Author Archives: Jason

Two Important FOLLOWS for your business

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This morning my wife mentioned to things in our morning prayer that I thought were pretty profound. She was praying for JibberJobber and she prayed that I could follow through with certain things, and that I could follow up on certain things.  I thought it was really quite insightful on what makes a company successful.

Follow-through:  More than once she has been asked by a spouse of a would-be entrepreneur how she gets me to follow through with things (projects, a book, sales, etc.).  I think her reply is that she doesn’t get me to… that I just do it.

If you don’t follow through on your stuff, and the right stuff, you will not have a business.

Follow-up: This is one of the most important parts of your business.  I know that not following-up is leaving money on the table.  Nurturing relationships, asking for deals, closing loops, and staying in touch more than once every three years is critical.  You can continually prospect new people, but the relationships you have right now might simply be waiting for you to follow up with them.

Thank you, Kaisie, for reminding me of two critical follows!

David Teten: How to Hack Your MBA (video)

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This is a 44 minute video from David Teten with the subtitle “How to Squeeze Maximum Value from College or Graduate School.”

Talking points include:

  • career acceleration,
  • time optimization, and
  • selective short-term learning programs and scholarships.

The questions he asked people with degrees in leading MBA programs include:

  • What is the best thing you did to leverage your education?
  • What would you have done differently?
  • What is your advice for someone just starting your program?

Here’s his original post where he shared the webinar… and here is the webinar in full:

Are you using testimonials in your marketing strategy?

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Whether it’s a personal or corporate marketing strategy, are you using testimonials well and enough?

Check out Pete Leibman’s post: A Secret Weapon For Marketing Your Career Center

As I read through that I loved his advice and knew that it would apply to YOU, whether you are marketing a book, a career center, a service, or yourself!

What testimonials do you draw on in your marketing?

If your answer is “none” or “what?” then you need to read Pete’s article and apply it to yourself starting right now.

Robert Merrill asks What is the New Blogging?

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Check out Robert’s post here.

My answer was so long I thought I’d make it the subject of this post:

Robert, thanks for this post and inviting me to comment. This evolution has been frustrating to watch and live over the years.

As you know I’ve blogged for over 6 years, and have maintained multiple blogs. I currently maintain three of my own.

I also wrote a book on LinkedIn (I’m on LinkedIn – Now What???), coauthored a book on Facebook (I’m on Facebook – Now What???) and have done numerous live presentations, videos etc, on things like blogging, Twitter, etc.

Six years ago I wanted comments on my posts. When social became bigger, the comments went away because people would “comment” about my post on Facebook, or Twitter, or elsewhere. It was messing everything up :p

But I continued blogging… through all the social eruption.

Or should I say distraction.

I’ve seen Google not care about social posts (comments, walls, discussions, etc.) like they care about (or track) my posts. If I google certain keywords I find my posts from years ago, but never a tweet or discussion or wall post. The chatter that happened in social is… GONE.

If I were to leave this comment on your FB page only a small handful of people would ever see it. I could not refer back to it, ever (especially years/months later). But on this post it lives forever (as long as your blog doesn’t go down). That’s really powerful. I continue to send people links to my posts that are years-old.

What I’ve seen recently (in the last 18 months) is that people are getting really tired of all the places they “have to” be… LI, FB, Twitter were the Big Three. Oh but get on Google+ or you are a loser who is missing out! And Pinterest is better than them all! And what about ____ and ____ and ____!!!! It is just too much, and people don’t have time for it, nor do they have the energy.

That’s why you see people “going dark,” or “taking a one month social fast.” It’s just too much.

Where should you blog? On your blog. For years I’ve called my blog(s) the “anchor of my comprehensive social marketing strategy.” It continues to be. Even if I hit a grandslam elsewhere (like a LinkedIn Answers question) I’ll link to it from my blog, so it lives forever and can be accessed later.

The next best place, right now (and this could change but I don’t see anything that is near good enough to be a close second) is LinkedIn Group Discussions. They don’t live forever, but you have a built-in audience that might care about what you are talking about (which bloggers don’t necessarily have)…

Anyway, my two cents. Can’t wait to see where we’ll be in another six years :)

Playing with Camtasia

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Okay, I just got a lot more dangerous.

I have been playing with Camtasia to edit my videos… here’s the first edited video I’ve done (I’ll post this on JibberJobber next week):

Is that cool or what?

Well yeah, of course the content is cool… but here’s what I did with the built-in editor Camtasia provides:

  1. Added an arrow to show you were to look,
  2. Zoomed in and out a couple of times,
  3. Added a “note” at the end…
  4. Added a watermark (see bottom right)

I almost cut out some audio but I am not ready for that massive step in editing yet.  I’ll get there.

I also need to figure out why this is not BIGGER… I know where the setting is to save it as a big video, but I must have clicked the wrong button…

Anyway, cool stuff, huh?

 

Owning Up to it in Court

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When I was in school I took a business communications class.  I remember the professor said the #1 reaction to something bad, from a company, was “we didn’t do it!”

Complete denial.

I hated that concept.

If a company did something wrong, especially knowingly (but even if they didn’t know it) they should own up to it, not deny it.

This is abundant in the business world.

Similarly, it makes me sick when people who do bad stuff go to court and plead innocence.  I’m sure their lawyers recommend that tactic, but what would happen to our world, society, economy, etc. if people simply plead whatever the most honest plea is?

That’s exactly what a young man in Utah did.  You can read the article here: Man apologizes for killing classmate, says he’s ready for consequences

Wow.  This is a man of integrity (at least on this topic. I don’t know him and can’t vouch for him, but on this topic, I think it’s extraordinary).

Awesome quotes:

“… Angilau himself told the court he was ready to face the consequences of his actions.”

“I want to be held accountable for this. I’ll do whatever to make this right, or as right as possible.”

This is one of those stories you can read to restore your faith in humanity.

I would love to see this type of response from more people in court.

Are You Blogging Effectively?

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This morning I have written four blog posts, on four different blogs.  Well, with this one, make that FIVE.

Why do I do it?

Because blogging continues to be an incredibly effective tool for outreach, community development, sharing my thoughts, personal therapy, and even SEO.  It helps me stay connected, and it makes me think critically about my ideas.

Here’s what I’ve written just this morning:

Another Way to See Full Names on LinkedIn: Recommendations. On my LinkedIn blog. Had to schedule this for tomorrow since a prescheduled post went up this morning.

Finding Dignity, Finding Hope. Identifying Your Identity. On my JibberJobber blog. Perhaps the most important post I’ve written this month, maybe this year, about how job seekers tend to lose their identity, and how that is not good (and what to do/think about it).

What is the scariest thing about starting (or thinking about starting) a business? On my 51 Alternatives blog (this is for my newest book).  This was a soft-pitch post, easy to write. Basically I let those blog readers know about my LinkedIn question, which is totally relevant for this audience.

How has social marketing evolved? Please share your thoughts… On the Recruiting Blogs community. I posted this on a Group Discussion on LinkedIn, but thought that community would be a great place to have a conversation about it.

And now this post, which is a good teaching post about blogging (how, when, how often, why, what to write, etc.).

Are YOU blogging effectively? Do you know WHY you are blogging?

Why I Hate “Politics” and Election Years

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Most everything to hate about human nature comes out during election years.

It’s really disgusting.  It is embarrassing to a country, and should be embarrassing to the human race.

Here are a few things that bug me:

Voting for your party.  Too many people are staunch this or staunch that… they have been forever, or their parents and grandparents where.  And so that’s how they vote, regardless of the issues, regardless of the individual polititician, regardless of how the party votes/thinks (which evolves, doesn’t it?). Parties are flawed, and it’s ugly business on either side.

Voting based on superfluous stuff.  I heard that many middle-aged women voted for Bill Clinton because he was hot/cute/attractive. Seriously?  That’s how we make a decision on voting for a four year position to rule the country (and have a huge part in ruling the world)??? Because he is cute?

Not voting at all.  What’s the voter turnout rate? Ridiculously low.  Wine about where we are at but you have to realize the people voted into office can have a huge impact on our current laws, spending, budget, freedoms, etc.

All the talk about the Constitution without knowing anything about the Constitution. I’ve said that Americans, in general, are ignorant and lazy thinkers.  Some of the other things on this list show that (voting for cuteness, etc.).  I think stereotyping and generalizing help us become lazy, and not critically assess situation.  I’m guilty of this, but I know it is worse than where I’m at right now.  Even people scream about the politician might not have read the constitution (I haven’t, until recently).  No, reading it in high school does not count.  Personal study is where it’s at. I read an awesome quote (I can’t find it right now, it’s from The 5000 Year Leap) that says the Constitution deals more with human nature than specific government policy.  In that case, when will human nature be outdated??

Generalizing and Grouping and Stereotyping becomes rampant.  I remember last election the four candidates were described as “the black man, the Mormon, the woman, and the white man.”  Seriously? The news perpetuates our inability to think by continuing to use the labels.  Oh, if he’s black he must think this way.  Or if he’s a Mormon, or if she’s a woman, that must mean ____ and ____ and ____.  Just wrap it all up in a one-word-label so the dumb, lazy Americans don’t have to study the issues, and we can vote by how we generalize.

Voting based on who we are.  I think there’s an assumption that all blacks voted for Obama, because heck, wouldn’t it be cool and historical to have a Black man in office?  So, Blacks vote for Blacks.  People think Mormons are supposed to vote for Romney because he’s Mormon, right?  Folks, let’s vote for leadership and politics and ability to make change happen, not because they are our gender, or race, or color, or religion, etc.  Here’s a horrible headline on my local news site: An unprecedented presidential race for Black Mormons. (I’m not even going to link to the article)  Seriously?  This insinuates they are torn because they want to vote for their religion (not the right reason to vote for someone) and for their race (again, not the right reason to vote for someone).

We put too much emphasis on what a politician says they will do. A friend of mine said to study how the politician has voted on things in their past.  Study what they’ve done to learn who they are.  Don’t listen to campaign speeches because they are ALL LIES.   I watched a few speeches from both conventions but I thought “wow – how stupid are we to trust 20 minutes of promises from anyone… we need to go back to what their record has been!” But all over Facebook you’ll see people who are so passionate about what their politician promised…. folks, people lie all the time.  ALL THE TIME.  Politicians are in the business of saying the right thing to get the vote.  They are like the guy who is trying to impress the girl to get a date (or more).  But once the relationship progresses, they might change.  Common story, right?  Why put ALL your confidence in what is promised for 20 minutes, instead of looking at what has happened.

I got to get back to work, but these are some things that bug me about politics.  And it’s not just a U.S. problem.