Students will tell you that there is a subtle yet absolute difference between knowing how to do something and knowing how to EXPLAIN how to do something. The ability to share knowledge requires that you have an additional layer of experience and know-how.

To be a really effective trainer, you need to be able to impart the how, the why, and the proper and effective application of techniques being taught. This deeper knowledge supports the trainer during Q&A where attendees query whatever comes to mind and the right answer has to come off the cuff. Without an intimate knowledge of the topic, there is no open Q&A.

As we wrap up another intensive workshop retreat, this one two full days in Langley, WA, I am reminded of how deep our knowledge of social media is, as well as how much we have yet to learn.  What Mike and I shared was so extensive, but there was much we didn’t share because there just wasn’t enough time. We feel as if there is lots of unexplored territory.

The cool thing about the approach of The Langley Center for New Media is that they are bringing in real experts in related fields to – over time – provide comprehensive coverage of all things new media: from content strategy to social media implementation to new journalism.  In the retreat-like atmosphere of the town of Langley on Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest, learning takes place in an intimate and relaxing environment. Still, for a two or three day event, the tuition is affordable and access to the instructors is intensive.

Many social media multi-day workshops announced by industry insiders over the last year have not happened, most often for lack of attendance. What was different here? The Langley Center is unique and different in the talent they bring in to impart knowledge and in their approach to learning. They understand that it’s not just content or strategy or implementation, but a whole new way of thinking and acting that take time and preparation to engage in.

After some very intensive interaction and time with them, we believe they truly “get it“. So, to the folks of Langley Center for New Media about to Rock The World, we salute you!

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Excerpt from Rock the World with Social Media – coming October 2010

For anyone serious about social media, a basic understanding of and activity in Twitter is a requirement. At the very least you need to understand the issues. The only way to understand the issues is to be a user.

If you are new, we recommend you setup a personal Twitter account and build out your BIO as a hybrid of 80% personal and 20% business text. Your 160 character bio should be keywords rather than sentences. It is a good idea to group keywords visually and separate difference sets with a vertical pipe or some other symbol like this:

Creative genius | photographer – commercial, advertising, editorial | love to hike & ski | dedicated family man | into cartoons and comedy

The BIO above is only 138 of an allowed 160 characters. You should use as many of the 160 characters as you possibly can. It will help you be found in searches both on Twitter search as well as on related sites such as Twellow. (Twellow.com is the yellow pages of Twitter, sorting entries based on keywords found in BIOs and locations as entered by users.)

A background image is highly recommended; for personal accounts, it can be slanted mostly toward the personal side of you. Still, we suggest you look at what other people in your same demographic are doing when you create a look for yourself. You are branding yourself, after all, and there is no better place to create a visual and “instant” brand for yourself than Twitter.

Unless you have the skills to do it yourself, be prepared to pay an average of $150 for a good personalized background page. If you need assistance, we recommend you use someone who understands the nuances of building a background that will fit for a variety of screen resolutions. You can find information to contact our graphic artist on our site RockTheWorldBook.com/extras.

Consider tools like HootSuite to organize your Twitter communications, especially on a Smartphone. Twitter and Smartphones are like Lennon and McCartney. They just go together brilliantly!

For more information about Rock the World with Social Media, our second book in the “Rock the World” series, please email training@integratedalliances.com. We’d love to talk with you! Or, post a comment here and we’ll respond promptly to your thoughts and ideas.



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So many people are jumping on bandwagons these days, so many trying to find their next gig, trying to do something to pay the bills. And so the issue comes up that anyone can do anything for anyone if they just know a little more than the next guy. But is that good enough?

I received yet another notice in my inbox from a new social media “expert” that purports to have figured it out. When I looked at the facebook video link, it was of such poor quality that it was sad to watch. He’s sitting on an old couch in a wrinkled shirt with bad audio (making it hard to hear) on a dim webcam so the only feature I can really pick out against the background is rather large ears.

Am I dissing this guy? No; not at all. I am being honest about how he is portraying himself in his quest to “sell” social media training to small business owners. Maybe he will find success; perhaps he will help some people go further than they are going themselves. In the meantime, he doesn’t understand that he comes across as someone who’s not in it for the long haul, someone who will leave the side of his client the moment a job offer comes in.

Contrast that with the quality product a real training company or professional strives to provide and you’ll see a huge difference in the potential return on your investment. Here’s a real life example: Mike and I were recently at HyperThreat Studios to record a CD-quality audio companion to our first book Rock the World with your Online Presence. The picture attached to this post is my partner, Mike O’Neil in front of the microphone.

The point is, when people come across so much poor quality, they stop looking. They miss the real professionals who can help them navigate this new world. There are tons of people who are in the field, where good enough is just good enough, sort of like our friend described above. There are fewer real veterans who will someday (perhaps sooner than later) find themselves being inducted into the Social Media Hall of Fame. Those would be the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Jay Deragon, Chris Brogan, Joel Comm, Dean Holmes, Mike O’Neil, Ron Davies, Lewis Howes, Patrick O’Malley, JD Gershbein, and others.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list. Rather only the first who have come to mind. If you know someone who really knows their stuff, feel free to drop a comment below. We’d love to recognize real experts in the field who maintain a level of quality not because they have to, but because they are just that authentic.

Image via Wikipedia

I get this question about once a week through email and other sources, so here’s the post I’ve written often but never published.

To have your Twitter update feed your LinkedIn update you must first add your Twitter account to LinkedIn.  You can do this from the “Edit My Profile” Tab or from your Settings (top right of the screen).

When attaching your Twitter account, you have the option of having your entire Twitter stream feed your LinkedIn updates (BAD IDEA!), or you can share selected tweets by including “#in” in the tweet. That means you get to use your brain instead of an automated system to post everything.

Those posts might be appropriate for Twitter, but not LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a different environment where people pay more attention to everything they read on your profile. It’s way too much exposure if your status, which feeds the home pages of your connections, is updated several times a day.

Already have Twitter connected to LinkedIn? Here’s how to change your settings.From your home page, click the drop down box beside the Twitter “T” and select settings. Of, you can access your Twitter settings from your Settings link at the top right of any LinkedIn page.

Again, if you adjust your settings to share only selected tweets (those that contain #in), you’ll be fine.  When you tweet and want it to show up on LinkedIn, #in is all you need. It will update your profile status within a few minutes.

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#1 – If you find it annoying to attend a networking event with people that bring their resume with them, consider how it appears when you do this:

On LinkedIn, you send your resume directly to the email address of all of your first level connections, asking them to pass it along if they know someone who is hiring.

First of all, you haven’t even educated the recipient of the career move you want to make or the type of position you are looking for. You can’t expect them to take the time to open the resume document (if they are inclined to open an attachment anyway.

If they do open the attachment, you can’t expect them to know from reading your resume what it is you are looking for. Most are not trained staffing professionals.

The better option is to reach out to people ON LinkedIn, which always includes a link back to your profile. Let them know what you are looking for and ask, if they happen to hear of anyone hiring in that area, if they would keep you in mind to refer.

#2 – If you cannot pay attention to detail; then do not say you do. How annoyed do you get at people who send an open email message to an entire list, all included in the TO field rather than the BCC?

On LinkedIn, when you send a message or communication to more than one person, the box: “Allow recipients to see each other’s names and email addresses” is checked by default. Bad form: this sends the message to everyone’s primary email address in the TO field.

Not being caught in this etiquette trap takes only the effort to uncheck that box.

#3 – Broadcasting your message without considering where you are: if you don’t walk into church or the gym with your resume and business cards in your hand, don’t do it on LinkedIn.

Really, just by participating in the community, answering questions, engaging in group discussions, commenting on people’s status updates, all leave a digital business card that will lead people right back to your profile.

Rather than seem desperate and broadcast your search everywhere you go, practice subtlety and engagement. Just by being there, people will notice you. If you have an attractive and relevant headline, and a strong profile, inquiries will come to you as often as those you send out.

How about you? What are your pet peeves from people who just “don’t get it” on LinkedIn?



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Last week after I spoke with Adrian Lurssen, VP of Strategic Business Development at JD Supra on Friday, my heart was pounding and my skin felt like it would just melt off my bones.  I haven’t been so excited in years!  What LinkedIn announced on Friday with the new applications is a game changer!

You see, in December 2008, when LinkedIn’s new CEO Jeff Weiner joined the team, LinkedIn was having trouble matching steps with its power users and biggest supporters.  Since then, they have upgraded the user interface, added features like Personal Information (which allows you to provide contact information to your Tier One connections), launched new and better recruiting tools, and opened new applications that work to heighten engagement of users in the community.

My partner, Mike O’Neil, and I have evangelized LinkedIn for so many reasons over the last four years: for career development, for sales teams, for marketing, for recruiting, for the scientific community to share and find each other, for the college community to interact and find resources for students,the list just goes on and on!  And it’s a community not just for job seekers and recruiters, but a place to engage other professionals, to assist each other in mutual relationships, to build a network of trusted professionals that you can reach out to when the need arises.  It is a very giving community and it is finally catching up to its potential.

The reason the new apps excited me so much is that they provide incredibly valuable resources to professionals both seeking advice and trying to determine ways to share the body of their work.  For attorney’s this app is Legal Updates; for creatives, its the Creative Portfolio Display; and for Real Estate Professionals, the Real Estate Pro. These join the earlier released SAP Community Bio, an application that allowed SAP professionals to “certify” their profile with their professional credentials.

What this means is that business owners and professionals alike will be able to tap into legal commentary on topics of interest to them, click through to subscribe to further updates, and even connect with the authoring attorney.  Creatives now have a place to display a body of their work, again showcasing their talent right on their LinkedIn profile. And with Real Estate Pro, professionals can stay abreast of the commercial real estate landscape in areas of interest.

Take my word for it folks – Friday was a game changer.  Get excited.  Get on LinkedIn!

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About this time last year, as we were preparing to publish Rock the World with Your Online Presence, my partner and co-author Mike O’Neil posted a question in the Answers on LinkedIn. What are some creative ways to promote our new book?   He received over 35 responses including one from Tony Eldridge about running a Twitter Contest. He had written a blog post on the and directed Mike to it as a resource.  You can read his post here.

We acted on his advice and partnered with CrowdCampaign.com to help.  You can still see the original contest here. It was really fun and drove a lot of traffic not just to our Twitter profiles, but also to our website: RockTheWorldBook.com. We were not set up yet to accept pre-orders for the book, so we can’t tell you how those turned out, but we will have that ready this time.

In fact, since August of last year, we’ve learned so much more about Twitter and authoring, that we plan to do two contests in the near future.  One is to promote the work of our friend, Joel Comm, who is releasing “Ka-Ching!” on July 27.

The second will be to promote our second book “Rock The World with Social a LinkedIn Users’ Guide to the World of Social Media”. As we get closer, you can find details for the book and related content on our website: RockTheWorldBook.com.

One prize, in addition to useful books and tools, will be an interview on our upcoming radio show on WebmasterRadio.fm “Rock The World LinkedIn Show.”

We’d love to hear our ideas for great contests and cool prizes.  What would you like to see?

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There is nothing new under the sun.  For LinkedIn that means, now that they have reached a certain level of success measured by number of users and a certain level of engagement, it’s time to focus.

For LinkedIn, that means niche applications.  They now have 16 apps; the new ones today are game changers.

Legal Updates

Consider how powerful having business intelligence in the form of a constant stream of current legal commentary is for a business owner, a professional, a consultant that is focused on the topic or industry of their choice.

The app is powered by JD Supra, a powerful online tool that, when partnered with the app allows lawyers to include a portfolio of their written work on their LinkedIn profile. That same work is available in a searchable, repository of legal information. Individual lawyers and law firms can be added to feeds.

All documents enjoy the viral qualities of the LinkedIn network: they can be shared (to groups, individuals, or as status updates), recommended, or added to a Favorites list for later reference.

Also, for lawyers, many of whom are trying to figure out how to make LinkedIn work for them, it is an opportunity to network. They can use the app to engage their own connections with meaningful content – but they can also distribute BEYOND their network to exactly the people they should be meeting: professionals in their fields and industries they serve.

Everyone gets useful legal information that matters to them – a real business advantage – and lawyers get unparalleled exposure for their substantive work and expertise.

Here is a video outlining the application.

Creative Portfolio Display

Image of Neil McKenzie

I had to run home and check out the other apps. I emailed out photographer, Neil McKenzie, who writes for the Colorado Business Magazine and has recently started his own blog to provide solid business content for those in creative professions. I knew he would do the topic justice. I didn’t expect him to have a blog post done before I could finish dinner!

Here’s what he has to say about this app developed by Behance

Real Estate Pro

Real Estate Pro by Rofo keeps you “informed about the local commercial real estate and office space market. Follow active brokers and professionals, track new property listings and see the latest deals in your area.”

You can see that the focus on these niche communities (adding to the previous success of the SAP Community Bio app) changes the world for members of LinkedIn, adding powerful tools that go beyond the networking and engagement, taking LinkedIn to new heights as a powerful business tool.

Now it’s your turn. Leave a comment about how you think this news will change the LinkedIn world.

(NOTE: I had the honor of talking to Adrian Lurssen, VP of Stratregic Business Development at JD Supra. Since I was driving, he was kind enough to follow up with an email outling the power of the application.  I modified his material for inclusion in this blog post with his permission. For more information, read their blog post here.)

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Where does WordPress fit into the social media space? Well, in the real world, we gain credibility and recognition by participating in projects, showing our skills, doing our jobs. If you want to learn a new skill or become known in the community, a quick and surefire way (if you’re all that), is to join community groups and volunteer in an area where you can put your strengths to work!

Blogging is similar in that you can showcase your thoughts and opinions and become known as a thought leader in the community. In real life, open your mouth and speak. Online, open your heart and write.

But WordPress is not all about blogging. It is brilliant at allowing you a platform to build a complete site that integrates easily with your social media activities. By incorporating your site and your blog together, you build traffic and content and keep it fresh without having to split your focus.

Check it out! Are you blogging? Diving traffic to your site? What are your thoughts?

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Meetup as a social networking platform is a powerful tool for connecting our online world with the real one.  Chances are you haven’t checked it out yet. According to Meetup.com, there are 7.2 million members with over 6 million monthly visitors, 79,000 local groups in 45,000 cities. They host 250,000 monthly Meetups attracting 2.2 million monthly RSVPs.

Not bad.

Here’s what they say:

Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.

Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.

Check it out.  At Integrated Alliances, we host several meetup groups and hold monthly meetings at the Denver WordPress and Social Media Meetup Group. If you’re in town, check us out.  If not, search Meetup.com for topics that interest you and see where and when the locals gather. You’ll be glad you did.

And if you host or attend, leave a comment with your favorite Meetup group. Telling people about it is the point of social media!

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December 1, 2004, USA Today ran an article “Best friends good for business: Employees with buddies at work more ‘engaged’”. At that time, 29% of employees said “they had a best friend at work, and mounting research indicates that the word ‘best’ makes the difference.”

LinkedIn had been around a year, Myspace and Facebook existed. But the term “social media” wasn’t widely used, if it even existed at that time.

Is it possible that this article was the foreshadowed the growing trend in social media to find and do business alongside others with whom who we feel an affinity? At the time they said that companies didn’t necessarily schedule friends together, but friends could refer others for employment and ask for specific schedules.

The statistics noting the differences between people having friends at work and those not were interesting. The 3 in 10 workers who had a best friend at work vs the 7 in 10 who did not were significantly more engaged in their jobs.

Now, we haven’t conducted a scientific study, however, the more we are exposed to people who successfully incorporate social media into work, the more we feel that the people who engaged in social media, even LinkedIn (the professional social network), the happier they are with what they are doing and accomplishing.

What do you think? Rather than make other notes about anecdotal evidence, let me ask for yours.  Are you able to use social media at work?  And (whether yes or no) how engaged or disengaged are you from your work?

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People have always been told that their vote counts, that one vote makes a difference. Nowhere is that more obvious today than in the social media space. People vote with the click of a mouse: Like, Share, Send, Forward, Digg, email, etc.

And companies listen to consumers and vote with their investment and development dollars. Microsoft invested huge sums in Facebook and today Mashable broke the story that they are launching Outlook Facebook and Windows Live Integration.  Now that’s powerful. Before now, you could tie your connection to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Hoovers via Xobni, but the power of actual integration is something not to be taken lightly.

My partner, Mike O’Neil has been talking since before I met him about the trends and predictors and future of the industry. He has preached that we will see greater integration and further aggregators that will make online platforms easier to use and manage. Microsoft and Facebook teaming up is a sure sign that those things are indeed happening.

After all, it was Microsoft that popularized the graphic user interface and brought Windows and Office 95 to the computing world, simplifying computer technologies for millions of users, forcing standardization in the industry of menus and icons and keystrokes. The same needs to happen in the social media space with the variety of platforms and features and access points and cultures.

Last year they integrated LinkedIn and announced that Myspace and Facebook were not far behind.  With the social integration right within Outlook – if it doesn’t bog down the program – that is a leap toward the integration Mike has predicted. Should bought stock in one of those companies!

Here’s the original article by Mashable…

What are your thoughts? How do you think this will play out? What do you think is next? Leave your comment below.

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