The next decade is going to be an exciting one for networking. With new technologies and devices emerging, how we connect will change dramatically. Here will explore how networking will evolve in the next ten years. We will also see how businesses can prepare for these changes and take advantage of their present opportunities. So, without further ado, let’s look at the future of networking!

1. Increased Security

One of the biggest concerns for businesses with networking is security. As more and more devices are connected to the internet, the risk of cyberattacks increases. This is why we expect to see a big focus on security in the next decade. Businesses must invest in robust security systems to protect their networks from attacks.

2. Faster Speeds

With the proliferation of high-speed internet, we expect to see much faster networking speeds in the next decade. This will significantly benefit businesses as they can quickly communicate and transfer data. This will also enable new applications and services requiring high bandwidth.

3. More Reliable Connections

Another trend we will see in the next decade is more reliable connections. This is thanks to technological advances that will make it easier to connect to the internet in more places. This means businesses can stay connected even when on the go. Jordan Sudberg believes that the future of networking lies in its ability to connect people and devices no matter where they are.”

4. Greater Flexibility

As networking technology becomes more sophisticated, it will also become more flexible. This means businesses

4. IoT Devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to devices that are connected to the internet. This includes everything from smart TVs to fitness trackers. In the next decade, we expect to see a

4. The Rise of IoT

One of the most exciting trends in networking is the rise of the (IoT). This is the growing number of devices connected to the internet. In the next decade, we can expect to see more devices connected to the internet as businesses take advantage of this technology. The IoT will significantly impact how companies operate and open up new opportunities.

5. Increase in Wireless Networking

One of the most significant changes we will see in networking is the move to wireless technologies. With the advent of fifth-generation (or “five-g”) cellular networks, we will finally have the speeds and capacity needed to support wireless networking on a large scale. This will be a game changer for consumers and businesses, allowing us to connect to the internet without needing cables or other physical infrastructure.

6. More Affordable Access

According to Jordan Sudberg, the future of networking is bright, and he is very optimistic about the next decade. He believes these are just some trends we can expect to see in networking in the next decade. With so much change on board, it’s an exciting time to be involved in this field. Businesses must stay ahead and be prepared for these changes to remain competitive.

So, what does the future hold for networking? Exciting changes will revolutionize how we connect and the world around us! Businesses that can adapt to these changes will be the ones that succeed in the next decade. Are you ready for the future of networking?

The post The Future of Networking appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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Despite LinkedIn’s reputation as the ultimate B2B platform, it has some kinks to work out. Feeds are becoming increasingly jammed with Work Anniversary notifications, and its limited user experience has some professionals up in arms.

We asked social media experts what they think about LinkedIn’s status as a B2B networking platform:

Q: LinkedIn is increasingly touted as THE “social selling” platform for B2B brands, especially in conjunction with ABM (account based marketing) AND our feeds seem to be increasingly cluttered with Work Anniversary notifications. How are you feeling about LinkedIn these days?

Andrea Hofer, Global Social Media Manager at Philips Healthcare: Each social channel is catered to different people and different facets of life and therefore we see different content being shared. Not a lot of people would share business content on Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, but they would do so on LinkedIn or Twitter. Conversely, those wedding pictures are kept off LinkedIn to maintain a professional presence.

I personally often find my LinkedIn newsfeed more interesting than my Facebook newsfeed. The professional nature of the platform results in a lot of social cooling, but what I lose in personal stories I gain in the quality/relevancy of links shared. Additional post tagging/filtering options would increase relevance, such as life event, work anniversary, job opportunity, case study, etc. I have found that nothing beats LinkedIn for targeting the medical C-suite. Facebook may be cheaper, but you are not able to effectively drill down to that audience.

Jennifer Forrest, Director of Social Media at DEG Digital: I think there’s a misconception that LinkedIn is the only tool for B2B selling. Don’t get me wrong, LinkedIn is still the king of the B2B selling experience, but it’s not the only player. Facebook is the more efficient platform from an ad targeting perspective. But that misconception comes with a similar one about who B2B buyers are. They are still people who live and consume products in a B2C world on a daily basis. So, it’s not crazy for Facebook and other platforms to be viable options for B2B, but LinkedIn is still at the top.

Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade, LLC: I have a love hate thing going with LinkedIn right now. I love using it as a directory akin to the old white pages to research folks I’ve met or might want to connect with down the road. For that function alone it is unrivaled. But because I’ve met so many people over the course of my career and it seems that every single one of them have become publishers, my feed is more than just useless – it’s annoyingly so. I’d love to see them kill work anniversaries and maybe even birthdays and then figure out how to filter out the drivel that masquerades as useful content.

Q: Are you spending more or less time on LinkedIn, and if so, why?  

Stephen Monaco, Founder of Future Marketing Institute: LinkedIn feels lackluster to me ​now so I’m spending less time on it than I did in the past. Like so many others, I quickly grew tired of accepting invitations from people who then started pitching me within minutes of becoming a connection. This is off putting to say the least.

Brian Moran, entrepreneurial consultant: I’m not spending enough time on it and I blame LinkedIn for that. LI is arguably the best research tool for business (selling is 90% preparation and 10% presentation). LI tells me so much of what I need to know for the 90% part of that rule, and yet I could be doing so much more on the platform.

Joel Comm, Author, speaker, brand influencer: I spend very little time on Linkshare as it is mostly noise. I do enjoy Slideshare and find it the best way to deliver new content to the platform.

Jason Falls, Founder of Conservation Research Institute: When I spend significant time on LinkedIn, I get business. That said, I don’t care for its user experience much, so I don’t spend a lot of time there that I don’t need to. Still, the improvements they’ve added over the last two years are good, have improved the site and experience and are more conducive to people connecting with the right people for business purposes. The notifications are trivial … you can turn them off by notification type if you don’t like them. LinkedIn is still a fertile ground for me, anyway.

Forrest: LinkedIn has made huge strides throughout the past year from a user standpoint. It’s much more of an interactive experience than it has been in the past, making it easier to spend more time on the platform.

Neisser: I find myself spending more time on LinkedIn mainly to make sure I not only understand its capabilities for social selling but also to become a true expert practitioner of social selling. Not surprisingly, this is connected to Renegade’s growing Social Selling Training practice.

Concluding Thoughts

LinkedIn may not be perfect, but it’s still an effective networking tool for businesses. The platform’s research capabilities and huge web of professionals provide valuable resources for any B2B seller. If you can look past its limitations, LinkedIn may be worth its weight in gold.

The post Is LinkedIn the King of B2B Social Selling Platforms? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Nashville. A little bit of country, and a whole lot of rock-n-roll and soul – when it comes to music and food. And on Friday this week, Nashville will be loud, rockin and groovin with a star-studded line up of social media mavericks. These razzle-dazzle digital marketers will give it all they got, and that’s a lot, to help make the world a better place when it comes to best practices for business growth. Agencies, consultants and in-house marketers are planning to attend this event and I am counting down to Friday’s full day of Explore in Nashville.

My Expectations for Explore Nashville:

Engagement

I’m looking forward to the engagement from the networking opportunities in Nashville. As a consultant, I have a real need to build real relationships in my industry. For me, it isn’t about the quantity of Twitter followers, it is about the quality of the relationships. Explore reaches out and draws in high quality professionals and provides the IRL (in real life) opportunity for handshakes and eye contact. Anyone in media knows, real relationships, engagement and conversations cannot exist in 140 characters alone.

Anyone who knows Jason Falls understands his high standard of quality. As the event promoter and host, he will certainly draw in a level of professionals who are up to snuff, not in a snobby, pretentious way, but in a genuine make-me-smarter brain exchange.

Networking with high quality professionals is important to me. Also, I’m hoping to learn something that I don’t already know. That’s right, I said it. I’m hoping and expecting to learn.

Depth

I’ve attended several social media conferences in the past year and frankly, I’m bored with the content that the majority of the speakers have offered. I went to SXSW earlier this year with 22,000 other media professionals. Fortunately I had a press pass that paid for my registration, because if I would have paid out of pocket for some of those light-weight, self promoting sessions, I would have been pissed. The real value I gained from SXSW this year was in the networking nirvana.

I realize that SXSW did have a lot of amazing speakers peppered throughout the full week of interactive sessions, some speakers who will be presenting at Explore, in fact. The event was enormous and overwhelming; finding excellent content at SXSW often felt like searching for a needle in a haystack, much like finding meaningful and unique content in the blogosphere can feel at times.

Bored of all the basic 101 level of tips on blogging, tweeting, pinning and the latest B, I’m confident in the quality and delivery of content each of the Explore speakers will share. Jason wouldn’t allow just any joe-blow to present smoke and mirror crap. Remember, Jason wrote a book to debunk all that is bullshit when it comes to social media. I’m expecting to get bonafide brilliance from the experienced digital media professionals as I search for a level of content that stretches my mind and gives me hands-on tips and best practices in today’s marcom world.

The post Social Media Explorers Head to Nashville appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Here’s the thing about radical transformations: They are radical and they are transformative.

Duh. I know.

But, if you agree that the arrival of the Internet, social tools, and mobile technologies are radically transformative, then it’s not such a far stretch to ask yourself “well, shouldn’t marketing be radically transformed?”

And then, it stands to reason, that the canon of marketing as we have known it, also requires that it be challenged.

That’s where I am with the notion of “targeting.”

Now, I’ve blogged about this before “Targeting is Dead: Here’s Why,” but a recent post by Seth Godin made me come back to the issue.

In “Picked vs. Spread,” he writes:

Instead of books that seek to be one of many to be chosen by the shopper with a problem, there’s the opportunity to publish books that spread, spread from someone who is in love with an idea to someone who didn’t even know they had the problem.

I think this is the way of most products and services.

It’s why we need to focus on Community First. It’s why you need to cultivate your community in a genuine way. ()

If you have people who care about the IDEA, the movement, the passion that is at the center of your organization, as Simon Sinek would say, “WHY you do what you do,” then they will take the things that they deem REMARKABLE and spread them…on your behalf…to those people who didn’t even know they had the problem.

In other words: YOUR TARGET MARKET.

And because they didn’t know they had the problem, the “pitch,” as it were is going to be, oh, I don’t know, about a gajillion times more effective, when it comes from someone who is passionate, has their attention, and has their permission (aka a friend of theirs and a Raving Fan of yours) than from someone who has a vested interest in selling to them (that would be you).

So, the Community, i.e. the Network actually does the targeting for you.

Is there a role for targeting?

Sure, but it’s in listening for those people who could be Raving Fans because they share a motivation for helping you spread your movement and idea, regardless of the size of their wallets or if they are going to buy today.

I’m not done with this concept. Not by a long shot.

Jeremy Epstein is founder and chief marketing navigator at Never Stop Marketing. He helps companies prepare for and exploit the changes brought about by the advent of social technologies. You can read his blog at www.ignitingtherevolution.com or find him on LinkedIn, Facebook,  and Twitter (among others) or download the Never Stop Marketing iPhone app to keep in touch.

The post The Network Does the Targeting appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Don’t get me wrong; it was fun while it lasted. You were always making me smile with your clever headlines and funny captions. And I’ll never forget all the times you thoughtfully gave me advice.

I thought we were a match made in heaven. I thought we’d be together forever. But you ruined everything. You took advantage of me. You weren’t faithful. You shattered my heart.

And now I have to dump you.

I’m sorry. Just know that I feel terrible doing it like this, so publically, so abruptly, and so callously.

But someone had to. Or else you’d keep on trampling on innocent hearts of other readers.

Not that you probably care, but my therapist said it’d be good to get this off my chest.

Here are the 10 things I hate about you (as a blogger):

1. You neglected me.

We used to interact every day. When I woke up in the morning, I knew I could count on you having something interesting to say. But then you sort of just disappeared. Daily conversations turned into weekly, then monthly, and now you don’t post with any regularity at all.

I’d @mention you on Twitter and bare my soul to you in your comments, but all I got was radio silence.

2. You made it so hard to stay in touch.

You just weren’t available to me – I couldn’t find your RSS feed button, there was no obvious way to sign up for email updates – you didn’t even have an about page. I wanted to reach out to you, but you were never there. And from now on, I won’t be either.

3. You lied to me.

I used to hang on every word you said. Every sentence was an a-ha moment I could take with me to work. But then I started to find out that your intellectual advice didn’t hold up in my practical world. You presented statistics without verifying their accuracy. You broke news that turned out to be rumor.

I trusted you and you made me look like a fool when I presented your best practices to the rest of the people at my job. It was humiliating. And you told me I should just get over it – that it’s only a blog!

4. You started to sound just like everyone else.

You used to be so unique. You had your own voice and you played by your own rules. You didn’t care what the suits had to say – you called it like you saw it. You were a rebel. But all the attention is softening you. The other day you used “leverage synergies” in a headline. It broke my heart to see you go so corporate.

5. You seemed so desperate for attention from other readers.

I can live with the fact that you might have a wandering eye, but you didn’t have to be so obvious about it. You know I’m a loyal reader but you keep asking me to subscribe with long, invasive forms, begging me to Retweet you and insisting that I share your stuff with my friends.

I used to tell them how great you were in my own way, but you wanted me to use that formal template on your website. It felt so … clinical.

6. You were too needy.

First you wanted me to subscribe, and that was fine. But then you jammed the ebook down my throat, wanted to charge me for access to your most intimate thoughts, kept interrupting our dates with pop-up ads, every link I trusted you enough to click on tried to sell me something, and you didn’t give me any warning!

Listen, I’m here to support you, but I’m not in this for charity. I need a relationship that centers on respect.

7. Your attention drifted.

When I met you, you were so focused, but you’ve drifted and now conversations with you feel like I’m flipping through TV channels and I don’t have the remote.

Why are you telling me about the 10K race you just ran and your recent trip to Target? I mean, it’s nice to know those kind of details, but don’t forget that I’m not a captive audience. There are a lot of other bloggers out there who will respect my time and attention.

8. You let yourself go.

I understand that you’re going to go through rough patches – maybe you’re having server issues or you tried something new and it didn’t work out – it happens to everyone.

But it’s just sad to see you with broken plugins, images that don’t load correctly, weird alignment issues with your fonts and ads running amok in your posts.

9. You only ever talk about yourself.

And not only do you only talk about yourself and never ask me about MY day or MY experiences, you just drone on and on and on and on. Our relationship has become a test of endurance.

10. I felt like I was talking to a 7th grader.

It started when you made some gross comments on Twitter. And then it leaked into your blog. And then you stopped caring about punctuation, spelling, and well, grammar.

Listen, I don’t expect you to be a polished as William Strunk Jr., but you do have a high school diploma, why not use it?

So for now, I’m going to see other bloggers. I hope we can stay friends and maybe there’s a future for us. But are you willing to change?

I’d love nothing more than for us to have a happy future together, but you need to be willing to make it work.

The post 10 Things I Hate About You (As a Blogger) appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

(What’s In It For Me.)

That’s been the failing of so many services within the social media space. It took Twitter more than three years to brand itself as a platform for news. For the longest time, it floundered as people stared at that “What are you doing?” prompt and still didn’t know what the service was about. Twitter is the exception, as most networks that don’t enunciate the WIIFM eventually die.

We know that Geo-location isn’t going anywhere, but there’s no guarantee that any one of the current networks will still be with us in 2013. Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook Places — we don’t know what’s going to stick, because most of us have no idea what they are for.

(Hint: If done right, they deliver relevant information to you only when you’re close enough to give a crap. If done wrong, they pollute your stream and your network with another layer of minutae and noise.)

What IS In It?

The killer feature for those mentioned above is delivering helpful information. Right now, though, it seems everyone is locked into silly games about Mayorships, and unless you are the one with the crown there’s very little in it for you.

Enter Waze.

Waze is a social network built not around where you are, but where you are going.

There are apps covering all the major smart-phone platforms, and the apps all share some great features:

• GPS Integration
• Search
• Real-time traffic data
• Routing
• Foursquare check-in integration

Having been pleased with the competition between Bing and Google Maps on my device, I was surprised to find that little Waze had better turn-by-turn speech synthesis than either.

What makes Waze special, however, is the social aspect. The more users there are on the roads where you’re headed, the more data there is about congestion. Waze knows when you’re slow on the interstate, and adds that to the database. When Waze calculates your best route, it takes recent traffic into consideration.

What’s really exciting is the Groups feature which is relatively new. By letting companies, neighbors, or just area residents talk to one another, you’ve now got a network of hyper-relevant information that actually has an answer to “What’s In It For Me?”

A Work In Progress

I don’t want to get your hopes up, because in many ways Waze is not a polished product.

The routing isn’t perfect, although it does learn the more you use it.

There are mechanisms for you to report (finger-friendly) instances on the map where turns are disallowed, or new roads need to be drawn. It may take a few days, but volunteers and employees do make those changes (and you can log in on the website and do it yourself.) Not a bad deal, considering they are starting with open source maps and improving the product. Waze also has a built-in system that prevents you from texting while driving: when the vehicle is in motion, you’re locked out of the keyboard to enter additional info. (There is a setting for a passenger to do the typing for you, but I think that’s a responsible move, as most of the data is shared with no action on your part, and the active reporting is simple taps.)

I found the Foursquare integration important, because the last thing you want to do is close out a navigation app and open something else, when the app you’re in already knows where you are. (I also found it to be faster than many dedicated Foursquare apps on my device.)

This isn’t a rant about the relative uselessness of the “Badge-hunt” services like Foursquare. Certainly it’s important to offer early users a premium to get them to populate the database with the useful information. I would say, though, that the all-or-nothing nature of Foursquare’s system (as most often implemented) is a huge turn-off to new users, or those who visit a particular place infrequently.

Waze does use incentives to attract users. You’ll find on your map a number of items that you can drive over to collect points. You also earn points for using Waze during your commute, “munching” new roads, reporting irregularities and accidents. But the nice thing is that even if you aren’t winning in a points race, you’re getting benefit from the other users in your area who are both actively and passively sharing useful information. And the more you use it, the more you’re sharing back too.

In other words, Waze gets a lot of things right about the “Social” aspect, and might be the first of an emerging class of Social Tools.

Related articles

• Waze Social GPS: Should Driving Be a Game? (iphone.appstorm.net)
• Waze Uses ‘Custom Groups’ To Drive Real Time Traffic Reporting, Allow Driver Interaction (intomobile.com)
• The Future of Geo-Location: Faith, or Science? (wired.com)
• Waze brings “Social Driving” to TV news (thenextweb.com)

The post Geolocation done right appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It doesn’t matter what venue you choose to attend, there’s a common question that someone will be asking, “how do I get more traffic to my web site?” Which is often time followed up by the second question, “how can I make more money with my web site?”

The answer to these types of questions aren’t found hidden within the hard drive of your favorite influential blogger, but are revealed from a core of principles and disciplines. If you’re consistent in these practices, you can watch your readership grow and traffic increase.

Here are 10 ways you can begin immediately to maximize your online distribution channel.

1. Provide Killer Content
The reason why people keep coming back to a web site is because the content that is provided is original or has a spin on it that makes it unique to the author. Providing killer content is what causes others to share it, tweet it, bookmark it and even email it.

2. Leverage Social Syndication
Share your content on social media sites, bookmarking sites as well as ping directories within your niche. Make your content easy for your readers to share with others. Utilize tools that allow your content to be submitted to Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter and even emailed. Don’t wait for people to come to your content, allow your content to be accessible where the audience is that you are trying to reach. Make sure you don’t forget the basics. Allow your content to be read via an RSS feed or by email subscription.

3. Provide More Than One Format
Don’t limit yourself to just text. Utilize video, audio and even eBooks. Realize that everyone consumes information differently. There are those that will never grasp the content from a blog post, but immediately understands it when they can see it or hear it.

4. Make Sure You Understand Basic SEO
Search engine optimization for some seems overwhelming, but there are a few things that you can do to rank for the keywords you want to rank within Google, Yahoo and Live Search. There are also basic things you can do with your content creation with H tags and ALT or image tags that can help your content become more search friendly.

To learn more about SEO check out SEOmoz.org.

5. Follow an Editorial Calendar
One of the biggest challenges for many content producers are consistently generating ideas and producing content that people want to read and link to. One of the ways that you can help facilitate this is by developing a content calendar for 1-3 months and producing the content you’ve scheduled. This doesn’t mean that if something news worthy arises that you cant write about it because of your schedule, but the editorial calendar is a guide that keeps you on tract and focusd.

6. Incorporate e-Newsletters
Provide exclusive content that is only made available to your e-newsletter subscribers. Offer them content that isn’t just a rehash of your previous blog posts, but provide tips, tricks and insights that is specifically created for them.

Blue Sky Factory and Mail Chimp are great options to consider when using email marketing.

7. Provide Downloadable Content
Develop free content such as eBooks, video and even audio podcasts that can become portable and downloadable. eBooks are another way for you to distribute your content to another group of readers. It’s also another way for your content to reach places that it never could with just another blog post.

Here is a great tutorial on how to create a PDF eBook.

8. Don’t Forget Offline Strategies
Write for other outposts that don’t publish online. Trade journals, local newspapers and magazines are just a few ways to get exposure to your web site.

Providing simple “mini billboards” like free schwag that promote your site. The more creative you are here the better the chance it doesn’t end up at the bottom of a trash can.

Another offline opportunity is to make yourself available for public speaking. These are great venues to share your content, position yourself as an expert and gain exposure to your online initiatives. While public speaking isn’t for everyone, if you can communicate an idea and keep an audience engaged, you may want to incorporate it into your distribution channel strategy.

9. Build Relationships
The bottom line is that there are no such things as lone rangers. There’s a reason why people succeed and it’s because they know how to build a network of relationships. What may start as a comment on a blog or an exchange of business cards at a conference could prove beneficial if your willing to incorporate all the networking disciplines it takes to build a strong and vibrant group of people around you.

10. All Roads Lead Back to Home
The final key to maximizing your online distribution channel is to make sure that everything points back to home. Make sure ever social profile, your email signature, business card etc. points back to your site. Push your content to where the crowds are gathering, but make sure you leave a trail back to your site. Keep in mind that not everyone will come to your site, but for those that do it’s another opportunity for your content to be consumed and a new group loyalists to become fans to your site.

I know that there are other additional strategies you can do to jump-start your content distribution channel, but the 10 ways mentioned above will get you started and pointed in the right direction.

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you are doing. What would you add to this list?

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The post 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Maximize Your Online Distribution Channel appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

I love the optimism springing forth from the social media evangelists. It’s almost like because we have social media, none of us “insiders” have to worry about tough economic times, losing our jobs or finding new ones. I’ve got news for you. Not only have social media advocates not had enough time in most organizations to illustrate the benefits of their positions, but the classically trained marketers and executives that are making hiring and firing decisions probably think the social media bible-thumpers are nuts.

Social media might be why you don’t keep your job in a recession.

Okay, so that’s a bit extreme. Blog Tip No. 173 from Falls: Don’t just say something. Say something incite-ful (notice the spelling).

No, I don’t think social media advocates are going to be the first laid off in a recession. But I would like to inject a dissenting opinion on the “social media will save you” bandwagon. Yes, having a strong personal brand and being well connected in the social media space is a good place to start to keep or find a job during tough economic times, but Twittering all day is not likely to get you hired.

The type of social networking that will save you or your job in a recession was, is and will always be the off-line kind.

Sure, there are anomaly examples out there of people getting jobs through Twitter conversations or connections on LinkedIn or Facebook, but let’s be honest. Most companies aren’t inside the tech bubble or hip to social media and wouldn’t think of hiring someone without a more traditional interview process. This means the social media job security utopia doesn’t exist for most of the free world.

So it all comes back to the good, old-fashioned grip-and-grin, the face-to-face, yes, dare I say, human contact, that will get you a job in a recession (or any other time for that matter.) The reason I know is that while on-line social networking is unbelievably powerful and empowering, the off-line networking is what sustains us and our businesses.

The Well-Networked Don’t Apply For Jobs, They Go Get Them

In 2006, I was a public relations professional, but in the high-walled silo of college athletics. Most folks in the mainstream heard what I did and thought, “What a joke. The guy watches ballgames for a living.” To boot, I lived six hours away from Louisville, where my wife and I wanted to return. I wanted to get out of college athletics and into mainstream marketing and public relations in a town where I had very few corporate connections or friends.

So I networked, but not on-line. Sure I solidified the LinkedIn profile (before most people knew what LinkedIn was), searched job boards and leveraged what few friends I had in marketing in Kentucky to get my name out there, but none of those put me at Doe-Anderson. What I did was pick up the phone and call people. I called everyone. Marketing managers, PR managers, HR directors, VPs, brand managers … If they were someone in Louisville and even remotely connected to the industry I was gunning for, they probably got a phone call from me.

And my approach was simple. Since I mostly got voice mail, I introduced myself, told them I was moving to Louisville and looking for opportunities and wanted to chat with them about the marketplace for their expertise and perspective. I asked them for 10 minutes on the phone, emailed them a resume and then followed up. While I didn’t do the math, I would say close to 85 or 90 percent of them not only responded, but spent 10 minutes on the phone with me chatting about jobs and companies in Louisville. I made a couple of trips and arranged for face-to-face meetings with several people on my list. Now, they not only had my resume, they knew who I was.

Within 60 days of starting my job search, I had five phone interviews, wound up with two face-to-face interviews and two job offers. Besides email, I didn’t communicate with a single person in my job search via social networks.

Now, to be fair, many of the now-recommended social networks job-related activity either didn’t exist, weren’t well populated or weren’t yet tapped for business purposes in early 2006. But if I were looking for a job today, I would go about it much the same way. Sure, I might use my connections in social media to reach people rather than using email. And, yes, I would be very open about looking for an opportunity which could lead to interest from hiring companies or managers. But the tried and true method of picking up the phone or meeting face-to-face will never be replaced by on-line communications in terms of putting an individual top of mind for a job opportunity.

And in the end, when I did land my job at Doe, even though I was the new guy in town, most of the people to know knew me.

Should you follow the advice of Rachel Levy, Mack Collier, Dan Schwabel or Michael Litman?(The British one, not the one who works at Doe-Anderson. He has an extra “t”.) Sure you should. But know and understand that all the on-line, behind-the-computer, cyber connections in the world don’t beat a hand shake, a smile and a chat.

IMAGE: “Shaking Hands,” by Aidan Jones on Flickr.

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• New Tools, Old Rules, and Careers (mediabullseye.com)

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And, for the record, I dig Scoble but am here to declare that while cool and all, he’s not the star of the show. Rocky is where it’s at. The dude’s just cool. I’d bet Robert would agree.

Sunday was slow going, mostly because of the Frog Design party the night before. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com was there and I could have sworn Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters was standing in front of me at one point. Twittering that wasn’t the best idea because many folks demanded I introduce them to him, as if I knew him personally. Of course, they all came to the party, partly for that reason, so it was a kickin’ time. (For the record, it probably wasn’t Dave Grohl, but if it wasn’t, it was damn close.) Who needs Dave Grohl. Pete Cashmore was hanging with us. That’s pretty cool.

Off to the presentations we trod. Charlene Li’s Social Media Revolutionaries session was great. The SlideShare is below. The reason Forrester presenters are so good, aside from the fact they’re always pretty freakin’ brilliant, is that they give case studies, which I’m finding are the most oft-requested stories from people interested in social media. Look through the slides and see the information about Blendtec, Ernst & Young, Dell and more. Plus you’ll get the top-level Forrester approach to social media which I’ve written about before.

Click here to see the slide show from SlideShare.net in a new window. I don’t have the plugin and my FTP wasn’t working well.

And the magic of Twitter is continuing to rear its blessed head. Shortly after Charlene’s presentation, in which she talked about Lionel Menchaca from Dell, he started following me there. I’ve insinuated that he’s an impostor and that the real Lionel wouldn’t follow me in a playful attempt to get him to do something cool like email me … or give me a free laptop. I’ll keep you updated.

I spent the majority of the day trying to collect more social media tools and case study examples to share with you via SME-TV in the coming days. And then there was the networking, of course. There are simply too many people to link to, talk about, brag that I met and so forth. Even writing this is tough because Jeremiah Owyang just walked in and is rocking the Bloghaus room. As of this writing, Kami Huyse is nowhere to be found and I haven’t synched with Connie Reece yet, but if you run down the list of cool bloggers I wanted to meet, or for that matter my Twitter followers, I can check off a ton of them.

Tonight’s parties will produce more fun and frolic. My hope is to somehow catalog all the people I met at some point. Linky links are what it’s all about in building and growing your blog. But the signal-to-noise ratio is mind-boggling and while I’ve found a couple cool tools that you’ll learn more about in the coming week or so that will semantically analyze your posts and apply links to relevant terms, they aren’t smart enough yet to link, say, Kami’s name to her blog.

More to come …

[tags]SXSW, Forrester Research, Charlene Li, social media, networking[/tags]

The post SXSW Sunday appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Shawn Morton, a/k/a Smorty and proprietor of Profilactic, one of the first and still the best (IMHO) lifestreaming platform on the web, and I boarded our plane just before the biggest blizzard in decades hit Louisville. After puddle-jumping to Birmingham, then Houston, then Austin, we jumped into SXSW socializing full force.

The first people I saw at registration were Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells, two of my favorite people in the world. Tamar Weinberg and I passed each other on the escalator. She later live (or semi-live) streamed me talking. Where, I forget. A great Twitter pal, Shashi Bellamkonda was there at registration, too. Smorty then introduced me to MyBlogLog creators Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson, creators of MyBlogLog, who were both interested and kind enough to call me to task on my reaction to MyBlogLog’s lifestreaming functionality post from a few weeks back.

Eric then introduced me to Bostjan Spetic (Boss, as we call him) of Zemanta.com who is introducing a new browser-based application soon that will apply semantic analysis of your blog post as you’re composing it, then recommend links, images and keywords for your post. We’ve asked for a preview and will bring it to you as soon as we get it.

Smorty and I met up with pal Nick Huhn and my man Richard McInnis from Radian6. We then watched Smorty wax some guys ass on Guitar Hero at the Microsoft station.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JjIxKnFdr0[/youtube]

Then the Twitteratti went nuts and a big party commenced. I met up with Chris and Christy, finally met and spoke with Stephanie Agresta, and had the honor of meeting both Jeremy Wright of b5 Media and Liz Strauss, of whom I’ve been a fan for a long time.

Of course, the highlight of the evening was finally catching up to Scott Monty, one of my favorite bloggers and new friends, who provided our highlight of the evening.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFm9R2frYn0[/youtube]

When the Mix at Six (So unfortunate this wasn’t a Mixx.com party) turned out to be a line to see Chris Brogan (and later Robert Scoble), Marcoullier insisted we go create our own party, which we did. Twitter fiend New Media Jim Long joined us, as did several other new friends. We then went for a late dinner with Charlotte Sells of Jim Beam. Charlie O’Donnell joined us, as did Josh Guttman of Sphere, Rachel Strate of Epic Ventures and Danielle Collins of Charlie’s company, Path 101, among others.

The only bad thing about SXSW thus far is there’s no way I can remember to put everyone’s name and blog links together in a late night post. Here’s Smorty’s recap, which does a much better job of pointing out many of the people we saw, met, spoke to and frolicked with. His site also shows off a lot of the cool executions of using Profilactic.

But you can see the Flickr set here and, of course, follow me on Twitter if you want to know what’s happening between posts.

[tags]SXSW, networking, social networking, social media[/tags]

The post Socializing At SXSW appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Next Friday, I’ll touch down in Austin, Texas, for the 2008 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference. It will be the third major conference of social media and internet thinkers I’ve attended in the last six months. And each one gets better and better.

I’ve written before (here and here) about the benefits of networking socially – my term for off-line social networking – and how my previous two events like this specifically benefited my blog. The more people that know who you are, the more come read what you’re doing. Each event has resulted in dozens of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, Digg/Stumble/Mixx vote helpers and more. SXSW will be no different, for sure. But my excitement for this conference takes on a different perspective now that I’m not a nobody anymore. And I don’t mean that from an ego perspective, just that I’m going there with already established relationships with folks.

Here’s what I’m excited about:

Parties

It’s no secret I do work for a spirits company. And I’m a spirits guy. There’s nothing more fun to me than hanging at a cocktail party telling war stories and getting to know interesting people. I’ve had the honor of hanging with Brian Solis, Chris Heuer and others before. I’m looking forward to it again. Maybe I can catch Stephanie Agresta for two seconds this time. Chris Brogan will probably give me hell for taking him to a mall bar in Vegas and we’ll both try to behave this time to avoid a repeat of the drunk Utterz (Talk to Chris. He deleted it.)

Panels

While the networking is my thing, I genuinely do try to learn from the presentations. I’m excited to have the chance to glean knowledge from folks I’ve admired from a far for a while. Andy Beal, Rohit Bahargava, C.C. Chapman, Mack Collier, Jeff Jarvis, Beth Kanter, Charlene Li and Brian Oberkirch come to immediate mind. Of course, there’s Kawasaki, Ferris, Israel and Scoble, not to mention Jeremiah Owyang, who I was able to meet and chat with at BlogWorldExpo, but I’m a mere speck on their windshield … and if you’ve seen me, that’s saying something. Of course, if I play my cards right, I could really just go for the Conversation Starters segment:

Over drinks and appetizers, you’ll have a chance to share ideas with a number of people who have volunteered to start conversations: Shel Israel, Robert Scoble, Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li, Chris Heuer, Mack Collier and Lionel Menchaca, as well as several Federated Media authors.

Maybe Heuer will introduce me to folks.

But there are tons of folks I’ve either met or want to meet who will be there but aren’t speaking. I’d love to find time with Maggie Fox, Solis and Heuer to chat about the social media release. Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell of Citizen Marketers and Church of the Customer are going to be there. I need to buy them a Maker’s Mark. I hear Scott Monty, will be there. He and I have some red wax to remove. As a Communications Overtones reader and fan, I’m stoked about the chance to chat with Kami Huyse. I’d love to see Erin Kotecki Vest again. Erica O’Grady and Connie Reece are folks I’d like to meet. Jane Quigley is someone I have who I’d like to see again. And I’ve delayed tossing out this name until now because I know it will torture her, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen Tamar Weinberg.

Pals

The best part of the SXSW experience for me will be going there with my homies. Todd Earwood, Shawn Morton, Nick Huhn and Melissa King (You need a blog, damn it.) are representing from the ‘Ville. There may be others going, too, but we’re all fairly close and actively involved in the Social Media Club Louisville, so it will be nice to have some time with hometown friends, even if we have to go a few hundred miles to get it.

Needless to say, the opportunity to meet and greet these and dozens more fine folks gets my blood going. If I didn’t mention you, it’s not because I don’t want to connect. Find me and introduce yourself. If we’ve met before, smack me on the back of the head real good for not linking to you. (Except for you Dave … You’re from West, By God, Virginia. You won’t do it lightly.)

Please jump in the comments and let me know if you’re coming. I’d love to connect and network socially with you. If you are, go check out The Daily Idea’s guide to SXSWi.

And don’t be offended if I didn’t mention you above. I almost left out Tamar and I love Tamar. (Heh).

Perhaps I’ll even whip out the camera and do a future episode of SME TV with you, too! See you in Austin.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. SXSW News & PARTAY Info
2. Geek Spring Break – 2008 SXSW Party Central
3. Going To SXSW?
4. A Don’t Miss Event During SXSW
5. SXSW Wordwide Flickrite Meet-Up

IMAGE: Brian Solis, Chris Heuer and me at BlogWorldExpo. Photo by Todd Earwood and on my Flickr.

[tags]SXSW, South by Southwest, social networking, networking, social media, Jason Falls[/tags]

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