May 14, 2016 By Leave a Comment

Keep Your Enemies Closer

(Admitted, I spend too much time on Quora, and now I’m trying to at least get some business value from that time.)

Wake Up Wednesday PM at the Pittsboro Roadhouse

Wake Up Wednesday PM at the Pittsboro Roadhouse

Last week, I saw this question: Am I right to remove competitors from a company event?

No, dear heart, you are not right. My answer:

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

It is marginally ok to expel them. People will understand. You will look like a dweeb. It is not professional.

Maybe they’re looking for job, and want to work for your company. Maybe you’ll be looking for a job, and wind up working for their company. Maybe you can gain intelligence, too. If your employees are leaking secrets, you have different problems than feeding your competition at your event.

A man I knew years ago built a pool in the backyard, not really because he wanted a pool, but because he wanted his house to be the place where his kids hung out with their friends, and a pool was a good way to make that happen. You want to be the place where people gather.

Filed Under: B2B 658.8, Leadership 303, LinkedIn, Networking 658.8
September 25, 2015 By Leave a Comment

Social Selling for Red Hat

NCSU’s Technical Training Solutions unit was asked to develop a Social Selling class for Red Hat’s sales employees. Martin Brossman, Greg Hyer, and Karen Tiede worked together to develop a six-hour course, with an additional set of homework to be completed outside of class.

Possible Deb Butterfield horse in SFO.
Fountain in Detroit airport.

Holly Sullenger, director of TTS, travelled with me to Palo Alto to beta-test the course with the sales staff in that office. They had been asking for additional social selling training, and wanted to see the material as soon as it was ready.

Working on Linkedin Profiles.
View from the Palo Alto classroom at Red Hat’s offices.
Opening the class at Red Hat, Palo Alto, CA.
Red Hat logo.
Holly Sullenger leading a class exercise at Social Selling for Red Hat.

The class went well. As is always the case, there’s nothing like teaching to show you what can be more robust the next time around. Both Holly and I realized we need to be doing more on Twitter. Future iterations will also have more on the three main ways to use Linkedin: input, profile, and output.

Look for an excerpt of the training on Slideshare soon.

Next time, too, we’ll just take the red eye flight home. It’s just as easy to stay till midnight and sleep on the plane as it is to get up early to make a 6 am flight.

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Networking 658.8, Social media 658.87
October 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Load a Portfolio to Linkedin

Post a Portfolio of Your Work to Linkedin

Linkedin is not a very image-friendly application. If you are successfully displaying your work on any of the portfolio sites including Pinterest, you may not need to worry about Linkedin. However, lots of professionals use the site, and adding either or both of the two portfolio display options to your profile doesn’t take very long.

Behance Creative Portfolio Display

If you already maintain a portfolio at Behance, link to it using the Creative Portfolio Display application (More / Get More Applications / scroll — on my account, Behance is #10).

Behance is the portfolio engine for Pantone, BTW.

SlideShare

At the time of this blog post, you can’t open a SlideShare account through Linkedin directly. (Check under More / Add more applications / Slide Share.) You can create a free account at SlideShare, and then link a presentation to your Linkedin Profile (as well as share it in your updates and groups).

Use MS PowerPoint or your choice of presentation software (most formats are supported) to create a deck with images of your work.

Think about a useful file name if you are going to allow downloading. Once files are downloaded, they are easily lost if the file name is something like “Portfolio 2012.” Use your own name and useful search terms to help viewers find the file again. (Put contact information in the header or footer of each slied, as well.)
Add captions and watermarks as needed. Load your portfolio presentation to SlideShare, and then let your network and groups know, as appropriate.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, How to 680, Images 770, LinkedIn, Social media 658.87
September 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pinterest and LinkedIn

Connecting Pinterest and Linkedin

Apart from your profile picture, LinkedIn doesn’t offer a lot of support for images, but all is not lost.  Linkedin has a LOT of activity, and because most of the people on that platform are employed, they tend to have a bit more money than the average visitor.  Even if Pinterest is driving the bulk of your traffic, take an minute and make sure Linkedin knows about your Pinterest account.

Add a Website link to your Pinterest account

Pinterest displayed as one of three websites on your profile.

Your Pinterest account can be one of the three website links displayed on your Linkedin profile.

Use one of the website link options to point visitors to your business account, and one of the others to point to your Pinterest account.

Select the “other” option on the first drop down (rather than any of the fixed options) and Linkedin allows you to create your own label for the URL.

Linkedin's Website listing

Select the “other” category to create your own label for the URL, and then enter the full link to your Pinterest account.

Filed Under: B2B 658.8, LinkedIn, Pinterest
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