When you are posting on your blog, tweeting, facebook status updating it should not always be about what your doing. It is also about well sharing. Sharing what you are reading, what you have learned and others who you find interesting.  The key being WHERE you get this information from!! So let me share with you some of my favorite sites. No, they are not all Social Media related. Nor are they work related. Hey, I do like other stuff you know.  I will do it in list form, cause people like lists:

-Stephanie Klein’s Stories Of My Life:

An amazing writer. Hands down one of my favorite sites to visit everyday. I love her humor and take on her daily life. I am proud to say I discovered  her blog for years before her first book was published and now I consider her a friend.

-Valleywag

Just the best gossip and 411 about the people in Silicon Valley. Bottom line it is a great gossip site. I admit it, I like gossip

-The SiliconANGLE

A blog by John Furrier that covers entrepreneurs, business executive, innovators and more.  What I like about it is it promotes those who have something interesting to say.

-PR2.0 aka BrianSolis

Great blog, great insight..nice guy. Need I say more?

-Social Media Today

What I like to do is subscribe via RSS and look at the 50-100 new blog posts posted everyday there. Way to much content to look at the webpage. I go over the RSS and look at titles that grab me.

-ReadWriteWeb

It is a site that give Web news, reviews and insight. That being said, just some great posts okay? Trust me on this one.

-Confessions of a One Date Wonder

Started off as a blog about “Jane Wonder”  who could never get a second date. Now, she is involved with one guy she calls LC. Will see settle down? Will she get married? Will she change the name of her blog?

-Hulu

No it does not belong on this list, but dang.. I love Hulu..

Feel free to post your favorite sites below..yes I will allow shameless self promoting, as long as you share one other that is not yours.. go nuts.

Posted under Blog, Off Subject, Tips & Tricks

So I have noticed a change in the request for interviews and speaking engagements over the past few months. I am getting a lot of requests for tips/tricks on using social networking to find a job. Now, with the economy is I totally can see why people are turning to this medium.  In the past 2 weeks  I have been interviewed for:

-How Facebook Can Help Job Seekers Find Employment

-Tweet, Tweet: How to Incorporate Twitter Into Your Job Search

Asked to on using Social Networking  & Linkedin to find a job at:

-International Association of Administrative Professionals

-NeCon East

So I thought it would be a good idea to share some tips and tricks that you can use to help find a job. I think I should do it in list form, as people like lists!

Using Twitter

-Post to your Twitter profile, I am looking for a job! So simple, I know some people do not event think to do that.

-Use Twitter Search to find a job based on keywords. Example: CSR Wanted, Denver got me this:

The key here is to play around with the search terms to narrow it down better to what you are looking for.

Also in regards to Twitter Search, use it to find people in your field of work and add them! You need to Network and build your community.

-Follow accounts like: @jobangels, @freelancejobs @manpower

-Use Twitterjobsearch.com

Using Linkedin
-Complete your profile, amazing how many people do not do that.

-Use SEO. Put in keywords your profile, play around with it to increase your visibility.  It is a good idea to find just the right words to describe what you do.  You will know you are on the right track when you see this box:

So lets say you are in website development, use keywords like HTML, MySQl, etc. These are words people may use to find someone with your skills.

The more times you come up in search, well..the better!!

-Save business cards. When your meeting people, chatting folks up, make sure to get their business cards. Then go back to your linkedin profile and add them.  Yes, simple.

-Put a picture up. This goes for both Twitter and Linkedin, it ads something when you can see what a person looks like.

-The Answers Section!! The most underused, yet powerful tool on the site! It is where the magic happens. This is where people in your field post questions they need help with. They are reaching out for “An Expert”. That expert is you! Get on it, respond, refer, engage, chat it up, etc. This is where networking happens. Questions in my area look like this:

Hope some of these tips help. What are some tools /tricks you use to find a job?

Posted under Tips & Tricks

I owe a lot of blog posts. I owe them to myself. I keep telling myself I am going to blog about this..or that.. or whatchamacallit ( i did like that candy bar). I’ll sit down and my desk to start typing and think “What was that great idea I had for a blog?” It is gone like that. Yep, in one ear and out the other…, this comes as no shock to my wife.She can remember the color of a tie I wore to a wedding over 10 years ago. The name of some random street we drove by one time, in some city we have never been back to since. It is amazing.

As many of you know, I just got my first IPhone. This handy device is amazing. It is one of the simple applications on it that has inspired this post. ( Though my experience with the IPhone is for another blog post, yes I wrote that idea down.)

The Voice Memos. I can not live without it now. The ability to record little messages to myself about things, has changed my work flow. I find myself recording everything so I don’t forget ideas.  Things like:

-Blog about this

- Pick up That

-Call Mrs.Whatsherface

I have become Mr. Organized now, thanks to it.

So this got me thinking.. what are some of the everyday “Social Media Tools” do I use that may be worth sharing? I am not going to go into great detail about each tool, as that could be a blog post by itself. I think I will share it with you in list form. As people like lists.

-Google Reader: The hands down best blog reader out there.  Simply put  blog reader brings the blog articles to you. Instead of checking websites all the time for updated content you just subscribe to a RSS feed and it will update the blog reader. For more on this you can  read this earlier blog post I did on Google Reader.

-Twitter: By now you know all about it.  If you don’t, you can read about it here. The key as a social media tool is not only the networking but the content you wade through. The comments you can see, the interactions. The best tools for that I think is Twitter Search and TweetDeck

-Xmarks: Now you need to use FireFox to run this addon. Everybody uses Firefox right? Right? This is a bookmark aka favorities addon. It lets me access my bookmarks from any computer. Brilliant!

-Stumbleupon: I think I may be alone on this one. Maybe just in the minority. I find stumbleupon to be really successful in driving traffic to my blog vs Digg. The idea behind stumbleupon is that simply put, is that people will look for random links on a subject. It makes recommendations based on the information you give it. Think of it as a changing channels on a radio till you find a song you like.

-Ping.Fm: I cant live without it. Lets me post to several social networking sites at one time. So yes, you will see the same post/status on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and even Plurk.

-GoogleDocs: Who needs Microsoft Office? I can access my documents from any computer and even my phone. You can have several people edit a document at the same time, make notes, whatever. Heck, my wife now does grocery lists for me on it now and makes changes while I am in the store. This is my favorite of all of items on this list, okay maybe not more then Twitter.

Noteworthy sites in no particular order:

-Linkedin: The Q & A section is very powerful

-Facebook: Ready for this. Every morning I wish people a Happy Birthday on Facebook. Yep, its social networking at its basic. It starts great conversations with people and lets me check in. Werid? Yes. Does it help me network? Yes.

-Meetups AkA Tweetups Nope, its not an application. Not a widget. Its real life. Nothing beats face time. I put together meetups and just network. Its the most powerful tool of them all…. and may even get you local coverage

Posted under Blog, Tips & Tricks

“Expert”.. it is a term I can not stand.  Me, I learn something new everyday. I never claim to know it all. Heck, my wife will back me up on that. I am always talking to people, reading, watching and learning to keep up with all this new technology.

One way I do this is by going to conferences and one I am a fan of is the Web 2.0 Expo.

I know that in these tough economic times we are watching every dime, but I dig this conference. Yes, I said dig.

Let me tell you why in list form, as people like lists.

- As far as cost goes for something on this level, there are many different pricing options

- There are software companies, strategists, executives, mobile technology companies, leaders in web 2.0 industry right there for you to chat with. (they don’t bite either)

-Networking, Networking, Networking. I have made many long lasting relationships at events like this.

- This conference has great speakers like: Stowe Boyd , Maggie Fox, Christine Herron, Tara Hunt and Charlene Li plus lots more!

-Notice the speakers are from many different areas of Web 2.0/Social Media/New Media/ insert buzz term here

- Many different tracks to pick from like Mobile, Web, Marketing and Security

-Workshops

-The Expo floor, the best part of any conference where all the action is!

Okay that is my soapbox moment for now.. sorry.

Posted under Blog, Tips & Tricks

Today a friend reached out to me.  She works for a very big, well know company. She asked me a simple question.

“How do we monitor our brand online?”

My response was “You guys get it!”. She responded with a very puzzled tone (as my wife does to me a lot) : “We do?”

“Yes, you do” Your company is taking the first step of looking into what people are saying about your brand online and learning how to deal with brand monitoring”

Okay, so enough of my little cut scene from a conversation. Let me give you some links to tools and resources that help companies monitor what people are saying online about them. We will do it in list form, as people like lists:

-Twitter Search which use to be called Summize before Twitter bought it. You simply type in keywords and you can see people who have used that word in a tweet.

-Social Mention searchs Google blog search, Delicious, FriendFeed, Digg, Twitter, Youtube and such and puts it into a nice package for you.

-Google Alerts An amazing tool by the folks at well, Google. Put in keywords and it will send you alerts when people use those words. This searches Google so we are talking about anywhere on the web that Google indexes, which is well, almost everywhere.

-Backtype allows you to search blog comments.  Users need to register and it will monitor the url you put in the chat. Then pulls all the comments back to one place for you to search.

-Yacktrack monitors lots of different social networking sites and allows you to see which sites your brand is being mentioned on vs another.

These are just some of the several tools that are out there. If there are some I have missed, please post them in the comments so I can add them to an updated list.

I used the term brand and keyword when writing this post. What is it you should be monitoring when following your brand? I think you should look at:

-Company Name

-Your Product

- Competition

-Your Company Executives (and your competitions)

- Clients

All right now, get out there and see what people are saying about you!

Posted under Blog, New Media, Tips & Tricks

Do you have days where you just can stay focused? Those days where you lack motivation because you are just burned out? I think I am having one of those today. I just can not seem to focus on the tasks in front of me. It does not help that there are so many distractions like:

-Christmas

-People in and out of my office

-Phone keeps ringing

-Instant Messages

-Email

-5 kids

You get the idea.  So I decided to turn the distractions around to help me at least get a blog post up this week. What are some things one can do to help “Stay On Target”? Or better said, focus? Let me share some that I do. Let me do it in list form. People like lists:

-Turn off the phone. This is my life line. I put up over 1200 minutes a month on this thing. Sometimes I just have to turn it off to get things done.

-Get off the Internet! Just unplug the cable. I love the internet. I love my email. Yet, it is well.. the root of a lot of evils.

-Clean your workspace up. I know they say a “A Clean Desk Is A Sign Of A Sick Mind” but its not true

-Music. Sometimes I need to  turn on my ipod and get lost in the music. This is one of things that works really well for me.

-Make a do to list. This is something that also works well for me. I just love checking those tasks off. It gives me a great sense of completion.

-No Multi tasking. Weird right? But doing one thing at a time works really well for me. Lets me check those items off my “to do” list faster.

-Have someone to bounce ideas off of. Another thing that works well for me. I will put togeteher a draft or list to send to someone whose feedback I value.

What do you do to focus?

Posted under Tips & Tricks