Social Networking Quick Tips
June 22, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Different Social Networking sites are good for different things. You don’t want the same information on all of the sites.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
1) Facebook is a personal experience. Put your favorite movies, TV shows, and inspiration quotes on the page. Add a few applications that reflect positively on the hobbies and interests that you have.
2) MySpace is impersonal and highly commercial. This site was given over to spammers and tweens a long time ago, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have an account and have control of myspace.com/yourname though. Put a couple images up, make some friend connections, and move on.
3) LinkedIn is your professional resource. Take advantage of all of it’s features. People have been known to get hired because they posted or answers questions on the LinkedIn discussion area. Make connections with people and use those connections, send a friendly message every now and again, ask for recommendations from coworkers and supervisors when appropriate, be sure to link out to your personal portfolio or other social-networking site identities.
4) If you’re not Twittering you should be. If you don’t want to, sign up anyway and try it out. There is a lot of value locked up in those 140 characters and you should understand the system and how it works even if you aren’t going to participate.
5) Social networking is a lot of work, people quickly figure out when you’ve abandoned a particular site, or are only using it for professional purposes. Be personal, be professional. You have to find the right blend for you that fits into your growth goals.
This post is part of Jonathan Coffman’s Lessons In Social Media series.
Personal Branding Knowledge Is Still Just Beginning…
March 16, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
UMass Students Are Sucked Into the World of Personal Branding « Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel: “Blog About Dan Schawbel Publications Press
I often read Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog for insight and tips on how to improve my own personal branding. You did realize that I have a personal brand didn’t you? 
I do in fact have a brand that is pretty apparent right here on JonathanCoffman.com. It’s one that encompasses my abilities to take new and in-the-pipe technologies and make them work in the real world, right now.
In the blog post that I’m linking to, Dan tells the story of a recent visit to the University of Massachusetts and how the student he talked to almost all were on Facebook, but very few had even heard of LinkedIn.
This really exemplifies the need for personal branding and social-media strategy to be a part of the final curriculum at our nation’s universities. These students know and understand how viral messages get spread, how to network online, and how to control how they look, but they don’t understand quite yet how to apply those skills to multiple outlets across the web.
For the last 2 years I’ve offered extremely cheap web hosting to my peers at the Missouri School of Journalism. What I offer them is 10 gigs of storage space, email, etc all for $20 per year. $28 if they want me to buy and manage their domain name as well.
It provides plenty of space and help for building a personal portfolio (which every grad needs) and it’s not going anywhere, I have too many personal and professional sites to just walk away from the web.
But here’s the real story: I’ve gotten several signups lately and I setup times to meet with each student who wants the deal to talk to them one-on-oine about how they want to use it and how I can help.
One actually emailed me last week saying she was going to have to wait to get a portfolio because ‘I’m saving up for Spring Break and I didn’t realize I could move my files around so easily.”
Well I’m sorry folks, but if you can spend $20 for a full year of online personal web presence, (2 or 3 drinks in Cancun for Spring Break of your senior year in college), you probably don’t need to be trying to get any job that would require an online portfolio or web presence.
Let’s just hope this particular person is smart enough to not post all of those crazy Cancun pictures to Facebook after the vacation.
This is just yet another example of why we need proactive education on social-networking and identity management. Firms like Google, Facebook, etc all have enormous amounts of data about US, and if you’re managing that information yourself, you’ve left yourself open to all kinds of abuse and inaccuracies.
Conversations
January 23, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
To start, you should check out my blog and add the RSS feed to your favorite feed reader. While you’re doing that, you might also subscribe to my Podcast which I update on occasion with pieces of journalism. I welcome comments and suggestions on each of my posts on my blog, and you can also find me participating in conversations on the following social-networking sites:
I recently started posting a daily link blog with news, information, and resources all relating to social media. Check it out and submit your own links!
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