LinkedIn: Social Networks Aren’t Just for Socializing

Note: hyperlinks in red

I think of Twitter as a cocktail party, and FaceBook as dinner party. Both can be fun, but they can also be noisy and full of drunk people.

LinkedIn is a place where business happens.

I’ve been on LinkedIn for four years. LinkedIn is a social network that allows you to make connections with trusted contacts and essentially create a personal Rolodex in the cloud. But it's much more than that.

In addition to the convenience of finding your important business connections in one place, it offers a host of useful resources for job seekers, sales people who are prospecting, and recruiters who are looking for qualified people to fill jobs. There are too many benefits to enumerate, but it’s not just a social network—it is a database of people and companies that can be searched geographically—and most of what it offers is freely available.

In 2006 my real-life best friend and fellow graphic designer started a job at PopCap, and she invited me to join LinkedIn. At the time, LinkedIn was populated with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business professionals, and required an invitation to join. In spite of its gated approach, its membership grew from five to eight million that year.

In 2007 when Facebook opened its doors to everyone and its membership took off, LinkedIn followed its lead, and by the end of the year it had more than 15 million users.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, not everyone joins LinkedIn, but those who do recognize its value. Today LinkedIn has more than 80 million members across 200 countries and seven continents, and continues to grow at the rate of one new member per second.

When I opened my account, I invited a number of business associates to join me. But before I did, I spent time aggregating information, then wrote an introduction, cleaned up my resume and gathered other relevant data to populate my profile. At that time, profile pictures weren’t included, but they are now, and I think it is worthwhile to include a good photo that reflects the image you wish to project.

I'm not passing myself off as an expert, but I'm sharing what has worked for me.

ADVICE ABOUT HOW TO PUT YOUR PROFILE TOGETHER:

Clean up your resume.
Have someone with editing skills review it for spelling, grammar and punctuation. Don’t rely only on built-in grammar and spell checking tools, as they don’t necessarily detect context or poorly written prose.

Introduce yourself, including information prospective employers or colleagues would be interested to know.
Your LinkedIn page is like an agent who promotes your image to others when you aren’t there to do it yourself. Think about the kinds of experiences you have that sets you apart from others who offer the same goods or services, and make your case.

Identify your affiliations with professional organizations 
and groups.
For example, if you and a prospective employer are connected via an alumni group, that could be a point of connectivity. But LinkedIn is not Foursquare, and there isn’t a competition for the number of “badges” you display. Adding affiliations needs to be done sensibly.

If you feel you can contribute substantively, answer questions as an expert in your field.
Members can pose questions, and you can enhance your reputation if you can answer, conceivably positioning yourself as a “go-to” person in a particular discipline.

Take time to consider and make note of your achievements and honors.  Today I spoke with a friend who was cited as a tech maven in a Huffington Post story. I think most people would be interested to know about it, and it should be included in a profile.

Participating in your community as a volunteer demonstrates teamwork and good citizenship—attributes that are important to many employers and very often mirror their values. If you have contributed through volunteering, say so. 

Who should you connect with? To begin, I think you should connect to real-life current and former colleagues, associates and employers. They know you and will accept your connection request.

And finally, identify people who can recommend you.
You can ask a former boss or colleague if they will write a recommendation for you. You should ask only people who have direct knowledge of your work. 

If someone takes the time to help you—I can’t stress this enough—you MUST thank them—preferably with a handwritten note. Why do that instead of sending an email? Because few people do it and it makes you stand out. I’m often amazed at how people fail to formally express thanks when someone goes out of their way to do something for them. There is a great story about the importance of handwritten thank you notes in Chapter 41 of Randy Pauch’s The Last Lecture. Read it.

LinkedIn has led to my receiving unsolicited job offers, which illustrates what it can do for people, even passively. It provides options to link to your Twitter feed and to post status updates, and recently partnered with Behance to link visual work samples to user profiles. But for the most part, you will find only salient information on LinkedIn. Unlike an individual web site which must specifically be sought out, when a person is searching LinkedIn, they are already in the mode to find you.

It really is a no-brainer: An investment of time on your LinkedIn profile can be beneficial on a number of levels. And beside the strictly business end of things, there can be a social aspect of joining groups where others share your interests or expertise.

When I started using Twitter in 2008, I would occasionally see people refer to LinkedIn as a network for old people. Since then, I’ve seen my kids and their friends graduate from college, and more and more of these twenty-somethings are joining LinkedIn and asking to connect.

As LinkedIn has evolved and innovated, one thing hasn’t changed: IT WORKS.
____________________

One reader mentioned he'd received a LinkedIn invitation from me, which is a concern. Please beware—it could be spam.

Friendship in the Digital Age

Hyperlinks in grey

My BFF Paula Wong and BTF Krystyn Chong. Photo by The Milkie Studio

I've lived in Seattle most of my life and have friendships that span decades. My BFF Paula Wong and I are both sansei — third generation Japanese-Americans. We went to some of the same schools and through different paths we became graphic designers.

Knowing each other for 45 years, we've watched our kids grow from infancy to adults. Professionally, we’ve gone from lead type, phototype and Exacto knives, to falling in love with our first Macs more than 20 years ago. In fact, I have Paula to thank for my tech addiction! When she worked for Aldus, Paula gave me a much-needed nudge to switch from traditional to digital design.

Having shared history, knowing each another's families, being there to experience and support major life events means we share a friendship with great depth and meaning — a rare gift in an era where life moves so quickly that often all we can do is skim the surface.

I think real friendships are important to all of us. How would we get through life without them?

L-R: The Sansei Lunch Club: Paula, Terri, Vic Kubo and Glen Iwasaki. Four graphic designers and friends who have been celebrating birthday lunches since the 1990s.

People now have more ways than ever to connect, but I sometimes feel like technology is isolating me from — rather than bringing me closer — to some of my real-life friends.

It's easier to send an email than pick up the phone. Getting together takes time and effort. Have email, Facebook, Twitter and Skype actually caused erosion of “real” friendships? With the expansion of our communities through social media, where do “virtual” friends fit into the current cultural landscape? And how does the quality of real-life relationships differ from those conceived online?

During the past 18 months I’ve “met” some great people through social media who have caused me to re-examine my perceptions about what encompasses a real friendship.

Last month, Krystyn Chong, my “BTF” (Best Twitter Friend) flew to Seattle to attend Gnomedex, a tech conference founded by Chris Pirillo. Previously we’d talked on the phone and frequently emailed and messaged each other, but had never met in person.

Krys is a persona. She's connected to incredible people in all walks of life, and draws them toward her like a moth to flame. A long-time blogger and online denizen, she’s made a name for herself, not just because she's attractive and smart, but she’s a social media aficionado. She has 15,000 followers on Twitter, regularly creates content for her blog, is a popular DJ on Blip.fm, and recently began publishing to Vimeo with works like “Twitter, Turn it up!”

She and I met for the first time at Chic Meets Geek, a pre-Gnomedex event, and later she stayed with my family and me for four days. She is pretty, petite and lively — definitely WYSIWYG. But spending time together was important because it allowed me to get beyond her online personality. It was great to do that. How else could I have known that she would develop a crush on my 23-year-old son? Or that she loves Skittles?

It’s amazing to have "friends" all over the world, whose birthdays are celebrated, and whose life events are updated and inquired about in much the same way we would with friends in real life. Online friendships are especially great for people who are shy or want to maintain a layer of anonymity. If they aren't "cool" in real life, they can be cool online. As the famous New Yorker cartoon said, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” 

The above cartoon by Peter Steiner has been reproduced from page 61 of July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, (Vol.69 [LXIX] no. 20) Its use is editorial only.

So I’ve found myself in a strange new place, where numerous messages I exchange each day are with people I haven't met yet, but I've come to care about very much.

It's hard to imagine having a friendship like Paula's without the two of us spending so much time together over the years. I'm lucky to have — and grateful for — all of my friendships. But I long for the time when I will meet some of my online peeps in real life. For me, meeting face-to-face authenticates a connection in a way that can’t be accomplished otherwise.

I'm looking forward to some day being able to give my virtual friends real (((hugs))) instead of virtual ones.

_______________________________

Paula Wong is Senior Director of Creative Labs for the fabulously successful (and addictive) PopCap Games in Seattle, WA. 
Krystyn Chong (@krystynchong) is a social media maven in Sacramento, CA. Find her blog at dreammm.posterous.com/. 
Photographer Fred Milkie’s recently published book, Alone Around the Mountain, has been nominated for a 2011 PNWB award.
Thanks to award-winning copywriter David Horsfall for reading this journal entry.

How I Became a Twitter Junkie

In October of 2008, Aaron, a client, told me I NEEDED to get with it and get on Twitter. Aaron (@SeattleBlank) is, like, 30 years old, and is a VP for a public relations firm, and someone I respect.

As a graphic designer, it's important for me to keep up with what's current. It's tantamount to social currency. So sheepishly, I opened an account.

It felt weird, though, all alone in what I'd describe as my "Twitter Room," and since I didn't really know what I was doing, I proceeded to post rather banal tweets about who I was meeting for dinner and where, or the projects I was working on, etc., as if anyone could care. There was no interaction or response by anyone. Was it any wonder that I was unimpressed with the whole thing? It seemed pointless and stupid. I did very little with Twitter for the first 4 months.

Whenever someone started following me, I couldn't understand why. They didn't know me. I thought, "why in the world would this perfect stranger want to follow me? Is he/she a stalker?"

I was paranoid and protected my tweets - and had only a couple dozen followers for several months. But it was intriguing to have people request to follow me and I began obsessing over how many followers I gained or lost. When I'd lose someone I sort of took it personally. It was like, why did they leave me?! Eventually I removed "protect my updates." What, exactly, was I protecting?

For many months I didn't realise it is almost a courtesy to follow back people who follow you (unless they are spammers or clearly have nothing that interests you). I wasn't doing that. Also, I didn't realise a person couldn't send me a direct message (DM) unless I followed them back. In fact, I was doing so many things the wrong way, but I didn't know it!

In January, 2009, I had 42 followers. I decided to reexamine Twitter to determine whether there was any real value, and to give it a serious try. This meant reading everything I could and learning about what people were interested in, and discovering the tools to manage it all. My tweets, until this point, had been boring and offered no value to my followers. How could I make myself more interesting? And what kinds of things did I want to share? After all, everything I tweeted would be a reflection of some facet of myself.

Taking cues from people like Peter Cashmore (@mashable), Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), Seth Simonds (@sethsimonds), and others, I tweaked my tweets, learned about retweeting (RT) and (@) replies. I learned an embarrassing lesson about DMs from Seth Simonds. I'd sent him a direct message and he couldn't reply because I hadn't followed him back. So he posted an @ reply that explained why he couldn't respond to me, and added something like, "I am an aardvark," to point out how silly it was to send a DM without following back. Seeing that on the Twitter feed, I felt like an idiot! (Note: I later sent him a DM, telling him I hadn't understood the mechanics, and he couldn't have been nicer.)

Eventually I figured out my own game plan: be myself but don't focus on myself; post tidbits of information that I find interesting; tweet YouTube videos that make me laugh; share silly things or stuff about the iPhone (something I LOVE), or tweet breaking technology news and other items of interest.

I started paying attention to what was going on around me, being more thoughtful about the news I'd read, and when reviewing email links people would send, I'd wonder if they were "tweetworthy?" I started really working hard at finding things that delivered value, entertainment or information to my followers. Also, I learned it is considered an act of generosity to retweet (RT) - or re-post an item you've read elsewhere, making sure the original person is credited with an @ attribution. And one more important thing: thanking people with an @ reply when they RT something I've posted, or sending them a DM, is just plain good manners.

You can tell you're doing something right when your tweets are RTed. It's a great feeling and addictive because RTs are like little affirmations that say "you did well!" The next great feeling is to have someone #ff or #FollowFriday you. (BTW, the # is called a hashtag, and is a shortcut marker for people to search for a topic or trend.) On Fridays, Twitterers (AKA Tweeps, Tweeple, Twits, etc.) recommend people worth following. When you see your name with a #ff or #FollowFriday, it's quite a compliment because it means your tweets are interesting enough for your followers to recommend you to others.

When I changed my game plan, the number of my followers increased. Each day I would gain a follower or two, then 5 or 6, then 10 or 11, etc. So my measly count that hovered around 40 or 50, gradually grew to more than 700 over the course of several months. I know, that is a tiny volume when Barack Obama, Oprah and others have millions, but considering I'm just a graphic designer in Seattle, Washington, I'm honored to think people find me worth following. And because I thrive on positive feedback, I'll continue to work hard to make it worth their while.

Postscript:
Since this blog post was originally written, I've discovered it pays to do due diligence and vet followers before following back. A good friend, @Tech_Blend (Ahad Bokhari) wrote a blog post about follower/following ratios, which also influenced my actions. His blog post: http://blogspot.fluidnewmedia.com/2009/11/the-new-currency-on-twitter-%E2%80%94-value/

Vindictive Billing

I'm a self-employed graphic designer, so it's important for me to establish relationships with clients in order to cultivate ongoing work. It's usually easy to do this since most people are basically nice, and often my clients become close, personal friends.

But on occasion you might encounter "the client from hell." -- you know, the one who calls you evenings and during the weekend and emails you at all times of the day and night, expecting you to drop everything so you can finish their urgently important project. Please note, these are precisely the people you don't want to have your home phone number.

In case you don't know, the clients who are the most trouble almost always are the ones who want to take the greatest advantage of you. In fact, there seems to be an inverse ratio of “pain-in-the-ass factor” to “billable hours/expenses.” The more problematic the client, the more demanding they are and the less they want to pay. The pro-bono clients are the worst, because you often have to bump paying work to accommodate their freebie project. You’d think the people paying you the biggest bucks would be the worst and expect you to bend over and grab your ankles, but actually, they’re usually the most reasonable AND appreciative.

My best friend, A.G., and I have had many conversations about each of our “hemorrhoidal” clients. One of the worst insisted on coming to the studio and standing over A.G.’s shoulder, directing changes until her blood pressure nearly exploded. Twice I’ve had clients like that, and when it became apparent how much they enjoyed twinking with work on screen, (“Gee, isn’t it just the most fun to work together this way?!”) they were banished from my office. I had to explain to them I couldn’t work that way, but would be happy to address their concerns if they would like to articulate them to me in a meeting, via email/Acrobat or fax. (By the way, A.G. eventually fired her client.)

Which brings me to the concept of “Vindictive Billing.” Lots of firms and individuals tack on a “rush charge,” when a client forces a project to the front of the queue. Rush charges are usually double and cover a lot of ground (working late, working weekends, phone calls, emails, meetings, and whatever else is required to get their job done). It’s a reasonable consequence of rushing something.

But Vindictive Billing works like this: when you’re designing for a client who doesn’t value your work in the first place and you KNOW they’re going to jerk you around anyway, it is perfectly reasonable to charge them more. I even know of a printer that has an invoice line item called, “mental-anguish change orders,” for clients like this, penalizing them for making arbitrary or idiotic changes -- usually under extremely stressful conditions. Once when my husband asked a contractor his hourly rate, the contractor said, “$50 an hour if I work alone; $75 an hour if you watch, and $100 an hour if you help.” He practiced preemptive Vindictive Billing!

You can’t always identify this kind of client right off the bat, but the next time you work together — if there is a next time — you need to incorporate the pain-in-the-ass factor into the cost of the job. And if they don’t like it, in the words of Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli, “Time to Say Goodbye.”

Confessions of a Graphic Designer

My best friend and I both are graphic designers. We're sort of geeky because we like talking about new hardware and software (we both idolize Steve Jobs) and sometimes even reminisce about our favorite versions of various applications, like Freehand versions 3.1, 5.5 and 8. (Freehand MX is a pain!)

Since we're both self-employed and occasionally suffer from that odious malady, procrastination, at times we've had to explain to clients why a project may be delayed.

In discussing this universally common situation with colleagues, we found designers have some unique and some not-so-unique excuses. Some of the more believable ones (because in some cases, they were authentic) include:

1. My hard drive crashed and I had to reformat my drive and reinstall all of my software
2. I had a press check or the press check was delayed
3. I had to visit someone in the hospital / go to a funeral
4. My email / network / server was down and I never received the files / images / work order
5. I was sick
6. The Fedex / UPS / Airborne package didn't arrive
7. The Word / image files you sent were corrupt
8. I was out of town
9. I had a photo shoot
10. The disc you sent was unreadable (most plausible if the client is on a PC and you're on a Mac)

Being a graphic designer is sort of like being a doctor on call (except you make heaps less money), so press checks and photo shoots really can occur with pretty short advanced warning, and they're sacrosanct: No one ever questions them. The really pathetic thing is, none of the above excuses would be necessary if people could simply STOP procrastinating.

Which brings up the question of why so many people wait until the last possible moment to do things?

Creative people have a tough job -- they HAVE To be creative ALL OF THE TIME. It's just expected that if someone calls with a project, you will magically come up with the most brilliant solution. How many times have I combed through CA annuals, printing and paper samples and my personal stash of "inspirational" scrap (crap?) in search of something to act as a catalyst? When people say "everything is derivative," I have to think somewhere along the line, someone had to have had an original idea.

But the pressure of always having to come up with the next big idea can be so daunting that it's hard to get started. So, reaching back to my earliest days in this field, I remembered something from a book I read ("How to Gain Control of Your Time and Your Life"), which described the concept of "punching holes."

Punching holes is this: Imagine your task as a sheet of paper. Then take the huge task before you and break it into pieces.

1. The first thing you can do that is easy is to start a folder for the project by putting the project name on it.
2. Maybe one of the pieces is viewing and editing a batch of images to see if any of them are usable.
3. The next could be starting the document in the application you're going to use to create the project and just labeling it and saving it.
4. The next piece could be printing out all of the word documents the client has sent and arranging them in the folder.

You get the idea. You "punch holes" in this virtual piece of paper until it resembles a piece of Swiss cheese. Then when you look at what you need to do, you find a great deal has already been accomplished, so the project isn't so daunting.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is. But even so, the temptation is to find any excuse to get going. Some of my favorites:

1. Clean my office
2. Go through old job folders/envelopes and toss out stuff I don't need anymore
3. Re-arrange my discs
4. Look for something I haven't been able to find
5. Import music into iTunes
6. Go out to lunch with a friend
7. Go shopping
8. Read
9. Wash and detail my car
10. Cook or bake something

In thinking about this, I've come to realise something: If graphic designers act out this anxiety-provoking behaviour, I wonder about personal injury attorneys, tax accountants or sous chefs? I mean, everyone must have their job-related secret behaviours. What are yours?