Boomers' Blog

Recently HubSpot Blog published an article by Pamela Vaughn entitled “New Study by LinkedIn Shows How User Mindset Affects Social Media Marketing.” The article summarizes research done by the social media website LinkedIn. This research contrasts the mindsets people have when they are using social media sites for professional purposes vs. personal purposes. It got into why people use different social media networks and what they expect from them, along with the emotions they feel when participating on them. Here is a link to this article for you to read more: http://ow.ly/dZL8q What especially intrigued me was that toward the [...]

Who are your social media buddies? By that, I mean folks who you met through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media sites and who then became more than just a cyberspace connection. They became a friend. These folks may help you figure out the nuances of that particular social media site. Maybe they can be counted on to share your posts on Facebook or retweet them on Twitter. Perhaps they are the ones who took you aside privately and pointed out how you might have handled a situation differently on that site. For some reason, when I think of [...]

Today I met with a young woman just couple years out of college to brainstorm how she could use LinkedIn to help find her next job. Wanting to move away from the nonprofit sector where she has worked since college, she is struggling with how to “brand” herself in her headline on LinkedIn, a professional social media site.  She doesn’t want to limit herself by how she frames her headline, as she is applying for a wide variety of jobs. I encouraged her to include her major areas of expertise in her headline, for after all, she could use 120 [...]

One of the great benefits of expanding my connections on Twitter is that I have more folks offering me helpful tips in the way of articles and blogs via their Twitter posts. To me, these posts are gems that come into my life because I am active on Twitter. Sometimes I search proactively on Twitter using a keyword or two. Other times a post in my Twitter feed jumps out at me and captures my fancy. Just this week Javier Arronis @javierarronis tweeted about a article in Pro Blogger with a number of useful pointers about becoming more professional and successful as [...]

Do you remember when you first started using Twitter? I don’t mean when you first set up your Twitter account, but when you started tracking with Twitter on a regular basis? It’s just been a couple of weeks since social media guru Melody Jones @SocMediaMelody tutored me in Twitter 101. Since that time, I have systemically assigned all those I follow on Twitter into lists. I have tweeted more, and I have started to more frequently used the @ and # symbols. OK, for those of you who are pros at using Twitter, I know all this sounds pretty darn [...]

Are you age 50 or older and looking for work? If your answer is yes, you might want to check out Work Reimagined, a new service recently developed by AARP and powered by LinkedIn, the career-oriented social media website. http://workreimagined.aarp.org/ The August/September issue of AARP The Magazine gave a very helpful overview of this service on page 76. Here is a link to the online article: http://pubs.aarp.org/aarptm/20120809_CO?sub_id=ghP9yLlXA1Gv#pg66 Quoting from the article, “Work Reimagined can point you to those businesses on LinkedIn that have a special interest in workers with long experience….You’ll find firms that are looking for the strong work [...]

What is the purpose of a Facebook page for a Toastmasters club, service club or other group? Bring in new members. Build camaraderie within the club. Promote the club to the larger world. All the above. In my opinion, it can be all of the above, but each situation is different. During a discussion I recently led on how Toastmasters clubs can benefit from a Facebook group or page, the question was raised – does having a Facebook page bring in new members for that particular club? The answer was – not necessarily. Yet when Toastmasters (or members of any [...]