Career Acceleration Notes (CAN)

LinkedIn.com - Webinar available Friday 11/30/07

Please consider signing onto this webinar - best if you can participate live, but still worthwhile if you must listen to it later.  90 minutes with self-made LinkedIn.com guru Jason Alba. 

Jason and I are on the same page on the use of this tool.  While I've been using it longer, he is the one who wrote the book: I'm on LinkedIn.com...Now What???   You can also access Jason's blog and read the comments of others from the sidebar of my blog.

I've copied the invitation issued through the program's sponsor, the Career Management Alliance - just click on the link provided, be prepared to pay $45, and learn a lot about strategies that will help you maintain your career health for years to come... 

If you haven't done so, check-out my profile on LinkedIn.com: 

Program: I'm on LinkedIn: Now What?

Presenter: Jason Alba, JibberJobber.com

Date: Friday, November 30, 2007 - 3-4 pm Eastern (attend live or listen to the audio recording)

Description:

LinkedIn has certainly established itself in a class all of its own. And, I know that many of you already have LinkedIn profiles and networks. Now, ask yourself ... Are you getting value out of your account and your network relationships, and what can you do to optimize that value? Is LinkedIn working as an effective sales, marketing and business development tool for you? Do you know how to find potential partners and clients with LinkedIn?

During this WEBINAR, Jason will walk you through various aspects of LinkedIn that will help ensure you feel "up to speed" with the tools and technologies. In this 90-minute session, you will learn:

-- What's important on the landing page, when you login, and how to identify opportunities to enhance relationships with other individuals.

-- How to show lasting appreciation for a connection by endorsing them, and usually getting an endorsement back from them for your own profile.

-- What settings and preferences you need to know about.

-- How to use LinkedIn as a job search strategy/tool (and, alternatively, what's wrong with it).

-- Three easy things to write your profile that will make a difference in your online image, along with profile tricks to help you to "be found" by others.

-- How to use answers to get business, find contacts, get competitive intelligence and establish yourself as an expert.

-- How to export your contacts, and why you would want to do that.

-- How to set up a group, determine if it makes sense for you and figure out which groups you should join (and why!).

Additionally, there will be discussion about common LinkedIn issues, such as how and when to accept invitations from others (and what to do with the notorious IDK button), things you shouldn't do and more!

Jason Alba is CEO if JibberJobber.com and author of this "hot" book: View this photo

Teleseminar Registration: https://monkey.he.net/~careerma/reg-teleseminar.php

Message to Starbucks shareholders: Free WiFI

It came to me before I had my morning home brew on Sunday...Starbucks, which reported its first earnings losses last week, needs to change its business model to embrace free wireless.  NPR's feature, Sports Bars Draw Fantasy Footballers on Laptops, made the connection for me.  In brief, the NPR story reported that sports bars are beginning to serve laptop-toting customers breakfast, lunch, and dinner along with numerous drinks.  Meanwhile multitasking customers are watching football on the big screen, keeping track of fantasy football statistics, and writing term papers. 

I don't intend to conduct business in a sports bar, and while I'm a regular Grande-sipper, I don't work at Starbucks either. Why don't I work where I sip?  While I've grown accustomed to the strong, slightly burnt coffee, I can't get comfortable with $30/month Internet access fees. 

Like millions of people with home offices and a laptop, I like to meet new people in public places, and I need to to have access to the Internet.  I live in a small suburban town with 2 Starbucks locations; I must pass at least 4 others on my way to Panera Bread, where Free WiFI is on the menu in every location.  Once there, I hunker-down with a beverage and/or an amazingly tasty and somewhat healthy fast food meal, all the while plugged into the Internet and able to meet others.

Message to Starbucks:  "fuhget about" your expensive upcoming television advertising campaign and reallocate those resources to Free WiFI.  Encourage lap-top toting customer evangelists to build your brand and grow your business.

Branding Summit spawns reaffirmation of CAN mission

In April 2007, I returned from The Alliance Conference like an athlete recovering from strenuous exercise: heart racing, exhausted, and amazingly energized.  Last week's Global Branding Summit had a similar affect on me: I wish there were more productive hours in the day to experiment with all the new ideas and Web 2.0 strategies I've been exposed to.

Many of the current readers of Career Acceleration Notes were not reading this in April, so please allow me to restate and reaffirm my commitment to my career, and most importantly, to your career:
You + Me = Success 4 Us   

from April 2007:

My immersion into professional development activities leaves me even more invested in providing you with the most current ideas and strategies in career development.  My head is spinning with the success stories of the most successful career coaches, résumé writers, recruiters, and business developers in the country.  So what's in it for you, current, future, and past Career Acceleration clients?

•    "The Brand Called YOU", the article by Tom Peters that I have sent to most of you, is the center of a relatively new movement in career development.  Those of you who are already working with me have been developing your Value Proposition or Brand as it relates to target organizations; we’ll do this more purposefully and broadly from now on.

•    We’ll be more daring as we differentiate you from others in your field.  I’ve been emboldened in my thinking about your résumés, prospecting letters, and cover letters.

•    We’ll work together more selectively in building and nurturing your network.

•    We’ll work together more effectively in bringing together all the actors in the career development sphere - other career coaches, recruiters, HR professionals.  Your success is THEIR success too.

•    We’ll practice using Web 2.0 technology to achieve our goals, and move toward Web 3.0 so we are never relegated to technological irrelevance and incompetence.

Thank you for choosing to work with me; thank you for helping me to learn and grow alongside you as we reach for our shared success in the world of work.  Inspired by the UBS tag-line, let's commit to You + Me = Success 4 Us.

Confessions of a customer evangelist: promoting Kawasaki

It is amazing to find that sometimes, you have been ahead of the curve and didn't know it. I worked in a neighborhood bookstore as part of my "portfolio career" (a.k.a.,lots of jobs; little money) in 2002-2003. I was going to graduate school full-time and making the break from corporate life to consultancy. One of the benefits of my $8/hour job was access to pre-release copies of books. I was the only one in the shop that gravitated to the business books, and by now you know that I'm going to tell you that Creating Customer Evangelists... was one of the treasures I found. I recommended it several times, and even loaned it to someone who probably didn't "get-it," 'cuz I need to buy another copy after sending the link to a client!

Truth be told, I'm not comfortable with the "good news" connotation of customer evangelism, but the idea that clients are likely to enthusiastically promote my services if I make it easy for them to do so is almost a "no, duh."  I incorporated the term, "buzz," into my vocabulary; I even had to define and defend it in a presentation at Temple University. My sense of urgency about this now stems from yesterday's global summit honoring "The Brand Called You," the 1997 Fast Company article that I've been sending to prospective clients for several years. To kick-off the 12-hour teleseminar (it was recorded, so look for it online), Guy Kawasaki facilitated an excellent session, "Evangelizing Evangelists to Build a Business and Build Your Brand."

Few business books stay with you the way this one has for me. This book's authors are Ben McDonnell and Jackie Huba; Kawasaki wrote the forward and introduces the book's discussion of customer evangelism and viral marketing through engaging case studies (no dull Harvard Business School  curriculum for you). I recall the one about Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks, and will have to wait to get another copy of the book to remember the rest. Okay, so I guess I am sharing "the good news" after all.  Buy the book; tell 'em Karen sent you!

(As a cyclist, I had to add the picture of "Bike Friday," one of the products that has been successfully marketed through customer evangelism - not sold through retail bike shops!)   

Blogs can be an authentic voice: post it, read it, comment on it, share it

I'm still a novice in the Web 2.0 world, so I spent the day with my headset on, listening to many of the seminars offered by the sponsors of the Brand You World - 2007 Global Summit.  While multi-tasking as I was tuned-into the speakers, I discovered an amazingly honest post about depression, written by Jason Alba of JibberJobber.com.

This post is a must-read for anyone who has felt like a "psycho-ceramic" as a result of career-related disappointment or defeat; a layoff or termination; a constructive quit or forced resignation.  While I was aware of Jason's resurrection from unemployed software engineer to entrepreneur, I didn't realize how profoundly the period of unemployment affected him.  The good news is that this guy who I'll call, "The Energizer Brand-Man," has feelings and is uncommonly able and willing to share them. 

I am proud to be selected as a strategist and partner by people like Jason, who are looking to open a door to the wild world of corporate employment. While I empathize with them, I add value to their search by staying focused on innovative strategies and solutions to end their pain. Jason's success proves that humility, self-reflection, and a willingness to try new approaches are powerful tools that can be integrated into your brand and your presentation. 

Please read more about Jason's story, take-in the comments of other career professionals and counselors, and comment about your own experiences: sharing anonymously online may be cathartic. If you aren't convinced that humility and self-reflection are effective tools, check out one of my previous posts, Truthfulness as a Job Search Strategy.  Jason is a self-made brand; learn from him and with him.

Online Identity & Personal Marketing - FREE teleseminars Nov. 8th

Time to really accelerate your career transition and job search through 12 hours of FREE teleseminars on Thursday, November 8, 2007.  

Billed as a tribute to the Fast Company article written by Tom Peters in 1997, this event is a global 12-hour marathon.  Programs begin at 10am EST; all will be recorded, so you can return to this site to hear programs you missed during the scheduled summit. 

Log on when you can and listen to "the big dogs" of the personal branding movement that was spawned by The Brand Called You as they offer perspectives and strategies for building and maintaining your career health.

New CAN clients have received this Tom Peters article from me ever since I started my own business; this online audio tribute is an opportunity to listen to someone other than me flap their gums about it! Check-out the schedule at Jason Alba's Jibber Jobber Blog.

Sponsors of the summit are asking that participants donate to Kiva.org, an organization that promotes  microfinance - a means to build a sustainable economy in the developing world through loans to specific entrepreneurs.  Your donations will be bundled into loans to provide affordable working capital; funds will empower individual entrepreneurs to earn their way out of poverty. (FYI - My son, Rob, has been involved in the field of sustainable enterprise for the last three years; sign up for an RSS feed to the Development through Enterprise/Next Billion.net blog and learn about the work of this NGO, based in Washington, DC (World Resources Institute).

Let's create some buzz about the Personal Branding Summit - comment about the sessions you found helpful and those you didn't; share your reactions and reflections with others at Career Acceleration Notes.