A Job You Love

Are you growing fed up with the word “SOCIAL”?

Now everything is Social! Social Media, Social interaction, Social Community, social engagement…

You Kids are social, you dog is social, the companies need to enable social interactions and social exchanges between people. You name it!

What does Social mean?

Social comes from the Latin word “socialis” which means “companionship”. Social is everything related to life in community.

And obviously we have been living in communities since the very beginning of the Man’s birth.

So basically almost everything we do is social. In the past people used to live in small local communities connecting with a limited number of people. They were socializing. And the main place of socialization was the church.

So everything they were doing was within their community. Everything was social as well!

Now the church has been replaced by internet.

Yes we do socialize today when we interact within communities, we start talks or conversations, we exchange ideas or projects.

We socialize in everything we do in that sense.

But we do socialize as much as people in small communities used to with the church or the local butcher.

Why this word “Social” has become such a trend?

It is difficult to explain but we put a new word for something that has been existing for ages.

But the biggest difference with the church is that we can interact with much more people and anywhere on the planet. The number of ties we can create is much bigger. And obviously the leverage is much higher.

The best part of the mass was not the mass itself but after the mass…where people discussed and met to exchange information, news and social currencies (jobs, marital updates, valuable help and information…).

So Social is everywhere, but do we need to call everything we do on the internet “Social”?

PS: I have decided to help my friends from Influence People to organise this event in Paris..So this post is in French exceptionally

La semaine dernière, Influence People a organisé la Conférence Social Media Monitoring à Londres #MSM10 et cette conférence a eu un retentissant succès avec plusieurs centaines de participants et un véritable buzz sur Twitter.

Le 10 décembre, la conférence débarque à Paris et je voudrai profiter de cette occasion pour vous faire gagner une place si vous retweetez ce billet avec le hastag #MSM10 (Merci à Luke Brynley-Jones qui offre un billet d’entrée gratuit, valeur faciale de 240 Euros et qui a écrit un bel article sur la veille, Vous faîtes de la veille, et après?)

Pourquoi participer?

1) Pour rencontrer Brian Solis qui est l’expert mondialement connu sur le sujet du monitoring sur les Media Sociaux (Loic Le Meur va peut-être venir mais ce n’est pas confirmé…)

2) Pour vous donner un avant goût, j’ai traduit un résumé sucinct des discussions de la conférence de Londres:

- Est-ce que les “experts” en Réseaux sociaux sont les mieux placés pour mesurer l’impact et surveiller?

Cela dépend de la culture et de la structure d’entreprise, mais on manque de recul pour avoir vraiment une idée.

Ce sont les community managers qui sont à priori les mieux placés car ils écoutent et comprennent les conversations Online.

Voici un résumé plus complet!

4) Pour rencontrer les gens de We are Social que j’apprécie particulièrement (Camille Jouneaux) et notamment Sandrine Plasseraud qui parlera à la conférence sur les stratégies numériques. Mais vous y verrez aussi les experts français de la surveillance comme Synthesio avec Michelle Chmielewski

5) Pour me rencontrer lors d’un de mes séjours à Paris (bon d’accord, je ne suis pas une célébrité)

Bonne chance, et j’espère faire gagner ce ticket d’entrée à quelqu’un qui souhaite passer un bon moment après la conférence Le Web10!

It is my new battle, getting twitter more human than robot…a bit idealistic and pointless probably but you never know!

Everybody is saying that Social Media is all about conversation and real humans. You give some power back to the consumer, the individual…Small is really becoming beautiful.

But the longer I spend on Twitter, the more I get appalled by the the automation of Twitter.

1) Some people send automatic DM (Direct Messages) to their followers saying “Thanks for following”, it is meant to be cool and to give a human touch to the tool, but actually it looks like spam, it does the opposite effect.

The best example is Automated DM, it happened to me a couple of times…replying to the DM thinking it was an authentic and personal DM but actually, my reply never got anywhere “the sender can not receive this DM as he is not following you…”

2) A lot of tweets are automated tweets, where people only susbcribed to a specific site or blog and send automatically the articles on their timeline. Ok I do understand that it can be sometimes helpful to do that, but I love talking to a real human and not an automated retweeter. You can do it but keep it low!!

3) I even discovered recently some people who installed a tool where they follow back automatically anyone following them. And if you happen to unfollow them, it will unfollow you automatically. It is a tool to grow your follower base…without taking into consideration the person. You are just a number.

The technology is getting cleverer to really mimic the abuses of life and Twitter is one these tools.

But over time, if you automate too much and don’t put any human touch on Twitter, it just can’t work.

Twitter is a conversation tool where you need to engage, and do a mix of everything. You can’t behave like a robot or remplace your presence by a robot.

Yes a lot of tweets can be boring “eating some beaf and salade” but at least it gives something human…and once you get your audience right, you can develop a more human way of communicating.

We want to liaise with real humans, fullstop.

You can join us at Link Humans as we run workshops on how to use twitter efficiently but humanly

The other day I met with a lady…I knew her from somewhere…But I could not remember which is a bit embarassing.

She was actually in the same situation, she knew me from somewhere but could not tell my name.

And suddenly she told me: “Actually I do remember now, we met 1 year and half ago at this event…and I sent you 6 months after a connection request on Linkedin but you never accepted it, I don’t know why?!”

Actually that day, I gave 15 career reviews for free to 15 different people, and I could not remember all of them.

So when she sent me a connection request, I did not know it was her. I receive in average 5 connection requests per day…

There was no personal message, no picture so I could not recognize her…and I never accept connection requests without personal message. So I just went on, and left the connection request unanswered.

And 1 year later, she complained to me.

But what if she had put a personal note on the message or a photo on her profile? I would have identified her and accepted the request.

So what did you do after your last networking session? Did you wait 6 months to send a connection request? Did you put a personal note to remind who you are? Do you have a picture to allow people to easily identify you?

At Link Humans we run workshops on how to use Linkedin, feel free to ask us Questions, laurent@linkhumans.com.

Creating a company is difficult

and easy at the same time. Easy you only fill in a couple of papers, send it to the company house and that’s it, Link Humans is created.

(on this picture you can see Jorgen, my business partner, during the Brainstorming session we organized to find the name)

Difficult but you never imagine the amount of work it requires to get everything done and ready. You never imagine that you have so many details to take into account: Shareholder’s agreement, VAT, lunch allowance, website with every details on, marketing, finances, PR, recruitment, you name it.

But I love it. Doing everything from Scratch…And we have done it in a different way.

First the name

Friends, partners, colleagues helped us to find a name (see the picture above). We gathered 15 people one Friday night in a wine bar. We presented to them our goals/values/mission…and we went out from this with more than 15 ideas of names. An even if we did not use the names they gave us, the ideas were brilliant and it generated a whole process for us. Finally we used name generators with our friends input and came up with Link Humans, a name that truly represents what we do.

Then the Logo and Icon…and Business cards

Sophie Anderson, the gingerbread lady did all the design and created a wonderful logo. I am amazed by the fact that Sophie did understand our company and the mixture between a professional and modern design. She found this brilliant icon…

Then we have been working on the website…so if you want to see our true pictures, have a look here. And by the way, feel free to give us your feedback on the website. We chose some pictures, organized the whole website and hired some Pakistani developers….And it was SEO time (my SEO consultant told me to backlink everything I can so you will there are many backlinks on this post). For those who don’t know what SEO is, it is a way to get high when people type in specific keywords in google.

Below here the email signature that Sophie created…just to give you a taste.

Social Media London, THE community!

Now we have decided to nurture and look after a community of social media lovers called Social Media London where we gather every month with a different topic. The 1st one was about Linkedin and I ran it with 20 people. It was good fun…as it was a non-geeky night, there were no slides only hand drawn pictures. People seemed to have enjoyed the presentation. In November, we are having a Twitter talk with Bill Boorman, the founder of #TruLondon. And the community is growing as SMEs and social media users seek to understand better social media as it is getting mainstream.

We have decided to recruit a community manager to run this group…(see the job description with the link).

So the company was officialy set up on the 12th of October…but I have the impression that it is only the beginning of a long journey (thanks to Eric Lambert for his huge help on that).

What is different? Our jeans do not have holes!

At the end of the day, the adventure is on, social media is more than a trend, it is here to stay. And I strongly believe that we can help businesses to fully understand what social media is and what kind of opportunity it represents.

But we wanted to be different…not to be the usual 20 something with torn jeans talking about Social Media, we wanted something more professional. Jorgen and I are 33 and 35, now it is time for Social Media to mature:).

See you hopefully in the future…and especially for our Launch Party on Friday 26th of November…book the date in your agenda now!

Any ideas, any feedback, please feel free!

You could argue that “the social network” is all bout Mark Zuckerberg, and the fact he is presented as an asshole who hates women and so on…probably the movie is completely wrong on the Mark’s personality side.

But the real conclusion is elsewhere.

The conclusion is in the difference of worlds between Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevosses (Tyler and Cameron).

It is the same difference between them as between a company 2.0 and a traditional one.

The Mark Zuckerberg way

On the one hand, you have a man who goes for it straight away…no business plan and structure, he just ships it. It is a concept largely developed by Seth Godin. Instead of waiting for the perfect product, just do it, send it to the customers and wait for their feedback.

You will learn quicker by doing than by drawing charts and business plan on a computer. So Mark after a couple of weeks of programming pressed a button, and that’s it, Facebook is online.

And the 2nd part of this Company 2.0 inaugurated by Mark Zuckerberg is its coolness. The site needed to be cool before all. During all the movie, Mark fights against Eduardo Saverin not to put any advertising or anything harming the cool factor of Facebook. So the 2nd part is obviously, the free model: Build it, and they will come. You don’t need a business model, just do it.

The Winklevosses way

On the other hand, you have the Winklevosses. They are clearly a kind of stereotype. Muscled blond guys with a wealthy background…but apart from that, they rely on the old model or old way of doing business.

They don’t launch anything without doing a business plan or using lawyers. They think of an idea and wait before doing anything, they want to test their idea on paper.

For them, life is clearly organized around how things should appear: “At Harvard, you never sue anyone, it is a gentleman agreement”.

So do you act as Mark Zuckerberg or the Winklevosses brothers?

Branch out received a funding of 6 million US$ in September…and has been the talk of the town.

But do you really believe you can use Branch out to look for a job?

It is a tricky one….let’s see the pros and the cons. Personally I don’t believe that Branch out can really compete with Linkedin as it is not the same positioning.

Branch out:

- Branch out has Job board features, it will be free for you to post a job and share it…and it seems that companies also will have it for free

- Branch out will benefit from the high level of interaction on Facebook, the engagement people have and the time people spend on it. You can’t compare Facebook and Linkedin on that. Because of that the interaction on Branch out should be higher…

- 61% of Facebook users are more than 35…which means that Branch out is in the right target for a professional network. They are more likely to use a professional tool if they are 35 than if they are under 18!

- The base of potential users is obviously huge with 550 million members on Facebook (which does not mean once again active members!!) so the potential growth is important

- With Branch out you can only reach 2nd degree connection ie the friends of your friends, and it does not show the name of the friend of the friend working at your targeted company….so you need to ask her the introduction

Now my personal input on that:

1) A lot of people are using Facebook with a lot of personal information, so they obviously don’t want to have any potential recruiter to see that information

2) A lot is being said of Facebook…it is all about love or hate…Facebook is everywhere. But let’s not forget that Facebook is not a number of members but a number of active users. For example in my case, I have 180 friends, but the people who really post news and info on a regular basis are around 20 maximum. So active users and members is a different story and Branch out is on the same boat

3) Linkedin seems to be more boring than Facebook and the new feature Facebook groups may allow to differentiate your different groups of friends/colleagues/connections. But Linkedin is still a safer option as the positioning is clear!

We still have cases of people losing their job because of they forgot that they befriended their boss or colleagues after ranting over their company.

4) Linkedin is trying to boost the interactivity side of its website with Twitter style updates but it is still a bit boring…now I don’t spend so much time on Linkedin, I use it as a networking tool for specific goals. Obviously I spend much more time on Facebook. So What?

We can’t predict anything with social networks but what I can tell you is that they remain powerful tools especially to find connections, the friend of friends working in your dream company, they allow you to visualize the path.

What do you think of Branch out?

By the way, I set up a new company called Link Humans where we give consulting and training on how to use social media. My partner is Jorgen Sundberg, a famous blogger and expert in Social Media.

Malcolm Gladwell in the book “Tipping point” tells the story of Paul Revere and William Dawes.

Paul Revere and William Dawes

Both men were independence activists during the independence war against Britain in the 1770.

Both received the news of the British Army coming to their towns to tame the revolt. So their goal was to warn all the cities along the way.

Both of them rode all night warning all the people they could reach.

But Paul Revere was far more successful in his journey than William Dawes. He managed to spread the word of the British army coming much faster and quicker.

The super connector Paul Revere

Why? Because Paul was an active man and super connector…in each town he came across, he identified the super connectors who could spread the word quickly in their city. Prior to this, Paul had built successfully a huge network of people and politician friends across this part of North America. All his prior work had paid off this famous day. He knew who to reach for and the key person to deal with.

Not William!

William Dawes was also a independence activist but he never managed to build a successful network as wide as Paul. He was well-known in his city but did not know anyone outside his city.

He had maintained a rather small network very focused around his local acquaintances. So when he rode all night long to warn the people, he reached for the first person he met…And this person did not have all the time the influence and the reach to spread the word of the British coming…

Who are you?

Now the question is, Are you a Paul Revere or a William Dawes? Do you build your network before you need it? Do you identify the super connectors in your network?

End of the story…William Dawes and Paul Revere spent all night riding but only one is remembered!

Paul Adams, a researcher about social topics and buzz at Google tells the story of Debbie, a girl living in San Diego (by the way it is a real story!).

(find this excellent presentation here)

Debbie used to live in Los Angeles so basically her social network is made up of people living in San Diego and people in Los Angeles, plus her family.

Debbie is really a good swimmer and started training 10 year old kids competitive swimming and has groups around the kids and her fellow trainers.

In LA, some of her friends work in a gay bar, she misses her friends and they miss her as well.

So her friends started sharing photos on Facebook of wild nights in the bar…She loves theses pictures and even comments on them on a regular basis. But she forgot that she has “friended” also with the 10 year old kids on Facebook (this generation is already on Facebook).

And while working with Paul Adams on her social activity, she realized that the 10 year old kids could see those pictures and the comments alongside.

Debbie was upset with this discovery, upset at herself and upset at the system, upset at Facebook.

The current problem with social networks is the difficulty to separate our different groups of friends and colleagues, and Facebook is probably the worst. With Facebook you can have Friends from different ages, background, they can be colleagues, friends, ex boyfriends, ex girlfriends, bosses.

We have famous examples of People sharing their anger and frustration about their job forgetting that colleagues and bosses are Friends with them on Facebook. So next day, a letter is on their desk.

As Adams explains, Social networks online don’t differentiate our offline social networks. All our relationships are put in the same basket.

And you, are you aware of the dangers of Facebook? Do you behave like Debbie?

I was reading an article the other day, and the guy was saying that groups on Linkedin have a become a waste of time because people spend their time promoting themselves…

I must say that I agree to a certain point…a great deal of groups have become spam for all the members.

Not only they do send a lot of events information to group members, but the content and articles shared on the groups are appalling.

The authors of the articles post their article but never interact with the comments. You see some question, or some comments, but nothing, no reaction from the authors. It is pure self promotion.

But sometimes even the questions asked are totally biased. It is purely to attract people or to look at the profile or the offer.

“It is a good question. As a coach and sought after speaker, I can tell you that you could find other solutions…”.

Have you ever seen that kind of answer?

Now in some groups, this kind of things does not happen because they manage really thoroughly what is being shared and said. And some other groups have developed such strong links that self promoters are being banned or not commented.

In a nutshell, how to choose an appropriate group:

1) How many conversations/answers/comments?

Are there real comments/exchanges among group members?

2) How people interact among themselves?

The way they are going to interact as well is important. Are they respectful, polite and helpful?

3) What is the content of the conversations?

The content is also important…content of the articles, content of the answers. Beware of the groups where self promotion lies at the heart.

All these elements will help you to find out if these groups are well managed or if they are left on their own.

At the end of the day, groups are a pivotal part of Linkedin, and we don’t want to spend time on groups where people promote themselves all the time. As Mark Williams put it, groups are what makes Linkedin sticky….people keep coming back to exchange, answer, comments..

I was reading “Free” from Chris Anderson and he was saying something right…

A british anthropologist called Dunbar stated that we can’t maintain more than 150 stable relationships. That is the limit of the human brain.

But what Dunbar did not take into account is the arrival of social networks…Now with the use of software, we can have much more than 150stable relationships. Software extends our reach and our efficiency in running our networks.

So Dunbar number is dead…it is not anymore 150 but much more.

That is the reason why you should use at least 1 social network to leverage your relationships and be able to manage a significant number of professional contacts.

But I am not saying quantity is better than quality, I am just saying that over the time of your career, you will meet and work with much more than 150 people, and with social network, you can really maintain a link.

If you look at this picture of Facebook friends…it is quite interesting.

The number of people that you communicate with on a regular basis is quite limited (2 to 5) but the number of maintained relationships is much higher which shows how efficient social networks can be in keeping relationships with people you don’t see to often or you have not seen for ages.

When looking for a job, that will be the “maintained ” relationships that will help you find a job…

Now with the new social networking trends, I can see a whole bunch of articles stating “Finding a job through twitter” or “easy steps to find a job with twitter” or “5 rules for job seekers on Twitter”.

No, finding a job on twitter is not an easy job and even brings a lot of misconception.

1 – It takes time

Twitter follows certain rules, a specific etiquette and to understand this etiquette you need to spend some time on it

At first, you are going to listen and observe, and then may be you will start retweeting…it will be a matter of months.

2 – It is time consuming

Yes it is time consuming…and when you are looking for a job, spending time on twitter is less time on other means (networking for example even if you can say that using twitter is a kind of networking).

3 – Networking

I still think that twitter is not the most efficient tool to network it can take more time than if you use a proper approach through common contacts or with a personal message on Linkedin. But things are changing.

And retweeting the tweets of other people does not necessarily mean they will notice you (for the twitter celebrities, it won’t happen as they are retweeted all the time and they don’t have time to notice or to thank people).

4 – Industry

Twitter has spread across all industries over the past year but if you are looking for a job in Hightech, communication, internet, advertising, twitter can still be of some use. Now if you work in other industries, you won’t find so many people.

5 – Jobs on twitter

There are jobs on twitter but I don’t think it is really relevant as these are jobs pushed from job boards usually…so it does not make so much difference.

The only difference is when a job is not advertised and is put on twitter…and it does not happen so often.

My advice: Twitter is a good tool to screen your market and industry, but it is not the most efficient tool to find a job. I still think Linkedin is better for Job Seekers, more efficient and precise.

Now if you want some fun while following your industry news, go also for Twitter.

Why did you come first on Linkedin?

Because all my contacts are on it! or Because I have been invited…

But really, why are you using Linkedin?

Generally people don’t even know the answer.

So you act as a headless chicken using Linkedin without really knowing why you are there and what you should be doing.

What are the consequences of this?

1 – Lack of focus on your profile:

Your profile is just a copy and paste of your CV without any specific focus. On Linkedin profiles need to be more concise and packed with keywords and not a dull copy of your CV. You can add some specific features (applications, recommendations) that make it more compelling.

2 – Your network of contacts is an addition of random contacts

You don’t know which people to add to your network and you do it on an opportunity basis instead of trying to focus on your business targets and adding all your physical network.

3 – Groups and events seem to be fun but you don’t know what to do with them, so you spend some time but quickly give up.

4 – You don’t know how to use your status update to communicate, so you decide not to use it, and actually you don’t know what to put in your status update.

Focus is everything on Linkedin, so before starting anything on it, ask yourself: “Why am I using Linkedin and what do I want from it?”

Othewise, don’t be on it, you are wasting your precious time!

The next Linkedin workshop in London will be on 15/09/10, for more information, Click here.

Here is the social network of Jesus designed using the bible and especially the new testament.

What I mean by “social network of Jesus” is the fact that Jesus lays at the centre of the network, he is the hub of the network, the person who knows everyone, the point of contact for all the relationships.

Definition

A social network is made of nodes (people) and ties (relationships), and the sum of all these nodes and ties, is a social network.

It can be ego centered (around a specific person) or community centered. As you can see this social network is ego centered (around Jesus).

For example, groups on Viadeo or Linkedin are community centered, there are ties between the members but all the ties are not linked to a single person.

Indeed Social networking is not a Facebook term. Sociologist J.A. Barnes coined the phrase in 1954 to explain the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend connections that cut across traditional groupings of family or ethnic groups. These pathways have historically been the way people get jobs, find flats or meet spouses.

A social network is dynamic and interactive, it is a living being, where people interact.

In this social netwok, jesus has had a relationship with all these people but he had a strong relationship with only a couple of them (the disciples). These strong relationships are what we call strong ties (contact at least once/week) and the other relationships (once/month or less) are weak ties.

To sum it up, a social network :

• ego centered or community centered
• social networks have always existed
• you have different level of relationships in your social network, Strong ties or weak ties

And to find a job and develop your career, you need to invest time in your weak ties but don’t forget your strong ties who will provide emotional stability and support in tough times.

And social networks online allow you to precisely spare your time by uncovering all the ties and nurture your weak ties in an efficient way (as for example using the “status update” function on Linkedin).

In the Uk and now in France, recruiters organisations and governing bodies have tried to avoid discrimination through different measures. In the UK, you don’t have to put a photo, your address, your age or your marital status on your CV.

In France, in 2006, the Anonymous CV has been created to prevent any discrimination but it has not been used so far or only on a small scale by some French corporations (Loreal, Axa…).

All these efforts have been made to avoid precisely any kind of discrimination whether it is about age, status, face or ethnic background.

But now Social networks are putting back on track the risk of discrimination.

With social networks, we can see people’s faces, where they live, where they come from and sometimes much more (Thanks to Facebook).
Recruiters are googling more and more candidates to find out information about them.

In the US, 70% of recruiters said that they have rejected candidates based on information they found online…14% in France (French are more hypocritical probably).

Before we could discriminate using a CV, now we can discriminate using  information on Social networks or internet.

The answer?

If the recruiter has really a problem with a specific set of people = nothing!
Otherwise you can manage your reputation on the internet

1) Create compelling profiles on Social Networks with a professional photo (if not professional, avoid it!)
2) Share your ideas/thoughts about your industry (slideshare, videos, comments on professional blogs, write articles…)
3) Customize your Facebook settings so no outsider can see your Facebook pages

Manage your reputation

That is the reason why people need to start now managing their reputation on the internet and looking after what other people say about them. I really think that in the future the CV will be a follow-up document like something which comes after and not before.

So what can we do about the risk of discrimination? Probably nothing as it is the nature of the web not to limit or restrain…the only thing you can do is creating your own content and showing off your skills.

And after all, on the internet we have much more opportunities to show that we are different than on a CV…no matter age, ethnic background or gender.