For Those Who Are an Overnight Success and For Those Who Aren’t a Video Series From Chris Brogan

November 13, 2009 · Posted in Innovation, Reputation, Time Management, Video · View Comments

These videos are from Chris Brogan’s Over Night Success Series. There are 9 videos total covering topics such as Grinding vs Clocking – Time and the Overnight Success, Pity Party, Small Talk is Big, Belief Systems, The Competition, What it Takes, No Excuses & A Call to Arms. These videos are great even if you aren’t an over night success, even if you aren’t a success.

These 3 are my favorite (although it was hard to pick)

Take time off – I’ve said it before you need your down time but I’m always happy to point out when others say the same thing. :-)

Don’t believe the hype – I included this one because Chris says – by over night success I mean 10 years of hard work.

Here’s another bag of money – on excuses. We all make excuses that become between us and our goals. Decide what your priorities are. Stop making excuses.

Tags: .success, belief, beliefs, competition, excuses, grinding, hard work, Innovation, pity party, Reputation, Time Management, time off, Video, work, working

Monitor your brand

June 15, 2009 · Posted in Free Tools, Reputation, Social Tools · View Comments

Carie Lewis has a great guide to monitoring your brand using iGoogle, it’s easy, free and most of us already have a Google account, plus it pulls all the information into one place.

She includes 5 different categories:

Brand – mentions of your name, including acronyms, misspellings, etc

Current – issues that people are talking about that involve you right now

Detractors – people you know don’t like you but talk about you

Competition – people in the same space as you

Staff – prominent people in your org, like your CEO

And includes a great list of places you should monitoring:

Google Alerts – I hope you know what they are and are already using them!

Filtrbox – a paid monitoring service to make sure we catch everything

Tweetmeme – tells you the most popular tweets about a subject

Twitter Search – shows tweets containing a certain keyword (we don’t use this anymore because we use Tweetdeck separately)

Technorati – shows blogs that mention certain keywords

Blogpulse – another blog monitoring tool

Digg – shows most popular articles on the web

Boardreader – shows forum posts by keyword

Some additional readings

Tags: brand, company, competition, competitors, customers, issues, monitor, monitoring, patrons, Reputation

My Problem with LinkedIn

May 11, 2009 · Posted in Reputation, Social Networking Sites, Social Tools · View Comments

and online reputations in general.

I have a profile on LinkedIn (as I do on many social websites) because many people and blogs I think highly of have recommended it. Now I’ll be the first to admit I’m probably not using it right and therefore not taking advantage of it properly. Here is something I noticed recently while updating my profile.

This is a section of my profile showing my position at MRRL. Three people wrote me recommendations (which I appreciate but I’m not sure what good they do)

After these kind people wrote wonderful things about me I can change my position anyway I like. In this case I made myself Princess of Georgia.

I know what you’re thinking, there is no Princess of Georgia and if there were it certainly wouldn’t be me. ;-) That isn’t the point. I can change my job description, title or any part of the position at any point on LinkedIn and those recommendations stay right there.

This is my problem with online reputations. As more of us establish an online identity, we interact more with others we meet online and we base our opinion of them on who they are telling us they are. Why does this matter? Because people have always been dishonest from the small tweaking of facts to outright lies. There is no one following me around the web ensuring I’m not fabricating facts. Even if someone suspected I was not the Princess of Georgia, what could they do? Maybe blog, maybe contact me, maybe tell their friends but those are pretty aggressive and don’t necessarily put the person doing it in the best light and most people just aren’t going to do it.

Because more professional opportunities are based on online reputations, this is important. We come to think of the people we interact with as colleagues and friends and we make recommendations or offer opportunities based on this relationship. Unfortunately there are some things you just can not know about someone unless you’ve worked with them.

I’ve received recommendations on my reputation and I’ve given them too. I’m not saying don’t do it and everyone you meet online is lying to you. I’m just reminding you of the old saying – “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog“.

Tags: identity, linkedin, online, Reputation, social networking