Don’t be shy about sharing. What would you give an opinion about at a networking event with your colleagues and clients? They’re listening online. For starters, provide helpful tips in your areas of expertise. For example, I tweet communication tips—and that’s a fairly broad umbrella: business or technical writing, presentation skills, interpersonal skills, personal presence, [...]
Some people play in the tweet stream for a pastime. The same people link on LinkedIn for laughs. And they friend on Facebook for fun. Those statements were truer several years ago when the sites were newer than today. Nowadays, the Twitter stream has trash, LinkedIn has spammers, and Facebook can become frivolous. So if [...]
. Whether you’re blogging or tweeting, think tour guide. Consider past situations when you’ve been fortunate enough to have an experienced tour guide––possibly through the Smithsonian, the Louvre, or another center of interest. Guides don’t just function as signposts: “Here’s an eighteenth-century military uniform.” “There’s the kitchen.” “Turn left and then walk straight ahead and [...]
Set up a free account with Google Reader or through your Microsoft Outlook and sign up for the RSS (real simple syndication) feeds for all of your key words. Read them to hear what others are saying before you say something that’s really last-decade and embarrassing. No, I’m not playing politician here and suggesting [...]
Learn from the big guys how to use social media for business advantage. Rather than shouting, “We’re the best,” at the top of their lungs to anyone who’s nearby, the Fortune 500 companies have their representatives listening to what customers say about them. They search for questions about their products or services and provide helpful [...]
In her excellent book Share This! Deanna Zandt tackles the topic of out-of-control buzz on social media sites. If you’re already active, you’ve experienced the phenomenon. It’s like the old game of gossip, where someone whispers a secret in your ear, and you tell it to the next person, who tells it to the next [...]
Beware of trash. Whether you’re looking at Facebook or Twitter, you can link to so many people who are blasting out so many messages that you miss those that you want to see. That defeats the purpose altogether of connecting online to stay up to date. Clutter on your screen is just as bad as [...]
Here are some free tools to help you search, connect, listen, and capture what you hear: www.search.twitter.com www.Tweetscan.com www.Twellow.com www.twemes.com www.blogsearch.google.com www.google.com/alerts www.LinkedIn.com/search Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 46 books. Her work has been translated into 23 languages. Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and [...]
Every year my next-door neighbors host a Christmas party for approximately 800 to –1,000 guests. (Okay, I don’t have access to the actual guest list to count. But for the entire four hours, they as hosts stand at the door and greet people coming and going.) The party is so large that as guests [...]
To get to the real sources of wisdom,see whom the gurus read, recommend, interview, and quote. For example, the guru in your industry may have 32,000 followers—but he may be following only 120 people. Check out those 120 to get to the wellspring of ideas: the raw data, the studies, the polls, and the analysts [...]
