patti wilson's blog

Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit Next Week

I attended last year and it was great networking. If you are in Silicon Valley next week do drop on by. This year, I will be in Scottsdale, Arizona presenting at the MBA Career Services Council on :

How to Use Social Media Tools to Brand, Network, and Connect in a Web 2.0 Job Search 

 

 

Mary Furlong and Associates and Santa Clara University are hosting the sixth Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit on June 16 and 17, 2009 at Santa Clara University. You are invited.

This marks the sixth year of bringing together academics, investors, entrepreneurs and industry experts to network and share deep insights into marketing to and developing businesses aimed at those over the age of 40.  This summit addresses Aging in a multidisciplinary way, and may provide a rich environment for you to network -- as well as share your expertise with our attendees.

They are pleased to extend a special SVBVS rate to my network of $85 (General Registration Rate is $99).  At registration, please use discount code: scupm09.  Please pass this around and share this opportunity. 

To review the program, and register, please visit www.scuboomerventure.com and click on the registration, use discount code scump09 to register.

Linkedin is not a Tool, It's now a Social Network

Yup, it’s been a devastating week all round. First I hear that Google cutting back on free food and now Linkedin has gone over to the dark side. Seriously, they have finally become a social network (see below)…..like they should have 5 years ago.

It is no accident that Facebook has over 100 million members in less than two years up from 13 million after they opened up their community to the world beyond the college crowd. The problem Linkedin has, I've been told, is that only 20% of its 20 to 30+ million members or less are actually using it…..and they may all be recruiters. 

Research and real life has shown,  if you create community and connection, people will interact and be active in a social network.  Linkedin has now seen the light. To grow from 100M in revenues to 200 in revenues and go public, they will need a lot more eyeballs and quickly. How do you get them? Move to social networking using the group feature. 

At Linkedin’s inception in 2003, I told Reid Hoffman, former CEO, now Chairman of the Board, that they needed to create community to really enable cohesive connections among networkers.  He and his crew insisted it was a "tool "not a social network.   What is it that guys have about their tools while women need to talk things out and build community?

Interestingly enough, a whole cottage industry led by the top networkers on Linkedin, such as Vincent Wright and Marc Freedman created communities off linkedin using, ironically, Yahoo groups. Linked in Lions, Dallas Blue (now just Blue) and My Linkedin Power Network have gathered thousands of participants talking, contributing and connecting off Linkedin.

They all have groups on Linkedin so perhaps Linkedin will bring their communities back into the fold. As the competition from other niche social networks have grown, Linkedin’s only option is to make the social networking space for them within its site or lose them altogether.

Reid, I told you so! It is going to be interesting to watch how you make a revenue model out this. It will be a success as people have been craving this. I bet this gets more women involved and active on Linkedin now.

Dear Patti

First, thank you for managing your group on LinkedIn. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you devote to your members, and we know they value it. Together you have made Groups one of the top features on LinkedIn.

This Friday, we will be adding several much-requested features to your group:

• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
• Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.

We're confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.

Sincerely,
The LinkedIn Groups Team

Using IT Vendor Sites for Promotion

Anyone who is an independent consultant providing IT services to companies should consider posting their information on Knowledgestorm, or Bitpipe.  Similar to Guru and E-lance and Linkedin, they use the info-mediary power of the Internet to promote your services.  Passively promoting yourself even when you aren't looking for the next gig, deal or position keeps you visible and "in play". And it will make your next search faster and easier.  Make sure that what you say is consistent across venues, sites and networks because Google doesn't discriminate when a search is done on your name. Everything will come up for view. But give the research that Knowledgestorm and Marketing Sherpa jointly conducted, IT professionals use advanced search tools and preform boolian searches (see below). Obviously those speeches you did in another life may come back to haunt you.

Here are excerpts from the public relations postings from Knowledgestorm's site to give you a flavor of what they purport to do.

About KnowledgeStorm
KnowledgeStorm is the Internet's top-ranked search resource for technology solutions and information. We help technology vendors reach technology buyers as they are searching on-line and convert them into Web leads. 

Leveraging the KnowledgeStorm Network of premier partners and its extensive search expertise, .......reach technology buyers and deliver the information they need no matter where their search begins...... Among the key findings, technology buyers are using more complex search terms. Fifty-six percent use three or more words in their search phrases. Nineteen percent use search operators such as "and" and "or" as part of their search phrase. Technology buyers are also going deeper into the search results, as much as five pages deep. Only 11 percent of buyers don't go beyond the first page of results.