Half a million hits on my blog. So what?

By Neil Patrick

Today this blog reached half a million hits. Oops. How did that happen?

I'm sure you care not a bit about this. That's okay. This news is of no consequence to anyone else. Or is it? This post isn't about self-congratulation. It's about how blogs have the power to change our lives.

I remember distinctly about three years ago reading an announcement on the blog of one of my inspirations, the wonderful Stacy Donovan Zapar, that her own blog had just reached half a million hits.

This was a revelation to me. At the time and still as far as I know, Stacy is the most connected woman in the world on LinkedIn. Stacy’s blog about recruitment is in a similar field to mine. Jobs are not the most interesting topic to most people, yet Stacy had achieved something incredible I thought. My blog was new and had about 30,000 hits at that time. Stacy I am sure didn’t intend this, but she unwittingly planted the seed in my mind that this was a goal I would set myself too.

It seemed at that time to me to be an impossibly unrealistic aspiration. And quite probably a completely meaningless one. It wouldn’t make me richer, smarter, or more secure. So why bother at all?

The answer to this question is that no, I am not richer. Or smarter. Or more secure. Except in one critical way. I am much more connected with many more wonderful people all over the planet. People who care about the same things I do. People I like and who hopefully like me. And we help each other out on the basis of simple goodwill.

Academics have a term for this. They call it social capital. My bank manager might say ‘so what?’. Well here’s the answer: As the world shifts from a competitive economy to a collaborative one (for more on this, read my post about it here), connectivity, reach and goodwill are the essential ingredients for influence. And influence has value.

Influence and connections have transformed my world. Just last week I enjoyed a Skype chat with one of my newest connections. A man who has been dubbed ‘Britain’s best boss’. A man who has been CEO of some of the biggest and most valuable companies in the UK. And he made me almost choke on my coffee when he told me he reads this blog. I had no idea, because apart from subscribers whose email addresses contain their name (a minority) and some wonderful people who share my stuff on social media, I have absolutely no clue who reads my online ramblings.

The fact is that this blog has put me in touch with a huge number of brilliant people all over the planet. People who send me things. People who talk to me. People who inspire me. People who will invite me to events as a speaker or participant. And many of these people have become friends. And endorsers. And collaborators. And yes, even clients.

So to coin a phrase from my favourite movie of all time, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, what has this blog ever done for me?...Nothing!...apart from change my world.

So to everyone that has shared, commented, agreed, disagreed, challenged, contributed or just read this blog, please accept my unreserved thanks and appreciation. You have made my online existence worthwhile. You have changed my world for the better. And I hope that in a small way, I have changed yours too.

The Best Advice I Received for Blogging on LinkedIn Pulse

By Karthik Rajan

The month was August, the year 2014. I saw a small icon show up on my LinkedIn profile. It was an icon for a pen – an icon that gave me the gateway to pepper the digital space. When I decided to take the plunge, I shared with my mother that I planned to blog. She gave it a quick thought and said, “Son, one advice – do not advise.”

The assuredness of her voice on the phone threw me out of balance. I asked her, “Can you elaborate more?” She added with a smile, ”No matter which part of the world and irrespective of language, when given a pen and paper, people have a proclivity to become authority figures on do this and do not do this.” She added, “Just share your experiences, trigger the reader's curiosity and let the audience draw their own conclusions, respect them as individuals and they will in turn respect you.”

Her advice made me think. How much do I remember from instructional classroom work vs. the stories outside of it? The childhood shenanigans and bonding with friends and family seem to be the memories without expiry date. On the other hand, concepts taught came a distant second. Reflecting on my own experience reference points, I saw myself nodding in agreement with her advice. Many of us think, few do. On this activity, I decided to act. The best way to describe it is through William Wordsworth’s words - “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” 

 

My experiences in the last 9 months gave me some things to ponder.

What I learnt about easy reads vs. disciplined moments

Many blogs are easy reads, packed with content like top 10 lists (listicles as my friend Dustin McKissen affectionately calls them). They have an ability to reach large audiences, but what about recall rates in the long term? On the other hand, sharing experiences – it takes a disciplined moment to get hooked on, a little while to make inferences but the memories are valuable. Emotional writing laced with context, is worthwhile in the long run. Without realizing, I was picking sides on the long-term metric (KPI) for thoughts on the digital space: Blending in to be forgotten or standing out to be remembered.

What I learnt about the commonalities between leadership and blogging

Leaders are endowed with power to take, but great leaders eschew the trappings of position but enhance the might of relationships. As a blog writer, we do stand on stage near a lectern, as scary as it may seem, just like leaders we have a choice to be pedestrian or great. It is very tempting to lecture (there is a time and a place for that) but it takes conscious choice to do the less obvious – reflect back the power of importance bestowed upon the blogger by the reader.

In a few meaningful words

My Mother’s timing of advice was impeccable; it did help me orient my blogs. The outpouring of responses from you all has been fantastic. A heartfelt thank you for the reads, likes and more importantly the comments, emails and phone calls. Just the learning from those conversations are a few blog posts. More importantly, I have learnt a lot about you. There are many bonds I have built. I really appreciate the relationships and memories.

Sharing experience, before your first blog

For those of you on the cusp of that very first blog, I understand the fear of the trolls, the unknown and many more knots in your stomach. The reality is that there is an army of souls- nudging you with words of encouragement, leaning in with thoughtful commentary that will expand your horizons and sharing with you their most precious - time.

If my experience is anything to go by, I am inspired to share - Just do it. When you take that plunge, I look forward to reading your first blog. Just let me know.


Ed: This post is reproduced with the full consent of the author. I'd like to thank  Karthik for his kindness in allowing me to share it here.

Why this blog sucks…without you!

By Neil Patrick

I am writing this post three years after starting this blog in September 2012.

In conjunction with Twitter, it has connected me with countless amazing people around the world. Even though I have never met most of you face to face, many of you have become friends, collaborators and even clients.

Thank you all for your support, encouragement, generosity, contributions, ideas, criticisms, and kindness. Without this, I would have given up long ago.

Anniversaries are the natural time when we reflect on what has passed and what lies ahead. I had absolutely no idea what would happen when I started this blog. I just knew the world of work was transforming so fast that many people were at risk of having their careers and later lives wrecked while they were busily going about their jobs. And untangling what was going on was both a mystery and a fascination for me. But most of all I wanted to try to do my bit to help people avoid these dangers.

As the daily traffic here grows to over a thousand hits a day I would tentatively venture to say that this blog has been a minor success.

But it still sucks quite a bit. And one reason is that I have failed to get enough of you to share your views.

Every day when I go to the comments to moderate them, I usually find the same junk. Here are a few examples:

So what? It’s just spam after all. And the appalling grammar is quite hilarious - so thank you for amusing me so much spam people! But I know that some very good blogs have closed down because of this deluge. My filters thankfully block most of it for me. And what’s left I just delete when I have finished laughing my head off.

But as I have explored more and more aspects of the 21^st century world of work, the more I learn, the less I realize I know.

I am also acutely aware that many people who read this blog know far more about some of these topics than I do. At the very least, we all have experiences which would illustrate or refute the views I record here. None of us can know everything.

So I have a humble plea. Please help me make it better.

When I read other writers’ posts I often find the comments even more interesting and informative than the original article. And I want that to be the case here too.

I am not after your money. Just your minds!

I think blogs should be catalysts for debate, not soapboxes.

I want this blog to become a community, not my personal podium. Please comment and tell me what you think. I am just as happy to be contradicted or proved wrong as applauded.

There is no advertising on this blog and I make no money from it. And I want it to stay that way.

So please get involved and help me make this blog a better place for all of us.

Thank you.

10 reasons a blog is more valuable than money

By Neil Patrick

Plenty of people are completely mystified about why I write this blog. I don’t carry advertising and I’m not selling anything to anyone – so it earns me absolutely no money at all. It takes time I could be using to do other things. And yet I think it’s one of the most useful and valuable things I do in my working week.

If you want to know why, here are my thoughts about this question.

I think it was Publillius Sirus who said, “A good reputation is more valuable than money”. Whilst a blog cannot determine our reputation completely, it does present our thoughts and ideas to the world for the world to judge. And such openness requires more courage than I thought I really had. For me, as someone who had lived their whole life fairly successfully without social media ever being part of it, writing a blog was a personal challenge. It was the first time in my life I had ever put my thoughts up for the world to see. And that was a scary prospect.

Especially since at first, I had no real idea what I was doing. So I’m the first to admit that for many months this blog was erm, let's say... finding its way...

I’m not about to proclaim that it’s improved; that’s for you to judge, not me. But I can say it has taught me a lot and become immensely more valuable than I ever thought possible. And with over 300,000 hits so far, plenty of people must be at least looking at it occasionally.

When I started, I was obsessed with traffic. I would examine the visitor numbers every day – if it was rising, I felt good. If it was falling, I would give myself a hard time and knuckle down to putting up another post in the hope I could rid myself of my self-imposed fail badge.

I would dig deep into the stats to see which posts were getting most attention and comments and resolve to do more along those lines. A lifetime of marketing management had deeply ingrained these habits in my daily practices.

But none of this really matters a damn. And here’s why I think this.

First, I have learned that blogs should not attempt to be any of the following things:

A fact repository – Wikipedia does that far better than any blog can. If you want facts, you can get them there in an instant on just about any topic you can think of. Just don’t expect anything other than dull as ditch water fact after fact after fact…

A source for the latest news – whilst we can all grumble about this or that bias within the mass media, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the news industry worldwide posting news about everything, every second of every day. You’d be a complete fool to try and compete with that as a blogger.

A discussion forum – if you are a blogger who has many thousands of readers posting their comments regularly – I sincerely congratulate you. But my experience is that comments are becoming increasingly hard to come by for a mixture of reasons – folk don’t wish to publicly share their views or identity; they are super busy; they feel they have nothing to add. I also know that some people struggle with the comment facility on the Blogger platform and if you are one, I apologise, there’s little I can do about that, I‘m afraid. Of course they may also think I still suck at writing blog posts! I respect all these reasons but if you wish to comment, on any of my posts, I will be genuinely appreciative whether you agree or disagree with my opinions.

A way to trick search engines - I’m bemused by the whole SEO industry. It seems to rest on the premise that getting to the top of a Google search for a particular search query is the most important online goal anyone can have. I don’t waste my time with any SEO nonsense. Google will place me where it does and that’s fine. It’s got hundreds of people much smarter than me working everyday to deliver the best search results they can. I'm not going to distract myself and  adjust what I write to try and second guess Google's search algorithms. Social media brings me more traffic every day than I could buy from search engines anyway.

So why is a blog valuable? 

1. A blog is personal and as unique as you are. If you don’t care about something you write about, it shows. So don’t write about it. Choosing topics because they are popular might get you more traffic. So what? Do you want to be running with the pack or carving out your own distinctive voice and position? Personally I choose the latter. 
2. A blog serves as a notebook and therapy. It’s a place to record your ideas and thoughts at a moment in time. I sometimes look back at my old blog posts with a mixture of embarrassment and amusement at my own naiveté. But these retrospectives help me measure how much I have improved my knowledge, thinking and writing. It’s also a cathartic exercise. Sometimes I have an idea or nagging feeling about something rattling around my head for days on end. Somehow researching the topic and writing a post about it releases that pressure and allows me to lay it to rest…for a while at least. 
3. It forces us to challenge and refine our opinions. If you are going to stick up a blog post and not care if your facts are correct, your arguments logical and your presentation clear and engaging, then you are a braver writer than me. The process of posting our opinions on a topic for all the world to see imposes a requirement for critical self-assessment that would normally be absent. If we are expressing our opinions to family, friends or colleagues, that’s one thing. Posting them for the world to see is quite another. 
4. A blog gets you friends all over the world who care about the same things you do. This is the most precious value of my blog. It brings me into contact with great people whom I would never encounter otherwise. Many of them become friends, collaborators and yes even clients. 
5. A blog will make you much better informed. I’m not a career coach, recruiter, journalist or HR person – in other words the type of people who usually write about jobs and careers. I have no direct vested interest in gaining traffic for this blog. On the upside, this makes me neutral and unbiased. On the downside, because I don’t have a professional background in the areas I am writing about I can justifiably be classed as an amateur. And that’s fine with me – this blog forces me to learn and dig into things that I’d never otherwise bother to find out about. 
6. You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to have a passion for your topic. I am seriously interested in how things work and what the future holds for the world of work. And this blog has made me even more interested in the subject as I have uncovered more and more intriguing ideas and analyses of what’s really going on. Writing a blog is the best way I know to increase my knowledge of that topic. It requires me to do my homework, to read as much or more than I write and to ask questions. 
7. It expands our knowledge and encourages us to consider other viewpoints. Not all writers do this, but I will typically research what other writers have said about a topic, before I write about it. Sometimes they provide useful quotes. Other times they introduce me to an aspect I’d not considered. Whatever their contribution, I learn. 
8. Doing it consistently and regularly is like going to the gym. It builds cognitive and communication muscle! I am not and never will be an Olympic gold medal writer. But I’m not trying to be. If I can be a workmanlike writer, that’s enough for me. 
9. It’s an opportunity to expose the guilty and praise the good. I have no sponsors that I must serve and please. I write what I believe and if something or someone deserves criticism in my opinion they get it! Others who I feel deserve recognition, I try to support and encourage. In that sense, blogs can be a democratic force for good in the world. 
10. If you’re not a digital native, a blog rockets you to the front with the cool kids. I’m well past 40 years old, and getting older and hopefully wiser. That makes me a dinosaur in the eyes of people who’ve never known a world without digital and social media. And yes I admit I like the kudos of not conforming to the stegosaurean stereotype. 

Blogs are everywhere these days. They are exploding as organisations recognise that having a lot of content on their website pushes their search rank higher. And their content reflects this. It’s copious, pedestrian, unoriginal and tame.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather read a heartfelt piece of writing by a passionate writer that challenges my assumptions than yet another sanitised click bait ‘news’ story any day…

Baby boomers – here’s why (some of) our kids hate us

By Neil Patrick

If you want to know how some of the gen Yers see us, then this piece by Australian blogger Mark Fletcher is an example. If you’re a baby boomer, it’s tempting to simply go into denial and rebuttal when you read his fiery rhetoric, but I think if you can see past the rage, he makes some valid points about for example the failures of government institutions to lead effectively.

But overall, I think his arguments are naïve and driven more by anger than understanding. You cannot hold a whole generation corporately responsible for anything. We didn’t hold the whole of Germany accountable for the crimes of the Nazi regime; if we accept Mark’s reasoning, it would follow that we should have done…and presumably murdered every surviving German person in 1945. It’s ironic therefore that one of his ‘recommendations’ is the removal of voting rights from everyone over 40 years old. Isn’t that a bit erm..fascist Mark?

It also conveniently fails to mention what the gen Yers have done which is really any different from what the boomers have done. They have just whinged a bit more and are seeking out culprits for their angst. If you want culprits Mark, I think you are looking in the wrong place.

Perhaps though this inter-generational blaming attitude highlights one really important point. If we have failed as a generation, we have failed because we put our trust in the wrong leaders and the wrong economic policies. And because of that error, we have failed to win the trust and respect of (some of) our own children.

What do you think? I'd welcome your thoughts in the comments section below.

Here’s Mark’s post:



The Baby Boomers had their chance to create the society into which they wanted to retire and they dropped the ball. They don't deserve our help, writes Mark Fletcher.

By Mark Fletcher
Back when I was a kid, old people had fought in a war. They could tell you stories about growing up in the Great Depression, about the spread of mass manufactured cars, and about personally trying to shoot Hitler. When they retired, they looked back on a long life of hard work, of securing our freedoms, and of not understanding how to programme the VCR.

Today, old (sic) people are rubbish. They’ve never done anything worthwhile. They happily took handouts from several economic booms and completely failed to invest in infrastructure like their parents’ generation had done for them.

In Australia, they crafted a completely nuts housing market where housing prices head steadily upwards (which will be paid for by their children’s generation); meanwhile, they enjoyed free education (again, paid for by their parents’ generation) which they subsequently denied to their children. The media companies they own write article after article about how ‘Gen Y’ has a bad attitude and feels entitled to jobs and conditions of employment. Now they have the freaking audacity to claim that they want to retire and have my generation pay for it.

Sod ‘em, the lazy swine. If you didn’t fight a Nazi, you don’t get to retire. You certainly don’t get to retire on my dime.

Boomers only ever cared about themselves?
Credit:  Alfabille (Own work) CC-BY-SA-3.0

The problem with my ‘Let them become Soylent Green cake’ attitude is that, one day, I shall be old and I will want to retire. With a bunch of old people currently hogging all the political power making the sort of short-sighted decisions that you’d expect from people who won’t survive to see the consequences, the future doesn’t look bright and rosy for my retirement (which apparently will be in the year 2105).

The Per Capita think tank released an awkwardly phrased report last week called Still Kicking:

The ageing of the population will see the number of people aged 65 to 84 years more than double, and the number of people aged 85 and over more than quadruple. As a result, the proportion of people who are of working age will decline as a proportion of the whole population.

Clearly this conclusion doesn’t follow. The sentence ‘The number of people who are of working age is not expected to increase by as much’ is missing, which is weird given that the rest of the report is dedicated to increasing the number of people who are of working age.

Per Capita gives us the usual handwaves typical of Australia’s think tanks. We could change the working age to include more people and ‘reconceptualise’ retirement. We could tinker with superannuation. We can gear our health system towards making sure that people are economic cogs for longer. And so on and so forth. All the low-hanging fruit was dutifully picked.

Not to be outdone, the number-crunchers at the Grattan Institute got out their sliderules and abaci to put together a chapter in their Balancing Budgets report about retirement:

Increasing to 70 the age of access to the Age Pension and superannuation (the ‘retirement age’) is one of the most economically attractive choices to improve budgets in the medium term. It could ultimately improve the budget bottom line by $12 billion a year in today’s terms, while producing a lift in economic activity of up to 2 per cent of GDP.

What both Per Capita and the Grattan Institute are saying is that previous generations have screwed up the general revenue base so heinously that everybody needs to work more to pay for the retirees.

Further, both organisations are setting the policy gears to resolve the problems of today’s old fogey. They let the health system deteriorate and now health care is expensive. Shock. They let the infrastructure deteriorate and now they don’t have the labour mobility that they need to get a job. Horror. They let the education system collapse and now they can’t reskill into new industries. Surprise. They let general revenue get whittled away on pork barreling and now there’s no money left.

As a result, intergenerational policy is being colonised and dominated by economic, labour, and health policies. How can we afford to keep old people? How can we unlock the potential labour of old people and translate it into GDP? How can we manage the health needs of the elderly?

It is an approach that conceptualises homo senilis as if they had sprung out of the earth and suddenly (like mushrooms) come to full maturity without all kind of engagement to each other.

There was society and it was functioning and then - completely by surprise - there were all these old people who had special needs and who needed things.

A better, more sophisticated, approach is to work out what sort of society we (that is, people under the age of 35) want for our retirement and then set the policy gears now to achieve it. Do we want a society of lifelong learning? Then we need an education policy to gut the current education system which considers education over by age 25 and de-link technical education from the research sector. Do we want a society of non-manual labour? Then we need an industry policy to let the manufacturing sectors crash, a research policy to invest in better industries, and a legislative policy to improve protections for intellectual property. Do we want to enjoy a retirement like our great grandparents had? Then we need a fiscal policy to diversify the revenue streams of the Government so it relies less on income taxes. And so on and so forth.

The easiest way for us to achieve this utopian future is to rescind the voting rights of any person over the age of 40. The Baby Boomers have made it clear that we’ll have to take the reins of government from their cold, dead hands, but they’ve demonstrated that they can’t be trusted to manage themselves. They’ll live longer and they’ll vote longer; and they’ll vote for parties that promise to stamp out ‘Aged Discrimination’ (which is code for forcing the rest of us to pay their indulged way).

They had their chance to create the society into which they wanted to retire and they dropped the ball. Our policymakers shouldn’t be putting out the fires of yesterday, and we definitely shouldn’t develop policies which exonerate their hideous mistakes.

Mark Fletcher is a Canberra-based blogger and policy wonk who writes about conservatism, atheism, and popular culture. He blogs at OnlyTheSangfroid. This article was originally published onAusOpinion.com.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/11/29/comment-will-you-still-employ-me-when-i-m-64

How a blog will explode your work opportunities

By Neil Patrick

If you are looking for work, or wish to boost your profile, you may have seriously underestimated the value of having a blog. Or you may have thought it is too difficult without technical skills. Or it’s too time consuming. Or any other excuse.

Well, don’t debate it, don’t think about it, just do it!

It’s quite possibly the best investment in your professional prospects you’ll ever make.

How long do you spend currently online each day? And wouldn’t an hour or two a day of that time be a better investment if it boosted your personal profile in your area of expertise and show cased your knowledge and professionalism to the people YOU need to influence?

And it’s much, much easier than you’d ever believe. What’s more, one of the most common reasons recruiters and hiring companies discriminate against older workers is that they believe that older professionals don’t have up to date IT and digital media skills. Doing this destroys that prejudice at a single stroke!

So don’t wait or even think about it too much.

Just do it.

You’ll boost your profile, showcase your talent AND prove not only that you are technically savvy, but also that you know how to take the initiative.

Oh, and if that’s not enough, you’ll learn a heap of valuable new things and grow your contact network too!

Here’s Jill Konrath, who spells these points out brilliantly as usual. Everything you need to understand about why and what you should do to set up your blog is here...not all the little details granted, but all the vital fundamentals to get you started are covered in less than 10 minutes!

This really is all you need to know to get started and to start building your online asset base.

Oh and if you want me to help you with my own tips and experience about this topic, just let me know!

The value of blogging and my favourite Twitter people in the world!

By Neil Patrick

Happy birthday to US!

I am writing this at the first anniversary of starting this blog.

I thought that it would be useful to share what I've discovered so that you can see for yourself what anyone could achieve in 12 months starting from scratch. I have absolutely nothing to brag about, but strangely few bloggers seem willing to share this stuff. Many people extol the benefits of blogging, but few talk about the numbers side of it. So, I thought it might be helpful to share my data and experience for anyone who is curious about the potential that blogs and social media offer for mature professionals.

Why did I do this?

I put up my first post here on 24 September 2012. I was a total rookie and had never blogged before. My blog posts came from three sources. About one third were written by guest posters, a further third were curated from mainstream and online media and all the rest I wrote myself. Since my first post, I have followed up with 263 more. That’s quite a lot compared to most bloggers it seems, but I am in a hurry; I’m driven by two main motivations:

1. A desire to urgently inform mature professionals about how the career world has transformed without many of them really noticing and what they could do about it to protect their futures. 
2. An intense curiosity to discover for myself if and how I could harness the power of social media to assist me achieve 1. above. 

What happened?

Well it’s now one year on and I have some answers.

I’ll start by sharing some headline numbers.

Total all-time hits on this blog are around 60,000 according to Blogger. Monthly hits on this blog are currently around 10,000. However, the biggest chunk (around 70%) of these ‘hits’ are not in fact reader views, they are hits by various ‘bots’ from Google, Twitter, Kred, Klout etc. The ‘real’ figures according to Google Analytics are currently around 2,500 - 3,000 human visits a month. Big difference huh? So the first point is do not trust the numbers of hits that are recorded by Blogger or Wordpress etc. Most of these are not human reader views.

At the same time I set up the blog, I also set up a Twitter account to support it and get the message out to anyone who might be interested in what I was doing. Currently, my Twitter following is around 6,200 followers. So on average, I'm getting roughly one blog view every two months per Twitter follower.

According to Beevolve, the average Twitter following is 208. So if you have more than that, you can give yourself a pat on the back! Interestingly, less than 0.5% of Twitter users have more than 5,000 followers. 

You can see these stats and more here:

http://www.beevolve.com/twitter-statistics/

According to statisticbrain, there were 554m Twitter users in July 2013, so the top 0.5% of Twitter users ranked by following is a whopping 2.8m people! Suddenly being in the top 0.5% doesn’t sound too impressive, but given this is hardly the sexiest or most entertaining blog in the world I’m totally amazed to have got so far so fast.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/

But the numbers alone don’t really tell the whole story. I am not chasing numbers for numbers’ sake. I think engagement is much more important. What’s the point of having hundreds of thousands or even millions of social media connections if you are not interacting with them?

This is where Klout and Kred come in. These both purport to measure online influence. My Klout score has reached 61 out of 100 and my Kred score is 785 out of 1000 for influence and 8 out of 12 for outreach. Before I started this blog, these were both zero or as close as makes no difference. If you want to know more about Kred and Klout and what they mean, I have written a post about it here:

http://40pluscareerguru.blogspot.com/2013/04/klout-and-kred-are-they-relevant-to.html

And then there’s Linkedin. A year ago I had about 360 connections on Linkedin. Every single one was someone that I’d met at least once (and usually much more) face to face. People I’d worked with and done business with over the last 20 years or so. About six or seven of them had been kind enough to give me recommendations.

In all honesty, I used LinkedIn pretty much like many do…rather like a self-updating address book of all my real world business connections. And since I worked mostly inside that little bubble, my network was growing very slowly. I would receive about one invitation a month to connect if I was lucky…and most of these were from people I'd met face to face.

Fast forward to today. Every day now I get a new invitation to connect with someone new on Linkedin. Most days it’s several. And most of these are from the sort of people anyone would love to have in their network. Apart from creating lots of exciting new opportunities, this has also massively boosted my search ranking on Linkedin. Today if I search against the keywords for the type of work I do, I come out on page one of a Linkedin search within a radius of about 50 miles. This in turn means I am approached more and more frequently with great new opportunities. 

But numbers are not the most important thing…people are

But these numbers don’t reveal the reality of the situation. People and relationships are what this is all about, not statistics.

I want to share insights, information and knowledge that is relevant and that I hope will help people. I want to engage with people. I want to help them avoid the growing threats to their futures and achieve their goals.

Which brings me to what I think is the most incredible outcome of these last 12 months. It’s the sheer number and quality of people that who’ve chosen to connect with me with and who have responded positively to what I am doing.

They are as diverse as they are numerous. There are so many that I couldn’t possibly recount all the details of all the emails, DMs, tweets, phone calls, Skype and Google hangouts that have gone on. But I want here to publicly thank every single one of them that has inspired me, helped me, encouraged me, enlightened me and even just been nice to me.

Here they are. Every single one of these people is just wonderful and I have provided their Twitter handles too so if you wish, you can easily follow them on Twitter and engage with them yourself.

Awesome Recruiters:

Axel Koster @AxelKoster

Barbara Adams @CareerProGlobal

HRIS Jobs @hrisjobs

Ibro Palic @Ibro_Palic

Intellego Jobs @intellegojobs

Randstad USA @RandstadUSPros



Career and resume experts:

Debra Wheatman @DebraWheatman

Kerry Hannon @KerryHannon

Kim Marino @CareerCoachKim

Michelle Lopez @One2OneResumes

Tony Restell @tonyrestell



World class coaches:

Donna Svei @AvidCareerist

Fernado Ratkoczy @JobSearchCenter

Jacob Share @jacobshare

Jane Anderson @jane_anderson__



Awesome HR pros:

Anne Marinis @AnneMarinis

Jeremy Scrivens @JeremyScrivens

Karalyn Brown @InterviewIQ

Lisa Orrell @GenerationsGuru

Nicole Le Maire @NicoleLeMaire



Linkedin experts:

Koka Sexton @kokasexton

Stacy Donovan Zapar @StacyZapar



Great guest post writers:

Anna Pitts @annaepitts

Anthony Juliano @ajuliano

David Hunt @davidhuntpe

Jim Langendorf @jplang43

Ron Thomas @ronald_thomas



Brilliant bloggers:

Andrew Ginsburg @GinsburgJobs

David K Waltz @davidkwaltz

Deb Briceland-Betts @DBricelandBetts

Jason Poquette @jasonpoquette

Jesse Colombo @TheBubbleBubble

John Baldino @jbalive

Karen Austin @TheGenAboveMe

Leo Woodhead @thecareersblog

Marc Miller @CareerPivot

Marcia La Reau @ForwardMotionUS

Mary Eileen Williams @FeistySideFifty



The lifetime achievement award goes to:

Everald Compton @EVERALDATLARGE



Social media and tech experts:

The one and only…Gary Hyman! @GaryHyman



Special mention for support above and beyond the call of duty:

Yittah Lawrence @ITISAGR8DAY



And last but not least all these super kind people who have supported and encouraged me:

Abby Kohut @Absolutely_Abby

Angel Torres @angeltorres

Anke Gosch @ueberfliegernet

Anne Sachs @TheatreSmart

Anthony Sider @BudgetDude

Biggleswade JCP @BiggleswadeJCP

Buzz Brindle @BrindleMedia

Caroline Fabian @fabe_recruits

Corrina Wade @wade_corrina

Dave Kushan @DavidKushan

David Nicola @Capt_Careerist

Deepak Sharma @deepakmandi

Diana Schniedman @DianaSchneidman

Diane McWade @dianemcwade

Dionne Lew @DionneLew

Dr. Heather Dix @HeatherChizz

Elzbieta Jaworska @edjaworska

Fotis Tsoumanis @fotispersisting

Getrude Sawadye @getrudesawadye

Gul Nur Bilek @GulNurBilek

Hanna Hurley @hanna_hurley

Helen Fisher @HelenJFisher

Jacqueline Ktita @JacquelineKtita

Jeanette Barrowcliffe @J_Barrowcliffe

Jerome Holland @JeromeHolland1

John Hanna @johnhannagdp

John Siracusa @john_siracusa

Karen Julius @karenjulius

Karla Crawford @kklm7

Kimberlee Lockhart @Kimba_67

Les Floyd @Lesism

Luis Carlos de Paula @lcdepaula

Margie Miklas @MargieMiklas

Mark Affleck @markaffleck

Mark Seaden @MarkSeaden

Projectme @projectmeuk

Sonja Vukadin @SONJAVUKADIN

Steve Leuck @AudibleRx

Wayne Miller @Affilipede

William Carrington @ColCarrington 

I only knew just one of these brilliant people one year ago (yes that's you John!). Today I am proud and flattered to count every one of them as a valued friend and supporter. My sincere thanks and appreciation goes out to each and every one of you. You are all awesome!

Which brings me to the most important point of all. When I started out just one year ago, I had no idea of where I’d be today. I had no clue if anyone was interested in what I thought or had to say.

The last year has shown me that social media can help anyone not only get their message out, it can connect you with people that not only share your beliefs, but also who are willing to share their valuable time, which is why I wanted to express my gratitude in this way.

And that’s the whole point, none of us knows everything. We never can and we never will. But through teamwork and helping others before ourselves, it’s possible to achieve extraordinary things. And that’s the power of social media. Finding and connecting us with the people that share our beliefs and values so we can create amazing things together.

I’m not promising that I can solve everyone’s problems, although I’ll try to help wherever I can and payback all the people who have helped me on my journey. I started out with a very simple idea. I just thought that too many mature professionals were blind to the career revolution that has swept away almost everything that we all grew up believing about work and careers. And this was a big threat to them. And I hoped that my modest insights could help make peoples’ futures a bit more secure and successful.

My work is far from done. But thanks to all of you, my commitment and belief in my mission has been cemented and will drive us forward to…who knows where?

Thank you all and I am now wondering where things will be a year from now. Personally I can’t wait to find out!

Happy birthday to US!

Is this career suicide?

By Neil Patrick

We hear so much about the explosion of social media and how it’s changing the world, that it’s easy to think that everyone is involved.

Think again.

Naturally enough I whenever I meet my close personal friends, we inevitably discuss how their work is going. If I think about these guys, all of whom I've known for years (okay, decades) and who are all switched on, well educated professionals, I am constantly perplexed by the fact that they just don’t get social media at all.

I should start by saying that this is a very small and skewed sample. All of them are aged 50ish, and employed. They are all male and they all work in the UK. So this isn't in any way reliable research ‘data’. But they are a good sample of the type of people I am trying to help with this blog.

One is a lawyer, another is a mental health worker, one is a CEO, one is a senior civil servant, one is an accountant, and another works for a medical equipment company. Six middle-aged guys all accomplished professionals in their fields.

Every one of them depends on their job for all or nearly all their income. Sure, some have working partners, but in no case does their partner’s income exceed their own.

Firstly, none of them use Facebook. I actually think that’s fine. I don’t use it either simply because I consider it to be more or less irrelevant to my career interests. You may have a different opinion about Facebook, but essentially I consider it a low priority because I think it is really a platform for friends and family relationships, not professional ones.

LinkedIn is of course the only really serious social media site for professional networking. Of these six friends, only one has more than 500 LinkedIn connections and a 100% complete profile. Two have no LinkedIn profile at all. The other three all have fewer than 100 connections and don’t even have a photo on their profile. They very rarely even look at LinkedIn.

Moving on to Twitter, not one of them has a Twitter account. And you’ll not be surprised either that none of them has a blog.

So these guys are all pretty much not participating in the social media revolution. Even my friend who has over 500 LinkedIn connections is what I call a ‘passive’ user. His use of LinkedIn is really more or less just as a self-updating address book.

So what are the reasons for their decision to not participate?

The most common one, is, “I just don’t have the time for that”. The second is that they cannot see how it can possibly be of value to them. The third is that they generally have no idea of how they can leverage the power of social media.

But slowly (very slowly) they are waking up. What I have found in recent months is that more and more of them have moved on from their default position of the last few years, which was, “that’s a waste of time” and, “I’ve got better things to do”, to “Yes, I know it’s important, but I really don’t know what to do”.

So they are showing signs of acceptance of the way things have changed, but remain in denial, having changed their excuse from, “It’s not important”, to “I don’t know how to do it”.

I find I am having more and more discussions with them about how to leverage their LinkedIn profiles. But mostly, they are carrying on as before, making huge assumptions about how they ought to use social media, and generally getting it wrong in the process.

One of them recently lost his job in a reorganization. He was one of the guys that had no LinkedIn profile at all. Naturally I am doing all I can to help him recover from this situation. But I am sorry to report we have no good news yet.

Can I say that if he’d had a LinkedIn profile he’d not be in this situation? No, that would be naïve. It wouldn't have prevented him losing his job. And it wouldn't guarantee that he would find another one completely effortlessly.

But I am sure that if he had developed a strong personal online brand, a global network of relevant business contacts and a position as a go-to expert in his field, he’d have infinitely better prospects than he has right now.

I actually do consider him to be a real expert in his field. But just about the only people that know about that are he and I. So right now, we are facing an uphill struggle. He’s missed the train and the next one coming is going to be really slow.

He’s a survivor and a fighter though and so I think he’ll recover eventually, but this is sadly a big problem, when it so easily might just have been a little blip, or quite possibly a massive opportunity.

So, he’s now fighting for survival with dwindling personal financial resources and no significant opportunities on the horizon.

In some ways, it’s the stories of these guys and the many others just like them that I know, that have been an inspiration for me in writing this blog. Mind you I know also none of them read it...
plus ça change...

What I know now – 9 lessons from my life

By Jim Langendorf

My last post was about my realization that my life was at half time and that I now knew the things I wish I'd have known when I was 23.

Upon further reflection, I thought a list of those lessons would be helpful.

I have nothing to fear if I am not liked. The most important lesson, which is applicable to business and professional life alike is that I am worthy of respect, if not affection. I don't like everyone and they are as unharmed by my lack of affection for them as I am of theirs for me. 

Time is fleeting but patience is rewarded. One must act with conviction, but be prepared to wait for results. It is often not clear what the consequences of our actions will be, but if you believe you are right, then you should act.

Consistency and diligence beat flashes of brilliance. Some of the brightest students in law school were unable to pass the bar exam. They could bring it to an essay exam for a class, and get As, but they could not maintain their focus and concentration at the big moments in July and February. Better to be regularly competent than only infrequently extraordinary. (See, Thomas Edison).

The front line of any organization is what gets work done. If you want to assure failure and rejection, then treat the waitresses, clerks, cashiers and janitors with disdain and disrespect. Almost everyone has to start somewhere. Some people start and stay lower on the "ladder." But they are mothers, fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. They are important in their own way in their own world. Almost everyone is doing the best that they can. Understand and respect them and thank them for their efforts.

Tip generously when it's deserved. Tip generously in advance to guarantee great service.

Show up and act like you belong where you are. If you believe, then other people are inclined to believe it too. If you believe that you can do anything and be anywhere you want, then you can be. It may be that simple.

There is a virtually infinite amount of money circulating the planet. You can have as much as you want, but you have to make an effort to get it. It will not automatically flow to you. Trillions are flowing all of the time. You only need a small part of that flow to be wildly rich. If I knew exactly how to do it, then I'd be rich too. I'm still working on the mechanics.

Go big. You can spend an hour digging a ditch, or selling industrial supplies, or learning how to finance a rental property with no money down. The hour digging a ditch pays quickly but only a little bit. The closed sale, or the refinanced rental may take a little longer to actually happen, but the payoff is far greater. Put your time into high return efforts and act on them, consistently.

Be courageous. Ask yourself what is the worst that can happen? Or remind yourself of the worst thing facing you a month, or six months, or even a year ago and recognize that you made it. It passed. Be bold. It pays off.

On that note, I am off to work. I have to litigate, settle and ideate for a while. Check out my website, http://www.langendorflaw.com/


Jim Langendorf is a law firm operator and an entrepreneur who spends much of his time in federal court recovering unpaid overtime wages for his clients. When he isn't practicing law, he is on a mission to self-improvement, wealth and health. He is always looking for opportunities where everyone wins.

Jim authors two blogs, Rashinal Thoughts http://rashinality.blogspot.com/and the more legal industry focused Donning and Doffing, http:// http://donanddoff.blogspot.com/ He welcomes new followers to both.

Baby-Boomers, Here's Your Wake-Up Call

The workplace has changed dramatically. These days, there's more to maintaining a career than your day job. Get another oar in the water, fast.

 

By Liz Ryan, Contributing Columnist, Kiplinger.com

October 23, 2012

I call baby-boomers the bushwhacked generation. Back in the early 1980s, when I began my career, the message to a new hire was "Welcome to XYZ Corporation! We’re so glad you are part of our team. We look forward to a long and happy employment relationship with you."

Hard as it is to admit, back then I was one of the people peddling that longtime-career Kool-Aid. I was a corporate human-relations person, one who never questioned the idea that if people came to work and put their shoulder to the wheel, they'd earn a nice living and climb the corporate ladder straight to retirement.

Now that the corporate ladder is sawdust under our feet, baby-boomers need to think differently. Longtime employment isn’t just elusive; it isn't even always a good thing. Every day I talk with employers who say "This candidate seems like a good guy, but I worry about him, too. He spent 26 years at his last job. Do you think this guy can flex, Liz?" In some respects, having many jobs with varying circumstances equips a job-seeker better for today's workplace than one longterm gig.

How is a baby-boomer to deal with the ever-shakier employment landscape? My advice: Grow new muscles. People need altitude on their careers now, and perspective they didn't need when a job search was a once-every-decade-or-so proposition. We need to be aware of the talent marketplace all the time. We have to know which business problems we solve for employers, whether we're job-hunting or not. More than anything, we need multiple oars in the water.

An oar in the water is a revenue stream and a way to exercise professional muscles. If you've been a W-2 type since forever, you likely haven't thought much about additional oars. (Our kids know all about them, however. As a 25-year-old in Denver told me, 'It drives my mom crazy that I've got a degree and five part-time jobs. She doesn't understand that I don't want one full-time gig. I make more money this way, and I don't lose sleep worrying whether my employer likes me or not.')

Back when, having a side job meant bartending or singing at weddings, something most corporate types would shun as too down-market for their tastes. Today, it's different. I encourage every working person to have a business card separate from the one your employer gave you. You could consult, advising overburdened businesspeople in your spare time. You could pick up freelance gigs from the comfort of your den. You can make money in a thousand ways without even blowing your professional cover.

Putting out a shingle isn't just a good idea financially; it's essential for your mojo, too. Solving other people's problems is the best way to grow your connecting-the-dots skills, the same skills we need to thrive in the new-millennium workplace. Here are three of our favorite oar-in-the-water options for otherwise-committed W-2 types.

"Elance" Your Knowledge

Elance.com pairs freelance workers with projects they can complete from home. Projects range from tiny (a graphic designer paying $35 for a more fluid bio than she could write herself) to gargantuan (a six-month project with a five-figure payoff). If you want to put a toe in the second-revenue stream, this is one great way to begin.

Blog About What You Know

Every day I talk with baby-boomers who are experts on all sorts of subjects – including areas of expertise they get paid for at work and ones they've cultivated over the years on their own, outside of work. I recommend that people who know a lot about anything at all start a blog or a Facebook page, to get the "sharing what I know" juice flowing and to enable other enthusiasts in the same space to find them.

You'll be amazed what happens when you start writing regularly about topics that interest you, especially when your advice can help other people. It's free to start your own blog at Wordpress.The blog itself may turn into a revenue generator for you, or the contacts you make via your blog may create financial opportunities (or both). What are you waiting for?

Get a Business Card

When it comes to oars in the water, the big message is "Be available when opportunities arise." To get started, go to Vistaprint.com and get business cards that brand you as something other than your company's assistant manager of whatever. I want you to get business cards, no matter what your work situation is – they cost almost nothing. You can worry about the actual business later.

Sadly, we've taught the baby-boom generation that entrepreneurism is something exotic and risky, not suitable for the average person – absolute hogwash that would have horrified our grandparents. My friend Jody, unsure how to brand herself, ordered business cards that displayed her name over the tagline "Available for Lunch." Those cards got her fantastic freelance jobs and ultimately a terrific W-2 gig. You don't have to pick a business name, design your offerings or create a business plan, at least not yet. Just get out there and start talking to people about their issues. You'll be amazed how fast your new-millennium workplace muscles grow.

http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/onthejob/archive/a-wake-up-call-for-job-seeking-boomers.html