Not sure if this makes me feel better or worse about myself. Don’t judge, just watch. Are you a new dork like me? Embrace it! Unleash your inner dork.

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GREAT video. Simple, and powerful and true! 9 minutes and 21 seconds worth your time to watch, laugh, and cry!

Thanks to Mitch Joel for pointing this one out.

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I will not follow you. And I thought I better let you know why.

1) You don’t have a real avatar – PLEASE upload a picture before you follow anyone. The default looks spammy and fake…and that’s NOT who you are if you’re a real person. I won’t follow you if you don’t have a real avatar.

2) You have more than 4 consonants or vowels in a row in your handle – Are you a real person if you create a handle like @jklsafjlk35 or @3523434kjklsa ? NOPE. I’m not going to follow you.

3) You have nothing in your profile, or worse, you have “Make money online” or “Buy Acai Berries” or “Want to buy Amway/Avon/Mary Kay/insert MLM here” in your profile – If you can’t make time to personalize your 160 characters in your profile, I’m not going to follow you. If you can only talk about these impersonal things in your profile, I’m not going to follow you!

4) You last 4 tweets are repeat tweets or are nothing but affiliate links – No RT (re-tweets) but repeat tweets. A tweet that says “Check out http://tr.im/mRuj” 5 times is NOT doing anyone any good and I’m not going to follow you! And if all your links point to affiliate marketing sites, I’m not going to follow you.

5) You follow 600 people but only 3 people follow you – If you are this out of whack, unless you JUST STARTED on Twitter, I’m not going to follow you!

6) 600 people follow you, but you only follow 3 people – You might be the world’s smartest person, but if you’re not listening to what other people say (even if you’re following me), you’re not as smart as you think. If your balance is this far out of whack, I’m not going to follow you!

7) I can’t see any @anyone messages on your page (and I may even scroll a few pages to see them). If you’re not into conversation, you and I probably can’t be friends. I LOVE CONVERSATION AND CONNECTION and so do most humans. If you don’t like conversation and connection, I’m not going to follow you.

8 ) You hashtag spam – If I click on the trends on the right side of Twitter and I see you are writing tweets with #spam #spam #spam #spam, I’m not going to follow you.

9) Someone I trust said not to follow you – If someone I already am following calls you a bad name, I’m probably not going to follow you. I may keep my eye on you, but I won’t follow you, at least not until I’ve built up some trust with you.

10) Your follow message got lost in my inbox – I get a lot of e-mails and sometimes, I lose the automatic Twitter messages I get when folks follow me. If that has happened to you, just send me an @philgerb, and I’ll be following you in a giffy.

Why don’t YOU follow more people?

Inspired by some recent Tweets by @rockintherobin

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Whether this new “social web” is new to you or you’re a web 2.0 veteran, this is a GREAT set of slides. Gavin Heaton talks you through a bunch of interesting “rules” and shows some great examples of what’s gone right so you can learn from others. You’ll also notice this presentation is already in version 6.0, as Gavin is continuing to update this to reflect our changing times.

Gavin Heaton, along with Drew McLellan, were the coordinators for the fantastic Age of Conversation projects  that gave a lot of money to worth charities…and helped over 300 people collaborate on 2 fun books.

Your turn:

• What questions do you have about the business of web 2.0?
• What do you want to learn?
• What can you teach us?

The best part about the “new Interweb” is that you have a voice. Please use it and ask for help…and use it to share what you already know!

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Top 10 11 LinkedIn Tips

1)      Your photo – Always include a picture of you smiling in your profile. It humanizes you and makes you seem more approachable. Mine is the same picture you see on the side of this blog.

2)      URL – Always customize the URL to be your name or something folks can remember. Mine is http://www.linkedin.com/in/philgerb 

3)      URL – If you don’t have your own blog or website, buy whateveryournameis.com and forward it to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t forget to include the www in your profile or it won’t work. 

4)      Name – Always include the way folks would know you so when they look for your name, they find you. Include your maiden name and/or nickname if applicable.

5)      Requesting Connections – Always customize your invitation when you ask people to join your network. Include how they know you, how you can benefit them by being a part of their network, and even how you hope to work with them in the future. Leaving this as the default says “You’re not important enough for me to customize this to you” or worse “You sent this to 200 people and are probably going to spam my network.” The default message of “‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” is NOT very compelling. 

6)      Email address – If you’re going to use your work e-mail address, always put your personal e-mail address on there as backup just in case you leave a company and forget your password.

7)      Export EVERYTHING – Monthly, export your entire profile and all your contacts so you have a hard copy backup. Email them to your Gmail account for double backup.

      Recommendations – Give folks you work with/for recommendations when they do great work. Be willing to revise them if folks find typos in your recommendation or if they want you to use different words to say the same thing. 

9)      Recommendations – Ask for recommendations after you do great work. Don’t be afraid to offer a suggestion of what a good recommendation to you might look like. Make sure you ask the right people for the right thing. The last thing you want to do is put someone in a place to give you a recommendation on something they can’t honestly say you did.

10)  Answers – Answer questions in your area of expertise, or recommend the questions you find to experts you know can answer them.

11)  Answers – Ask questions of your network when you need help (and for bonus points, publish the answer on your blog for all to read). Never ask folks to respond privately so everyone can learn from your questions.

What are YOUR best LinkedIn tips? Share them in the comments below.

If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn, please invite me to your network, and let me know how I know you, and I will be happy to connect to you. If you give me a generic “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” and we’ve never exchanged e-mails or I don’t remember you, then I can’t add you. I can’t let just anyone in my network.

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Example 1: Facebook Fail

On Facebook, Dan Leone, a now former employee of the Philadelphia Eagles, posted this status update:

“Dan is ******* devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver…Dam Eagles are Retarded.”

Result: FIRED from working with the Philadelphia Eagles! DOH!

Example 2: Twitter Twit

On Twitter, one job seeker who was offered a job Tweeted this:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

To which someone at Cisco responded:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

FAIL! No job!

In this economy (and with the Internet’s memory) it’s going to be a LONG time before either person finds a new one.

So what can we learn from this?

First, people are listening to what you have to say. If you use Google Alerts, or do a Twitter search, or watch your Facebook news feed, you can see what folks are saying in near real-time.

Second, everything you say online is captured FOREVER and it will be re-broadcast all over the world. The Cisco guy now has pages and pages of “re-tweets” for the phrase “cisco fatty” and there are 309 (soon to be 310) Google blog searches for “cisco fatty.”

Here’s the lesson:

Think twice before saying “Sally is a fat head” or “I hate my boss Phil!” Folks are listening. You probably are friends with someone who knows someone who knows someone who is friends with your boss, your co-worker, or your HR director.

What can YOU learn from this?

Sources:

• Facebook source
• Twitter source

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