Corporate vs Professional Individual Twitter Accounts

I’m having a challenge. I know I’m not the only one since this is a much discussed problem among various organizations in our field. I’m pretty sure there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution but I’d love to hear your suggestions.

Our consulting organization CEPSM has a Twitter account (@cepsm); and so do nearly all of the consultants that work here. That being said, we all primarily use our individual Twitter accounts (e.g. @mikekujawski) to build community around our passion/business since individual accounts always beat corporate accounts when it comes to building and fostering professional relationships. So the question is, what is the point of using the CEPSM corporate account when we are all actively involved in two-way business engagement on the same topic via our individual professional accounts?

Quick Tip – LinkedIn People Search

Whenever I give a workshop relating to social media, I often ask the following question when talking about social networks: “How many of you are currently on LinkedIn?”

In most cases about 60% of the people in the room put up their hand. I then ask those same people: ” How many of you have ever actually received any value from being on LinkedIn”?

One hand usually stays up.

What people tend to forget is that in most cases you’re not going to “receive” value simply upon signing up. This applies to all social media tools/applications. You need to be willing to put in some work (i.e. “give”) in order to receive. The truth is, the majority of people couldn’t be bothered and thus never end up using their accounts.

It is for those people that I want to provide the following simple use for LinkedIn, which involves very little time investment. It’s often overlooked and yet it’s right there front and centre. Basically, by following these steps you can find and connect with almost any person, from any industry in any city. The bigger your network, the better it works (concept of 3 degrees of separation).

1. Create a profile on LinkedIn
2. Build your network (add just me to start if you’re lazy)
3. Click on the “advanced” button
4. Type in your search criteria (limit your search to your network only, in order for introductions to work)
5. Browse the top results (they are listed in order of relevance by default)
6. Request an introduction
7. Fill in the blanks in the automated form.

This sets into motion an automatic message that will be sent to the connector from your immediate network as well as the end person that you are trying to reach. The ball is thus in their court and you will receive an answer 99.9% of the time. Just remember to limit your first degree connections to people that you have either personally met, done business with, or at least chatted via phone.

Why does this work?

Simple: When people see an introduction from a familiar contact, they feel obliged to respond. Don’t forget, 50 million users wouldn’t have signed up if this stuff didn’t work.

Have a look at my “Quick Tip” presentation below , which explains this exercise in visual form.

New season, new tools, new updates…

I’m back from a perfect honeymoon in Maui and ready to roll as usual, with the only difference being that I am now writing officially as a married man. Feels nice.

One thing I noticed upon my return was the amount of changes to my everyday social media tools of choice. Leaving the online space for two weeks feels like a year when you’re used to everyday engagement. Here are a few popular tools and apps that have recently been updated (plus three new ones). Be sure to get the latest version(s) if you haven’t already.

• Tweetdeck: New Tweetdeck Directory and ability to drag and drop links into your tweets. Also has improved integration with Twitter and MySpace accounts. Still my dashboard of choice for all status updates.
• iTunes: Completely new iTunes Store interface and Podcast directory. No more popularity index. Very useful podcast search engine though. Still quite slow on the PC platform when compared to an equivalent Mac.
• Twitter.com: The main landing page has been updated to reflect Twitter’s most powerful feature, search! Good move. Better late than never.
• Google Wave: The long awaited Google Wave has officially launched (by invitation only at this point). I’m not ready to offer a review at the moment but be sure to request an invite on their website to try it out yourself.
• Google SideWiki: Another tool launched by Google that will grow very quickly in my opinion. Basically it’s a sidebar wiki, which allows users to make comments on any web page. Why do I think this will be popular if many existing plugins already offer this functionality? Hmmm, how about the fact that this one belongs to Google!
• Klout: A great new tool for analyzing and comparing your Twitter stats and level of influence. There is a one time wait of at least 30 minutes for your profile to be analyzed.

Let me know if I missed any big ones.