Jason Lee Overbey (HeyOverbey!)

“We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.”  - Anne Lamott Bird by Bird

I’m a bit of a contemplative, to be sure. I’m reading the book Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think edited by John Brockman (@edge). It is a collection of 150 essays by today’s leading thinkers in technology, art and science. And it got the old noggin to ponder about the uniquely human act of writing. Not communicating. Any old plant or insect does that. But writing.

It occurred to me how ancient writing is. People who study such things claim that even prior to spoken language the prehistoric human felt driven to express herself by drawing on the cave wall. To communicate… through writing… is truly a primal force that compels us.

I would then say that when we write, we are drawing on something deep within us that predates the pen and paper. Something very, very old. It predates even the necessity to communicate through the written word. It’s strange. It excites me.

It makes me think it has its rudiments somewhere deep in the code of DNA then. To the spiritual among us, they would claim that it is a God-authored drive. I kind of like the romance of that notion. The more prosaic in our ranks would argue that it is an emergent property that developed as tribes solidified and chores were assigned allowing us more free time to create and express. Still others would say it is an overdetermined phenomenon and probably has multiple factors involving its arrival in the human psyche. I simply don’t know. And past the fact that it is an ancient scenario, my pontifications on the reasons and the modality fail me. I can’t figure it all out. 

But what I do know: It’s there. It is in all of us. We want to write. From crayons to keyboards, the proclivity stays with us our whole lives.

Sure, a select and esoteric few are genius at it. Most of us fall in the skill level of writing that the average population does with math - we know a little more than enough to balance our check books and get the taxes done. I suspect, though, we could do a lot better if  we wanted  to. All primitive tribes have language. There are a few that have no more than two words for math, however. It seems that to count was not as important to survival - to being human - as to communicate and to write. I can relate. I would much rather write in my spare time than do calculus.

So I started wondering. In the age where social media ubiquity offers the unprecedented forum to write and to have people read it - why aren’t more people writing? Oh sure, they post about lunch. They post cute pictures with cats. They even let you know when they entered or exited a relationship (something I would never post about but absolutely love reading from others). But, surely, more of them ought to be blogging. Right? I mean in paragraphs. You know the sort of thing: a topic sentence, middle progression, and a cogent end bringing it all together for the reader.

Ah. I just dismissed it as fear. Laziness. Or maybe people are too busy.

But something nagged at me telling me there is more. Everyone has hobbies, interests and opinions. I know they can articulate them - they do every day at Starbucks. And then, right in the middle of my caramel frothy thing,  I heard someone say, “Yeah, but no one wants to hear what I have to say.”

Now that is an entirely different objection to writing from fear, skill or accessibility to audience. That’s about relevance.

People who say that no one wants to hear what they have to say often make the declaration with such authority that I often wonder how they obtained such absolute, god-like knowledge. You mean no one - at all - wants to hear anything - at all - about your story? At all? Wow. How’d you find that out?

I am thinking the average person feels like there are too many people crowded in the cave. And who wants to see one more pictograph of a man slaying a deer in the forest!

Ah ha!

So… whatever you feel about the subject of writing… you still have that thought to do it, don’t you? It may not be with you like a sickness. Like the “ick” that all adored writers through the ages declared they had to surrender to or face insanity. You may not have it like that. But to write is there. It may only feel like a shoe that doesn’t fit quite right. You can still walk just fine. You get through the day. But you are aware of its presence, its almost quiet ache nonetheless.

Arguing with your inner writer only leaves you exhausted and angry. Quit fighting.

I want to tell you today that I still want to see your drawing on the wall. I am convinced that being in the lineage of the ancient man with the same desire, you too, have returned from the hunt with a story to tell. I’ll even go to your cave to learn about it.

You may not be able to draw your story with the detail or shadowing of some. But should that alone prohibit you from taking up the pen? No one else can write your story for you. Not really. While the plots may vary but little, the voice of every storyteller is different. Always.

I want to hear about your journey. I do. I am a bit of a nosey quidnunc… fine. But I know others who want to hear you as well.

It is a human and ancient thing to sit alone somewhere and read the thoughts of another from a page. It wakes me up. It gets me thinking. At times it makes me outraged. I laugh. I remember. It takes me to new places. I can’t always determine whose words it will be that do all that for me.

So don’t just write for yourself. Write for me. Write for all of humankind.  

The following article was written and posted by Justin Stone-Diaz on http://www.billyburgwick.org on June 14, 2011. When looking for guest bloggers on facebook today, Justin gave me free reign to peruse and use his old content. I have always wondered what goes on with a person’s social media accounts when they finally buy that farm. I like Justin’s musings on the dark topic and re-posted his article here in its entirety. You can follow Justin on Twitter at @justinstoned. You should prolly go do that now!

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It was my friend Steve’s birthday this week. It was the first thing I noticed the other morning as I logged into Facebook and scanned my feed.

Now the thing is that my pokey, tattoo’d digital pal I met back in the early days of MySpace has been dead since December 2009.

Out of curiosity I took a look at his page to see what was going on.

Facebook’s auto birthday reminders, one of the platform’s oldest features appeared not to be the only one’s confused about Steve’s corporeal state. Scrolling down the screen there appeared about 2 years worth of random greetings birthday posts.

There were several messages mixed in between the birthday greetings that seemed to acknowledge and comment on his passing but for the most part the page appeared just like any other.

Each year on my own dead mother’s birthday my sister awkwardly tags me in photos of her that I do not actually appear in.

Last year another friend of mine overdosed after several earnest attempts at sobriety and there had been activity from on his page after his death.
Seems some of his family choose to assume control over his individual account as apart of their grieving process.

Within a day or so of his death his account became a flurry of activity of friend additions and interactions from and to his profile.

From time to time I still see my dead friend add new people to his network and the occasional page “Like”. All three ways I’ve seen people in my immediate network deal with death on social media have been creepy but understandable.

Where one profile immediately became a digital Weekend At Bernie’s Zombie animated by his deceased family member’s keystrokes, the other sat silently for two years collecting posts from people thinking them alive.

I’m not sure which bothered me more - the well meaning attentive tact one family took or the neglect the second seemed to suffer.

I get it - people deal with death differently but as social media evolves and offers people weird new ways to express it, I think a larger dialog needs to occur about what happens to your digital presence when you are gone both as it affects is as individuals and as a society as a whole.

The taboo surrounding talking about one’s own death is huge and bringing up what your wishes are once you are worm food isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do.

Everyone has their own unique relationship with their online accounts and figuring out what you want to have happen with them is a highly personal matter. If you do not have a clear set of wishes it will be left to chance who gets access to your accounts and what is to be done with them.

Discussing the matter directly as apart of your living will is ideal but it does not need to be so formal. Bring up the subject the next time a big celebrity bites the bullet or while watching a black comedy or your favorite bad zombie film.

Ask your friends what they want to see happen once they have croaked. Do they want a digital memorial staffed by loved ones or estranged family members for eternity or do they want it all gone.

Having had this conversation with several folks I’ve noticed the subject is often met with uneasy laughter, rants about reincarnation, nihilism, emptiness or beatific descriptions of angelic cosmology but is a subject everyone seems to want to talk about once you break the ice.

Facebook MySpace both offer options for individual profiles to be converted into Memorial pages if they are provided with information about a death.

Twitter’s policy is unclear. Internet rummors abound about the deletion of Timelines accounts of people once they are dead.

Facebook also allows immediate family members the option of closing down a profile and removing it from their system completely.

Yesterday after talking to a bunch of people who got the same annoying message from Facebook I took the initaive and submitted a report about Steve’s profile.

The process was a bit annoying at first- for some reason their Help articles on the how to submit the information seemed to be available in 20+ Langauge Options, English not being one of them- but easy to figure out once you get to the right form.

I’ll spare you my speculation on why someone’s family or their other friends (digital or IRL) didn’t look into the matter right after he died. I was as guilty as the rest and let the poor guy’s profile and network fester.

The report has been submitted and Facebook sent me their auto response suggesting they’ll get back to me, eventually.

About Justin Stone-Diaz

When Justin is not correcting people, relatives or online services on what his name is, how to spell it or explaining how hyphens, like bacon can make anything better he spends his time reading, writing pondering media in all it’s forms.

An attendee of Ben Jerry’s Scoop U, Reed College The School of Hard Knocks, Justin Stone-Diaz has contributed to various print, trade technical journals under his or some version of his name.

That’s code for he’s a ghost writer. Wink Wink.

He is one half of the media duo working under the moniker ‘Toonmonk’ and the pixel pusher behind this and many other sites.

An admonsihment for writers: “Show, don’t tell.”

An axiom among gurus: “Teach always. Use words when necessary.”

Street vibe: “I can show you better than I can tell you.” (Often followed by, “Fool!”)

Age-old cliche: “Actions speak louder than words.”

Ancient Chinese proverb: “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

Among many professions: “Those who can’t do, teach.”

I get the point. I am sure we can increase the list ad infinitum (add yours in comments). And… I buy it. I believe it. It makes that identifier go off in my truth detector. Ding! In fact, I want to live by these. I’d like to think I do. No, I mean, I would like to think that I “do”. That I am a do-er.

And, of course, here it comes…

But! I am left contemplating today, “Why can’t I show AND tell?” After all, I learned that in kindergarten. We all know what they say about learning things in kindergarten: it’s everything I needed to know.

After all, I am a purveyor of words. A trader whose wares are ideas. A manciple of communications, if you will (I think I will). Admittedly, I read the dictionary for fun! I am a speaker and a writer. In business, I work more on the telephone than with any other tool. So I also buy into the idea that the pen is mightier than the sword, that wise men speak because they have something to say, that a man can be convinced to action by the confidence of a conversation. (I cannot count how many people I have persuaded to turn in a car they were hiding for repossession by a stirring exchange in conversation)

Here…

Joseph Conrad: “Words have set whole nations in motion. Give me the right word and I will move the world.”

Mark Twain: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

Proverbs 18:21 “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” Richard Wright

And I read this by the adored Anne Lamott today in Bird by Bird, “We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.”

Since I was a child I have known a part of me that, almost desperately, longs to reach out and connect with other people through the spoken and written word. My whole life path has been a development of communicating through the written and spoken word. Through poetry. Through singing. Preaching. Teaching. Conversing. Praying. Writing. Listening. Reading. Pausing. Gesturing. Talking. Editing. Through writing some more. Speaking. Dreaming. Thinking. Telling. Showing.

M. Scott Peck. I’m a big fan. He taught a lot about reality being revealed in paradox. “Para” meaning along side and “dox” meaning opinion. He showed us in The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: “When you get to the root of things, virtually all truth is paradoxical… to understand paradox ultimately means being able to grasp two contradictory concepts in one’s mind without going crazy.”

I get it now. I do not have to choose. I do not have to either be a show-er or a tell-er. I do not have to be either a do-er or a speak-er…

In my writing I  will show AND I will tell!

I love politics. I love world news. It excites me. I’m a bit of a quidnunc though. I also am enamored of social media and where it will go next. 

With that in mind, I have compiled a couple interesting links here for you to review regarding how government and world leaders are using social media:

1 - World leaders to get their own social network. Click here to read how “Tibco Software is expected to announce the launch of TopCom, a hyper-secure social network and video-messaging service that will be made accessible only to the top 200 members of the World Economic Forum”.

2 - The CIA now tracks social media for intelligence gathering. Click here to read how the CIA calls the information open source material and has a designated Open Source Center to track posts, hashtags, blogs and the like. 

3 - Twitter is blocked in China. But click here to read how “a number of Chinese dissidents have already left homegrown social media sites, choosing to create a community on Twitter that is beyond the reach of government censorship” and are getting past the firewall. 

4 -Government & Social Media Wiki page. Click here to read how “Josh Shpayher aims to help Congress, elected officials and their staffs from the Hill and around the country and the world, the media, and the public at large track who in government uses which forms of Social Media”. This is a powerful tool to track a  politician’s social media use.  

5 - Citizens can use social media to sway local government. I really liked these 7 ways the populous can use social media to impact their government from www.ohmygov.com

6 - Federal Government Guidelines for Staff Use of Social Media. Click here to read how “The rules lay out how bureaucrats should use public social networks to communicate with citizens and with each other, be it via sites like Facebook or those which allow multiple users to create and share information online”. 

7 - How New York City Government Is (and Isn’t) Using Social Media. A panel discussion by City Hall on incorporating social media in NYC. Click here. 

8 - How Twitter Helped the White House. Click here to read how the White House chose its latest hashtag on the economy that ended up trending worldwide within 45 minutes.

9 - The United Nations pushes NGOs (non-governmental agencies) to use social media to fight poverty. Click here to read how “The Division for Social Policy and Development (DSPD) organized a Panel Discussion on “How NGOs can use social media to create impact and eradicate poverty”, which took place on Friday 20 January 2012 from 1:15pm to 2:45pm in conference room 6 at the United Nations North Lawn Building (NLB)”.

I would be honored if you had some links to share with me! 

@HeyOverbey

JLOverbey@gmail.com 

So we’ve been on Twitter a while and we have gotten a few followers. Regardless of how self-serving it may seem, if you are anything like me at all, you love to see your name in lights. I get excited when I get an email from Twitter announcing that a tweet of mine has been favorited or ReTweeted or that I got a mention. 

If we have learned anything in social media work it is this: those mentions and ReTweets are a gold mine. We cannot afford to let them just sit out there. Apart from the opportunity it presents us to engage people and keep our brand in front of them (whatever that “brand” may be: a product, message or cause), it is also poor social media etiquette to not respond - some way - in kind. 

But here’s the rub: “Thanks for the RT @HeyOverbey” is boring, mundane and downright intolerable. How do we avoid the monotonous? The more followers we have, the more our timeline becomes valuable real estate. And when we sign off at night, the last thing we want to do is leave our last 3 tweets - the ones that display on our snapshot profile - hanging out there as mentions to someone that people do not know or care about it. Leaving people with that is like telling an inside joke at a party and excluding the crowd. They half smile, sure, but inside they hate those with the goofy joke. Who does that? “Oh, sorry, it’s an inside joke. You had to be there.” No, not at the party!

So we need to get imaginative. In the frenetic day-to-day of the social media world, it is easy to get lazy and I have been guilty of it, to be sure. But I will confess that when I go to someone else’s timeline and they do it, I shake my head… however hypocritical it may be. 

Here are a few ways we can freshen up the way in which we respond to those who took time out to engage us. They are strategic and purposeful. If executed properly, they satisfy professional etiquette and they position us and our timeline in an artful and pointed manner.

1 - Always link the responding Tweet by using the reply function on Twitter. It seems like a no-brainer but we all have seen the stand-alone thank you Tweet and wondered if there was some secret meeting on Twitter we were left out of. Using the reply function lets everyone in on the otherwise “inside joke”.

2 - Klout is a source of contention and chagrin for some - even mockery for others. But with corporate American jumping in on Klout and establishing them as a real player in the game,  we can hardly dismiss it out of hand. Chances are, most of the people we interact with on Twitter are on Klout. We get 10 +K per day to give away. We can use some of those to thank someone for a RT or mention. When we give the +K, Klout produces the Tweet option box and we have the chance to edit the phrasing. I have said things like, “I love seeing my name in lights! @susanavello mentioned me on Twitter so I gave her +K in blogging…” We can play around with the language but I am here to report that I have gotten a lot of response from this way of thanking someone for their ReTweets. 

3- Don’t directly thank them. Instead, using the reply function to link our Tweet to their efforts, we can post a link to their blog or site. “Have you folks checked out @new_resource’s blog! He is killing it this week in #HR writing. Read him at…” No boring “thank you” here. But by linking the Tweet he will get the “thank you” idea and our followers will have a Tweet to read with value in it to them!

4- #FF sucks! I know it’s not dead… yet. But it aggravates the love right out of me to see a block of #FF tweets in my feed. Ick. I am inpatient and somewhat controlling though. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! But not exactly. I still participate in Follow Friday but with a twist. I like to add value and a reason for my followers to pay attention by putting a blurb in about the person. Posting “Stuck on your job search? Following @Resume_Strategy and @CornOnTheJob will pull you outta the mud! #FF” is so much better than saying “thanks for the mention”. And it tells my followers WHY I think they should #FF someone. Any other way, I think, is a close cousin to spamming. 

5- Alternative language to saying “thank you”. If all else is failing us and we just have the itch to say thanks, we can try saying it in a different way! That whole variety is the spice of life deal. It at least provokes a reader’s mind in a different medium than the monotonous. Continuing to use the reply function, we can play around with these words and phrases: 

+ Phenomenal               + Sensational              + You are amazing

+ You make me look so good               + No one holds a candle to you

+ Your social media presence speaks volumes. Gracias for the support! 

+ Much obliged for the RT! I enjoyed your blog post yesterday on_______

+ You’re one of the reasons I love coming to Twitter, thanks!

+ You’re the bees knees           + Cheers       + Let me know how I can help        

+ Brilliant content today in your timeline, thank you.

+ Fantastic               + Incredible               + Amazing

6 - Post a link to someone’s tweetreach. Like Paula Dean does, we can start everything with butter. If we want to lay it on especially thick we can, still using the reply feature, post a link to someone’s tweetreach. “You are rockin’ it this week @animal. Your tweetreach is: 124,512 people & impressions http://www…” I bet you 10 ReTweets this gets attention and is a lot higher quality than TY.

7 - Post a link to our reader’s comments on our blog. If someone has mentioned our blog and also commented there we can post in the reply Tweet: “Appreciate your comments on my blog post about facebook. Insightful. http://www…” 

8 - Dig up their old chart toppers. We can really go the extra mile by taking some time to go through their old tweets, blog posts or videos and post the link to them when we reply in thanks: “You’re amazing, thanks! Your YouTube video from last August on setting up Linkedin Groups is a must-see for newbies. http://www…”

I think we get the idea.

As with any effort on social media, we have to mention that our response must be genuine. Any feigned emotion will easily be spotted and turned away from on Twitter. When we are honest in our praise and professional sucking up, it will play out in our Tweet. It will have that ring. As we toy around with the verbiage, our own voice will come out.  

People’s time is precious. We don’t want to waste it with the stale and dusty. I am convinced that as social media use becomes more ubiquitous, we not only can build a better thank you on Twitter… we have to.  

You’ll thank me give me +K for it later.  

@HeyOverbey

JLOverbey@gmail.com 

PJ Neumann (@Neumania513), a Finance major at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, conducted this interview with me for his Business Technologies course by way of facebook chat. 

PJ Neumann:  Thank you for taking time out of your day to do this for me and my education.  For whom do you work and what is your job title?

Jason Lee Overbey:  I am an independent contractor. I consult for a recruiting firm name sourcing talent for open positions.  I also consult with businesses on their SM projects and sometimes their credit and collections projects.

Pj Neumann:  I see. How long have you been employed in this discipline?   

Jason Lee Overbey:  About 1.5 years for sourcing. I just jumped on social media work - there is a real need for small businesses who have not yet jumped in or need help with it. I have 14 years now in credit, collections and accounts receivable work.

Pj Neumann:  Is the utilization of Social Media an effective way, for an individual seeking employment, to network? 

Jason Lee Overbey:  Not just effective; today it is necessary. Most all quality, experienced recruiters now have a heavy presence on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and now Google+. Not to mention the ancillary platforms. 

Pj Neumann: Ah. Took the next question right out of my mouth (fingers?). Of the SM tools listed, which would you say is the most effective?   

Jason Lee Overbey:  Depends on what you are measuring, your aim. I have to list Linkedin and Twitter. Linkedin is the obvious answer but recruiters and career “gurus” chat all day long on Twitter.   

Pj Neumann:  I heard that linkedin is great for individuals with experience in the field they are currently employed in, but what about college grads with basic work experience and skills?

Jason Lee Overbey:  Every college student should ALREADY be on Linkedin.  There, they can post the word “seeking” in their title along with their target job.  They can then be found by recruiters, companies and similar people in the field to build a network BEFORE they need to use it. Get started now.

Pj Neumann:  That is news to me. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Jason Lee Overbey: (1) It allows the student to build a network before they need to use it. (2) Linkedin allows you to join up to 50 Groups. There, you can connect with “thought leaders” in the industry, other students, and recruiters. (3) This gets your name established as someone studying in the field of your interest. You’ll get a… presence in that niche.  (4) When the student graduates they will have a great network already established; and (5) they will have real time access to professionals in the field with whom they can interact and ask questions about trends in their industry. Ultimately, they will have contacts they can draw on for work. 

Pj Neumann:   My question was more toward why all of this is news to me. I am nearing my 4th year in college and I was unaware of the benefits of Social Media!

Jason Lee Overbey:  AH!  Yes… colleges are behind the times for some reason and recruiters and career guides bemoan this fact on Twitter daily.  I am not sure why but i do know that colleges are dropping the ball here.  Perhaps it is the traditional mindset. But I hear this a lot. Almost every college student that has approached me in the last 6 months has bad information or none at all about Social Media.

Pj Neumann:  The types of questions that enter my mind about SM include: 1. how do I portray or brand myself using SM tools; 2. do I create a “fun” account and a “professional” account for each tool; 3. how much do I let individual’s see; 4. is my personal info to reflect my resume and skill set; etc.  All of these questions have dominated my thoughts for the past 6 months and I seek clarification.

Jason Lee Overbey:  1- Social media is just an extension of a “brand” (and people are growing tired of that word but what should we use until a better language develops?) that should be established in traditional methods as well. Have a clear, written mission of what you want to accomplish to guide you.  The second part of that is consistency - have your message and facts about you be the same across all SM platforms.  The third part is be accessible - on all of those platforms. Let the reader know how to reach you further and make that easy. 

The MOST IMPORTANT part is to ENGAGE.  Do not just be a broadcaster or a “preacher” on SM. Respond to people, comment, repost other people’s work, ENGAGE! 

2 - When you write out your mission from part one you will have the answer to this question. Clearly, if you have a professional aim in your branding then you are not going to use your SM platforms to post the more lewd side of your life. So, yes, many people have multiple accounts.  Having said that, you have to be human in your professional posts and humor goes a very long way in attracting and keeping people engaged with you. 

3- This question comes up every week. The advice I always hear is don’t post anything that you would be uncomfortable having posted on a billboard in your home neighborhood.  More and more though (thinking about Google+ and the new facebook timeline rolling out) people are going to be able to choose who exactly see what posts. 

4- Personal bios should reflect the written mission you came up with in answer 1. If that mission is to feed hungry children then the bio should reflect that, if it is to find a job in the medical profession it should reflect related schooling, accomplishments, desired company maybe. And you can always add a quick funny one-liner or quote. Anything that appears forced, plastic or computer generated is going to be passed over. It needs to be perky, alive and reflecting a real person behind the bio/avatar.

Pj Neumann:  All of this is very useful information but how do students on limited budgets receive consulting on these topics if they are not getting it on campus?   

Jason Lee Overbey:  Twitter is saturated with SM enthusiasts and career guides who love to help college students. Right now it seems that the colleges are not bringing in SM leaders so the students have to go to them…. I always point people to tweetchat.com. There they can put in hashtags surrounding keywords of their interests. For example: #recruiter. Then, start following a bunch of them. But more than that, reply to a few of their tweets, read the links to their blogs and comment there and then ask to connect on Linkedin.  They almost always do. You can then reach out and ask questions.  Most recruiters have lists they keep on twitter.  For instance, here is a list of 497 companies that recruit candidates on Twitter alone: http://twitter.com/#!/JobHuntOrg/employers-recruiting. (via @JobHuntOrg) You will hear different things about their effectiveness but that is another conversation left to the recruiters to fight out.

Jason Lee Overbey:  That is a lot of twitter accounts to start connecting with.  The person tweeting from those 500 accounts is mostly the corporate recruiter.  BAM you are in!  They LOVE to talk.

Pj Neumann: Thank you!  If a student was to approach you and ask what it would cost for them to have all 4 SM accounts setup and basic coaching associated with each, how much would you charge them?

Jason Lee Overbey: PRICING wow…okay!  Well right now I see “experts” (and there is no such thing because SM changes each week) but they are charging $50-$300 per hour.  I charge BUSINESSES $27-$35 an hour and up.  STUDENTS:  I usually help for free if I know them but $75 bucks for 2-3 hours and then 90 days of access to me by phone/web.  This shows them the main 6 SM sites,  analytic sites and 3rd party apps. Who to connect with. And, a lot of questions come up in the first few weeks - a lot.  I will retweet them on my account and stay available to them.

Pj Neumann:  That is very reasonable. The 90 day phone access is worth the money alone!

Jason Lee Overbey:  It is!  A lot of issues come up and it takes 3 months to build a foundation.  Only celebrities get overnight success. And that is suspect. The main way to look at this is as a guide. I have been down the path and know where the snares and toils are and can point people away from them and toward a smoother trek. That’s really all a SM consultant can do: guide.

Pj Neumann:  What types of “success rates” do you see?  Employment within 90 days of graduation of students using SM versus students not using SM?

Jason Lee Overbey:  There is a chat every Friday on twitter called HireFriday - #HFChat - that boasts thousands of participants. We hear a lot of success stories there and in other places the #HFChat conversation takes place (start with http://www.hirefriday.com). Some numbers I hear thrown around right now are 6-9+ months to get a job today…. 4-7 if you are on SM. But I am just throwing out what I have heard. Who knows. The question is does SM help? It most assuredly does because it is networking.  The key factor is the quality of one’s network.  Anyone can be on SM but are they ENGAGING and networking?  All of this must be followed up by getting on the phone.

Pj Neumann:  Absolutely. Of course, the discipline is a factor as well. I would imagine that business people are seeing higher successes than teachers.

Jason Lee Overbey:  Oh, of course. I do know some professors actively using SM and they have been asked for more speaking engagements. If you look at the marketplace today…. if you don’t have the little “in”, the “t” or the “fb”, etc. after your product or brand it will viscerally delegitimize you in the “consumer’s” eye. Whether or not they click for more is unclear. But a product has to have the SM platform available. That is the same with your product, as a student, too.

Jason Lee Overbey:  Even if they don’t follow or “like” you - they need to know you are there.  This goes for blogging too, it needs to be showcased on your blog site.

Pj Neumann: SM is just a part of life, today. It really seems so time consuming. How many hours a day do you suggest individuals use SM?

Jason Lee Overbey:  Who can say, really! I would guess students need an hour a day - and that can be split up 20 min in the am, afternoon and at night. That way you hit all the primetimes. Also, there are a lot more schedulers out there so you can post tweets, status updates, blog posts, links for whatever time you want then go to bed.  But, you have to still jump on to engage. That is where the goods are - in hooking someone into conversation with you - whatever that looks like.

Jason Lee Overbey:  It really depends on your mission again.  Recruiters need more time on SM than a doctor would but BOTH need to be on there.  A first year college student is going to have different goals/needs than the graduating one. And as social media evolves so will the requirements. But it all leads us back to the phone!

Pj Neumann:  Well, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day for this interview. I have become aware that my life is lacking effective SM skills. I think employing your services would behoove me.

Jason Lee Overbey:  I would be glad to work with you. We will really cover a lot more. And I love the word, “behoove”.

Pj Neumann:  How does your schedule look for…

What are your friends in university saying about how much they are being taught and hearing about social media?

Find me on Twitter: @HeyOverbey

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HeyOverbey

“Writers will happen [even] in the best of families.” Rita Mae Brown

Love it. Rita is making the point that a true writer - the one with the ick - has to write. Born that way. There isn’t a choice in the equation. Fundamentally, I write because I have to. I write to stay sane - or to get and stay sane. This compulsion, this obsession to communicate through the written word, is more than an illness like, say diabetes, that can be treated. The only way to treat this ick is to surrender to it. So it reminds me that…

“Writing involves a commitment greater than illness.” Bernard Malamud

Still, since I have to do it anyway, someone else might as well read the stuff, right? Ultimately…

“One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others’ minds.”  Alfred Kazin

Sure… we hear every hour new tips and tricks to maximize the circulation of our musings. Trying to avoid redundancy,  I offer these ideas as well: 

+ Use Twitter. Daily! Seems obvious but I am still a little surprised by how many people do not have a twitter account today. And those who do are not using it to its full potential. Create a pithy, pointed profile. Google uses keywords from your Twitter bio to help determine how you appear in search results. Use a clear pic. Follow a lot of like-minded, but quality people, and tweet relevant information. In between that promote the URL for your blog. Don’t forget to show a little personality in your feed or, I feel, it comes across robotic and dry. And pay attention - there are a lot of articles out there about how to maximize your twitter experience. One last quick tip for writing bloggers: follow the hashtag #amwriting. It is a great group of writers supporting each other. Okay, one more… suck up. ReTweet, mention, favorite people’s tweets (they will get that email from Twitter and see your name).

+ Use networkedblogs on facebook. It is a great way to follow quality blogs you like while promoting your own. You can also “syndicate” your blog(s) and choose publishing options.

+ Sign up for stumbleupon. After two or three of your pages getting submitted and “liked” by other stumbleupon members your presence increases and you are suggested to other users. Also, “thumbsup” your own pages. Kinda like voting for yourself on election day if you were running for office - it just makes sense.

+ Use Reddit and Digg, too. (But you already know about these… I’m cutting back on the redundancy)

+ Use www.problogger.net. There is a lot of good information on this site: articles, links, interviews, SEO optimization, tips.

+ Look into and use www.blogcarnival.com… ”where someone takes the time to find really good blog posts on a given topic, and then puts all those posts together in a blog post called a carnival… Carnivals come in edited “editions”, just like magazines or journals. The fact that carnivals are edited (and usually annotated) collections of links lets them serve as “magazines” within the blogosphere, and carnival hosts can earn their readership by providing high quality collections.”

+ Comment on other blogs. Scour the internet for like-minded bloggers. Go to expert’s pages/blogs. Find good, relevant conversations and add quality comment to the feed. This gets you exposure and if you are good it gets people asking who you are. Many times you have to fill out a profile before you can comment and that creates a blurb and linkback to your blog.

+ Try www.blogrush.com. Another great blog syndication tool.

+ Have more than one blog. Try wordpress, tumblr, blogspot and others. Even if your content is exactly the same on each site, you are increasing your presence on the web so you are more likely to appear in internet search engines like yahoo and google.

+ Visit www.superbloggingtips.com. They have super blogging tips. Sorry.

+ Submit your articles to www.addyourblog.com. We are assuming it is good quality stuff - they do not tolerate spammers. Who would? Don’t spam, people. Why do we have to keep saying it!

+ Google+ Even if you are buying all the hype that G+ is about to kick the bucket, they still have the ubiquitous power to control search results. At least get a Google+ account as a placeholder and post your blog posting links there.

+ Join www.bebo.com and promote your writing there. You can sign in with facebook.

+ Newsdag. I like http://www.newsdag.com. You can create an account quickly and publish each of your blog posts separately. The people there want to be there and spend a lot of time reading and commenting on posts. Be sure to linkback, of course, to your blog site.

+ 12Most.com. Over the last year 12most.com has grown phenomenally. If you can punch out a high quality proposal to them, following their clear guest submission guidelines, your exposure will grow exponentially. 

+ My favorite! http://www.triberr.com is now open to the public. So far, joining far-reaching tribes on the platform will get your links more exposure through this one site than any other I have seen so far. There is a commitment factor inherent in the tribe that ensures your links get Tweeted by other members in the tribe. The tribe chiefs are brilliant at monitoring other people in the tribe to ensure they are regularly approving your posts to be Tweeted and that quality content is being streamed for you to post in kind.

If you are a pro, you have heard most of these… thanks for bearing with us! Maybe some have helped. If you are new, you cannot afford to blog without checking into most of these supports.

No matter what, do not stop writing. In your journal, on bits of scrap paper, on a card you may or may not send to a good pal… WRITE! You have a story, a message, a voice - and we need to hear it.

Connect with me on twitter @HeyOverbey and email me: JLOverbey@gmail.com

I have a veritable carnival event of different types of friends and personalities in my life. I decided long ago to not cheat myself out of challenging and inspiring relationships because I judged folks by their exterior and to, instead, acquaint myself with people from all manner of living. Admittedly, I still judge people based on what I see in the first seven seconds… let’s be real. But I stick with it. I hang in there and attempt to go deeper than what is floating on the surface.

By practicing this, I have ended up with a lot of… tough guy characters in my circles. Even a few tough gals. You know the sort of thing: “I eat nails for breakfast and enemies for lunch. I don’t eat dinner cause I’m out taking over the world. I have NO fear!”

But I’m a pretty amiable guy. They all know I used to be in the ministry. They vaguely know that I am in the recruiting and social media world for a career.  So quite a lot of them turn to me for counsel from time-to-time. They trust me.

They come to me with varying degrees of what, very simply, is fear-based paralysis. From being stuck in a relationship they want out of desperately, to being blocked from taking their next career move, my analysis for them is that they need to deal with the fear.

Here is what I am met with more times than not: “Come on, Man! I ain’t afraid!” Their chest puffs up. They square their shoulders. They look like they are about to spit or cuss. Clearly they want to break my nose.

“You didn’t hear me.” I chide gently. “I am not saying you are a sissy. I did not say you couldn’t win in a bar fight. I did not say you let people push you around. We are not talking about boogey men or ghosts. I did not say you were afraid. I said you have to deal with fear. It’s not the same. “ What they are hearing and what I am saying gets confused by pride and ego.

One of the best definitions I have encountered for fear was from our friends in the recovery support communities. It goes like this:

“…fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of [these] unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance or frustration.”   - Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

When we can look at it in this way we take away the stigma of fear that assaults our pride and we can measurably deal with what the root problem is and take real action.

Whether we are refusing to end a relationship, go on an interview, meet with a high profile client, start a workout regimen, start writing a book, or research the career path we feel called to switch to, if we look at the fear in this way we can walk through it.

Later in that passage it goes on to say that this type of fear is the main activator of our defects of character. When not attended to it draws out our procrastination, excuse-making, attempts to ignore, anger, sarcasm, anxiety, changes in sleeping and eating patterns, isolation, even jealousy. Anyone can add to the list.  

It is worth mentioning that wildly successful people in many areas of life can still be crippled by this form of fear in just one nagging corner of their psyche. Because of their overwhelming confidence and results in every other facet of life, this one little area dogs them at every turn and they attempt to gloss over it. They cannot or will not admit that in just this one area of existence they are stuck. At best, they ignore it. At worse it bleeds over into work and home and trouble starts to brew. Many times they can’t even link the two together.

So what can we do?

I’m a lover of charts and lists and I think a very logical, excel-spreadsheet-type of approach, can best tackle this often illogical, yet stubborn form of thinking.

So we get out a pad and pencil. We draw a chart with three columns and we head them like this:

Pretty simple.

In the first column we list the issue that is troubling us. No one is watching so we forge ahead. In the middle section we use the above definition and we write out as thoroughly as we can what we are fearful of losing that we already have or what we are fearful we won’t get. We also list some of the ways that we have been reacting by not dealing with this constructively. Those undesirable personality traits we mentioned. In the last column we face the real truth about the matter. We list what would happen if we did, in fact, lose the thing we already have or don’t get the thing we want. We face it. We list what real actions we can take.  And we leave some extra space for a little later.

Let’s try it with an interview for an exciting job opening:

We already begin to see clearer. No hocus pocus. No spooky couch therapy or feel-good mantras. No sloppy pep talks. We are approaching it seriously and business-like. We have logically dealt with illogical thinking.

I mentioned leaving space in the last column. If we have done the first three parts we have made a serious approach at tackling this pesky fear. Chances are though, that our thinking can still be clouded. Our last task is to find someone in whom we have true confidence and ask if we can get their opinion on the matter. We tell them, almost nonchalantly, that we have a little problem and would like their insight. We read the part we have done on our own and we ask for their take on the matter. Invariably, they will offer up some additional insight that we did not think of ourselves and we can jot it down in our last part of the table.

This is just one way that I have used and shared with many other people to deal with all manner of issues that are troubling them. It is by no means new or revolutionary. It is purposeful. And because of the table format, it is a linear answer to a cyclical way of thinking. It works! Now, it may not be for you. That’s okay. Maybe looking at the alternative definition for fear we started out with is enough to change how you look at the problem.  Either way, by honestly admitting to ourselves that this kind of fear has nothing to do with how manly… or womanly we really are, then we can remove any lingering prejudice from stereotypes and get down to the business of moving on.

Whatever the challenge, if we are not facing it I think we can finally agree it is not because we are weak or afraid or not strong. I think we can also agree it is because we have a form of fear we have not honestly dealt with. When we do, we have taken away all of our last feeble excuses.

Let me know what you think! I’m not afraid… I can handle it. 

I am honored and excited to be named the newest member of the HireFriday and #HFChat leadership team. HireFriday is a community a million strong (the goal for 2011) where job seekers meet with recruiters and career experts to talk about the job hunt. Every Friday at NOON EST the HireFriday Chat (#HFChat) convenes on Twitter to discuss hot topics and ideas on the job search. This community is amazing and its reach is powerful. 

My debut blog post was published on the site earlier this week. I ask and encourage you to check out the site here. Thank you! I am posting the article here today. I appreciate everyone’s support… and thank you again!

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Telephone Names Sourcing – The Candidate’s Way

If you are new to phone sourcing, it’s a technology whereby those in the recruiting industry use the telephone as their primary method of sourcing – or developing – a list of names and phone numbers of people inside of a company who perform a specific job function, holding a specific title. These candidates are referred to as passive because they already hold jobs and are not necessarily looking for new opportunities. The researched list is then presented to the client, recruiter or hiring manager as a source of talent they can approach with their open positions.

I consult for and study under Maureen Sharib (@MaureenSharib), the Master in telephone names sourcing. She says:

“Phone sourcing is the fastest and most effective way to get ALL the names inside any company holding specific titles. Hands down it’s the best!”  

She also says:  

“The ONLY WAY to find ALL POSSIBLE POTENTIAL CANDIDATES that might be appropriate for your open position is to call into the places where they work. In order to do this you must be socially skilled. You must know how to talk with people. Surprisingly, this is a skill that is diminishing today amidst all the focus on “social media”. Much of sourcing today embraces the social media agenda of “web-based and mobile technologies”. Think Internet sourcing and texting. God forbid anyone would really talk to one another. If you know how to talk with someone you can telephone names source. I said before it’s not easy but it is simple. Here’s how I do it:

“This is Maureen Sharib. Can you tell me who the Manager is for your External Reporting group?”

Sometimes she knows and she tells me. Why does she tell me? It’s a very good question and one I have done a lot of thinking about. I think she tells me because of one simple thing. Can anyone tell me what that one simple thing is? She tells me because I removed the mystery.”

Phone sourcing has also been adapted for the sales community – or any niche that needs to get inside of a company structure to determine who is doing what. Here we will list some ideas you can use as a candidate in the job search to use the telephone to ferret out information from companies that you need to get in front of the right people. You can use this technique that recruiters are using to find you and use it to find quality intel. 

I will not argue social media / internet vs. the telephone. We will leave that to the Twitter community. I will say that the best way to get results is to combine and use all the tools that have been laid at our feet. Now let’s get on the phone!

1- Research. Any good project starts with some prepping. Do your homework. Work in simple Word documents. At the top of your sheet you can list your name and the job title you are pursuing. After that, list a job description that fits the industry title you want.

Jason Lee Overbey – Director of Company Humor

“This position ensures the entire company balances business with levity. The D of CH develops hilarious content to disseminate by way of email, post in break rooms, and provide spontaneously on walk-throughs in each department. He or she also plans guest speakers for corporate events, provides nonprofessional counseling to dry coworkers, and works directly with the CEO to keep his speeches and content in compliance with corporate humor policies. The DCH also stays abreast of the competition’s humor policies and adapts internal policy accordingly. Monthly reports in a clown suit will be due and presented at board meetings.”

You are already setting a tone for your project.

2 - Next, list the requirements that are deal breakers for the position.

+ Must have a Master’s Degree in Psychology with an emphasis in Campy Humor

+ Must be certified in funny faces and imitations

+ Must be certified in Workplace Equality

+ Must possess 10 years of related laughter and knee-slapping scenarios

+ Must be able to travel and work weekend functions

+ Must be certified in First-Aid & CPR

3 - You already have a document setup that is now guiding your sourcing effort. You’ll be surprised at your newly acquired efficiency and focus. Next list the: Name, Address, Phone Number, and Email of the target companies you want to get in to and maybe 2 or 3 other companies you’ll place at the bottom of your list. List them in blocks. Leave a few spaces between each company for your notes. You are ready to start sourcing.

XYZ Widgets

321 Zero Street

Everywhere, USA 11221

111-222-3456

Email: youarehired@xyzwidgets.com

4 - Now you have to get on the phone. Sometimes it feels like the phone can weigh can 1,000 pounds. Take heart! Ease yourself into the project by reminding yourself that you are not calling about the job itself – yet! This is very critical. In recruiting we separate the sourcing of candidates from the actual recruiting of candidates. This gives each task a laser-like focus and prepares us for each succeeding project. It makes it manageable. It gives it a grit.

Remember that in most companies, and in all larger ones, you are dialing in to an operator or a secretary and not into the department you want to work in. This should ease some initial anxiety.

Remove the mystery from the call and avoid causing any suspicion that they gatekeeper or operator may have by identifying yourself.  Like this:

Operator: “Thank you for calling Acme Tools – home of the best deal guaranteed. This is Wanda how can I direct your call?”

JobSeeker: “Hello, Wanda. This is Jason Overbey. Before you connect me, can you please give me the name and direct dial of the Vice President of Corporate Humor please?”

Do not be concerned with the exact title. They may go by a different moniker but if you have experience in the field you will know the variations. Help the operator out a little if she seems stuck, “Oh, they might go by Senior Communications Officer?”

Do not concern yourself with who does the hiring or how they do the hiring. Right now you are just focused on the information gathering and sourcing piece of your project. You are not doing anything with the intelligence yet. Just compiling data.

5 - The dreaded questions! What if I get objections or probing from the operator? Remember that Maureen Sharib starts her teaching by advising us to remove the mystery (see her latest here: http://www.slideshare.net/Maureen_Sharib/the-mystery-the-magic ). You CAN answer those without fear.

Gatekeeper: “May I ask what this is about?”

JobSeeker: “Sure, Wanda. I need to get in contact with them next week about some information I want to share.”  This is not a lie. We do not have to be clever or sneaky.

Gatekeeper: “Okay? Well, who do you work for?”

JobSeeker: “I’m sorry. No, I’m not calling from a company. I’m at home.”

If you are prepared, you will pick up a feel for Wanda’s tone and you can mimic her and respond in kind. If she persists you can always politely thank her for her help and say you will try another way and end the call. You can then try during a different shift to get a different operator. But if you hang in there and stay on the call you will get results. If she persists:

Wanda: “Well, I’m sorry. Without exact details I cannot give out their information.”

JobSeeker: “Okay.I understand. I really need to get the information to them personally.”  Then pause. It can be hard – but pause! Just hang in there. If no response try, “… what is their email and maybe I can present it to them that way.”

6 - If you get stuck on one company, skip it and go back after you have sourced all of your targets. Taking a break helps. Be sure to note any slips the answerer may give you in the way of useful information and note it on your sheet.

 7 - Directly transferred. If Wanda didn’t listen very well and directly sends you to the department, try the same approach with the receptionist there.

8 - Remember to approach each call calmly and with your document in front of you, guiding you. This will remove any frenetic tones you may have lingering in your voice. People who work on the phone all day sense nervousness right away. With the document in front of you, you have that inner sense that you are doing a job – and you are.

 9 - If you still can’t pick up the phone, try your sourcing with a list of dummy companies. Call three or four companies in another state that you have no interest in whatsoever and see what results you get there. It will be a great start.

Phone sourcing is a powerful tool. It gets you “now” information. What you find on the internet can be old and stale – and rarely updated. On the phone, you get information that is hot and reliable. You get those slips we talked about, like, ”the VP just got promoted and that spot is empty. I could give you…“ or, “…right now we are restructuring that department… marketing is filling in. You should talk with…”

If I do say so myself… I follow some pretty groovy industry experts. I do not keep Twitter lists but they do. I have found a lot of people don’t keep lists. When they do, it’s their favorites or people who interact with them. Not too useful for the rest of us. Or, they don’t keep adding to their lists. But I’ve been looking for some new folks to follow and started looking through their compilations for the good ones.

They all may not have millions of followers. But these are people who study their field and have their proverbial nose to the grindstone every day in their industry. They know their niche - and they know who to cross-follow.

Here are nine Twitter lists you will want to check out today!

And don’t forget, you can always use http://www.followerwonk.com to search Twitter bios by keyword. 

1. @animal - The recruiting animal. He has one of the top names in recruiting - not to mention most memorable. He has brilliant content in his daily timeline. Here is his list of 236 corporate recruiters.

2. @ResumeStrategy - Her name says it all. She is on the mountaintop of resume writing and trends. She is funny, smart and a powerhouse in the field. Here is her list of 500 career experts.

3. @johannaharness - Creator of the phenomenally popular #amwriting group. Anyone who writes or is interested in writing follows this hashtag.  She has a list of 485 writers in the community. 

4. @StacyZapar - She is the most connected woman on Linkedin. One of the best Twitter List Keepers out there. Here she has a list of 500 business savvy people on Twitter. She describes it as “entrepreneurial Tweeps who understand business.”

5. @HRMargo - She is the founder of HireFriday and #HFChat. This chat meets every Friday at Noon EST to discuss the job hunt. The goal for 2011 was to have the group a million strong! Here is her list of people related to HireFriday.

6. @shally - One of the very top sourcers in the galaxy. Sourcers are people who source - or develop - the names of top talent to recruit from. He calls this list cyber sleuths and it is full of people who know boolean search methods and sourcing tricks. 

7. @salesrecruiter - She is a medical sales recruiter expert and career coach. She has a list of the Top 50 sales bloggers. Except she only has 40 in there right now.

8. @NealSchaffer - We all know Neal Schaffer… and what list of Twitter lists would not be complete without a social media list. Here is his list of 353 people who Tweet great social media content and he often ReTweets.

9. @RecruitingBlogs - Is the social network for recruiting professionals. They have a group of 489 Recruiting and HR professionals on Twitter by RecruitingBlogs.com.

I had a hard time finding quality Twitter lists that everyone would get something out of. Please share yours in the comments! 

This is by no means comprehensive. That’s probably not possible. You’ve heard of a lot of them, to be sure. A lot of these sites are helpful. Some are funny. A couple are weird. All are interesting. Add your own to the comments section and I will feature them - and you - in Part II.

1 - Social Chiefs. See a weekly report of the top “social chiefs” across facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Sign up and see your position. http://www.socialchiefs.com

2- TwimeMachine. See your last 3,200 tweets. You always get new followers and they didn’t see your really good stuff from 6 months ago. And your other followers don’t remember so you can repost. http://www.twimemachine.com 

3- Social Media Glossary. Get the definitions to 120 social media marketing terms you forgot the meaning of. 

4- Email Alerts. Important stuff coming up? Send yourself reminders in your email with alertful. http://www.alertful.com 

5- Highlight Webpages. Easily highlight sections of any webpage that you want to emphasize and share the highlighted link with coworkers and friends. http://www.awesomehighlighter.com

6- Customized News. Compile top news you choose in one site. http://www.topicfire.com

7- Search Twitter Bios. Looking for specific Twitter people in a certain niche? Search their bios by keywords. http://www.followerwonk.com 

8- Your Twitter Account Price. See how much your Twitter account is worth in US dollars. http://www.whatsmytwitteraccountworth.com 

9- Online Coupon Codes.“In this economy?” Get tons of codes for online coupons for thousands of retailers. You can even upload ones to share. http://www.retailmenot.com 

10- Need a Public Toilet? Find a public lavatory anywhere in the world. Share locations of clean restrooms you have found. Talk about the power of social media to help! http://www.sitorsquat.com

11- Printable Blogs. Turn your favorite RSS feeds into a magazine and printer-friendly versions. http://www.tabbloid.com

12- No Gray Areas in Life. Play the game Which Is Worse? You are presented with two scenarios and you HAVE to pick just one. Funny and, at times, thought provoking. http://www.whichisworse.com

13- Free facebook Page Tabs. If you don’t know code but still want a decent welcome page for your facebook page pagemodo will let you create an iFrame for free. http://www.pagemodo.com

14- Scatterbrained? Sync your Google calendar with facebook here.

15- Share Screenshots of Web Pages. With Bounce you can capture any screenshot of any webpage. You can then make notes and share the link. http://www.bounceapp.com

16- Cut Any Song to Custom Length. Need a song for a ringtone or other use? Cut songs here: http://www.mp3cut.net 

17- Prove A Point. Create a Google search for someone and share the link with Let Me Google That For You. You can have all sorts of fun with this one. http://www.lmgtfy.com

18- Purge Inactive Twitter Uses. Strengthen your Twitter following-to-followed ratio by unfollowing accounts that are not tweeting. You can specify the number of days since last Tweet. Each month I purge all accounts that have not tweeted in 45 days or more. http://www.untweeps.com

19- Track Your Brand in Your Email. With Nutshell Mail you can monitor your brand presence on facebook and Twitter by having a summary sent to your email. http://www.nutshellmail.com

20- Do Anything You Want. If you go to http://www.zombo.com you can do anything in the world you want to do.

We talk about Linkedin every day. I read a post about Linkedin every day. I can’t beat ‘em… so I thought I would join the choir. My voice might be a lil rusty so forgive me if you’ve heard these before.

Some cool Linkedin tips and insights:

1- Blog Link App. Promote your blog on your Linkedin account. It supports all platforms. It also automatically pulls blog updates from your connections on Linkedin so you get all the news and posts from people you chose to connect with professionally. Click here for the app. 

2- Leave Some Groups. We all know you can join up to 50 groups on Linkedin. I tell everyone new to Linkedin: “Join up!” I was only active in a few of my 50. I relied on the emails that Linkedin sent me for the latest about what was going on in each community. Until recently… when Linkedin informed me they were changing certain group’s email alerts because it didn’t look like I was active in them. So I thought, why don’t I toss it up? I left those groups (for just a couple weeks). I joined several groups that have no correlation with my current career path whatsoever so I could eavesdrop on their powwows and see how they did things. I tried a molecular biology, law enforcement, and poetry writing group. My findings were staggering. They do not post like the recruiters and #HR clans do. I learned a lot. Toss up your memberships and rejoin your old haunts after you have learned a few new tricks.

3- Speaking of Groups… No matter what your ilk is on the site, you can benefit from specific, sometimes lengthy, boolean operator searches. And of course, you can use boolean for searching outside of Linkedin. Before your eyes glaze over, there is a Boolean Strings Group on the platform with loads of useful search tips, starter articles/links and they will even write a search string for you on a particularly troubling query if you suck up properly. Most helpful! They once helped me write a search string for all the hospitals in Chicago hiring OR managers. 

4- Customize the Link to Your Public Profile. If you haven’t done this, you have a bulky link to your page on Linkedin. It can be very cumbersome when you are on Twitter or in a quick meeting and you want to share with someone about how to find you there. Go to the profile tab on the top bar.  Click “Edit Profile” from the drop-down box. Scroll down to the box on your profile containing your public url link. Click the “edit” after your link. On the right upper hand section of the newly opened page you can choose a tailored link. Use your name. This will affect how you appear in search engine results - part of managing that social media image you are working so diligently on. No more cutting and pasting of an over-sized link. You’ll remember it now. 

5- Recommendations. I do not take these lightly. It isn’t like a, “You were so cool this semester. Have a good summer. See ya next year!” yearbook entry. Having said that, you might be wondering how to get more recommendations to beef up that section of your profile. I think it’s easy. Recommend someone else. 

What if you haven’t worked directly with them? Last month, I took 5 people that I have been following on Twitter, interacting with through blogs and listening to on blogtalkradio or YouTube. I wrote careful, glowing reviews about each one. I was sure to use a tone that made it clear I was recommending their content and not a co-working relationship. The results were successful and I plan to do it each month this year. You don’t have to sit next to someone in an office to vouch for them. You can recommend someone right now!

6- Weekly Linkedin Updates Email. If you are not sitting with a direct business need it’s sometimes challenging to engage connections on Linkedin outside of such a need or group dialogues. Each week I get an email from Linkedin with updates from what is happening with my connections on the platform. What I have been doing is going through each one and congratulate folks on new positions or comment on other changes. I get a response every time and my contacts stay in touch with me. 

7- Fill Out Your Skills & Expertise Section. I am still not hearing this taught. Increase your chances of being found on Linkedin. If you want recruiters to find you, possible business partners, or companies with propositions - they will find you by these keywords you enter. Click here. Linkedin also gives you a snapshot of each skill you search by showing: the demand of the skill, people who claimed the same skill, related companies and related groups, and open jobs in that skill category. Wicked cool.

8- Add YOUR Company. Do you work for yourself? Freelancer? Small business partner? After you create and tweak your personal profile, increase your brand presence by adding your company. From the main header bar click on “Companies”. From the drop-down box click on the first option “Search Companies”. On the top right-hand side of the new window choose the blue “Add a Company”.  Have fun.

9- Get a Client Recommendation Badge. After you have claimed your company in step #8 and filled in your services/products, you will be able to get a code from Linkedin to add a badge to your site. This badge will allow your clients to recommend you on your LI profiled directly from wherever you display the badge. 

10- Search Your Contacts. Try the app: IN stant. After you authorize the app you can begin searching all of your contacts… well, instantly. I really like the graphics and arrangement of the people in the search results. All you do is click on a contact and you are taken to their profile. It is much less cumbersome than sifting through connections directly on Linkedin. The REALLY employable feature is that you can search by keywords such as: recruiter, attorney, or social media.

There’s 10 Linkedin insights that aren’t your average tips. Watch out for Part II. 

JLOverbey@gmail.com

I took notes in 2011. About a lot of stuff. Here are some of the top things I learned last year from scouring all of my social media platforms. It’s not all I learned, to be sure. And they are in no order. But here are some observations I made by being on social media every day last year:

1- The telephone is really the most powerful social media utility. I saw several articles last year on this very topic. For all of the domination that social media takes in the news, the telephone rests in the background, quiet, with its sovereignty. I have made copious amounts of new connections in the past year from social media. They were all solidified by picking up the phone. I made a lot of new sales leads from social networking platforms. The telephone sealed the deals. Social media is not going anywhere. And neither is the phone.

2- Small businesses don’t really care about or know about social media - but they have enough prescience to know they need to. I know this isn’t all small businesses. And it is even some big businesses that carry this attitude. But we have to be honest about who is really on our beloved social media platforms with us right now.

My career is in the recruiting industry… plus. In late Spring I had a friend invite me to lunch to ask about Twitter. He had no clue. At all. I showed him how I used it to promote our work. We talked about the technologies and waxed a bit philosophical regarding the positive and negative impacts SM is having, and may have, on humankind. I set some stuff up for him. He had the audacity to go and tell his buddy. Another lunch. Another setup.

By December I had been in contact with over 12 different small business owners who don’t care about Twitter and facebook - some even abhor social media - but they somehow knew they needed… wait for it… a presence there.

Then, being in the recruiting and career field, college students began to approach me.

I am no self-touting guru of the social media space. But I am not dumb either. Let the Mashable types and the big guys consult for the other big guys. I know a lot about social media (sometimes I even know a couple tricks the big guys don’t know). More importantly, I know how to engage and when. Any fool can see that skill-set matches a need. There is a market in your area, too. There are businesses that want someone to worry about social media for them. I now do recruiting work and… Dear God, social media consulting.

So now I have a little page. Check it out and give me a “like” press: http://www.facebook.com/HeyOverbey

3- Linkedin has limits. Gasp! I am in love with Linkedin. No doubt. But I am not going to marry it. Being a sourcer (developing the names of top talent for open positions) I naturally use the platform. And I cannot wait to be a LION or GORILLA or whatever it is. But it has limits. As with facebook and Twitter, there are duplicate accounts, deceased accounts, placeholder accounts and most severe of all… accounts that are not updated and fresh. A lot of the information on Linkedin is stale and has just been sitting there. Once people get the job they want they do not go back to update. I use it every single day - weekends, too. But see #1 above. To really be adept at using Linkedin we have to know its limits.

4- Tailored Google search results. I did not know. I thought the web was free. Not in cost but in exchange of ideas and information. I felt silly that I didn’t know this. But when I found out that Google uses my IP address, the location of my laptop, my previous search queries, and more to determine what appears when I make a search, I was changed. I have a responsibility to genuinely sift through what has been presented to me for my consumption. When important, I will cross-search with http://www.duckduckgo.com They do not track.

5- Twitter bio importance. Of all of my 5,000 Tweets last year I got the most ReTweets on this one:

“Google uses the keywords in your Twitter bio to help determine how you appear in search results. Choose your words carefully!”

So load it up with some juicy keywords. Whether you are in sales, a job hunter, a quilt maker or a rapper… make every word in your Twitter bio do hard work for you.

6- Linkedin skills section. Even as late as the Fall people did not know about this. To be found by recruiters, people looking for your small business, or other possible connections, fill out your skills section on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/skills/?trk=skills-global-nav

7- Why Google+ really does matter. I am not going to argue the finer points of Google+ vs. facebook. Or, will Google+ die off? My only point is discovery. So go to do a search on Google right now. The very first tab in the top black header bar is +You. Google is ubiquitous. They are the #1 search engine. They use your Google+ profile to affect searches about you and your product or message. Don’t you want to manage that by owning this piece that they will use in query results surrounding your name? Still don’t need a Google+ profile? Even one as a placeholder?

8- There is no such thing as a social media expert. Social media is changing weekly. Sometimes it feels like the coders don’t even know what they are doing. Like almost every day now that Twitter hiccups on me in mid-Tweet. The powerhouses are those people who stay on top of the trends and tweaks and adapt. It’s a Darwinian-type thing. I cringe when people call themselves an expert in social media. An expert would have known 5 years ago that a Pakistani Twitter user would have captured photos of the US raid on Bin Laden and tweeted it before the world knew he was dead. No one dreamt of that utility. Not to mention the impact of overthrowing governments in the Arab Spring. We simply do not know where social media is going. It is powerful. It isn’t a fad. We have no idea how it will be used next… or what layout will be introduced tomorrow. Each time a platform makes a layout change, the way users interact with the site changes at a visceral level. How can someone be an expert on that? All we can do is immerse ourselves in the arena and change as it changes and pass that information along in our message and business.

9- Empire Avenue. Ick. I didn’t even want to include this one. People in my network, especially on Twitter, loathe and despise it. I think a big reason is that recruiters thought initially that they could source candidates from it. Of course they could not. Not really. But if you look at it as a social media game you might be able to get some uses out of it. I never Tweet about it or even talk about it, really. But I cannot deny - in any way- that Empire Avenue has introduced me to a lot of people I would have otherwise not connected with. I’m all about the networking stuff. I have been introduced to great new content. I have even gotten 103 new likes for my facebook page in the last two weeks of December from it. Instead of Modern Warfare, I play Empire Avenue - and I get a lot of useful bonuses out of it. Of course, if one is using social media platforms solely to develop a pipeline of candidates for their open positions, EA is probably not “for them”. But if networking is a passion, check it out.

10- Klout measures engagement, not influence. I our Klout score app bemoaned on Twitter every day. But Klout is definitely a useful tool. Not for measuring influence, I don’t think. Having influence over someone means you drive them to a measurable action. To a purchase, to organize around an idea, to do something about your message you can monitor in spreadsheets and with pie charts. Klout cannot track that. They are tremendously adept at measuring engagement though. For social media, engagement is where you get things done. Engagement is king. When I changed my perspective on what they actually measured, I got a lot more out of Klout. I even wrote a somewhat funny piece on it: http://heyoverbey.tumblr.com/post/12005750768/klout-blondes-and-other-distractions

So if we think of the score as an engagement number then I think we use it better.

And P.S., I have some +K to give away so let me know if you need some. Seriously!

11- Three types of successful personalities on social media. We have (a) the controversial or pot stirrer (b) the funny one and, although no good deed goes unpunished, (c) the genuine helper. There may be others (I’m thinking about those in the art community niche). These three are my favorites. The mundane and the repetitive get ignored… and blocked. I think what people mean when they tell us in blogs and posts “to produce quality content” is to be genuinely helpful, sometimes controversial or maverick, and be humorous. I just never hear them articulate it that well. Look up synonyms to adjectives. Vary sentence length. Like this. And vary the structure of your sentences. Poke fun of yourself. Tease the senses. And for the love of all things holy, please suck up to people. Don’t be sloppy about it. But mention, ReTweet & share, and read their work and comment on it.

12- Wordy is so 1911. Link to your blog and articles and keep the posts short.

There it is. Twelve musings from my social media diary. I would love some heated and juicy comments.

JLOverbey@gmail.com

It is the dawn of 2012 and Rumi seems so fitting…

“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

-Rumi (13th-century Persian Muslim poet and Sufi mystic)

Here is a shortlist of some of the top tips for jobseekers I have gathered from all my social media interactions from November 2011. Pass ‘em along…

(1) Although still in beta, fill out your skills section on Linkedin. You will show up in more search results. Even if you have a small business, still fill out the section with your expertise. You will get found more often. Here’s the link: http://www.linkedin.com/skills/?trk=skills-global-nav 

(2) The resume is NOT dead! (by way of: @CornOnTheJob). Are you following him? Yeah, you should be!  Here’s the link: http://www.cornonthejob.com/career-advice/resumes-and-cover-letters/think-the-resume-is-dead-you’re-wrong/

(3) Great interview question to always ask: What does a successful employee look like in their first 90 days here? How will you know that you hired the right person? (by way of: #HFChat - HireFriday every Friday at Noon EST on Twitter).

(4) STOP asking fluffy, dating-like questions in interviews - both recruiters and interviewees. Ask questions about measurable performance. (by way of: @levyrecruits - yeah, you need to be following him on Twitter, too!)

Companies have a problem to solve and clear challenges they are facing in an open position. Ask what those problems are. Then demonstrate in your interview exactly how you can and have solved those problems in your career.

(5) Google+ is taking off! From US News & World Report… Here are twelve people you can add to your circles right now who post about career information, job hunting and resume tips! (by way of: @HeatherHuhman and @ComeRecommended). Here’s the link: http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2011/12/02/job-seekers-who-to-add-to-your-google-circles Oh, yeah, I get an honorable mention. Shucks.

(6) Follow recruiters on Twitter! Here is @ResumeStrategy’s current Twitter list of over 400 recruiters you can add… and start engaging with today! http://twitter.com/#!/ResumeStrategy/recruiter-shop-talk

(7) While you are at it, Karen has an invaluable list of of 300 Twitter accounts who have identified themselves as job seekers! http://twitter.com/#!/ResumeStrategy/job-seekers

(8) A timely tip for looking for work during the Holidays. @ClarkHoward shares a great video tip about showing work ethic by STILL looking for a job right when you think the season slows job hunting down. It doesn’t! Hardcore recruiters will work right through December to fill positions. http://www.clarkhoward.com/videos/clark-howard/employment-military/a-timely-tip-for-job-hunters/vFPcw/

(9) I keep hearing it every month in every forum: DELETE the objective statement off your resume. Everyone knows your objective is to get an interview and a job. Delete it and free up that space on your resume to list more measurable accomplishments you have made over your career.

And, finally, use your network. Trite? Nope. I mean use them. Engage with them. What does that mean? On Twitter, start by ReTweeting the experts you follow and add a relevant reply when appropriate. On Linkedin, reply to posts in your groups you have joined, and read the Linkedin weekly update you get in your email. There you can comment on changes in your network and links that people in your industry have posted. And, if you are actively looking for work, add the word “SEEKING” or something similar in your profile title to increase your chance of showing up in recruiter search results.

Send me an invite to connect on Linkedin and let me know how I can help: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonleeoverbey 

Email: JLOverbey@gmail.com

Twitter: @HeyOverbey

Google+: http://gplus.to/HeyOverbey