Katie Wynner and I have been putting together a presentation we’re giving in Long Beach, CA this week on Social Media Marketing and she came across this video on Social Media ROI. The video showcases several of the best known Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies and data that I’ve seen from recent reports released on all the tech hubs. Two thumbs up. Hat tip to Katie for the find.
It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? There are a lot of people out there right now who’ve had the question thrust upon them when they weren’t ready. What would you do? Would you seek another job just like the one you had because it’s easy, familiar and safe? Or would you go and do the things that you’ve always wanted to do because they matter to you?
There’s been a strong surge in the pro-entrepreneurship movement this year urging individuals and organizations to focus on making a difference. People are starting to see how participating in the culture of entrepreneurship and doing things and working on problems that add value not only gives them a sense of fulfillment in their lives, it improves society overall. The great shaking out we’re all experiencing right now is producing new thoughts and solutions on how to go about doing what we do and finding meaning in our lives. Some call it “The New Entrepreneurship“, or “awesomeness” and some simply call it “working on stuff that matters“.
What would you do tomorrow if you were laid off today? Would you change the world?
There’s a reason people say “try walking a mile in their shoes“. Achieving empathy isn’t just about putting yourself in someone else’s position, it’s also about seeing that position from someone else’s perspective. True empathy is being able to strip away your own thoughts, feelings and judgment in order to clearly see a situation through someone else eyes, with their heart, filters and experiences taken into account. Most people make the mistake of just putting themselves in another’s position and saying “what would I do if I were in this situation?”. This approach often leads to poor judgment calls, misunderstandings and bad advice. Why? Because experiencing empathy isn’t about how you think or feel at all. It’s about simulating what they are experiencing and relating to it. Even in an identical scenario, they’ll never think, feel or behave quite the same way as you would.
Of course, we’ll never get perfect at achieving empathy – our brains are (sadly) wired to put ourselves at the center of the action. The good news is that we can take steps to improve our approach to get better insights into the hearts and minds of others. It starts by first taking ourselves completely out of the equation and then asking “what is this person feeling/thinking based on their experiences, and how can I relate to that”. This is hard to do, but it’ll get you off on the right foot. Once you focus on the shoes, you’ll be in a much better position to know what it really feels like to walk the mile.
Now that we’ve got the technology to connect in real time, 24/7 to anyone with an internet connection, more and more organizations are reaching out across the globe to find the very best people they can to get things done. Likewise, people with talent are collaborating with teams remotely and seeking meaningful work across the globe. Technology and the web are giving people and organizations an unprecedented amount of access to ideas, education and each other. The question is…are you ready to embrace these trends and adapt?
The following presentation “The Future Of Work” was shared by Jeff Brenman. It’s designed to be read and offers a quick, visual overview of trends we can expect that are changing how we’ll work and compete for jobs in the coming years. Here are some of the trends -
I’m having a lot of fun playing two social games right now – Glue and Foursquare. Foursquare connects you and your friends around the places you visit offline (restaurants, shops, movie theaters etc) and Glue connects you and your friends around the popular sites you visit online (like Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yelp and Wikipedia). Both services allow you to share your experiences about your favorite places and stuff you love in real time with your friends, as well as earn rewards, unlock achievements and compete for bragging rights.
I recently found this video series on the theme forest community blog and thought it was so valuable that it was worth sharing with my readers. If you’re like me, you learn a heck of a lot better from being shown than from reading manuals and how-tos. This series of 7 videos put together by Drew from Themeforest.net is a great resource for visual learners looking to get into WordPress design. I just wish I had had it 2 years ago! Hat tip to Drew.
Some fresh Hitwise data posted by Bill Tancer just a few weeks ago indicates that Twitter might have hit a wall and is now on the decline. Just as Twitter secured an additional $100 million in financing, which would place the company’s valuation in the $1 billion range, Bill dug into the data to take a quick look at Twitter’s market share of visits to see if the hype is matched by site traffic. I’ve included 2 of the key graphs here – Marketshare of Visits (U.S.) to Twitter.com and search volume for “Twitter”. In both visits and searches, Twitter appears to have hit a resistance point as of April 2009, which validates the feeling expressed by many heavy users that engagement seems to be falling off of late.
It should be noted that the chart immediately below indicates visits to Twitter’s website, and does not include application and mobile traffic. That being said, even without application and mobile data, visits to the main Twitter domain should have some correlation to new user adoption. If this interests you, please head over to Bill’s post and start a discussion – perhaps he’ll be nice enough to run the reports again as of this week so that we can get a better idea of whether this is just a temporary setback Twitter is experiencing, or not. My guess is that with the addition of Twitter lists, you’ll see a spike this week back to Twitter.com, but that it’ll be a spike, not necessarily the start of an upward trend.
This weekend I made the decision to switch things up and reboot my Twitter following list. On Sunday night, with a little help from Jesse over at SocialToo, I ran a script that unfollowed almost 12,000 people. This week, for the first time since the summer of 2007, I’m back to following just over 200.
In this post I’ll discuss why I decided to reboot my list and how I’m planning on changing my approach to using Twitter moving forward. I’ll also show you some data, bust a few social media myths and tell you a few things that those “social media gurus” with large Twitter followings don’t want you to know. Ready to rock and roll? Buckle up… Read More
