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Category Archives: Social media
What do you think of ‘motivational’ type business books? (Plus review of ‘The Start-up of You’)
I was recently sent a copy of The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, to take a look at (thanks @najmafinlay). It certainly seems timely, with so many people competing for a smaller pool of good jobs, redundancies looming and for many of us the idea of 'retirement' becoming increasingly theoretical.
Reid Hoffman, we're told on the cover, is a co-founder of LinkedIn, so that probably tells you where the book's coming from. Having said that, I liked the format, with practical, actionable steps at the end of each chapter under the heading "Invest in Yourself" and plenty of sound advice about the value of building your network and a generous reading list at the end.
Social Media Week foretelling the end of social media
It’s Social Media Week all over the world, and plenty of the events are being streamed or live-tweeted, which is great for others who can’t get to things but want to know what was said. I did get along to the Edelman offices in London yesterday for a ‘Social Business in Action” panel discussion consisting of David Armano (@armano) and Robin Hamman (@cybersoc) of Edelman, consultant Euan Semple (@euan) and Vincent Boon (@vincentboon) of Giff Gaff. Several strong themes emerged and they’re being echoed at other events so far this week, namely:
Issues with the phrase ‘social business’ – there’s plenty of talk about it, but also plenty of argument about it.
Ask not what you get from the social web, but what you will give to it
I just read an interesting report on the We Are Social blog about recent research from Insites Consulting which found "a positive correlation between the extent of social media integration and the company’s financial results." The summary is in the form of an infographic (complete with at least one spelling error – the bane of infographics, alas) which I enjoy reading, but always end up with more questions than answers.
Apparently, the pharmaceutical and financial sectors are the least adoptive of social media at the moment. No surprises there really.
Overcoming social ‘overwhelm’ by setting modest goals
Do you ever have that sinking feeling when you open up Tweetdeck/Feedly/Facebook etc? I don't know about you but these are the kinds of things that frequently go through my mind:
everyone's so much more of an expert than me everyone's business is doing so much better than mine people are so much better at blogging/tweeting/interacting regularly than me I have nothing to say that anyone will want to hear aaaagghhh!
But from what people tell me, actually most of us are in the same boat: trying to understand everything, keep up with our peers, not get left behind, not be SEEN to get left behind…
