Tag Archives: networking

Networking – Part II: How LinkedIn Fits In

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I’m not convinced that it does.

HandshakeIn the first part of this series, I summarized my views on good, old-fashioned networking and why I’m such a strong believer in it.

In this article, I’ll explain how I see LinkedIn, a professional social networking service, fit into my idea of networking.

LinkedIn

One of the biggest social networks for professionals is LinkedIn. The idea is that you set up an account and provide resume-like profile information. You then “connect” with other LinkedIn members, who become part of your direct network. Through them, you are indirectly connected to other people and can, supposedly, ask for introductions to make any of those people part of your direct network.

View Maria Langer's profile on LinkedInI’ve been a member for about two years now. As of this morning, I have 63 direct connections, 3200+ “two-degree” connections and a whopping 271,000+ “third degree” connections. Yet in the two years I’ve been a member with all these relationships, I have yet to get any leads — solid or otherwise — for work.

I’m not the only one. This is evidently a major complaint among members. Yet they all stick to it, trying to work the system.

Why LinkedIn Isn’t Working For Me

I have three theories on why LinkedIn is not working — at least not for me:

  • Linked in, being an Internet-based network, appeals primarily to technology people. So the user base is deeply skewed toward technology-related fields. I’m a writer who writes about using computers, so I’m on the fringe of this network. I think that people more heavily involved in technology may find LinkedIn more valuable. But I’m extremely disappointed with the number of aviation-related professionals on LinkedIn. Of the three that I’m directly connected to, I brought all of them into the system and two of them only have one direct connection: me.
  • Members have either the “what’s in it for me” or lack of confidence problem I discussed above. As a result, they’re not very likely to highly recommend contacts. To be fair, however, I have had no requests for recommendations in the past two years. In other words, no one has come to me and asked for information about any of my contacts, which include freelancers that do layout, indexing, writing, and all kinds of publishing-related work.
  • Members simply aren’t working the system.

You Gotta Work the System

A few months ago, when a LinkedIn contact asked me whether I’d ever gotten any work because of my LinkedIn membership, after admitting that I hadn’t and discovering that he hadn’t, I offered to ask a friend of mine who I consider a professional networking expert. She’s also a member of LinkedIn and she’s the one who’d pulled me on board. When I asked her the question, she admitted that she hadn’t gotten any work either.

“But I’m not trying very hard,” she added.

I knew immediately what she meant. You can’t simply put your name in a hat and wait for someone to call you with work. You need to work your connections. You need to make sure everyone remembers you and thinks about you when they have a need. You need recommendations. You need to build new connections through the ones you already have.

In other words, you need to network the old fashioned way.

And that’s where LinkedIn falls short of people’s expectations. Yes, you can use it to track down contact information for former classmates and colleagues and clients. But unless you actively keep in touch with these people, you may as well keep an address book in your desk drawer. LinkedIn only puts out what you put into it.

Full Circle

Which brings me back to my original example. Suppose I add Adam to my list of LinkedIn contacts. (The big challenge, of course, is getting him to sign up if he isn’t already a member — non-tech people are extremely cautious about signing up for any online service, even if it’s free.) And suppose Pete (remember him?) is also a member of LinkedIn and gets John to join. Pete refers John to me via LinkedIn. John sees my resume and is impressed. He asks Pete for an introduction. Pete uses LinkedIn to introduce me to John. John becomes part of my network and I introduce him to Adam.

Seems like a long, roundabout way to get things done, but if all of us were already members of LinkedIn before any of this started, it would go smoothly, like clockwork. And, theoretically, a lot of it would be do-it-yourself stuff, with John finding me through Pete’s contact list. A few clicks and introductions are made. E-mail is exchanged, then phone calls. And relationships are solidified by business transactions.

That’s the idea behind LinkedIn.

Sadly, that’s not what’s happening. Not yet. But I’ll continue to try to build my LinkedIn network and try to make some use of it.

Are You LinkedIn?

If you’re a linked in member, use the comments link or form for this post to share your LinkedIn user ID with the rest of us.

If you’re not, check it out. You might benefit from it.

Either way, I’d love to hear experiences of LinkedIn users. Use the comments link or form for this post to share them.

Networking – Part I: Doing It the Old Fashioned Way

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When it works…and doesn’t work.

HandshakeI’m a strong believer in networking as a way to build strong relationships with clients, customers, and colleagues. I’ve had some success with it, which is probably why I think it’s such a good thing.

But as times change, so do business techniques. The internet’s social networking features are grabbing hold and changing the way we network. Is it for the better? In this multi-part series, I’ll explore some networking concepts and services as I see them.

Real Networking in Action

For example, suppose I fly for an aerial photographer named Adam. Adam is working for Charlie’s company and has hired me to fly him around while he takes aerial photos of Charlie’s housing development under construction. During the flight, I’m impressed by Adam’s equipment, ability to give me clear instructions, and obvious know-how. He’s a professional, someone I feel privileged to work with. At the conclusion of the flight, I see some of his shots and they’re really good. I observe the way he works with Charlie and Charlie’s response. Everything I see is positive.

Three months later, I get a call from John who is interested in getting some aerial photos of a local mall where his company’s about to build a multistory parking structure. He’s been referred to me by Pete, a past client, and wants to know if I have a photographer on staff. I don’t, I tell him, but I know a photographer who’s experienced in this kind of work. I offer him Adam’s contact information, then, after hanging up the phone, send Adam a quick e-mail message to let him know that John might call.

The hope, of course, is that Adam appreciates the lead and uses my company for the flight. If I’ve done my flying job right, he’s recognized me as a professional who is capable of getting the job done. So perhaps Adam might recommend my company to another client who needs an air-taxi from Scottdale to Sedona. Or a gift certificate for a tour of the Phoenix area.

The result of my networking activities is that Adam and I both get additional business.

When Networking Goes Bad

Too often, these days, people have the “what’s in it for me” attitude. If they were in my shoes, they’d expect some kind of cash compensation — a sort of commission — from Adam if he got the job with John. They don’t realize that Adam might be working too close to cost to be able to cut them in on the action on such a small job. So Adam doesn’t take the job and they both lose.

Or there’s a confidence problem. Instead of offering Adam’s contact info to John, they’d try to broker a deal to keep themselves in the middle. They’d be worried that Adam might prefer using a different helicopter operator and that they’d lose John to someone else. But John may prefer to speak directly to the photographer to make sure the photographer meets his needs. When he can’t get in direct contact with him, he looks for his own photographer who might just have his own favorite helicopter operator. Again, they both lose.

I don’t have these problems. I’m not greedy and I have enough confidence to know that I can do the job satisfactorily. I pride myself on having a good relationship with all of my clients. I get a lot of repeat business to confirm that I’m doing something right.

How a Commissions Structure Fits In

I do need to make a few quick comments about commissions. I don’t want you to think that I’m completely opposed to paying commissions for leads. On the contrary: I work with several outside individuals and organizations who refer customers to Flying M Air in return for monetary compensation.

For example, I work with hotel concierges and pay them a 10% cash commission for hotel guest they book on one of my flights. (With tours starting at $795 in the Phoenix area, that’s not a bad take for making a phone call.) I also work with an individual at an aviation-related business who refers potential clients to me when her company cannot meet their needs. I send her a gift card purchased locally for each call that turns into a flight.

The main thing to remember here is that these people and organizations are not colleagues or clients. They do not have a business relationship with me other than as commissioned referrers. I think of them as a marketing arm of my company. This isn’t networking. It’s marketing and sales.

Next Week

That’s all I have to say — at least for now — about networking the old fashioned way.

Next week, I’ll start my discussion on Web 2.0′s social networking features with a look at LinkedIn and how I see its role in real networking.

In the meantime, why not take a moment or two to share your thoughts about networking. Do you do it? Has a referral really benefited you in the past? Use the comments link or form for this post to share your experiences.

I have Pownce Invitations

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So what?

After reading, mostly on Twitter, a lot of hype about Pownce, I finally got an invitation from a fellow Twitterer, newmediajim. I signed right up to check it out.

And was extremely unimpressed.

Pownce is PrettySure, Pownce is pretty — much prettier than Twitter. And Pownce is apparently attracting the more mature crowd that I wish used Twitter more frequently. And Pownce offers a lot of additional features, like file exchange, event sharing, and the ability to send messages to just your friends — or a specific friend.

But, as one of the recent TWiT participants mentioned on the most recent TWiT podcast, why do we need that? We have e-mail to send files and online calendar programs to send event notifications.

Finding new Pownce friends is virtually impossible without a “public timeline” like Twitter has — you can only see the messages posted by your Pownce friends and the people you are a “fan” of. Of course, there is the occasional “public” message, which goes out to everyone. But in the one week I’ve been a member, I’ve only received one of those, so it’s obviously not a feature people want to use.

And I really like Twitterific, which works with Twitter. The Pownce non-browser solution requires you to install Adobe Air and then an application that runs within it. I don’t know about you, but I think Adobe is even worse than Microsoft at installing a lot of useless under-the-hood crap on your hard disk when you install its software. I prefer to keep new Adobe apps off my computer unless I need them to get my work done. (Can someone explain what Adobe Bridge is all about and why I should keep it when I have a perfectly good Mac OS Open dialog?)

And then there’s the advertisements vs. fees we can expect in the future. A note on the Pownce sidebar urges you to “Go Pro!” This will support larger files — certainly larger than you can send in e-mail — and will hide advertisements. Right now, there are no advertisements. There aren’t any on Twitter, either — unless you count the never-ending stream of self-promotional tweets by some Twitter members (which are easily blocked out). Pro will cost you $20/year. Is it worth it? We’ll see. But I know that if Pownce starts filling up with advertisements, I’ll use it even less than I currently do — which is once every few days, just to check in.

Because you must have an account to participate at all on Pownce, the folks at Pownce give new members 6 invitations so you can invite your friends. Trouble is, I have enough trouble convincing my friends to get online with Twitter, which I prefer. If I’m going to bring new friends online to this new kind of social networking phenomena, I’m going to ask them to join Twitter, not Pownce. I have no desire to monitor both services.

Now I know that Pownce was created by the folks who gave us Digg. And there are rumors flying around that any anti-Pownce Diggs are being buried by the folks at Digg. (It would be interesting if everyone who read this post dugg it just to see if it survived this test; you can find a “Digg This!” link at the bottom of the post.) And the TWiT-TV team seemed to have a lot of respect for the programming team. But even they aren’t pushing Pownce. And that says a lot because they push almost everything they talk about.

In any case, I have 6 Pownce invitations — unless the folks at Pownce take them away from me for being so unenthusiastic. I’ll hand them out to the first six people who comment on this post and specifically say that they want an invitation. Please do not put your e-mail address in the body of the comment. Just put it in the e-mail field of the comment form; I’ll find it.

And if you’re reading this and already have a Pownce account, please use the Comments link or form to tell us what you think about it. Am I missing something? Or do you have the same general thoughts about Pownce?

And, for the record, I was equally unenthusiastic about Jaiku. Sorry.

Vox "Blogger" Copies and Pastes

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Another blatant case of copyright infringement.

I use Google Alerts to find articles that might interest me. Today, while going through a list of articles that came in earlier in the week, I found an article titled “Mac OS X Vs Windows Vista.” I clicked the link and was taken to a page on Vox, yet another blog-based social networking site. The blog entry began with the following brief introduction:

Doing my daily read of the news papers today and I came across a story asking which is the better OS, Windows Vista or Apple’s OS X. me I’m a mac users so I already know which is the better OS lol. Anyhow I’m sure you don’t want to read my one sided thoughts lol.

What followed that was a sloppy paraphrasing of the entire text of an article called “Vista versus Mac OS X” on Blogger.com. The Vox “author” had obviously copied and pasted the entire piece into the Vox-hosted blog, then edited selected sentences and added paragraph breaks to come up with a lengthy summary.

For example, the original says this:

On features alone it’s easy to conclude that Vista and Mac OS X are now on par but this overlooks two important elements. Firstly, the feel of both products is very different. In my opinion Mac OS X is unobtrusive and its interface intuitive and clean. Vista on the other hand makes you work for it. Take for example another new feature for Vista called User Account Control (UAC). UAC presents an intrusive dialogue box that warns you whenever you try to make a system wide change or install a new application. This will annoy most users however and you can just switch it off. But doing so overrides all of the new security measures Microsoft have built into Vista and makes the threat of infection from viruses or malware more likely. In contrast Mac OS X generally still remains virus and malware free.

And the Vox copy says this:

ON FEATURES alone it is easy to conclude that Vista and Mac OSX are on par, but this overlooks two important elements.

First, the feel of both products is different.

In my opinion Mac OSX is unobtrusive and its interface intuitive and clean. Vista, on the other hand, makes you work for it.

Take, for example, another new feature for Vista called User Account Control (UAC).

This presents an intrusive dialogue box that warns you whenever you try to make a system-wide change or install a new application.

This will annoy most users, however, and you can just switch it off. But doing so overrides all of the new security measures Microsoft has built into Vista and makes the threat of infection from viruses or malware more likely.

In contrast, Mac OSX generally still remains virus and malware free.

This is just one example. The entire piece was used this way.

Yes, the Vox blogger did link back to the original article. But why bother going there? All of the important points were already available on Vox.

And yes, the Vox blogger did include the name of the original post’s author. But did he have permission to use the entire article? I seriously doubt it. Was this “fair use”? I don’t think so.

As a writer, copyright infringement pisses me off to no end. A writer takes time to think about and compose an original, well-thought-out work. Who knows? It may have taken the article’s author hours to write the piece. How long did it take this lazy blogger to copy and paste its text into his blog? 15 seconds?

Obviously, I reported it to Vox. And I reported it to the author of the original piece. And then I left a comment for the blogger to think about.

Maybe (lol) he just doesn’t know any better (lol). Maybe (lol) Vox will set things right and teach him a little lesson about copyrights (lol).

It’ll probably put him out of business. As the sample of his writing shown at the beginning of this entry indicates, he obviously doesn’t know how to write anything worth reading.

By the way, the original article, by Danny Gorog, is pretty good. If you’re interested in these matters, I highly recommend it. You can find it here.

May 28 Update: The copy-and-paste blogger has deleted the comment I left on his offending blog post. If he cared about writers rights, he would have deleted the entire post. I’m curious to see what Vox will do about this. Probably nothing.

The Trouble with Treos

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Why my expensive new communications tool is going back to the Verizon store.

If you’ve been following this blog, you may know that I’m hoping to write my next two books at our off-the-grid “camp” on top of Howard Mesa. The place has solar panels that should generate enough electricity to power my computer equipment. But to work, I need an Internet connection — the one thing our place doesn’t have.

I explored my options. Satellite was too expensive. Wireless Internet available by pointing a specialized antenna at the top of Bill Williams Mountain wasn’t going to work because I was out of range. (The Internet guy drove up with test equipment last week to check.) That left the last option: a connection via a cell phone provider.

I’m a Verizon subscriber. I’ve been one for about six years now. Verizon has the best coverage in my area, with a nice strong signal in most places I go. I’m not a phone nut; I buy a new phone every 3 or so years. I’ve been using a Motorola flip phone for 3-1/2 years. No camera, no PDA, no Internet access, no fancy ring tones. It’s a phone, plain and simple. And it works well.

I went down to the Verizon store in the mall at Happy Valley Road in North Phoenix last Friday. (It’s a 41-mile drive from Wickenburg.) I walked in, got myself a sales person, and proceeded to tell her my needs: I need to be able to get any computer on the Internet from my cell phone. Somewhere along the line, I might have mentioned that I was thinking about a PDA. But I definitely told her I’d be connecting to a Macintosh.

Palm Treo 700pShe said the only PDA phone that would work with a Mac for syncing and Internet connection would be a Palm Treo 700p. She assured me that it would sync with my Mac using the included USB “tether.” I’d also be able to connect that tether to any computer with a USB port and, using that, get on the Internet. We talked plans and pricing and although it was going to cost me about $100/month to use the darn thing, Internet was unlimited. And the Treo has all kinds of cool features that would help make me more productive while on the road, including a keyboard for messaging, e-mail, Web browsing, and a camera. (Check out my TumbleLog for some photos I posted online from my phone on Thursday.)

So I bought it. And I bought the case, the Bluetooth headset, and the car charger to go with it.

I was incredibly busy on Friday night, all day Saturday, and on Sunday morning. But I still found time to set up tether and Bluetooth syncing. I didn’t find time to set up the Internet connection stuff for my PowerBook. But I just bundled all the hardware and software and manuals into my luggage and took it with me on my trip to California, figuring I’d have time to figure it out while there.

I didn’t have time until Thursday morning. And that’s when I realized that I didn’t have everything I needed to make it work. I needed software and it wasn’t on the Verizon Welcome disc.

So I used the Palm OS version of GoogleMaps on my phone (highly recommended) to find the Verizon store closest to Torrance Airport. And since we had about an hour and a half to kill, we drove over there. I brought my phone and the cables and the computer. And after some awkward confusion and two trips to the back room to consult with a hidden expert, the service person gave me the bad news: tethering did not work with Macs.

Of course, this is exactly the opposite of what I’d been told by the person who sold me the device. So who was I to believe?

Later on, I was able to get on the Internet and view the Web page with information about tethering. And it confirmed what the Torrance Verizon person had said.

Of course, I could still set up the computer to use dial up networking (DUN) with the cell phone. I was able to get the instructions to set up that from the Palm Web site, which I was able to view with the phone itself. I set it up and it worked. Then I realized that it might be using up my minutes — I only get 450 anytime minutes on my plan because I really don’t use my phone that much for chatting. So I called Verizon and asked. I was assured that the connection time to Verizon’s DUN system was included in my plan.

But DUN is about 1/3 to 1/2 the speed of the broadband connection I thought I was buying. And it can’t seem to hold a connection for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. And this phone cost a small fortune. So I’m not a happy camper.

And I still haven’t confirmed that it will work at Howard Mesa.

At this point, it’s likely that I’ll be taking advantage of that 30-day trial period Verizon offers to return the phone. With luck, they’ll have something that works correctly with my Mac. Otherwise, I’ll just have them reactivate my old phone and forget about Internet access via cell phone, at least for a while.

[composed in a hotel room while on the road with ecto]