The secret of influence everyone forgot

By Neil Patrick

Go and take a look at your Twitter feed. Do it now.

Scroll down the tweets in your feed and look at the little icons beneath each tweet.

Notice anything?

I'm willing to bet that most tweets you see will have zero shares, zero likes, zero comments.

No-one sees or is interested in 99% of their Twitter feed. This fact is a problem for the posters. And an opportunity for everyone else.

The explosion of online content (and the platforms’ manipulation of it for their own ends) means that only the very highest profile people and most active posters get much engagement with their social media output.

And this simple fact is in my opinion the most overlooked opportunity to create online influence.

This isn’t a marketing or media blog. So why am I bringing this up?

Because this current state of play is a huge opportunity for anyone who wants to build influence online. And online influence translates to offline influence more than ever.

If you are serious about your career, how much better placed are you if the internet recognises you as influential in your profession?

You’ll have a bigger network. A more authoritative voice. And the ability to help others.

Notice the last point. Help others.

Not ourselves. As the global marketing director of one of the big four global consulting firms once said to me about her firm’s social media,  "We have too much media and not enough social".

She summed up the situation perfectly. Her firm employs thousands of the best and brightest minds globally. Their daily production of expert and insightful material posted online far exceeds what I could produce in a year.

Yet when I looked at the social media influence of even the most active and established people people at her firm, almost none had achieved any significant online influence.

They were all putting high quality and interesting content online. But no-one cared. Their impact was virtually zero. It was because they thought that merely creating and posting things online was the whole task.

It isn’t.

Online influence is the outcome of positive interactions with other people, not fire and forget. And as Dale Carnegie wrote in 1936, "You can make more friends in two months by being interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you".

So if you want to be influential online don’t follow the herd. Show your network that you care about them more than yourself. It is actions more than words which determine how others see us.

Decide who the people and organisations are that are potentially valuable to you. Put all of them onto a Twitter list. Call the list something flattering, such as ‘My favourite people online’.

Forget your main Twitter feed. Instead when you go to Twitter, go to your list and you can see what all of your important accounts are tweeting.

Share the ones you like. Better still add a positive comment.

This task takes no more than about 10 minutes a day.

Do it daily and the people you want to build a relationship with will notice. Sooner or later they will reciprocate. At the very least they will remember you and think well of you.

A similar approach applies to Linkedin. Last night as I was going through my new invitations to connect on LinkedIn, I came across an invitation from a lady who was a singer/songwriter. On the face of it, I have no reason to connect with such a person. Nonetheless I accepted.

But I also sent her a message thanking her for connecting with me and offering to introduce her to someone I know who is influential in the music biz. She was thrilled at the unexpected offer.

How often have others done a similar thing for me at our first encounter? Hardly ever.

Which is the whole point. In the space of 10 minutes I had been able to help out two people. Perhaps the introduction will be fruitful. Perhaps not. That is up to them. But this simple gesture of goodwill cost me nothing. For me there are no downsides.

In itself, this gesture won’t change my world. But because I do such things almost every day, I accrue goodwill from an ever increasing number of people. And that cumulative goodwill does amount to a great deal.

Almost daily, I am approached by others with requests for help. Offers of collaboration. Business enquiries. And even the postman must be confused by the number of packages that arrive from all over the world, when people send me things as gifts of thanks.

Recently I met with a director of one of the world’s biggest recruitment firms. At the end of our meeting, he said, "I follow you on Twitter - that’s how I knew about you". I was somewhat embarrassed that this fact had escaped my notice. He had noticed me, but I hadn’t noticed him.

But if he had ever engaged with me on social media, I would have certainly noticed.

If these anecdotes still don’t convince you, I have one final argument for adopting this approach - it’s a great deal easier and much less time consuming to be kind to others online than it is to create a new piece of content that goes viral.

And if you want a guide to social media, the best book about it was written in 1936. It was called simply, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’.

‘Nuff said.

Pity the Twitter Zombies

By Neil Patrick

There are a lot more zombies than trolls lurking online...

This morning I intended to write about the economic situation in Japan. But as sometimes happens, I got distracted by social media. So I am sorry if you are dying to read about the Japanese economy, but I promise I will get back to that asap (stop groaning!).

Yesterday evening I spent an enjoyable couple of hours drinking beer with Katrina Collier of Winning Impression. Katrina is one of a small elite band of people I consider to be true experts on social media for recruitment and HR. If you are in either of these fields, you really should be connected with her. Here’s a link to her website.

As we chatted, both watching our social media feeds at the same time, Katrina was laughing as she observed Twitter trolls tweeting all sorts of hate to her after she retweeted the petition to keep Donald Trump out of Britain.

Katrina’s an Australian and if I know one thing about Aussies, it’s that they are not easily intimidated. When you grow up surrounded by countless species of creatures which are mostly looking for people to kill, I guess this is understandable.

Yet this was also an instructive situation. The more the hate poured in, the more she laughed. And I ventured that this explosion of Twitter troll activity would do her Twitter metrics no harm at all. Algorithms do not care whether we are generating online love or hate. They just count impact.

The trolls were inadvertently boosting Katrina’s online influence scores with every drop of bile they spat at her. She could laugh with good reason.

When the mainstream media is full of stories about cyber-bullying, the popular message is understandably that we must protect the vulnerable from such things.

But if you are big and grown up enough to take such things in your stride, if you are not easily intimidated, trolls and bullies do us no harm at all. In fact they help us for the simple reason that AI cannot yet always distinguish between love and hate.

This little story came full circle this morning as I reviewed my new followers on Twitter.

This is a daily task for me. Every day there are 30 or 40 new followers. Most are what I call “randoms” – people who are following as many people as possible in the hope that a percentage will follow back and artificially make them look more popular than they actually are. I have written about these ‘binge and purgers’ here and what you should do with them (tip…Don’t follow back ;-))

Another friend of mine, the ever clever Matt Ballantine tweeted the other day:

Matt is bang on the money I think. Most people like to feel popular, but many are in reality terrified that engaging in real dialogues on social media could:

1. Stir up hate – (don’t worry, at least you believe in something) 
2. Expose them as not being an expert on everything (don’t worry, no-one is) 
3. Meet people they’d rather not (don’t worry, you can block them) 

As I reviewed my new followers, I looked at the ones who looked genuine and interesting and then looked at who they were talking to and about what.

And this is where most fall down. I don’t expect anyone to spend hours and hours every day chatting on social media. Not if they have any sort of life. But I do expect to see something that shows they are not a zombie.

Time and again, I see tons of tweets, but zero conversations. It’s as if these people would rather stand there talking to themselves than risk the imaginary terror of the things I describe above.

If you like talking to yourself, be my guest. But really what’s the point? If you are doing this you have become a zombie.

We shouldn’t be afraid of trolls. And we should pity zombies.

All of them used to be people, once.


PS. More proof of this trolling backfire emerged this morning when The Daily Telegraph featured Katrina's tweet in its piece about the Donald Trump petition. Nice one Katrina! :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12041412/Petition-to-block-Donald-Trump-from-entering-the-UK-hits-100000-signatures.html

Why Linkedin best practices are a myth

By Neil Patrick

There’s no universal social media best practice, so stop looking for one

Last weekend over coffee, Gary Sharpe of Blue Dog Scientific and I were discussing LinkedIn Pulse. I think it is fair to say Gary has established himself as something of a renegade authority on LinkedIn.

He is an agent provocateur, evangelist, firestarter. He’s also a champion of fairness, a scientist and a driven man. He has an uncanny knack of spotting elephants in rooms that only when he points them out, do the rest of us recognise them.

Dr. Gary Sharpe of Blue Dog Scientific

Gary and I have shared values and core beliefs about things like authenticity, trust, collaboration, transparency.

We have also independently evolved entirely different ideas about how we use social media platforms in our day to day businesses.

It’s not that we disagree about much, but rather that we have totally different manifestations of our online presences.

Gary’s online presence mirrors who he is, what he cares about and what he wants to achieve. And so does mine. Neither of us copied any best practice or more prominent thought leader. We each figured out our own strategy that was right for us.

So who is right and who is wrong?

The answer is that we are both right. Because there is no such thing as a one size fits all solution.

But as friends and collaborators, we thought it would be interesting writing some content for each other. Gary has posted about our shared ideas and beliefs here. If you want to get some really authoritative insights into Linkedin, then you'll find much of interest on Gary's blog.

Why it is good that we are different

Gary has a great deal more courage than I in how he has taken on his mission to improve everyone’s user experience of LinkedIn. He ribs me that I am risk averse. I rib him that he plays with fire too much.

The fact is that we are each being true to our own personalities and backgrounds. If I tried to be Gary, I would inevitably be at best a weak impersonation and at worst, come over as a complete fraud. And vice versa.

Why I don’t post on LinkedIn Pulse

I write a lot of blog posts – there are around 400 on this blog alone, not to mention a ton of others scattered all over the web. But you won’t find me posting on LinkedIn Pulse. Gary on the other hand posts on Pulse almost daily. Often with biting critiques of the very platform he is publishing on.

My rationale for not posting on Pulse is this; I believe that LinkedIn like any corporation serves its shareholders first. Second it serves its customers. At best, its members (that’s us) come a very lowly third.

And as Gary has consistently reported, we users are getting an increasingly poor deal as LinkedIn continues in its quest to drive up revenues and profits. Worse, when we publish on Pulse we are providing our labours to LinkedIn for peanuts.

They acquire our content by the bucket load every day. We get an increasingly paltry compensation for our hours of toil. Our work may bring us a few comments and plaudits from our friends. We may trigger the odd new contact who likes what we have said. But this is a very poor ROI in my view.

My mantra is this:

Don’t build your house on rented land. Especially when the landowner has absolutely no vested interest in retaining your goodwill.

How I connect with people without using LinkedIn

We all want to find and build worthwhile professional relationships. This makes LinkedIn the natural platform choice for most of us. And just as Gary has built his following and network through his blog, LinkedIn and Google plus, I have built mine through my blog and Twitter.

I consider LinkedIn “high stakes” social media. The most senior people are rarely on the platform. They are too busy being successful. And most other people don’t want to be pestered by strangers. Either to connect or to read our latest musings, however profound or insightful they may be. People want choice and they want control. I get that. And I respect it.

Send out too many invitations to connect with people you don’t already know and you’ll potentially be classed by LI as a spammer, especially if you trigger a few IDKs (that’s when an invitee responds with the “I don’t know this person” button).

So I never invite connections from someone on LinkedIn I don’t already know from somewhere else. And the result is that I may have a smaller LI network than some, but it’s with people I like and who hopefully like me. This is the foundation for relationships which are meaningful and valuable.

Twitter on the other hand is low stakes. Every day I gain about 30 or 40 new Twitter followers. Most are what I call ‘randoms’ – people whom have absolutely no reason to follow me, because we have nothing in common. Yet within those 30 or 40 will always be 3 or 4 people I do want to get to know better. Many of these people subsequently request to connect with me on LinkedIn because I am nice to them on Twitter – I comment and interact with them. I share and favourite their posts that I like. Everyone is happy.

Why LinkedIn is still immensely valuable to me

A few weeks ago, the CEO of a business in my locality posted on LinkedIn he was looking for a board level marketing consultant. He wasn’t a first degree connection of mine, so despite this being exactly the sort of work I specialize in, I never saw his post. The first I knew about it was when people I was connected to started recommending me.

Within a few hours, four people who knew me well had all put my name forward. And sure enough this led to a meeting and the start of a valuable business relationship.

None of this happened because I had posted on Pulse. It happened because people in my network thought enough of me to put me forward. For all sorts of reasons, they had goodwill towards me.

We win goodwill not by brilliance, but by caring about others

The thing that each of the four people who recommended me for this gig had in common was that in different ways, I had helped every one of them previously with their work. In some cases, it had been advice, or I had previously worked with them. In others, it had been simple friendship and encouragement.

This was no clever strategy on my part. It was no brilliant post which established my authority. It was just people being nice to me, because in the past I had been nice to them.

My approach to social media works for me because it reflects who I am and what I want to accomplish. Not because I have copied anyone else’s strategy. And Gary does the same thing. So we are entirely different but also entirely the same.

Vive la difference!

Nasty Twitter tactics to watch out for

By Neil Patrick

I’m on Twitter daily, so I get to observe in sometimes gory detail how various folk use and abuse it. And lately I've noticed a nasty and cynical tactic getting more prevalent.

It’s the latest incarnation of what I call “binge and purge”.

It’s easy to spot when a Twitter account is doing this. When they follow you, scroll down their time line and you'll see how many people they followed at the same time they followed you. Binge and purgers will typically follow accounts en masse. Several hundred a day. Day after day. I’m sorry to tell you that despite following you, they are not interested in you and what you think or have to say. They just want to get as many people as possible to follow them back.

They have naively concluded that having a zillion followers trumps everything else. Big mistake.

It’s a bit like having a rather lame party or event to organise for 100 people and knowing that few people will really want to come. So you send out 1,000 invitations, because if you only sent 100, only 10 people would actually show up.

If you want to go to a lame party, be my guest.

The binge and purgers’ error is that they see celebrities and famous people as their role models.

As I talked about here, there’s a mass of celebrities and other famous people who follow very few people on Twitter. But because of their high public profile, they don’t actually need to do very much to get a lot of followers on any social media platform. They don’t really engage; they just tweet all about their daily lives. And their followers are essentially engaging in a form of voyeurism. It’s a lucrative formula which is exploited by thousands of gossip and celebrity magazines and websites all over the world.

And whilst I think this is a completed wasted opportunity, I get it. They see it as a low cost and easy way to help keep their face out there.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. They are social media role models for no-one.

But sadly, many ‘normal’ organisations and people who ought to know better, have taken this non-typical and flawed model and assumed that social media success is about having a zillion followers, whilst following as few people as possible. I recently read a post which asserted that unless a Twitter account had 10 followers for every person they followed, it was not worthy of being followed.

This is absolute nonsense.

Why?

Because it makes a second flawed assumption that social media is like old media. In other words, a newspaper which has a higher circulation deserves to be paid more for its advertising space than one with a lower circulation. In old media this was more or less true. In social media, it’s also complete nonsense.

Why?

Because social media is about relationships and people, not old school advertising. It’s active not passive. It’s real time not scheduled. It is collaborative. And it is not, repeat NOT about me, me, me. It’s about US, US ,US.

It’s not an advertising vehicle.

It’s a place where we can grow our networks of friends, learn from each other, get feedback from our customers, share information, build communities, watch our rivals, help our friends and best of all sometimes just chew the fat…together.

Binge and purgers neither desire nor find any of this. Because they are on an ego trip.

Goodwill not reach is the measure of online influence - unless you are using social media in completely the wrong way. And you do not acquire goodwill by dumping your followers within a day or two of them following you back. It just leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

It’s the industrialisation of social media. A cynical and exploitative attitude where connections (that’s you and me) are viewed as raw material. And this mechanical approach kills the very thing every genuine decent person or organisation wants; real relationships, based on trust and mutual goodwill.

I can only see this cynical, exploitative and idiotic trend continuing. But all is not lost. Just keep an eye in your new followers for a few days and watch which ones have quickly unfollowed you. There’s your proof they are a binge and purger. Dump them immediately.

And don’t get sucked in to the mythology that you can’t be awesome unless you have a zillion followers.

Why you shouldn’t follow famous people on social media

By Neil Patrick

I observed an interesting thing this morning on Twitter. I found myself looking at a few verified Twitter accounts. In case you don't know, these are the profiles with a little blue dot on them and a white tick inside it.

Apparently Twitter allocate these at their discretion to the accounts of well known people so that we know that this is their real Twitter account not a faker or imposter trying to hijack their fame.

Actually you don’t have to be especially famous to get this. If you’re a broadcaster, actor, newspaper journalist, sports personality, you’ll probably have one.

But the little white tick is not a quality or merit badge. It just tells us that the person is well known and they are who they say they are.

It doesn’t mean they are worth following on social media.

A famous person yesterday (possibly)

When I looked at a dozen or so of these accounts, I spotted a few things they all had in common:

 

• They have many, many more followers than people they follow. This tells me they are not interested in what anyone else has to say. It doesn’t tell us that they are actually saying anything worthwhile. 

• They rarely share or comment on anyone else’s tweets. In other words, they are not interested in anyone else or engaging with others. 

• Their tweets are all about the boring details of what they are doing and/or how fabulous their life is. Hello? We don’t care (except for the minority of stalking obsessives that is) 

When I look at the people on social media who I follow and am interested in, almost none of them are verified accounts. They may have less than a hundred followers or several hundred thousand. But these are the truly fabulous people. The people who provide us with things that are interesting, valuable and helpful.

These people understand that we must give to receive. That no-one cares about the details of their day to day lives. That social media, just like real life is a two way street.

These people enrich my life every day. When they engage with me, they make me feel good. They inform and challenge me. They show me that they care about others more than themselves. That’s why I like them and that’s why I follow them.

Whether their Twitter profile has a little white tick or not.

Is social media a bubble and what does that mean for us?

By Neil Patrick

I love social media. But I’m worried it's becoming a bubble. Over the last couple of years, it’s been displaying some typical features of bubble-like behaviour.

We’re witnessing endless expansion of the main platforms. A rush of investor cash into ‘the next Facebook’. Irrational IPO valuations. A sense that we must get in or miss out. The rise of exploiters and gamification. Rising quantity but falling quality of content. And an ever rising number of scammers, fakers and fraudsters.

Gary Sharpe posted his take on this phenomenon the other day:

The evils of the social media scene have made the networks places of corruption, vice and crime. The levels of fraud, returns-on-incompetence, digital de-reputation, self-servicing, rip offs, anti-knowledge, time wasting, money-down-the-draining, preying on the weak/naive/desperate, copy-cats, liars, cheats and ill-informers has reached epic proportions.

Gary never minces his words!

I track stock market sentiments about social media platforms and there’s some definite nervousness showing especially around Twitter:

Only one platform, Facebook has managed to deliver the sort of revenue growth that investors expect to see. All the other platforms are struggling to meet this key objective.

Another of my respected online friends, Jesse Colombo, Forbes columnist, analyst, and bubble expert had this to say about LinkedIn way back in 2012: 

The general public, in my view, still has irrationally high hopes for the commercial success of social media companies and LinkedIn, one of the last vestiges of the social media dream, is expected by many to carry the torch for the sector going forward. These irrationally high hopes can certainly be seen in LinkedIn's astronomical 1,000 P/E ratio (source), which is far too rich even when taking into consideration the company's healthy expected 5-yearearnings growth rate of 64.69%. Richly-valued growth stocks, such as LinkedIn, have a strong tendency of plunging if there is even a slight disappointment in revenue and earnings growth.

Jesse’s cautiousness about Linkedin has proved to be well founded. Just look at the stock value since he wrote this in 2012:

Now I am assuming that you are neither an investor, nor a shareholder in social media.

But you are probably a user.

And if your use of social media has any sort of connection to your business or career this stuff matters.

So this post is about my take on what I see ahead and what we as users should do about it to protect our vested interests.

The outlook

First I see some consolidation ahead as undercapitalised platforms get acquired by others who see potential synergies arising from such acquisitions. The struggling share valuations make such acquisitions more and more likely. The worst case scenario is an event triggering total collapse of investor confidence in the sector. If you think that’s unlikely, think Lehman Brothers.

The implications

Weak revenue and profit growth is the principal reason for growing investor disillusionment with social media firms. This means that we can fully expect to see a steady rise in things we as users mostly don’t like – limited free access, more paid-for elements, more demands for personal data to access content and apps, more intrusive advertising, higher quantities of junk content.

More intrusive data capture

All data has value. And when you're a social media platform owner you have bucketloads of it. Better still you acquire it more or less for free. And you can secure pretty much unlimited rights over what you do with it - provided you describe these rights within a long and legally dense set of user terms and conditions which no-one ever reads, yet still clicks the “I agree” button.

More noise

We are already at saturation point. The sheer volume of content pumped daily into my social media channels is completely beyond my capacity to consume any but a truly tiny fraction of it. All our capacities to consume media are finite. But the supply is rising exponentially. The only possible mathematical outcome is a continual fall in the overall level of media consumption as a share of what’s produced. In other words, if you produce online content, you can only expect your overall consumption levels to fall in future.

What to do about it

So against this backdrop, there seem to me to be several sensible actions to take if any of your career or business interests are connected with social media:

Build real communities that share your beliefs

Having a million Facebook likes, a hundred thousand Twitter followers and 10,000 Linkedin connections, is going to become less and less valuable, unless they are a truly connected audience that has active goodwill towards you.

Earn your goodwill by being kind to your online friends

Goodwill isn’t created by people being so amazed at your profile stats, that they are wowed into following or liking you. Goodwill is created by showing people you care about them.

Focus on quality over quantity

The exponential growth of content and the finite capacity of people to consume it, means that content quality will become increasingly important.

Build trust

We don’t create trust by slick presentation, or shouting about how great we are, or bludgeoning people into submission with sales messages. We create trust by our actions that show we care about the people we are connected with. And by being willing to help them, whilst asking for nothing in return.

Own your own media

Social media platform owners have all recognised that crowdsourced content is a fabulous (free) source of assets for their businesses. By putting our work onto Facebook or Linkedin, we are surrendering our ownership of that media and placing our fate in their hands. And if you have any sort of online content, it’s essential that you own its domain. In other words “Don’t build your house on rented land.”

I’m not saying don’t post on Linkedin or Facebook, I’m just saying that if that’s all you do you cannot realistically expect to see value growth from these activities in future. The only sensible decision is not to have all your eggs in someone else’s basket(s).

Expect change - permanently

It’s easy to forget that social media has already had a string of casualties in its brief period of existence. Remember MySpace? Friends Reunited?

I believe that social media platforms have lifecycles. But because the pace of tech change is now so rapid and mature platforms so slow to change (Facebook is apparently working on introducing a ‘major innovation’ - a dislike button), I think there will be more casualties sooner than we might think.

When we try and predict the future, we are almost certain to be wrong. But I hope these observations are at least helpful in framing your own expectations and actions in the coming months and years.

I would love to hear your reactions to these forecasts!

The Perils of Facebookisation

By Neil Patrick

My good friend Dr Gary Sharpe at Blue Dog Scientific coined a term the other day in a conversation with me.

It was “Facebookisation”.

He didn’t need to explain what he meant. It’s the spread of trivial, egotistical, self-obsessive social media content creeping out of Facebook and into other and often mainstream media.

It’s the idea that we are all celebrities and should try and emulate them.

Except, most celebrities are hardly good role models at least in social media.

At first, I gave it little thought. It was a nice term though and I mentally filed it away for future use.

Then this morning I saw a Huffington Post newsfeed that Michelle Mone, new Tory peer, successful entrepreneur and founder of Ultimo had recieved a Twitter backlash for "bragging" that she’d been given a ministerial car and driver whilst on an assignment in connection with her unpaid work for the government. (she’s working pro bono on the DWP’s work on stimulating entrepreneurialism).

Apparently, Michelle or more likely her media team, quickly took the tweet down and tweeted this in her defence:

At a time when Jeremy Corbyn’s authentic voice and humble, consultative, non-ego-centric approach is drawing millions of supporters especially amongst the young, we have to question whether the “Look how rich and successful I am” approach to personal branding is really valid in the 21st century.

I suspect this approach just inflames the rage of those who rightly or wrongly feel that ‘the system’ has dumped them on the scrap heap. Does presenting ourselves and showing people how wealthy and successful we are really enable them to achieve amazing things with their own lives?

I'd argue it does not because the faulty premise is that all any of us need to succeed is motivation. And because that is free, we can all access it from within ourselves.

But the real barriers to success are not insufficient motivation. They are things like education, access to resources, contacts, creativity, innovation and know how. Without these things, no amount of self-belief and aspiration will deliver success.

The other key requirement is personal credibility.

Humility, empathy and modesty are in my opinion at the heart of personal credibility. Bragging, narcissism and displays of wealth, influence and success are not.

Even if they are presented with a big grin and 'motivational' message.

Why a viral Tweet might not be what you really want

By Neil Patrick

For a change, this post is not about jobs, the economy, recruitment or work. It's about social media and specifically, Twitter.

I discovered something this week which initially caused me a jolt. With over 19,000 followers on Twitter, apparently I am in the top 1% most followed people on that social media platform.

I am not trying to brag about this. It’s nothing to brag about anyway when I also mention that since Twitter has 302 million active accounts, this means the top 1% comprise over 3 million people!

So that fact immediately stopped me getting an over-inflated sense of my own importance. If I needed any more reminder of my insignificance on the internet, I will just mention that just about everyone who has any sort of fame or mainstream media profile has at least a million or so Twitter followers and Katy Perry has over 66 million. Yikes - that must take some managing everyday...

Nonetheless if you follow me on Twitter, I would like to express my unreserved appreciation, especially since there are millions of more exciting people you could be following instead of me. You wonderful people enrich and educate me, inspire and intrigue me and motivate and moderate me - all in your own unique way.

Anyway, since we are on the topic of Twitter, I wanted to share my thoughts on following and follow backs. There seems to be an unwritten rule on Twitter that if we follow someone and they don't follow us back, then after a while we should unfollow them or withdraw our offer of online friendship.

I feel that this idea misses the point. I follow plenty of people on Twitter who I am pretty sure will never follow me back. But I keep on following them because I want to hear what they have to say.

Yet I often find that if I chime in with my thoughts on something they have posted, THEN they will follow me back. When you think about it in this way, theirs is a shrewd attitude. Having zillions of followers isn't (or shouldn't be) the goal of being on Twitter. Having real connections and a real and active network of like minded people with whom we have all sorts of relationships seems like a healthier and much more valuable goal to me.

Which leads me to try and explain why I don’t follow back everyone that follows me.

You can easily find plenty of viewpoints on this question. First there is the camp which argues that if someone follows you on Twitter and since this is SOCIAL media, it's anti-social not to reciprocate. That viewpoint makes sense ONLY if everyone that follows you shares your interests and values. And plenty of people with a few hundred connections on Twitter do exactly this.

But the Twitter experience changes if our account grows to many thousands. Everyday I get new followers where I can see absolutely no reason why they would follow me or be in anyway interested in what I do. Some new followers see I am a man and seem to work on the rather disrespectful assumption that therefore I must be interested in following pornographic accounts. Sorry but I will block you.

Then there are millions of promotional twitter accounts offering free followers and a ton of other spammy stuff. You guys will never be followed back!

But if you are just a normal Twitter user who kindly follows me I also may not follow you back. I do actually feel rather bad about this, but there's a simple reason for this decision. Once we are following more than a couple of thousand people on Twitter, our Twitter streams get very, VERY busy. I just watched mine for one minute. In that time, 50 new tweets landed in my Twitter feed.

That’s one every second give or take – and even if I spent every waking minute looking at them, I could never keep up.

So I have to apply some rules about who I follow back. The essence of these rules is I follow back people who have even the slightest overlapping interest with the things I am interested in. And that's quite broad. It includes business, economics, government, HR, jobs, education, leadership, media, tech, recruitment, coaching, and rock music (for a bit of variety and flavour).

It doesn't matter to me if someone has 10 followers or 10,000. If our interests co-incide and they are engaged members of the Twittersphere, I follow back.

If you are mostly sharing your favourite photos and music on Twitter and chatting about entertainment, that’s fine and it's none of my business, but generally speaking, I won’t follow you back. In order to do what I do, I need to see tweets about jobs, careers, the economy etc. If these are drowned in a sea of other things, I can’t see what I need to see.

In essence, my approach is not to follow more and more people endlessly chasing some vanity number of followers like a mirage, but fewer people so I can actually hear more of what I want to hear above the noise.

And this is why I hope I never have a tweet which goes viral. Like old newspapers, today's fad is tomorrow's trash. Going viral might be great for some people. But for me it's a distracting illusion. Personally, I'd rather be more like the moon than a shooting star.

All that said, if you send me a personal tweet on Twitter I will always try and get back to you. Better still communicate with me via LinkedIn in and you will always get my attention.

You may have an entirely different set of principles you apply. But for whatever it's worth, these are mine and I hope that my thoughts are at least helpful when you think about what yours should be.

An extra way to get found by recruiters when you are jobseeking

By Neil Patrick

I’m always thinking about ways I can make this blog and my Twitter account more valuable for jobseekers.

And this morning I had a flash of inspiration.

I have a lot of recruiters who follow my Twitter account - 500 at least. I also have a lot of job seekers.

But it occurred to me that jobseekers usually don’t have a lot of recruiters following them on Twitter. And recruiters are always looking for ways to find candidates.

So I have decided to try something new.

I have set up a new list on my Twitter account that any jobseeker that wishes to can appear on. Just send me a tweet if you are jobseeking and I’ll add you to the list.

The list is called “My job seeking friends”.

I have no idea what the results will be. Or how many people will join the list. All I know is that the people that join it first will be the most visible because they will be at the top of the list.

There’s no cost, no catches and no downsides that I can think of. It’s no more and no less than it appears.

I’d suggest that if you do this, you also make sure that your Twitter bio contains a link to your Linkedin profile. That way recruiters can go straight to your Linkedin profile.

It’s an experiment I admit, but you have nothing to lose if you are job seeking. Just let me know and I’ll be happy to put you on the list.

I’ll also tweet about it to encourage recruiters to view the list.

It might be a total flop, I don’t know.

But I’m ready to give it a try!

If you are a jobseeker or recruiter I’ll be happy to hear what you think!

How professional services firms can become social media superheroes (Part 2)

By Neil Patrick

This is part two of my post on social media for professional services businesses.

In part one here, I presented the latest evidence from FTI Consulting which showed that professional services firms:

• Lag behind other sectors in their utilization of social media

• Are handicapped by compliance and regulatory obstructions, lack of understanding of how to execute it and difficulties in producing the necessary content

Nevertheless, most reported that they anticipated an increase in their use of social media in 2014. And critically, those that had already successfully implemented social media programmes reported not only higher numbers of new clients, but also a doubling of the average value of business generated.

To recap, the research asked 408 US-based financial advisors about their use of social media for business. They grouped respondents into the following 4 categories:

In the Wings (25%) Respondents who don’t use social media in business at all. However, they are active users of social media in their personal lives. For example, 62% of this group use Facebook, 33% use LinkedIn, 58% view or share videos on YouTube, 27% use Twitter and 24% use Google+.

Network Novices (38%) Respondents who use social media passively. They use it to build their personal brands, enlarge referral networks and connect with other professionals.

Connectors (17%) Respondents who use social media more actively to cultivate relationships with prospects and current clients.

Power Professionals (20%) Respondents who use social media to deepen business relationships by gathering information and disseminating thought leadership. Power Professionals are more than twice as likely as Network Novices and more than 60 percent more likely than Connectors to use social media for business on a daily basis.


In this post, I’ll look at how the most progressive users of social media in professional services are overcoming the obstacles and examine 5 keys steps to making this happen.

1. Demolish the obstacles

The FTI Consulting research examined what professional services organizations can do to move up the ladder from passive to active users of social media. Part of this research asked respondents what their company could do that would increase their usage of social media.

The results from this open-ended question revealed the most serious obstacles. The major barriers to successful social media use are very pragmatic: regulatory and compliance issues and a lack of training and content.

20% to 25% of respondents from all four segments were asking for modifications to compliance requirements. But regulatory constraint doesn't seem to be the problem per se. Rather, the primary issue pivots on an understanding of compliance policies. Moreover, these policies are often unhelpful because they were framed before the existence of social media. They are reflective of a different media age and the associated top down, command and control approach to communications which characterised it.

In the Wings respondents were twice as likely as Power Professionals to cite regulation as a hindrance. However, once respondents felt they understood compliance policies, they called for more training, content and social media marketing from their firm.

I would endorse this observation. Recently I was consulting with the marketing team of an established financial firm. They were keen to grow their social media activity. But they had one big obstacle. Every single item they wished to post online had to be approved first by their in-house compliance team. And this could take up to two months. TWO MONTHS! That’s an age even in the old world of marketing. In the digital age it’s an eternity.

The pattern is clear. The most progressive companies and professionals are coming to terms with regulatory boundaries and are learning how to use social media within the constraints. So for professionals to reap the rewards of social business, professional services organizations must tackle these three issues:

• Modify or loosen policies as much as possible

• Communicate and provide training

• Invest in the creation of meaningful content

2. Trust your people and liberalise your policies

To help professional services firms take a closer look at their social media policies, FTI asked respondents to tell them which of 12 common LinkedIn activities their company permitted them to use. These activities ranged from passive tasks such as accepting connections and listing the company name in a profile to active outreach, including sending InMail and requesting recommendations.

More than 90% of respondents reported they could use LinkedIn at work at least to accept connections. The vast majority were allowed to accept and request connections and name the firm on a profile page. Some 70% were allowed to join LinkedIn groups.

However, the percentages declined for more active outreach activities. Permission to post content to groups had been granted to only 27% to 55% of respondents, depending on the segment. Permission to write or request recommendations ranged from 21% to 41%. However, at least 20% of respondents, said their company allowed them to engage in each activity.

This suggests that most social media activities are on their way to acceptance. While seemingly small, 20% indicated that every activity, from accepting connections to posting content, was permissible. We can conclude that liberalized social business policy is moving from a small cadre of progressive professional firms into the mainstream.

Interestingly, Network Novices - professionals whose use of social media is most passive - may be the group best primed for action. Network Novices are less likely than Connectors and Power Professionals to use social media for outward communications such as posting updates to their profile or to groups. Surprisingly, respondents in the Network Novices group were most likely to believe that their firm’s policies permitted them to do so - sometimes to an even greater extent than Power Professionals.


3. Communicate and train people to give them confidence

Companies need to communicate their policies clearly and make sure employees understand the content. Effective communication of policy bolsters social media use and also prevents its misuse.

Communication should be anchored in training and education. With the exception of In the Wings, respondents from all segments are asking for more training in social business skills and information about best practices.

Given the hectic schedule of most professionals, on-demand training may be the best choice for their firm. For example, companies can provide pre-recorded webinars on complex topics such as social business strategy or simple fact sheets covering straightforward issues like LinkedIn usage policies. Ideally, professional services firms would offer training, best practices and sample content on a single platform so professionals easily can access what they need as they need it.

4. Create and share pertinent content

A growing number of experts are warning about social media fatigue. As a tsunami of content hurtles around the globe, they assert that the bar for getting noticed is rising, arguing that creating fresh, compelling content is becoming more and more difficult.

I would partly dispute this argument. It is applying the old world marketing model which scales vertically by expenditure to the new digital world which scales laterally through peer to peer endorsement.

Put another way, if your audience is well targeted and engaged, then you are not fighting it out to gain attention from a largely disinterested audience. You are successfully engaging with people who know you and are interested to hear what you have to say. It doesn’t mean you can settle for substandard or sporadic content, but I think this alleged threat is over-stated.

Of course as the volume of content shared expands, so the finite capacity for your audience to consume it comes under pressure, but this is more than compensated for by the nature of social networks which amplify your reach through the process of sharing content they like.

Nevertheless the requirement for sound content at the core of social media remains a challenge for firms who are already stretched. There’s no short cut to the production of great content. However, once a firm understands that this is a sound marketing investment (and that compared to traditional marketing is relatively low cost), the investment needed becomes much easier to bear.


5. Choose your platforms with care

Although respondents view LinkedIn as their primary network for social business, the number has declined slightly. In a study conducted in 2012, 90% of respondents said LinkedIn was their primary business network; in 2013, the number was 80%. This fall has coincided with the growth of the Linkedin userbase and the attempts by Linkedin to drive up user engagement and revenues. Inevitably this more diverse membership and commercialisation of the platform has resulted in some reacting negatively to these developments.

30% of respondents said that if their firm allows them to use it, Facebook would be the best platform for brand building. Twenty-seven percent see Facebook as the most desirable tool for improving the effectiveness of their network. For cultivating prospects, Facebook would be the platform of choice for 33% of respondents.

I wonder if this apparent endorsement of Facebook is skewed by the respondents’ personal experience of social media platforms however. As one of the earliest and still the largest platform, Facebook is familiar to most of us. But neither this fact, not its scale mean it is automatically the most suitable platform for business users of social media. Personally I feel it is not the best environment for a professional services firm to be seen in. It may be fine for restaurants and travel businesses, but accountants and solicitors...?

Although these percentages are lower than those of LinkedIn, respondents were slightly more likely to say that Facebook was the preferred network for nurturing existing relationships. On every dimension, In the Wings respondents gave higher marks to Facebook than they did to LinkedIn. 

In conclusion

Social media has huge potential to change the way professionals communicate with their clients and build a positive reputation. Although regulatory compliance and brand reputation remain issues, the most successful social media business users have already overcome these concerns. Their next challenge will be to further develop businesses social media skill and expertise. And critically, this research demonstrates that social media investment and expertise does find its way to the bottom line.

The time to act is now. Social media isn't a fad and it isn't going away. It is reshaping the very essence of how the world communicates and it is the most powerful development in human communications since the invention of the printing press. And whilst the social platforms allow almost instant communications, the results are far from instant - social media success is a marathon not a sprint.

You can try to survive with 20th century approaches if you like. Personally, I prefer to seize the limitless opportunities of this new world.



About the Research

The FTI Consulting research was based on a survey of 408 U.S.- based financial advisors, conducted in July 2013, in conjunction with Putnam Investments. The sample was drawn from a proprietary research panel of financial advisors maintained by FTI Consulting Strategic Communications and from panelists provided by Harris Interactive.

This post is adapted from an article that originally appeared here:
http://ftijournal.com/article/social-media-power-users-and-why-they-matter

How professional services firms can become social media superheroes

By Neil Patrick

I’m in the business of delivering professional services to my clients. And social media is a key tool in helping me grow my network and business opportunities.

But in professional services generally, it is clear that many are much less convinced than I am about its benefits.

Professional services folk trail behind other business-to-business industries in social business. In this two-part post, I’ll be looking at what the hard evidence reveals about this and what the professional services superheroes are doing with social media today.

From conversations with my network, it’s clear that part of the resistance lies in the difficulties of tying their social media efforts to quantified business results.

Slow adoption of social media in these professions is sometimes attributed to regulatory and brand constraints. It’s also often hindered by a lack of senior management support, doubts about the appropriateness of social media and concerns about the return on the time and money invested.


Let’s take a look at the data

FTI Consulting identified in this recent study the practical problems that professional services firms need to overcome in order to generate better results with social media. These are:

· remedying lack of knowledge
· understanding best practices
· creating suitable content for social business

FTI looked at the issues of social business in professional services by carrying out a survey of financial advisors. These professionals are a useful proxy to discover what all professional services firms can do to boost their effective use of social business. Just like financial advisors, lawyers, architects and consultants also build their businesses by cultivating individual relationships. On social media platforms, the success of that cultivation relies on providing authoritative and engaging insights on the issues clients and prospects care about.

Most professional services firms must navigate a challenging landscape of regulatory demands and company compliance measures. Despite these regulatory constraints, the survey found that the use of social media is on the rise. Although 25% of respondents are not using social media at work, only 30% say social media will not be significant in their marketing efforts in the next year.

Of respondents who now are using social media for business, their use has been rising steadily. For example, more than 60% of those respondents, have been increasing their use of LinkedIn over time. Nearly the same number of respondents have boosted their use of Facebook. In addition, financial advisors have become more frequent tweeters – 57% of respondents presently using social media have been expanding their use of Twitter.

Approximately 60% of respondents who now use social media expect that usage to climb in the coming year. A prime driver of this growth is the buiness results that users are achieving. For example, of the 60% who expect to increase their social media use, the majority will do so because they report that the people they are trying to reach are on LinkedIn or Facebook. 40% attribute their expected increase to the role social media has played in achieving their results to date.

The emergence of Power Users

The report found that social media power users (individuals with both the skills and enthusiasm to optimize social media tools and channels) add much more to their company’s revenues and profits. Financial advisors that are classed as power users are more than twice as likely than the less savvy to have won new clients through social media: 73% vs. 30%. Similarly, the value generated by those clients is double: a median of $1 million in investible assets vs. $500,000.

These results demonstrate how social media helps financial advisors achieve greater levels of new business. Power users also are the most likely to say social media has helped them achieve their desired results and agree that the people they want to reach are active on social media.


So what do Power Users do?

A key finding of the research is how power users are achieving these results. The research proved the positive impact of social media upon seven key business objectives and its contribution to the key goal of winning valuable new clients by:

• Building brand identity
• Improving effectiveness of referral networks
• Cultivating specific prospects
• Enhancing current client relationships
• Connecting with other financial professionals
• Cascading thought leadership
• Expanding professional knowledge

Which type are you presently?

The research identified four distinct groups of financial advisors on a scale from passive to active users of social media. Passive users focus primarily on building brand identity and on improving their referral networks. Active users, on the other hand, create a virtuous circle by compiling and disseminating knowledge and using that information to cultivate prospects and enhance business relationships.

The four groups (and their characteristics) are:

In the Wings (25%) Respondents who don’t use social media in business at all. However, they are active users of social media in their personal lives. For example, 62% of this group use Facebook, 33% use LinkedIn, 58% view or share videos on YouTube, 27% use Twitter and 24% use Google+.

Network Novices (38%) Respondents who use social media passively. They use it to build their personal brands, enlarge referral networks and connect with other professionals.

Connectors (17%) Respondents who use social media more actively to cultivate relationships with prospects and current clients.

Power Professionals (20%) Respondents who use social media to deepen business relationships by gathering information and disseminating thought leadership. Power Professionals are more than twice as likely as Network Novices and more than 60 percent more likely than Connectors to use social media for business on a daily basis.

The path turns an old adage on its head: It’s not who you know, it’s what you know. Advanced social media users are doing more than connecting with others; they are adding value by creating, obtaining and sharing information. For Power Professionals, social business success is a matter of what they know and can share with the market. Network Novices and Connectors still are focused on the “who.”

So it’s clear that social media use by professional services firms is on the rise. And that those who do it most effectively win more business AND more valuable business.

In part two of this post, I’ll reveal how you can overcome the obstacles to becoming a power user and achieve better results with your social media. Follow this link to go straight to part 2.


This post is based on an article that originally appeared here:
http://ftijournal.com/article/social-media-power-users-and-why-they-matter

How to engage successfully with recruiters on social media

By Neil Patrick

Today, I read an interesting and insightful piece by the ever clever Glen Cathey here, called ‘14 Tips on How to Use Twitter for Social Recruiting’.

Glen’s piece was about how recruiters needed to up their game in terms of using Twitter as an effective tool to find suitable candidates.

It got me thinking that there’s another side to this equation, which is how job seekers should use social media to engage with recruiters effectively.

Over on my Twitter account, I have set up lists of recruiters, so anyone who wishes to can find and follow relevant recruiters more easily. I have organised them by continent here. Please feel free to subscribe to any list that you feel may be helpful to you.

As Glen pointed out though, many recruiters have yet to fully grasp how to use Twitter effectively in their hunt for the best candidates. Many simply use Twitter to tweet jobs as a means of free advertising.

This is far from ideal for a recruiter. Unless they have a lot of followers who are the right type of profile for their search, they won’t achieve much reach on Twitter.

But this post is about job seekers not recruiters, so here are my thoughts on a strategy for job seekers to engage effectively with recruiters on Twitter.

Ensure your profile on Twitter is right for a recruiter

It may well be that when you first set up your Twitter account you were not job hunting. If that is the case, and you are now looking to job hunt, it’s time to adjust your Twitter bio so it describes you in your professional capacity rather than a purely social role. You have 140 characters to do this - but less if you include a link to your LinkedIn profile which I recommend.

Because space is so limited, you cannot talk about your accomplishments and nor should you – that’s for LinkedIn. Instead describe yourself succinctly and professionally. What’s your area of specialism? In what industry or sector? What experience or capabilities set you apart from your peers?

I do not recommend that you mention you are presently job hunting. This will exclude you from the screening for some recruiters who (wrongly in my view) are only interested in candidates who are presently employed.

It’s also time to adjust what you are tweeting about. Try and focus your tweets on matters which are relevant to your career and professional interests.

Find and follow all the recruiters relevant to your search

My Twitter lists are a good start point for this, but you’ll find many more if you do a Twitter search for recruiters in your city/area such as recruitment Dallas, recruiter Dallas or jobs Dallas.

Don’t worry about whether or not they follow you back

It’s great if they do, but what you want is to get their tweets in your tweet stream. 

Get noticed by RTing them

There will probably only be at most a dozen or so recruiters that are appropriate to your sector and geography, so it’s not a great deal to manage.

RTing of job tweets isn’t that common, so you’ll find it’s an effective way to get noticed by a recruiter. If you RT them regularly, some will acknowledge your support and follow you back.

 
You now have the start of a relationship

So it’s now time to invest a little more. Apart from helping the recruiter spread the word about their jobs, by RTing them and earning some goodwill in the process, you can now take it to the next level.

And the way to do this is to pay it forward by helping them some more. Don’t just think about your own job hunt. Think about the recruiter’s goals. Do you happen to know someone that would be a great fit for a role they are seeking to fill? Yes? Tell them - but talk to your contact first to make sure they are happy to be referred. 

Take the relationship to the next level

Once you have exchanged some tweets with a recruiter, and hopefully an identifiable person at the recruitment firm rather than just an anonymous corporate account, you have a basis to connect with them on LinkedIn too. To avoid the risk of rejection though it’s best to ask first on Twitter. This has the double benefit of showing them some courtesy and giving you the highest probability they will accept your LinkedIn invitation.

Continue the process on LinkedIn

The pay it forward approach I am recommending can continue on Linkedin. You are now in a higher visibility and higher impact relationship and platform with the recruiter. If they are using Linkedin well, they will be posting information here, not just jobs but other pieces too. You may well feel qualified to comment on some of their posts. Do it. This is a great opportunity to show what you know and add value to the discussion.

 
You are now in a privileged and high visibility position

By following this strategy, you should have managed to build a relationship with a handful of the key recruiters in your area of specialism and territory. Do not abuse this status. You might think I recommend taking the relationship next to face to face. I don't.

Whilst this is great if the recruiter initiates such a move, don’t invite it yourself. Recruiters are extremely busy people and they have to prioritize their time for getting the best prospects for their clients. But you can now be sure they’ll contact you when the right position comes along if you've pursued this strategy. After all, you are one of probably just a handful of people that they have such a close relationship with.

As Glen pointed out, 'Ultimately, people like helping people they like, and people like people they feel that they know'.

I think the time to carry this process out is only about 3-4 weeks. It’s not a substitute for other parts of your job hunt activity, but it’s probably more likely to yield results than spending the equivalent amount of time sending off another pile of resumes.

If you’ve followed this strategy or a similar one, I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below. And if you're a recruiter. I'd love to hear what you think too.

The top 10 trust-melters on your social media

By Neil Patrick

The importance of trust in your personal brand and social media is something which often gets overlooked in an age where clever techniques are assumed to trump everything else.

If people like you, they’ll talk to you. If they trust you, they’ll do business with you. - Zig Ziglar

I have plenty of tips on this blog for better social media management to help build your personal brand. The thing I have never talked about until now is trust and how we can enhance or reduce it in terms of our social media activities.

We all know trust is difficult to win and easy to lose.

The question is how should we present ourselves and behave on social media to enhance this aspect of our online reputation and not diminish it?

Based on what I see day in day out on social media, here’s a list of some of the basic things I think we should all pay attention to.

1. High intensity recirculation

Digital media is designed to make sharing easy. One click and you can share almost anything you like. But this characteristic of social media risks creating digital overload for your network. I see plenty of people who churn out shared content at a frantic rate. They do it because it’s easy, and in the misguided belief that that the more you do, the more you’ll benefit.

I don’t agree. It’s the equivalent of social media spamming. It’s not big and it’s not clever. And it does your personal brand no good at all. Everything we share should be for a reason and it should have a value to its recipients – even if that value is just entertainment or amusement. 

Think before you click!

2. Buy me now! 

I quickly lose interest in professional profiles which try too hard to sell. Your personal profile on Linkedin especially isn’t the place to be shouting at people ‘buy this’. It’s the place to tell people who you are, what you have accomplished and why you might be of value to them. They’ll decide later, possibly much later if they want to buy you or from you.

And remember, that time isn’t when they first encounter you on social media. People, love to buy but hate to be sold to. Isn't that why no-one in their right mind will follow someone on Twitter whose profile says something like – ‘I got thousands of followers free – let me show you how you can too’?  (did you ever notice how none of these people actually have more than a few dozen followers?)

3. Engage on old world media too 

Social media is great for finding new people and starting to build a relationship with them. But it’s absolutely no substitute for meeting face to face, a Skype chat, talking on the phone or even emailing each other. Every single one of my most valuable social media relationships may have started with Twitter or LinkedIn, but the real value is created away from social media, not within it.

Social media is the start point for building valuable relationships not the destination.

4. Your profile picture says more about you than you ever can 

This is such a basic point that it seems almost too obvious to mention, but it is hardwired into humans to make split second evaluations of each other based on what the other person looks like. So invest in a professional headshot, with a professional photographer. 

Not only will you look better, the difference between a mobile phone snap against a blank wall and a professional headshot sends a powerful subconscious message…I should be taken seriously, because I care about being professional in every detail of my work.

And use this same picture for all your social media platforms. This is an exercise in brand presentation and consistency, not personal vanity. 

5. Be human 

Showing a little of your unique personality on your profile and social media interactions is a good thing. You are not a machine, so why try and present yourself as one? 

People form relationships with other humans, so show your personality a little. It’s not a substitute for being professional first and foremost, but it’s our individual quirks that people respond to and remember, much more than the dry matter of our professional accomplishments. If something about you is unusual amongst your peers, then use this. I happen to love heavy metal, so I drop small references to it here and there which shows I am just a little bit different.

6. Be likeable 

I am constantly amazed at how some social media interactions are so hostile. Perhaps these interactions should be called ‘anti-social media’. Just because someone has an opinion that is different to yours, it isn’t a reason to attack them. Respect others’ opinions, be courteous, even if they are not courteous to you. 

On Twitter for example, I think sometimes people forget that our tweets are public. If someone follows me and their tweets don’t show respect and courtesy to others, I am unlikely to follow them back. 

7. Pay it forward 

Helping others before we help ourselves is perhaps the best way I know of showing who we are and building goodwill towards ourselves. Help others, ask for nothing back. This might be something as simple as clicking the like or share buttons on their content regularly (provided of course you do actually like it).

It gets you noticed, it shows that you care about others and most importantly, it shows that you understand the power and value of collaboration.

8. Choose your friends carefully 

Rightly or wrongly, we are judged by the company we keep. I’m not saying avoid the people who for whatever reason are not superstars. On the contrary, helping those perhaps less experienced than yourself is a very positive and laudable thing. But we should also work hard to build relationships with the high profile people in our professional space. And more than ever before, social media allows us to reach out to people that in the analogue world would be hard to reach.

Having connections with these people isn't just valuable because of potential opportunities. Even if you never actually progress your relationship with them further than a Twitter connection and the odd retweet, their connection with you carries weight and influence within the social media platforms which see that you are connected and respond accordingly. 

9. Create your own unique value 

Sharing the work of others is great, assuming you are selective and discerning. But the most powerful way to build your standing is through the creation of your own unique material. It could be as simple as adding insightful comments to the work of others.

It doesn’t have to be a full blown blog either – images are always popular and if writing isn’t your thing, it’s easy to build your profile and content with interesting pictures. Smart phones make this easier than ever.

10. Be consistent 

We are all multidimensional as people. But in the world of professional networking through social media, it gets confusing if your content and activities are really diverse. In the purely social space, we can indulge our whims and fancies. 

With professional social media we need to stay focused. If you have multiple interests and activities, then at least with Twitter, you can have separate Twitter accounts for them. Sadly the same isn't possible with LinkedIn.

So decide what you are about within your professional social media space and stay on topic. Everyone will appreciate it.

I am sure this isn’t the last word on the subject, it’s more a simple checklist of what seem to me to be sensible best practices. So if you’d like to add points to the list, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

How to use Twitter in your jobsearch

By Neil Patrick and Axel Koster

You may think that Twitter isn’t the most obvious way to find a job. After all how can a message of 140 characters really carry meaningful influence or effect on your job search?

But I disagree. You’ve just got to know how to do it right. So today I hooked up again with my good friend Axel Kőster at the Manhattan Group to share some insights on this topic which we hope are helpful.

1. Twitter is a superb networking tool if you approach it as such.

The most valuable resource any jobseeker can have is a large and powerful network of people that are potentially helpful to them. In this post I described how Linkedin is ‘high stakes’ social media. What I mean by this is that if you try to connect with a high profile person directly on Linkedin, there’s a chance, even a probability that unless they already know you, they’ll decline or ignore your invitation to connect.

On the other hand, Twitter is 'low stakes' media and hence an easy way of connecting. If you show interest and support for a high profile person, they will notice you if you do it consistently over several days or weeks and will probably follow you back. From that point it’s an easy step to escalate your connection onto LinkedIn.

You’ll find that many recruiters are on Twitter too and to help you, I have set up lists of them organised by continent here. Just select the ones that are interest to you and you can follow them and see all their tweets about the jobs they are recruiting for.

2. Don’t use Twitter to ask for a job, use Twitter to show what you know

Our second tip is to keep your Tweets focussed on a career topic which is close to your area of interest and expertise. Describe this in your Twitter profile. To be brutally frank, no-one cares that you love your wife or have three wonderful kids or enjoy travelling. If that’s what you want to tweet about, that’s absolutely fine, just don’t expect Twitter to help you in your job search.

On the other hand, if your Twitter profile tells people that you are a professional fitness trainer, or compliance specialist, or electrical engineer, now you are talking the right sort of language to connect with others who for whatever reason share your interest or expertise.

So use your Twitter profile to describe what you do professionally and you have made the first step in turning it into a professional networking tool.

By the way, I don’t think this is the place to brag about yourself. Plenty of folk do, but personally, I believe we should use our twitter profiles to say what we do and make ourselves appear approachable, not conceited. Who loves a show off after all? Much better to talk about all your accomplishments on LinkedIn.

3. How to Tweet

Sharing the tweets of others who you admire in your industry is a great way to build your network and influence. But don’t just do that alone. Create and share insights and opinions of your own. Ask questions. Engage with the people that show interest in what you tweet, even if it’s just a friendly acknowledgement.

If you are using it to help you find a job, never use Twitter as a way to let off steam about something that’s really made you cross. Equally, don’t allow others to draw you into Twitter arguments. Twitter is thankfully fairly troll-free when you are using it professionally, but if someone does turn hater on you, take the argument offline or simply walk away and ignore them. You gain nothing by having a fight in public!

So, be friendly, be helpful and you’ll steadily build influence for the right reasons.

4. Leverage Twitter

You can and should connect your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile. If you have a blog, connect that too. Here’s the thing; encouraging people on twitter to connect with you on LinkedIn sends a powerful message to LinkedIn. LinkedIn sees that you have a steadily expanding network of great contacts. This in turn is interpreted by LinkedIn that you are a more influential person and your ranking in LinkedIn search rises accordingly. So you get found on LinkedIn by more recruiters.

Adopt the mantra of paying it forward. Help people out whenever you can. You may not see a benefit from this straight away, but it’s surprising how building a base of goodwill within your following pays you back over time. It’s a leap of faith, I know, but it really does work. You’ll just have to trust me on this one!

Recruiters look at Twitter when they are checking you out. And if they see pointless babble about TV shows or whatever, it won’t help you. It may not especially hurt you either, but it’s a missed opportunity to show that you are an engaged and influential thought leader in your profession.

Finally, don’t interpret this as meaning you gotta be all serious all the time. This is social media after all, so don’t get all heavy. Try to show a bit of your personality and let that shine through.

5. Learn from your peers

None of us can ever know everything but if we are connected with the thought leaders in our industry, we can discover great new insights, opinions and ideas. So Twitter can be a great learning resource if you adopt the right strategy about who you follow.

But you can go further than this. Follow the businesses on Twitter that you are interested in and you’ll get some valuable insights into what they are doing and possibly even some of the problems they are facing. And if you discover a problem that you can help them solve, even if they are not recruiting, how valuable is that knowledge as a basis for a speculative approach to explain to them why they should be talking to you?

6. And finally, use tools to help you.

Twitter is frankly a bit of a bear to use professionally unless you make use of tools to help you. But the great thing is that there are lots of them, most of them are free and have really simple and intuitive interfaces. You just connect them to your Twitter account and off you go!

Last but not least, here’s Axel’s advice on using Twitter to help your job search, plus his thoughts about a couple of really useful tools, Hootsuite and TweetReach: