Archive for online networking

Yet another guide to Twitter for business… yawn.

Aug 3 | by Sam Deeks | how to, online networking
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Oh, my.. God.  Everyone’s doing it.  Writing guides to Twitter, I mean. So here’s mine.

Twitter is a way to publish / broadcast little chunks of information (140 characters).  That can be text, links to interesting things or repeating things other people have said.  This takes place within a global network.  You build up your network by following other people or being followed.  Often people follow the people who follow them.  Sometimes they don’t.

Everyone you follow or who follows you is part of your network and each person in your network has their own network.  You can explore all the people in the network of someone who is in your network.  Wherever you find interesting people you can view them and their tweets (their ‘feed’).  If you want, you can follow them.

When you follow someone, their tweets appear (along with those of everyone else you follow) in an overall ‘feed’ of tweets from everyone in your network.  When you’re following 20 people, that’s quite a few tweets a day.  When you’re following 10,000 people that’s a hell of a lot of tweets a day.

What’s the point?  Well, you can follow people who are particularly interesting in terms of your speciality of niche, for example.  How do you find them?  Maybe you already know them – in which case, you find out their Twitter name and follow them.  Maybe you find them because someone you’re already connected to in Twitter has them in their network.  Or, maybe you find them by searching all Twitter’s tweets for certain keywords.   If you search for ‘nasa’ you’ll get back a list of tweets mentioning ‘nasa’.  You can skim through all the people tweeting to decide who you think has something useful to offer you and follow accordingly.

Twitter makes it just as easy to find every time you’ve been mentioned (offering lots of potential for measuring the success of online marketing efforts).  It allows you to send private, direct messages to people that you follow and who are following you.

Once you’ve created a Twitter account, there are many ‘Twitter clients’ you can use to manage your Twitter communications whether via a browser, your iPhone, a blackberry or your laptop.

The beauty of Twitter is that it’s brief, almost instantaneous and global.  It is faster than the news networks meaning – increasingly – that it’s the place for breaking news.  And it’s currently free.

On the plus side, Twitter is the fastest global communication tool currently out there with all the power and searchability of the internet built in.  It’s what social media is really all about.  It’s so good that it will kill Facebook off within a couple of years.  Use it to offer people valuable information and links and you’ll go far.  Use it to feed your overblown ego, on the other hand, and you’ll find yourself on a fast-track to damaging your reputation in no time.

Do’s:

  • Do give away useful information (via links or by ‘re-tweeting’ things other people have given away)
  • Do ‘big up’ other people in your network and get introductions going
  • Do be a real person (not a cool nickname and avatar)
  • Search for people talking about the things you care about and follow them

Don’ts:

  • Don’t follow people just to build up your numbers
  • Don’t try to use Twitter to get rich quick
  • Don’t be indiscreet (personally or professionally)
  • Don’t post 100 tweets a day, it’s really boring

Bad Feelings at Ecademy – 657 views and counting

Mar 9 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, online networking
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It’s official: we’re addicted to feeling bad

I popped into Ecademy this afternoon briefly and took a quick scan of the blogs.

Interestingly, most had 20, 30 or 40 views.  All except the one titled ‘Bad Feelings At Ecademy‘ which had 657 views.  Naturally, I dived in to see what the fuss was all about.

The fuss (as usual) was all about an Ecademist falling out with the management and getting booted off.  “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I can almost hear ringing in my ears.

Sadly, nothing seems to attract us more than conflict – and I’m as programmed as anyone to being drawn towards the dark side. Is it because we love suffering?  Is it because in argument there’s something more honest than the superficiality we normally cloak ourselves in?

There’s no doubt though.  Nastiness gets traffic.  Blood, guts, misery, depravation, disaster and sleaze is what people want.  In a low-key but inarguable way, those figures on Ecademy prove it.  Again and again.

4Networking magazine: a rare beast

Aug 11 | by Sam Deeks | online networking
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4N magazineIt’s a networking magazine AND it’s a great looking online publication – hats off to the 4N team.

The 4Networking ‘4Community’ magazine is a rare beast – a successful blend of good design, good copy and effective online reading technology.

Worth having a read – and worth checking out 4Networking both on and offline. If you’re new to networking and you want a more relaxed, fun approach to B2B networking, then 4Networking breakfast meetings are a great way to start.


Crashing Facebook

May 16 | by Sam Deeks | online networking
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What happens if you have too many friends in the social media?

What happens if you switch on too many cutesy applications in Facebook?

YAAAAGHHH! You repeatedly crash my browser, that’s what!

The famous pink shirt should make this person instantly recognisable to the business networking community.

Has anyone else made themselves practically unavailable as a result of using Facebook to it’s fullest?

We’d love to hear from you :-)

A1, SAMFUK and my reading glasses…

Apr 23 | by mukaumedia | business insight, online networking
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Congratulations A1 on a nice online forum. Its only been open a few weeks, but its already seen quite a lot of activity. Nice atmosphere, well worth signing up and joining in.

I’ve always been interested in what makes a forum work – or not work. Recently, I’ve been jumping between Sales and Marketing Forum UK – or SAMFUK as I like to call it :-) – and A1. Although SAMFUK’s gone through a considerable makeover recently it still hasn’t achieved the easy readability of A1. The simple result is that I’ve spent far more time recently on A1.

Moving from SAMFUK to A1 is like putting on your reading glasses mid way through trying to text someone. Its only when you’ve done it, you realise how much you were struggling before.

Being right – an obsession

Apr 22 | by mukaumedia | online networking, smile
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I can’t tell you how many times I find myself sitting bolt-upright, way past midnight, suddenly wondering “Why the hell am I doing this?!”

If I’m really, really honest, a lot of the time I’m probably doing it because I suffer from a need to be right. Right?

Typically in our house it goes like this:

“Are you coming to bed?”

“I can’t. This is important!”

“What?”

“I’ve got to finish this post.. it’s…er.. very….”

Clare goes to bed. 60 minutes of furious writing / editing later:

“Why the hell am I doing this?!” [Quits without posting]

Google serves porn to kiddies (allegedly)

Mar 20 | by mukaumedia | GRRRR!!!, news, online networking
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So apparently Google’s filtering system went doo-lally and started serving up hard core images on its front page results. I don’t know why anyone is surprised. We create the internet so that anyone can fill it with anything and, in its default mode (i.e. unfiltered) anyone can access anything. Then we get upset when the clunky filtering systems we invent to try to oh, er… stop certain people (i.e. kids) seeing certain things don’t work properly.

What bothers me more is the internet’s underlying ‘pornography’ – its capacity to supply endless, necessarily shallow, amoral, 2-dimensional chunks of increasingly visual material for the pleasurable consumption of everyone from pre-school upwards.

It astonishes me that we’re outraged that Google serves up a jpg of genitalia to our kids but we’re completely comfortable with them spending their lives constructing their self-esteem around how many Bebo friends they have acquired – or them spending hours ‘consuming’ 2-dimensional people on ‘Hot or Not’.

You might think I’m being over the top but if – for a moment – you could stop identifying porn with a ‘thing’ (the picture, the stage show, the DVD, the private shop)- then you could only describe it in terms of what it does to / for people and how we relate to it.

What is porn, then, if we can’t name the ‘thing’ we usually label it as? Its a way of looking; a way of using ‘things’ to feel something; a way of relating to the world. Its a way of representing people and things. How does porn treat people? The portrayed? The consumer? Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Difficult? Deep? Heavy? Yes. The girl on the front page of Hot or Not when I clicked through is there for what reason? To know how hundreds of anonymous viewers will judge her. Her what? Why is she there? To try to build her self-esteem based on how many men find her attractive. How is that different from what we call pornography?

Being vulnerable

Feb 16 | by mukaumedia | business insight, online networking
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An Ecademy blog titled ‘Being vulnerable is good for you…NOT’ prompted me to make the following reply:

“We sometimes talk about vulnerability like its some kind of conscious style decision. ‘Shall I do vulnerable in this or that situation..?’

I prefer to see vulnerability not as a choice but as a consequence of a choice to be open; to be who I am rather than what my ego would prefer others to think I am; to risk being seen; to risk lowering my defenses; to communicate rather than react and create conflict.

To affect ‘vulnerability’ is about as manipulative a strategy as is the deliberate mirroring of body language in order to force ‘rapport’ and influence decisions.

For most people, being invulnerable means hiding behind heavier and heavier armour and striking out before anything or anyone can hurt them. Or hiding from the world in a cocoon of alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, work, anger, relationships… the list goes on.

On that basis, being vulnerable is good for me.”

Successful networking: scientific method or intuitive enterprise?

Feb 11 | by mukaumedia | online networking
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Life: Scientific Method or Intuitive Enterprise? wink

I believe that it’s all Intuitive Enterprise. Even when theory and analysis are at their very best, its at the level of intuition when we synthesise startling new ideas from evidence and observation. I suspect that business management at its very best is the dynamic, in-the-moment opportunism that comes from lived experience and qualities like courage, generosity and passion.

The worst of business and science is a barren terrain of jargon, dogma, masks, labels and hierarchies that offers protection for those for whom emotion and feeling are a difficult – or often painful – experience. In this place, that which cannot be measured (intuition and emotion) has become not only worthless, but dangerous.

I’ve learned that the more I trust, honour and act on what we call ‘instinct’ (the un-measurable, un-nameable sum total of all my experiences, feelings and observations), the better results I achieve and the more interesting my life is. The less we honour that un-measurable component, the less we can ever understand the real driving force behind customer experience and buying decisions – let alone how people interact in the workplace.

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