As the world changes, so should the way we interact with it. Very general statement for sure (I sense a few “duhs” coming from those who are reading this.). I find my used of tools to help me get work done also changes.

Sometime ago, Facebook released new profile pages for users. Twitter released its new layout of its website last summer. Google is constantly tweaking its search indexing algorithm.

Getting more value from LinkedIn groups

LinkedIn has been evolving, too. One of the ways they’ve evolved over time is through groups. We even have one for the New Media Cincinnati social media networking group.  When groups first came out, I and others saw this as an opportunity for people to essentially post content that may or may not have been valuable to it.

Over time, I became inundated with messages and discussions that I really wasn’t interested in. Nevertheless, I liked being associated with certain groups. Some, however, I decided to leave because I couldn’t find value in them.

Over the past year, I’ve been striving to get more value from the LinkedIn groups I’ve joined. Many group managers are now moderating groups to make sure that content posted in them are relevant to the audience. We have Group Rules on the New Media Cincinnati group that bring people back toward creating discussion versus self-sharing content.  Members of LinkedIn groups can also flag content to alert moderators.  So it’s gotten much better over the past year.

Here are three ways I’ve recently gotten more value from my involvement as a group member:

1. Connect with other like-minded people. When inviting others to connect with me, LinkedIn knows if I share a group with them, and they offer me that group connection as a way to say that we “know one another”.  We have what I like to call a “pre-existing connection”.

In addition, LinkedIn lets you invite others to the group with an “Invite Others” link, currently near the upper right corner of the main group page.

2. Participate in discussions. Discussions are items, questions, links, etc., that are posted to LinkedIn groups. Effectively used, these items are designed to have others comment.

3. Learn about jobs. Many of the groups I’m involved with have a job board where members can post jobs that may or may not have been posted elsewhere.

Here’s a video that shows how you can use groups on LinkedIn (click here if you can’t see the embedded video):

What are some ways you’ve gotten more value from LinkedIn groups?

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In this video I share about the upcoming February 12, 2011 New Media Cincinnati Second Saturday event. We’re excited to have Debba Haupert from Girlfriendology.com to come and talk about how she’s built a great community around the concept of female friendship.

Whenever I’ve been a speaker at different groups around the Greater Cincinnati area about social media, and I notice there are women in the audience, I always bring up Debba and Girlfriendology.

When I first met her back in 2008, I had no clue what Girlfriendology was, but I was intrigued by the name to find out.  For the past several years, over time, she has WOWed me and others as she’s connected with other women. She inspires me as a community leader, and I’m really looking forward to learning from her this Saturday.

Click here to watch the embedded video.

“Build a little community of those you love and who love you.
Morrie Schwartz”
— Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie)

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Google Doodle for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Today is the day the United States has set aside to remember Martin Luther King, Jr. Among many things, he is known for his “I Have A Dream” speech he made at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963.

Here’s an excerpt:

Today we are more connected to one another than ever. In his e-book “Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Re-invent Yourself,” Seth Godin says that social media can be “a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It’s a choice… up to you.”

Right now, it’s possible for us to stay in touch and learn about other cultures, other races. We no longer live in isolation. We no longer have to live in distrust of one another because of skin color or nationality.

We no longer live that way because, through the power of the connectedness we share, we are that much closer to living Martin’s dream.

Update, 9/14/2011: I saw this on Julien Smith’s blog and have to share it. Not quite related to the tone of this post, but it really opens up my eyes:

Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did

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Twitter has been around since 2006, which seems like eons in internet time. I signed up in August of that year, and it’s been really neat to see how far the tool has come.  I think each of us as users need to make the tool useful for ourselves, and that often means using the tool differently than others. My strategy and tactics in using Twitter have changed over the past 4 years, and they’ll continue to evolve.

One way I’m currently using Twitter is via a plugin on this blog called Twitter Tools. It posts to Twitter when I publish a new post here on this blog, and it compiles an archive of my tweets. The latter I used to do daily, but I’ve since changed it to weekly.

Over the years, there have been some very powerful stories told that involved Twitter. This year, the Twitter team has compiled what it considers to be the 10 Most Powerful Tweets of 2010. Do you agree with their assessment?

This could be a useful exercise for each of us, provided we have access to our own tweets from January 2010. What would be the top 10 most powerful tweets you sent this year?

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Much of what happens in the new media space is highly experimental; especially when new tools are released. Google Buzz came out last week, and we talked about it at last weekend’s New Media Cincinnati Second Saturday. There are a lot of things that need to be worked through, and there are certainly some promising things for it.

I noticed C.C. Chapman (someone  I so look forward to meeting in-person someday) had started a “Morning Buzz” bit with an extended update over at his buzz page. I thought this was a neat idea and have started to play around with it this way myself. I call these early morning updates “uncaffeinated buzz”, because I write them when I first get up in the morning, before having any coffee.

It feels uninhibited and freeing, and I feel like it’s helping me find (or reclaim) my voice. I’ve thought about bringing these buzz posts over here and using them as blog posts. Or maybe it will just be a bonus for those of you who are following me over there.

Make it a great day!

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I’ve been asked a number of times recently in the local Cincinnati community about how the different social networking platforms relate to one another and why someone would want to participate in any or all of them.

There are a lot of parallels to our online and offline lives.  Consider your presence online as participating in a digital neighborhood. It’s your digital neighborhood, consisting of all the places where you hang out. These analogies could probably be fleshed out a bit further, but go with me on this, okay?

Office

The office is where business gets conducted. Transactions are processed.  The office is the company’s website. I don’t currently work for a company, so I’ll point to the official New Media Cincinnati website for the time being.

Home

If the company website is the office, then the blog is the more informal hangout, where guests are welcome to come and hang out, join in on discussions. If we had a cold one, we’d offer it to you, etc. Have you seen the pictures of the family? Chances are, you’ve stopped by my “home” to read this post. Welcome!

Business Meeting

LinkedIn is analogous to the business meeting. It’s where business connections get made, and (typically) professional types of discussions happen. Think of it as the Chamber or Association meeting. Are we connected over there?

Office Watercooler/Conference Call

From time to time we need to get up from our desks and head to the break room and chat with other coworkers. At other times, we have conference calls to be on, where we’re talking about a specific topic, or the conversation has a common sort of context.  That’s what Twitter is.  We hop in to share some information, ask questions, and so forth. We also can share information around specific topics with hashtags (for specific chats or events).

Backyard Fence

Remember those chats with your neighbors along your backyard fence as you’re hanging out in your yard? Pretty casual and very friendly.  Facebook is the digital equivalent of the backyard fence. Let your hair down a bit and kick your shoes off if you want.

Other places?

I’m sure there are other parts of our digital neighborhood I’m missing, and maybe you can help to develop the analogy even further. Where would sites like Foursquare fit in? What would be the grocery store or shopping mall? The library?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

I’ve been a part of an interesting discussion on Facebook recently about where to draw the line between personal and business use of social media, and it prompted me to share these thoughts about strategies for managing an online presence.

You are a brand

Everyone who comes in contact with you in-person or online leaves with an idea of who you are as a result of the experience.  While what happens in real-life might be fleeting or temporary, what happens online sticks around.  Many of us have camera phones that can take pictures or video and upload them with ease to the internet.  Did you just get tagged in a career-limiting photo on Facebook? Or did someone capture that great picture of you helping someone out in your community?

Is what you do online adding to or detracting from your personal brand?

Some points to keep in mind:

• Everyone’s use of social media will vary, and that’s okay. It’s a free world.
• Know your goals in developing and maintaining an online presence. These will dictate how you use the tools.
• Your goals may and probably will change over time. So will your use of the tools.
• Don’t expect to stay on top of everything. You’re only able to sample a bit of information at a time. You can set up monitoring stations, for sure. That’s a topic for another blog post.

Strategies

With these points in mind, here are six strategies you can employ to develop and manage an online presence:

1. Dump it. There are times when you no longer need or want to have that blog, account, etc. It might be worthwhile to just delete the account altogether.
2. Shelve it. Maybe you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling with your blog, account, etc., but you’re not quite ready to delete it. Maybe you’ll get back to it sometime; maybe you won’t. So you leave it alone for another day. Over the past 7 years or so, I’ve created over 10 blogs. Most of them lie dormant now or have moved to another space.
3. Anonymize it. There are advantages and disadvantages of setting up an anonymous online presence. On one hand, you have virtual free reign in what you can say and do without having it come back against you. Some folks opt for this strategy by using a pseudonym or nickname. On the other hand, you aren’t able to transfer the equity in your online brand into your offline career. But maybe that’s not your goal in the first place. Maybe you want to have one account for everyone and another, more private account where you can say whatever you want to say.  I started off using a nickname on some social networks but later opted to use a more distinct form of my real name.
4. Merge them. If you have multiple accounts, blogs, etc., maybe they’ve become overwhelming for you. Maybe you want to present a clearer message across one social networking presence. In this case, it might be worthwhile to merge.
5. Link them. If you still want to keep multiple online identities, then consider linking them to one another, so that others can know where you are. I do that with blogs and in my Virtual Business Card.  Something like this is useful if you’ve signed up with different usernames on different platforms. It’s also useful, for example, if you leave one blogging platform, for another, to cross-link the two.
6. Aggregate them. Similar to linking, another strategy is to aggregate your multiple presences using a tool like FriendFeed. This place becomes a one-stop shop for everything you put online.

So remember that what you do online says a lot about who you are – or who we think you are.  How you decide to use social networking tools is completely up to you, and your goals should dictate how you use them, and there are different strategies you can employ.

Agree? Disagree? Did I miss anything? What other strategies have you found useful?

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Welcome to another post describing how I use social media. In this case, it’s Twitter (again).

Any social networking tool you use should serve a purpose.  You need to make it useful to you.  I’ve found myself re-evaluating how I’ve used Twitter over the past three or so years and have made changes.  Maybe it’s time you looked at how you use Twitter as well.

The title of this post is meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it’s also serious.  I believe that many people who follow me on Twitter might be better off if they didn’t. Your use of social media will vary from mine, and that’s okay.

So, without further delay, here they are:

10. You prefer to get updates from people you follow via a mobile device. I update very frequently, several times throughout the day. You might want to unfollow me via your mobile device, or at least turn off your mobile notifications.  I only have direct messages sent to my phone.

9. You don’t follow many people, and my updates take up most of your page at Twitter.com. Yes, I update a lot, especially at certain times during the week. If this bothers you, you could a) follow more people or b) unfollow me, even temporarily. I believe there’s even a tool called TwitterSnooze.

8. You want updates from those you follow to be on-topic, all the time. I update Twitter with random things I’m thinking of on the spur of the moment. Many people say that’s one reason why they stick around. If this isn’t you, please unfollow.

7. You don’t want to get updates from an event to which you have no desire attending or watching. I have occasionally updated from events, using specific hashtags to contextualize my updates and for easy reference. If this is too much for you, you might want to unfollow.

6. It bothers you to see someone you follow talk about God, religion, or spirituality. I openly share my faith using Twitter. It’s just another communication vehicle for me, and I am the same online as I am offline. Unfollow if this bothers you.

5. You expect me to follow back when you follow me. I’m sorry, but I cannot keep up with all the notification emails, so I’ve turned them off. Send me an “@” mention to get my attention. If that’s not enough for you, you might want to unfollow.

4. You are bothered when I report my location through a service such as Brightkite. I do occasionally update Brightkite with my location, and I find it useful to track where I’ve been that way. You might want to unfollow if this bothers you.

3. You are not interested in hearing about any of the specific projects I’m working on. I openly talk about some of the new media projects I’m working on, including How I Got My Job, New Media Cincinnati, Journey Inside My Mind, Get That Job, etc. If this sort of thing bores you, please unfollow.

2. You find it impossible and maybe even annoying that someone can be determined to make every day a great day. Yes, it’s true. I do tend to ooze positivity. I’m sorry if this offends you. Please unfollow.

1. For some reason, you don’t want to unfollow because you’re afraid it will hurt my feelings. Seriously? Twitter has always been permission-based. Make the tool useful for you. If what I’m saying isn’t interesting or useful to you, then unfollow.  I think too many people in the Twitter space get emotionally wrapped up in who’s following them and who’s not. Maybe it’s got something to do with the ability to send a direct message (DM) to someone. Maybe it’s something else.

So there you have it. I’ve made the decision easy for you. If what I’m doing on Twitter isn’t useful to you, then it’s okay to unfollow. You might consider checking back in from time to time or even using Twitter Search to keep up. I know some people who do that.

[photo credit: johnscotthaydon]

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I would consider myself – and many others would probably agree – a power user of Twitter. I update over there. A LOT. In fact, I recommend that those who start following me immediately turn off device notifications, unless they have an unlimited text plan.

Twitter by far is THE most useful tool in my social networking arsenal. I know for a fact that actual business has been conducted through my use of Twitter.

I started using it back in August 2006, so I have had ample time to grow and develop community. Imagine my surprise earlier when I saw something magical about to happen:

danieljohnsonjr Whoa. My next tweet will be my 15,000th. Send me an @ reply and I’ll put you in it. You have 10-15 mins. Starting…. now. 17 minutes ago from web

I initially thought I’d be able to string everyone who’d replied into a 140 characters or less message. I mean, what’s the likelihood that many people would be paying attention at that precise moment. I must have forgotten what my previous post said:

danieljohnsonjr Okay, now, where are all you followers coming from? 20 minutes ago from web

I checked and I have close to 2100 people following my updates. Some are dormant accounts or may have not updated in awhile, but still, that’s a lot of potential people to see my 14,999th post.

So, since I couldn’t fit everyone into a 140-character “tweet”, I hope this suffices. Thank you so much for enriching my experience thus far. I sincerely hope I’ve been at least half as valuable to you as you have been to me. Here are the people who replied, in the order they came in:

1. radiodaniel: @danieljohnsonjr I want in:-)
2. doctoranonymous: Hi @danieljohnsonjr. Have a great weekend!
3. jaymartinez: @danieljohnsonjr tweeeeet
4. purpletrout: @danieljohnsonjr Congratulations Daniel!
5. mikeward: @danieljohnsonjr what if we dont wanna send you a tweet
   

   mikeward: @danieljohnsonjr d’oh
6. writer_mom_tn: @danieljohnsonjr heya!
7. melgallant: @danieljohnsonjr congrats on the tweet record!
8. chrbutler: @danieljohnsonjr Congrats on the 15,000th tweet!
9. TeriLussier: @danieljohnsonjr nice tweet up!
10. cossondra: @danieljohnsonjr put ME in there we are such nerds arent we??
11. audiojunky: @danieljohnsonjr haha congrats on the 15,000…thats a lot im reaching my 1,000 soon
12. kate_the_great: @danieljohnsonjr OOH! Pick me! Pick me!!
13. zaldor: @danieljohnsonjr 15000 tweets?! That’s insane! Congrats! And here i’m not even at 5k!
14. justinrains: @danieljohnsonjr Pick me!
15. kflake: @danieljohnsonjr congrats on the 15,000th tweet!

Because I’m a good sport and love you all, I’m including this direct message I received

editvdo me, too…me, too…me, too

and this message that came in while I was typing up this post:

akirk45239: @danieljohnsonjr I’m late. I’ll go for the 15,001st. Congrats from Monfort Heights

Thank you and everyone else I know from Twitter for making it a fun journey thus far. Now, onto that 15,001st update.

—–
Check out my other blogs:
Daniel Johnson, Jr.
Get That Job!
Journey Inside My Mind Blog
Journey Inside My Mind Podcast
QuotesBlog
Twitter.com/danieljohnsonjr
Connect on LinkedIn
Interesting Things I’ve Read

Related tags: daniel+johnson+jr twitter social+networking

Jacob posted a great question on LinkedIn:

Social Networks, Bringing Us Together or Keeping Us Apart?

Here’s what I offered:

Good question, Jacob!

I still believe that the telephone is one of the best social networking tools around, and, at least for me, there is a point when you want to take your online connections into the real world. Last year, I began creating opportunities to network away from the computer.

During the week, I meet with folks I’ve met through social media periodically for lunch. Last October I founded New Media Cincinnati, a meetup group for folks interested and passionate about new and social media to get together. We hold conversations in real life and online.

Social networks are the people; not the tools themselves. The tools exist just to facilitate the real-life connections.

What do you think? Are social networking tools bringing us together or keeping us apart?

[IMG] New Media Cincinnati – April Meetup by danieljohnsonjr.

—–
Check out my other blogs:
Daniel Johnson, Jr.
Get That Job!
Journey Inside My Mind Blog
Journey Inside My Mind Podcast
QuotesBlog
Twitter.com/danieljohnsonjr
Connect on LinkedIn
Interesting Things I’ve Read

Related tags: daniel+johnson+jr jacob+morgan social+networking linkedin