Social Settings: Asking Questions Can Break the Ice

A friend told me that her daughter, just finishing 10^th grade in high school, didn’t go up to an acquaintance standing alone at a youth group function because her daughter didn’t know what to say to the other teen. The daughter (incorrectly) believed that she would have to talk about school or movies or clothes – topics with which the daughter is uncomfortable.

In reality, teens who are “shy” about talking to other teens are under a misconception as to what to say to start a conversation. It took my being a journalist in college to learn that asking questions about someone else is a terrific way to start a conversation.

Imagine the teen standing by herself – we’ll call her Nan. And imagine my friend’s daughter – we’ll call her Alice – standing with her two best friends. Then imagine Alice going over to Nan:

Alice: I’m glad to see you at this event tonight. Are you thinking about becoming more involved in the organization next year?

Nan: I’m not sure. I just wanted to come tonight to see what the group is planning.

Alice: Are you interested in school literacy projects? Because I’m chair of that committee next year and I could really use some help.

Nan: What kind of help do you need?

Alice: Why don’t you come sit with me and my friends and I’ll tell you more?

By this point the ice should be broken, and Nan should be able to go sit with Alice and her friends and take part in the conversation.

The moral of this story is this: When you don’t know what to say to another person, asking questions of that other person can start a conversation. Of course, the questions shouldn’t be rude. Instead they should be questions that invite a pleasant conversation.

Try this technique of asking questions the next time you’re at an event and spot someone standing alone. You may be amazed at the appreciative response you get.

Technorati Tags: Flipping Burgers and Beyond, social settings, teens, teen

Facebook Warning: Beware of the Profile Photo You Use

I really shouldn’t have to write this post because of how strongly I’ve warned about watching what you put up on social media networks. Yet when I went to “friend” a rising college sophomore, I discovered that he had an idiotic profile picture on his Facebook account. (An unseen person’s hand is squishing his mouth into a weird shape.)

I quickly sent him a message – I did NOT embarrass him by writing on his Facebook wall – that he must change the photo immediately. I explained that Facebook is becoming a business relationship site in addition to a social relationship site, and he cannot afford to alienate future business contacts with his juvenile mug shot. (Note that I’m talking about his profile picture. If he wants a goofy picture in his photos elsewhere on his Facebook page, that might be okay depending on the picture.)

And only yesterday morning in a consult with Mary Pat Kavanagh of www.kachingtraffic.com did I learn how very much a business relationship site Facebook can be. I’m not going to try to impart here even a tiny bit of her extensive knowledge. Instead I’ll just say that I didn’t appreciate how important it is on Facebook to create personal relationships first that can then lead to business relationships.

Later I had a conversation with a professional who doesn’t have an email account. She argued that online social media networking will create young people who can’t socialize with real people. In reply I talked about how social media expert Erica O’Grady (www.ericaogrady.com) believes that successful social media networking demands real-world relationships.

O’Grady’s premise is that you must go out and meet the people in person that you have met online – whether that be at a conference or a speaking engagement in your hometown or a community service project. It did take me a little while to wrap my head around this concept. Then I saw how right she is.

Now O’Grady also talks about being the purple cow in the room – for example, how she dyed her hair the color pink before going to a conference of techies in order to motivate people to start a conversation with her. While I understand this concept, I still think that your Facebook profile picture has to be a good picture of you and not an idiotic picture. Because, truthfully, who would even recognize you at a conference if your profile picture is of you with your mouth screwed up all funny?

Anyone disagree with me? Think that it’s okay to have an idiotic picture on Facebook even if down the road you plan to use Facebook connections for business purposes? Leave a comment below. I’d love to discuss this.

Technorati Tags:
Facebook, Mary Pat Kavanagh, www.kachingtraffic.com, www.ericaogrady.com, Flipping Burgers and Beyond, business, profile picture

Social Media Networks and Confidence in Who You Are

I’ve been reading a great deal about social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. And every article I read leads to another social media network and another and another. Not to mention discovering lots of new people and new blogs.

Monday on the Blogcatalog.com-sponsored ustream.tv teleseminar by social media expert Erica O’Grady – www.ericaogrady.com, social media expert Chris Brogan was mentioned. I have to admit I had never heard of him.

I later went to his blog and read the post titled “The Real Power of Personal Branding” – http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-real-power-of-personal-branding/ I was very impressed, as were many of the people leaving comments about the post.

One thing Brogan wrote about was the need for confidence. He said: “Confidence (not arrogance) is the secret sauce to everything you do with regards to personal branding.”

And I thought about confidence in connection with the topics that I blog about: college applications, applying for internships and jobs, career strategies. In every one of these scenarios, you’re putting out your personal brand for others to consider. And if you don’t have confidence in your personal brand, who will?

On the other hand, it is important to distinguish between confidence and boasting. Confidence is the ability to say “I’m the best for this job because ….” and then tick off very specific traits that make you the best. (Of course, per my earlier post “Interview Tips: Backing Up Resume Statements with a ‘Compelling’ Story,” you need to be prepared with stories to back up the traits you tick off.) Confidence is NOT boasting how terrific you are without any actual examples of this.

In talking about college applications, a college’s admission goal is usually not for every college applicant to be well-rounded. A college’s admission goal is usually to have a well-rounded class. This means accepting a freshmen class of students with passions in a wide range of areas. And students with passions must have confidence about those passions – they must be willing to publicly say “this is what I love and this is who I am.”

And that passion can become your personal brand in “adult life.” A personal brand built with confidence on something you love can be an extremely powerful personal brand.

Technorati Tags:
college applications, college application, jobs, job, careers, career, internships, internship, intern, employment, Flipping Burgers and Beyond, Erica O’Grady, Chris Brogan

Twitter Cautionary Advice Especially for Teens and Everyone Else

Yesterday a post in the email newsletter of Joan Stewart – www.publicityhound.com – resonated with me because I had had a similar thought a day earlier when responding to an evite.

Sending tweets on www.twitter.com can be great fun and good for creating business relationships. But, as Joan Stewart pointed out, this can also be a dangerous activity if you reveal too much personal information.

What would be an example of this? How about the revealing that the entire family will be away from home for a whole week starting “right now”? Sure, your address isn’t included in your tweet. But you have to figure that, thanks to the internet, everything can be learned.

A person with bad intentions could probably put together enough info from your tweets, your Twitter profile, your other online accounts, etc. to figure out your home address. And you just announced your house is going to sit empty for an entire week!

The ease of dashing off tweets may interfere with the realization that, as if with everything else you post on the internet, caution is the motto. It’s probably okay to say you’re attending an internet marketing conference in Miami. It’s probably not okay to add that your entire family is coming with you.

We all have to remember that anyone – and I mean ANYONE – can have access to our information on the internet. Just like we’ve talked about not posting anything online that could backfire in an employment or college application situation, let’s remember not to post anything that could backfire on the personal safety of our families and ourselves.

Moral of today’s blog post: Remember internet safety rules when twittering – and slow down your fingers to stop and think before giving away too much personal info.

Technorati Tags:
college applications, college application, jobs, job, careers, career, internships, internship, intern, employment, W-4, Flipping Burgers and Beyond, Joan Stewart, Publicity Hound, Twitter

Interview Tips: Backing Up Resume Statements with a Compelling “Story”

On May 26^th I blogged about ideas from Carole Martin – “The Interview Coach” (www.interviewfitnesstraining.com) – after listening to the first part of her two-part teleseminar on good interview techniques.

Now I’m listening to the second part of the teleseminar, and I was particularly struck by this advice: Never put anything on your resume or say in an interview that you can’t back up. Sounds simple, right? Turns out it isn’t.

Martin gave the example that people often say on their resumes that they are hard-working. Yet, when asked in an interview to give an example of being hard-working, these interviewees have nothing to say.

She says that you must be able to “prove” everything you say on your resume. In other words, be prepared to give an example of when you were hard-working – a “story” that reflects this trait.

And I loved Martin’s formula for what makes a good interview “story.” Here’s her formula:

• beginning – 20% (problem, situation)
• middle – 60% action (what you did)
• end – 20% (results)

The reason I truly loved this is because the same formula could be used for telling a good “story” on a college application essay. Many college application essay writers spend way too much time on the beginning, very little time on the middle (the meat of the essay), and snip off the ending of their essay.

(Recently, during a coaching session, I explained to the father of a high school junior that college application essays were NOT the same as what high school English teachers drum into their students – five-paragraph essays with the first paragraph stating the proposition that the next three paragraphs will support and then a concluding paragraph.)

Always be careful what you put on your resume (or college application) or say in an interview. Ahead of the interview prepare the “stories” that you will tell to back up your statements. Then you’ll have a good chance of saving yourself from freezing when asked for an example of, say, how hard-working you are.

Post in the comments below an example of a “story” that you used to support a statement on your resume or college application.

Technorati Tags:
college applications, college application, jobs, job, careers, career, internships, internship, intern, employment, W-4, Flipping Burgers and Beyond, Carole Martin, college application essays, resumes, The Interview Coach

More Twitter Info – Thanks to Penny Sansevieri

Since writing the previous post about Twitter, I’ve been experimenting with some Twitter ideas provided by Penny Sansevieri in the May 29^th issue of her newsletter. Penny’s website is www.amarketingexpert.com.

I signed up for Penny’s newsletter a couple of months ago after reading her terrific book RED HOT INTERNET PUBLICITY. The newsletter is actually targeted at book authors who want to use the internet for book promotion (that’s me!). Yet almost everything Penny writes about in her newsletter could be used for other types of internet promotion.

Back to Twitter: Penny’s newsletter had tons of information on Twitter, and I want to share three of her suggestions that I just tried out:

If you go to the Twitter search site http://summize.com, you can type in words connected to topics of interest and see who sends tweets on that subject. For example, if you type in “red hot publicity,” some of the tweets that will appear are from BookGal -- that’s Penny. (Of course I was jealous of the tweet that announced she saw William Shatner at BookExpoAmerica; I was at BookExpo and didn’t catch sight of him.)

The summize application enables you to choose to follow people who send tweets about things that interest you. But Penny’s point for book authors is that people can find you based on words you use in your tweets. So you should think carefully about those 140 character tweets you post.

Next I tried out www.tweetvolume.com, at which you plug in search terms to see how often the terms are being used. I got 2600 for “internet marketing,” but I have no idea over what time frame that number represents. And checking the questions and comments section of tweetvolume, numerous other people have asked that question about time frame with apparently no answer yet.

Then in a list of many other applications for Twitter, Penny also included www.whoshouldifollow.com. You plug in your twitter name (mine is ZimblerMiller) and you get a list of suggested people to follow based on the tweets you’ve sent. (Big Brother is watching!)

These new social media networking sites appear to be morphing at an incredible pace. How will we ever keep up with the information flow? And, hey, as a book author, I hope people will take breaks from the internet to still enjoy a good book.

Of course, people reading a book can send tweet updates of the book’s plot. Oh, dear, I hope no one gives away a book’s twists. Some information should be marked “confidential – not for tweets.”

Technorati Tags:
college applications, college application, jobs, job, careers, career, internships, internship, intern, employment, W-4, Flipping Burgers and Beyond, Penn Sansevieri, Red Hot Internet Publicity, Twitter, William Shatner

“Tweeting” Your Image – the Twitter Phenomenon

Just when you’ve got MySpace and Facebook figured out – carefully balancing “fun” with maintaining a professional image – comes Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that offers you the ability to send messages (tweets) of 140 characters -- not 140 words.

The idea is that you post a message on Twitter to let everyone who is “following” you know what you are doing. In other words, people choose to “follow” you and then get a news feed of your tweets.

In the last week I’ve gotten email newsletters from several internet marketers explaining how to use Twitter for business purposes. Trying to follow this advice, I’ve sent tweets about attending the two-day internet marketing seminar of John Kremer (www.bookmarket.com) as well as attending BookExpoAmerica. Last night I sent a tweet about reading the book “Problogger” by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett recommended by the BlogSquad (www.blogsquad.biz).

It’s important to consider how this new social phenomenon (it’s free – anyone can sign up at www.twitter.com) could help or hinder your professional image. If you sign up for this social network, ANYONE else who is on the network can “follow” you unless you check “Protect my updates.” (This lets only people whom you approve follow your updates.)

I’ve just put a Twitter link on both of my blogs. (I chose to have only one tweet appear rather than the five tweets that is the default setting.) And I actually don’t update through Twitter. I update through Ping.fm, which at this writing is still in beta.

And actually I don’t go to the Ping site to update. I go to my Facebook page, where I have the Ping application. There I can dash off a quick update that Ping sends to the sites I’ve indicated: Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter. And, now apparently, Twitter then sends the update to my two blogs.

Okay, are you as confused as I am? And you want to know what’s the point of this post? One, you should know what Twitter and tweets are if someone asks you about this new phenomenon. Two, you should remember to follow all the “protect your brand” recommendations that I’ve given for other social media networks.

And because it is so easy to dash off a tweet, you may have to be especially careful to resist shooting off a risqué comment. Instead, if you decide to join Twitter, consider how you can positively impact your brand.

You know what? I’m going to send a tweet through Ping on my Facebook account that I’ve just blogged about Twitter.

Technorati Tags:
college applications, college application, jobs, job, careers, career, internships, internship, intern, employment, W-4, Flipping Burgers and Beyond, Bebo, BlogSquad, BookExpoAmerica, Facebook, John Kremer, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ping, Twitter