Posts tagged as:

LinkedIn

Honing Your “Me” Message

by Daria Steigman on October 25, 2010

Branding, Marketing | Independent Thinking | Steigman Communications, llcI have a confession: I hated my “About Us” section for a long time. It was impersonal. Static. Written like it belonged in a so-last-century corporate brochure.

Despite that, it took me two years to figure out how to rework the language to get the balance I wanted of informative, business smarts, and personality. (It’s been up for a little while, so you can check it out and let me know what you think.) It’s not that I didn’t try. Or that I can’t rework other people’s resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and About pages.

I just couldn’t get mine right. It’s just really hard to write about “me.”

Have you looked lately at how you’re talking about yourself? If so, did you change anything?

Photo by Liz West (Flickr).

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , , ,

{ 1 comment }

Social Media Rules, Wrongs, and Beating Ourselves Up

by Daria Steigman on October 12, 2010

We need to stop beating ourselves up.

There seem to be two big trends among social media proponents these days:

  • Beating up on people and companies alike for using social media “wrong.”
  • Beating up on ourselves.

This post deals with a little of both.

First, though, some great food for thought to set some context. Over on his blog, Stowe Boyd pointed to this amazing presentation by Google researcher Paul Adams that looks at people’s communities and the disconnects between our various networks and how online platforms have typically been designed. It’s really smart stuff, and worth going through.

The Real Life Social Network v2

This presentation is particularly relevant to our ongoing efforts to define the boundaries of our various networks. Who should I connect to on LinkedIn? Is it okay if I don’t friend you on Facebook? Will people think I am vouching for you just because we’re connected somewhere in cyberspace?

We’re trying to create  ”rules” without having any rule book.

Ari Herzog wrote a very moving post about his struggle to set parameters. He said, in part:

I want to say I am sorry for reading your messages and requests to be my friend, for me to join your networks and for you to join mine. You wanted me to share myself with you on a deeper level outside of this blog and you invited me into your inner sanctum–and I said no.

That conversation continued here. It’s worth reading in full–including the comments–as it’s clear that this discussion is going to go on for a long time.

Here’s my bottom line: It doesn’t matter if your network is more (or less) exclusive than mine. There isn’t a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all community. I’ll hang out where it makes sense for me and evolve the parameters over time just as my business might shift strategies and add or subtract services as market conditions change.

So can we agree to stop beating ourselves up as we work on our rules?

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , ,

{ 3 comments }

7 Tips for Optimizing Your LinkedIn Brand

by Daria Steigman on August 18, 2010

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Brand | Independent Thinking | Steigman Communications, LLCIn keeping with the time constraints of busy, always on-the-go workers, MarketingProfs has created a new “Take 10” series: short, 10-minute presentations with actionable takeaways. I was smart enough to take 10 minutes out the other day to get a LinkedIn 101 refresher course from Jason Alba.

Alba offered four “do it once” tips for setting up your profile and six “do regularly” tips for keeping your brand front and center on LinkedIn. The highlights of his “do regularly” advice:

  • Pose a Question to your network at least once a month.
  • Answer Questions whenever you have a few minutes of downtime.
  • Join LinkedIn Groups Discussions, which let you reach an audience beyond your first degree network (or start a Groups discussion of your own).
  • Use Advanced Search to find prospects.
  • Use Company Search to gain competitive intelligence on your prospects and your competition.
  • Update Your Status at least weekly. (I’d actually recommend doing this more often as long you have something relevant to share—be it a useful link, a blog post, information about that killer conference you’re headed to, and so forth.)

I’d add one final “do regularly” tip: Read status updates from your network. You can do that easily by pulling in the RSS feed of all your contacts’ status updates. This is a great tool for keeping up with who has changed jobs, is sharing good news, or otherwise has something worth commenting on. I tend to skim the updates (there will be a lot), looking less at who’s connecting with whom and more at who’s sharing news. See something interesting? Click through, leave a quick comment, and become instantly top of mind.

Photo by Mario Sundar (Flickr).

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , , , ,

{ 1 comment }

You’re Using Social Media, But is Your Audience Listening?

by Daria Steigman on June 10, 2010


Independent Thinking | Steigman Communications, llc

I wrote here about the secret to a great client relationship (hint: it’s about how you communicate). Now I want to talk about a related issue: understanding how your audience is listening.

For example:

  • Have you ever had someone say, “Well, I tweeted about that”?
    Okay, but I didn’t see your random tweet at a random-to-me time in a sea of tweets from the 500+ people I’m following.
  • Have you ever had someone tell you they posted the event to their LinkedIn Group?
    Great, except I get a weekly digest and your event was three days ago.

  • Have you ever had multiple people send you Facebook notifications for the same event, even though you’re on the organization’s distribution list and so have obviously received at least one event invitation (and possibly signed up already)?
    Gee, now you’re spamming me.

Here’s the problem: When you do this, you’re making assumptions about my behavior and how I use various social media channels. Get it right, and we’re cool. Get it wrong, and your message is lost. You become irrelevant. Or worse, I unfollow, unlink, or unfriend you.

Whether you’re asking directly, monitoring online behavior, or accessing analytics, it’s important to understand how people consume information.

What strategies do you use to understand how your audience is listening?

Note: This post originally appeared on IABC’s Communication World blog.

Photo by cogdogblog (Flickr).

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Tagged as: , , , , , , ,

{ 0 comments }

What Book Has Influenced Your Career?

by Daria Steigman on June 1, 2010

Daria Steigman | Independent Thinking | Steigman Communications, llcThere’s a LinkedIn discussion going on right now in one of my groups about the books that have made you the person you are today. While I knew many people would cite inspiration texts, philosophers, and business gurus, I had to stop and think whether there were any media that resonated that much. I scanned all the books on my shelves. Nothing popped out.

Then I realized there is one documentary and one poem that did make a difference:

  • I saw Harvest of Shame when I was 13 (props to an amazing teacher), and it made me want to do something to help migrant workers. Ten years later, when I knew I needed a graduate degree to break out of my dead-end job, I chose labor relations.
  • Wordsworth’s The World Is Too Much With Us is 14 lines long, and it turned my 17-year-old self upside down. I came to college planning to study economics and business so that I could live and work overseas. But then I found poetry and my passion. And that took me into that dead-end job, which took me to labor relations–and eventually to that blowtorch that helped shape who I am today.

The rest of my library? Some really great stuff that’s made me an educated woman and/or given me great ideas and insights. But made me who I am? That’s a much smaller list.

What about you? What media have helped forge your path?

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Tagged as: , , , , ,

{ 6 comments }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →