Top 3 Twitter Tips
November 18, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Whenever I tell someone that I work in social media (and explain to them that social media is things like blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, etc) they almost always come back and ask me what Twitter is and why someone would use it.
I’ll save that post for another day (although I’ve written about it before, try searching my blog to find Twitter posts, there are a lot of them).
If you understand what Twitter is, here are my Top 3 Tips for better Twittering:
- Don’t try to read every single tweet — Twitter messages — that the people you follow send, it gets overwhelming very quickly.
- Reply to others early and often, it build good will and you’ll get more from the Twitter experience this way.
- Search for conversations you may be interested in and join-in! — use Twitter Search to search by topic.
If this wasn’t a “Top 3″ what tips would you share? There are a lot of different ways to Tweet, and this is only one way to do it.
Learn To ‘Social Media’
June 22, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Since I work in social-media I see it everyday, some people get it, and some people don’t. Building social-media isn’t a one-time thing. It takes time to find conversations, to build reputation, and learn the best ways to share your knowledge with the world.
Here’s the thing, social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s here to stay. Now it may not always be in the same form that it is right now but it’ll be here.
As one of my final projects at the Missouri School of Journalism in the Convergence Journalism department I wrote up some tip sheets on personal branding, and some of the basics of social-media. Take a look at the Lessons In Social Media series and let me know what other topics you think people who are just beginning to “get it” need to know!
Here are the posts I have up right now:
- The Basics of Managing Your Online Identity
- Social Networking Quick Tips
- How To Get Hired Using Social Media
- Google Alerts For Personal Branding Management
- More to come!
How To Get Hired Using Social Media
June 22, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I was lucky enough to know and be on the bleeding edge of social-networking when it began several years ago. I also spent a lot of time cultivating and contributing to my online identity and making connections with people online. The good news is that you don’t have to be an early adopter, or an Internet wiz to get hired using social media.
Looking for a job isn’t easy, and it can be very frustrating. Social media can help, but it’s not a replacement for old fashioned phone calls, emails, and letters. When I graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism I had multiple job offers, and the best of those offers were ones that I came across or was a candidate for because of social media.
For some time, I had been Twittering, Facebooking, and Blogging. I spent money to make sure my blog looked good. I spent hours finding interesting people on Twitter. I stayed up late when I should have been doing other things honing in my online portfolio. And you know what? It all paid off.
One job offer came from a person who followed me on Twitter for two months and noticed that I was talking with increased frequency about finding a job. A couple phone calls and emails later, I was interviewing and had an offer before I got home from visiting.
The other job offer from social-media crossed platforms, I knew the person who knew about a job, but we follow each other on Twitter, and are Facebook friends. Again, my talking about finding a job was seen by this person and I got a Facebook message about openings where she worked. It just so happened that this job was a perfect fit, I got the offer, and took it.
In two paragraphs I just explained how I got a job using social media, but that’s not incredibly useful is it? To help with that, here are my tips and suggestions on finding a job using social-media.
- Put your portfolio and resume online. This is more important than you realize. You’ve just in an instant opened up your resume and portfolio of work to the millions of people online. Now you just need to help people find it.
- Sign up for Twitter and find some people with similar interests to tweet back and forth with. You’ll quickly understand by looking at some of the so called Twitterati how useful and powerful this service is. After you sign up for an account “follow” @chrisbrogan, @guykawasaki, and @scobleizer the three of them have thousands of followers already and actively tweet throughout the day and night. A lot can be learned by example.
- Start a blog. This is a GREAT way to show off your knowledge and skills. This doesn’t have to be complex, start it off on Blogger or Wordpress.com if you want (although I would highly suggest putting wherever you portfolio and resume is). Write one or twice a week at first about what you’re working on, what you’re thinking about (that relates to your job ambitions), and your goals. Some of the best job related feedback I got was on my blog by people emailing and commenting when I wrote a post about “My Ideal Job”.
- Drive traffic to your online portfolio and resume. Do this by putting links on your Facebook page, in your Twitter profile, putting it in big type at the top of your paper resume, and by having it on ALL correspondence online and off. You never know where emails or resumes may get forwarded, and if your online portfolio is linked right there for easy access it makes a world of difference.
- Make It Personal. This is your job hunt, and it’s not going to be easy, but by taking advantage of the basics of social-media your job hunt can expand beyond the traditional into the extraordinary. Social media doesn’t work unless you’re human and make it personal. Being professional and sharing ideas is going to increase your credibility, but not including personal moments will exclude you from the conversation.
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.
Lessons In Social Media
June 22, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Social media doesn’t have to be intimidating, in fact it’s very easy to get started and build a base of information and conversation upon which to learn and grow. As an active participant, researcher, and social-media based employee, I use social media for both my personal life and professional growth.
There are numerous opportunities to get out there and explore, by reading through these basic lessons and tip sheets I hope you can take better advantage of the soon to be ubiquitous social side of the Internet.
I wrote these tip sheets and information pages as one of my final projects at the Missouri School of Journalism in the spring of 2008. They are written toward an audience who may have heard about social-media but isn’t sure how to get started.
There will be follow up and additional information added to this resource as I have time to expand the series. If you have any questions please contact me. And as always, comments are open, leave your thoughts, edits, and changes below.
Lessons In Social Media:
- The Basics of Managing Your Online Identity
- Social Networking Quick Tips
- How To Get Hired Using Social Media
- Google Alerts For Personal Branding Management
- More to come!
links for 2008-03-20
March 20, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
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.
Five Mistakes I Have Made With Personal Development Information
March 2, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Five Mistakes I Have Made With Personal Development Information: “”
(Via Positivity Blog.)
With all of the social media tools out there, it can get very daunting very fast if you’re not careful about planning, organizing, and actually getting things done. I came across this post a while back and thought I’d share it with you today.
Essentially it has some quick tips on how not to get sucked into ‘personal development’ books, etc. But I think it applies equally as well to managing your online life and making sure things don’t get too out of hand.
The main tips are:
- Don’t take in too much information (it’s easy to get sidetracked and confused)
- Just reading things once (you gain additional insight and knowledge by reading things more than once)
- Not applying or testing the information (don’t take ‘their’ word for it, go out and try these things out)
- Go looking for magic pills (they don’t exist so don’t waste your time)
Pie In the Sky - A Blog Series Examining the Future of Web Hosting
February 17, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
This week marks a major series of blog posts. All week I’ll be posting about my vision for the future of web hosting and the Internet itself. The series couldn’t come at a better time, web startups are everywhere again, personal computing and communication has been revolutionized, and creating connections between people, machines, and the world has never been easier.
Stay with me all week to get resources, tips, advice, vision, and more as I take a look at the Pie In The Sky, the future of web hosting.
The future is literally today as social networks and pervasive computing continue to dominate the online landscape just as we as a country continue to march toward an election season rife with technology issues that need to be taken care of.
Here’s a quick preview of some of the topics you’ll see throughout the week:
- Monday: Where we are now, the state of the Internet
- Tuesday: Major product launch and commentary
- Wednesday: Launch recap and review
- Thursday: Comparing cloud computing platforms
- Friday: Where the future of web hosting and the Internet lies
- Saturday: How Journalism, new-media, and social-media can take advantage of the future - Today.
In between major posts I’ll also be posting links and resources in micro-blog format to provide additional context, information, and commentary.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to my RSS feed to always have the latest content. Alternatively, you can also subscribe to my blog via email using the form in the far right column.
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Pie In The Sky is a weeklong blog series by Jonathan Coffman - Convergence Journalism Specialist and New-Media Evangelist examining the state of the web hosting business and the potential for cloud computing. Visit Jonathan’s blog all week for expert commentary, insight, and vision.
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Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-01-11
January 11, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- responding to emails, I’ve been giving out the wrong phone number to people all week, ahh! #
- some poor guy has been getting all my calls #
- Lost in Ikea shelf land! Help!! #
- Never been to Ikea before, its like a right of passage. #
- Backing up my web server, I wanna try doing automated backups to Amazon S3, any tips? #
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