Monday, November 30th, 2009
Let me start by saying I write this post from a job hunter’s point of view. For the longest time I’ve been telling friends to do something, anything in the social media scene while they’re still in school to help them when they’re looking for a job. Designers have portfolios, why shouldn’t knowledge workers have something similar?
Without a doubt the most commonly used excuse is “oh you’re in marketing it’s a different industry”. I think this is absolutely untrue. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the finance industry, law, medicine, HR, anything, social media can be used to strengthen your network and give you an advantage.
In the process of research at work I’ve come across people who podcast about comics as a means of promoting their store to financial institutions producing videos on the financial crisis to people who blog about plastics and chemicals to people asking questions about pottery on LinkedIn. There is space for every niche, it’s just whether or not you’re willing to look for it.
Tomorrow: three ways anyone can get started to contributing to their niche in social media.
Tags: Blogs, job hunting, LinkedIn, Podcasts, social media scene, videos
Posted in social media | 4 Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2009
Earlier in the year I reviewed Tactical Transparency and said that it’s a good book for an introduction to the social media scene. However, I now feel Personality Not Included is the book I would recommend as the intro book, simply because it explores more than social media, and is about really changing the mindset of organisations from within, which is what the vast majority of organisations these days need to do. Social media is merely a byproduct and tool to helps make achieve this change in mindset easier.
There are five main thrusts to the book:
- Find (and use) your accidental spokespeople
- Define your personality by being unique, authentic and talkable
- Craft a backstory people will care about
- Conquer internal fear about embracing this change
- Finding and using personality moments
The first half of the book is about explaining why these are important and providing many case studies of real world examples, and the second half provides steps that can be taken to bring the aforementioned concepts to reality. Of course, the steps are general guidelines and must be tweaked to be made relevant to your organisation.
Many of these concepts and steps will sound simple and intuitive to those of us who have grown up in a world where mere transactions aren’t enough anymore, but is probably difficult for the Generation X or Baby Boomer boss at work to wrap their heads around. If so, buy this book and give it to him or her, and make it an office copy after that.
There’s a really good video introduction to Personality Not Included that I encourage you to check out at the Personality Not Included blog (sorry, I couldn’t find a way to embed it on the site!)
[image taken from Flickr.com]
Tags: accidental spokespeople, accidental spokesperson, authentic, baby boomers, backstory, book review, case studies, changing mindsets, embracing change, generation x, generation y, internal fear, introduction to social media, main thrusts, personality moments, personality not included, rohit bhargava, social media scene, tactical transparency, talkable, unique
Posted in Books, Reviews | No Comments »
