment early last year. The group has since grown to over 800 members. Weve explored a wide range of subjects and have hopefully demonstrated the feasibility of using a LinkedIn group for personal branding.

From the outset, I had in mind that when the time was ripe, I would begin conducting live interviews in the group with individuals who were thought leaders in their respective fields. Readers would be able to pose questions regarding a particular response or relevant to the overall conversation, simply by adding a comment. That time has finally come. I shall be interviewing over a number of weeks Janice Weinberg, a Westport, Connecticut career consultant and author of career books for IT professionals and managers. Her latest book, Debugging Your Information Technology Job Search, contains many innovative ideas for IT managers and executives through the CIO and CTO level who are seeking new jobs. The book also guides readers in identifying and correcting problems that are preventing them from generating interviews or if they are obtaining interviews impeding their ability to receive offers.

My questions to Janice will cover resume-writing, guidance in identifying employers likely to have suitable openings, and techniques for presenting oneself as a strong candidate in interviews. In providing her responses, Janice will draw upon her experience assisting IT managers* in obtaining computer operations, network operations center (NOC), service delivery, helpdesk, application development, program management, technology risk, and IT marketing/sales positions, as well as CTO and CIO jobs.

If youd like to help your friends who are seeking management jobs, you may want to direct them to the interview: Advice for Managerial Job Seekers From Career Book Author

*Please note that although the emphasis in this author interview will be on providing guidance to IT managers, managers who are not seeking computer-related jobs can also expect to learn novel ideas to help them find more rewarding employment, since some topics I plan to cover will relate to general search strategies applicable to all managers.

Before you go, subscribe to Online Social Networking and like Larry Brauner on Facebook.

In October 2010, I wrote New Facebook Groups Wreak Havoc. The new Facebook groups were brand new, and they were ruffling quite a few feathers. People added their friends en masse causing them to receive unwanted notification emails. You can imagine the chaos.

Fortunately, Facebook replaced email notifications by onsite notifications as the default, and that greatly decreased the sting of being added to a group without having to opt-in.

Over time, Facebook members came to expect that they would be added involuntarily to groups and adjusted accordingly.

I belong to scores of groups, and most of them Ive been added to without my request. If I dont like a group, I leave it. Sometimes, I adjust my group notification settings based both on my interest level and the quantity of posts and comments.

The success of a Facebook group depends upon adding new members, just as much as it depends upon member engagement and the quality of posts and content.

If you like a Facebook group, participate, contribute relevant posts and comments, and add friends to that group whom you think might be interested. Let each person choose whether to leave or to remain in the group.

Two of my favorite Facebook groups are:

Respond in a comment with a link to your favorite Facebook group and a description of the group. Also, please dont forget to subscribe to Online Social Networking and to like me on Facebook.

Its fairly obvious that Im not updating this blog very often. I used to write a major article every week, and now I barely write an article a month. I miss it and look forward to getting back to it. However, on the bright side, Im busier than ever with social media for others and therefore have little time right now for personal blogging.

My main occupation is as head of social media and marketing for a high-end watch distributor 20 minutes drive from my home. On December 4, 2010, Ivo Jackson and I launched a temporary website for the company which by now is in desperate need of a major redesign and overhaul. To date our website has received 142,000 visits including 20K visits in this its sixteenth month, and 269,000 pageviews including 40K pageviews this month.

This effort has required an enormous amount of my time (Im earnestly looking for a social media assistant to work locally with me in Rockland County, NY on this project) and the time of others including my principal freelance watch writer, John Sealander.

Im also part-time social media head for American Friends of Retorno on a project that will help returning American soldiers recover from PTSD and drug addiction. Our website is nearly complete. Ill be asking for your help once its fully set up.

While I do my work, Im online all day, and Facebook or Small Business Network are probably the best places to find me. (I also accept all requests to connect on LinkedIn where I have in excess of 6,000 direct connections.)

I truly love networking and although very busy, Im still very accessible.

In case you havent heard, Friend Connect will be retired March 1, 2012, says Google. This is not pleasant news for those websites that have sizable Google Friend Connect communities and whose community members have opted to receive newsletters from the site.

Google recommends that you join Google+ and invite your community to join with you in order to keep in touch. Compared to Google Friend Connect, Google+ is a rather lame tool for staying in touch. Google Friend Connect newsletters permitted direct community contact.

Google+ got off to a great start but seems to have lost much of its original momentum and engagement. Google probably hopes to give Google+ a shot in the arm by terminating Google Friend Connect and redirecting members.

If you have a community and wish to stay in touch, here are two approaches for creating email lists, are better than merely joining Google+ as Google advises.

If you have a small budget for an email contact list, I can use Aweber or Green Wave Email Marketing. Im using both of them. Once youre set up, ask your community to subscribe to your newsletter.

For a free email list, you can create your own group on a Ning social networking site, such as my Small Business Network. You will be able to email group members and to network with each other.

I invite you to subscribe to this Online Social Networking blog and to joinSmall Business Network, so that we can stay in touch with each other. Im also on Google+, Facebook , LinkedIn and Twitter.

I love to network, and Im very accessible.

While building my online presence and working on small client projects over a three year period, I devised, tested and evaluated a wide variety of web-based marketing, branding and communication strategies and techniques, and discussed them on Online Social Networking.

In November 2010, I seized an opportunity that arose to join a major luxury goods company and test my strategies and techniques in a competitive real-world environment. The results were outstanding. Not only was enormous buzz created, the business was able to dramatically increase its authority and credibility within the trade and with the media.

I credit just five very simple ideas with our success:

Of course the details of implementation were far from trivial. They needed to be worked out along the way, and yours will too.

I shall elaborate on these five web strategies in future articles.

Please subscribe and join me on my Facebook page.

You may also leave me a comment.

In Why Facebook Smart Lists are Actually Dumb, I expressed my annoyance with Facebook for permitting their smart lists to interfere with our use of the lists weve deliberately created in order to manage our Facebook friends.

I wrote, Try to use Facebook friend lists to selectively invite people to Facebook events or to like Facebook pages. The only lists consistently available for such invitations are Facebook smart lists, even if those smart friend lists happen to be totally empty lists.

Ive devised a simple method to work around the Facebook Smart List glitch. All you need to do is temporarily rename the list you want to use. Append the numeral 0 before the group name so as to push it to the top of the alphabetic list of lists that Facebook presents to you when you invite people.

Change Cool People to 0Cool People or Writers to 0Writers and dont worry. Nobody but you can see these list names. Now, from your Facebook home page, go to the list you want to change. Select Manage List and then Rename List to revise the list name.

If only Facebook would allow us to view all our friends in a particular list and then click the link under their pictures to visit their profile pages without deleting them from the list. Unfortunately, that problem isnt going to be solved in 2011.

Have a successful 2012!

Please subscribe and join me on my Facebook page. Your comments are most welcome.

Facebook friend lists may one day become much more useful than they are at present if the top online social networking site ever finds the wherewithal to implement Facebook lists intelligently and with flexibility in mind.

Admittedly, Facebook has some of the friend list details right. For example, you can create custom friend lists that make sense to you and your personal or business interests. You can (finally!) assign friends to friend lists without leaving their profile pages. You can also (once again!) select which lists of friends will see any particular Facebook update.

Recently, Facebook created so-called smart lists in order to help us with categorizing our Facebook friends. Smart lists are an excellent idea. Unfortunately, however, Facebook went too far with smart lists and let them overshadow our hand crafted lists.

Try to use Facebook friend lists to selectively invite people to Facebook events or to like Facebook pages. The only lists consistently available for such invitations are Facebook smart lists, even if those smart friend lists happen to be totally empty lists. Thats especially dumb. Dont you agree?

For invitations, Facebook could provide a similar friend list selection mechanism to the one the online social network employs for directing profile updates. Then, optional use of Facebook smart lists would be - uh smart.

Facebook expects users to invite selectively and responsibly. Why shouldnt Facebook help us by correcting their smart friend list oversight?

Filed Under Best Practices, Case Studies, Facebook, LinkedIn, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Promoting Yourself, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing, Website Traffic, Widgets, WordPress | 9 Comments

Your social media and web strategy necessarily starts from your website, the one place on the the web that you own and control.

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, are very useful and will likely figure in your online plans. However, the possibility that any given networking site will become unpopular, change its rules, cancel your membership, or even shut down entirely, renders such a website unsuitable as a hub and foundation for your web presence.

Your website doesnt need to be intricate, although it can be. I tend to prefer simple websites. The Gevril Group website, for example, which I developed in concert with Ivo Jackson and John Sealander, uses the WordPress content management system, a very basic 3-column theme, an opt-in form and a Facebook widget.

Launched this past December, the Gevril Group website now receives in excess of 8,500 visits per month.

Our latest creation, the new Purple Umpkin childrens book website, is even simpler in design and implementation. You can compare it to the original Purple Umpkin website. In my opinion, the new version is easier to use, and it looks and feels more like a venue for a childrens book. What do you think?

Work on a Childrens Books umbrella website is underway employing equally simple design principles.

Every web presence needs a website that attracts and speaks to its visitors. Online, your website is your brand. That website must be secure, and the content on that website must be nothing less than superb.

Your thoughts are welcome.

Please prepare yourself for a small dose of cynicism. Last week, a Facebook sales rep tried to persuade me to buy ads to drive traffic to the Gevril page, in order to increase its number of fans. Neither the reps rational nor the outcome of our talk are important for now. However, I do wish to look at the implications of this one aspect of the Facebook business.

You pay Facebook to drive people from unspecified Facebook pages to your fan page, hoping that once there, theyll like your Facebook page. You also hope that youll benefit from building a Facebook fan base.

When a member clicks on your ad link and then clicks your like button, that activity is called engagement. Naturally, the more Facebook engagement, the more lively and profitable the Facebook site is for its owner.

Consider this: When you advertise your fan page using Facebook ads, youre paying for the privilege of increasing Facebook activity. Youll even bid against other advertisers for that privilege. Is that totally ingenious or what?

Is it any wonder that Facebook makes it so challenging for us to use our personal profiles to conduct business or to organically grow our business pages?

What do you think?

All media have the tendency to become over-saturated with intrusive commercial messages. There are too many television and radio ads, too much junk email and snail mail, too many billboards, and yes, too many Facebook notifications. When overload occurs, messages are perceived as noise, and people filter them or tune them out.

The most common reaction of marketers is to raise the volume in one way or another. Marketers send more messages or create snazzier headlines. Raising the volume can help, but only for a short time. On Facebook, when the noise gets too loud, the top social networking site acts to tone it down or turn it off. Behavior that was once unrestricted becomes restricted.

As examples, we used to blanket our friends with invitations to Facebook events, but now Facebook forces us to be selective. We used to add friends haphazardly if we wished, but now Facebook deters us from adding people we dont know. Raising the volume on Facebook isnt a satisfactory option.

In response to Facebook Page Events Rock, readers asked for a Facebook page event how-to. Im not ready to write a comprehensive guide. However, I offer you here ten tips for successfully inviting people to your Facebook events:

The key isnt raising the volume. The key is better targeting and better diversifying your contact methods.

Please subscribe and like my Facebook page.

Comments are welcome.

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Online Social Networking Sites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning