Godin + Scoble = differentiation

Back in March I wrote about CV’s (that’s a ‘résumé’ to satisfy my US readers).  In that post (admittedly pre-economic downturn and global credit crunch) I was joining a conversation about the need to have a CV to get a “remarkable” job.  At the time my gut instinct was “yes”, and remains that way.

In fact what I said at the time was; “In a world dominated by ‘average’ and ‘ordinary’, the easiest, fastest and most efficient means to show how remarkable you are is to stand out alongside ‘average’, and show it for what it is.  Be close enough to warrant comparison. Far enough apart to stand out.“

At the time Seth Godin said “If you rely on your resume, you’re playing the wrong game…” (see post comments); albeit he admitted he was being particularly hyperbolic in his original post to make his point.  I think he was right on both counts.

And yet just 7 months later – here we are.  For many, job hunting is a stark reality.  There’s doom,  gloom,  stocks tumbling and low low confidence.  Plus the heady mix of redundancy and competition.  And probably confusion with CV’s & résumés flying about amid posts like “Can LinkedIn win from losers?” and sort your CV cropping up left right and centre.  So what should you do if you need a job (remarkable or otherwise)?

My advice is read Seth’s original post as well as another by Robert Scoble who recently offered more advice just very recently.

A pinch of Godin + a dash of Scoble will get things moving in the right direction for you I am sure – and it will certainly help you begin to market your personal brand much more effectively.

‘Grown up’ social networking

There is a good piece in silicon.com today about LinkedIn, and how their CEO believes that it is very different to Facebook and the other social networking sites.

I agree, and somewhat bizarrely disagree completely.

I’m very much in tune with LinkedIn’s CEO and his thinking about LinkedIn’s role and ‘reason for being’. In fact I really struggle to understand why B2B professionals would not want to use the service – truth be told I am amazed it’s free.

But to assign other social networking sites into a ‘juvenile’ camp is naive. Maybe it is just semantics, and I am reading too much into it?

Take Twitter for instance. Over the last few days I have been following various people as they post comments (tweets) in real-time about events at SXSW (a music, film, and interactive conference and festival) particularly the uncomfortable keynote with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook‘s CEO) and Business Week‘s Sarah Lacy.

Hilarious. Live. Connected. Interactive. And certainly not juvenile.

Ok. Possibly not as thought-provoking or grammatically sound as a blog or elements of LinkedIn (e.g. Answers) but as a forum to share a stream-of-conscious babblings. Ideal.

Now the blogosphere is catching up on the whole Zuckerberg thang- with more detailed descriptions and reviews. But ultimately I learnt a great lesson in my use of Twitter over the last 48hrs. Its sufficiently different. Spectacularly different. And if you follow the appropriate people – seriously grown up.

Just like LinkedIn. Only different.

By the way I am here if you want to connect My LinkedIn Profile, My Twitter

Social Networks and a Golden Ratio

It’s bugged me for a while, and low and behold Seth Godin sums it up again. First. And that’s two posts in a row from me, with a Godin influence! Damn it that guy is good.

Anyway, Seth says “One of the mantras of networking (and the many social networking sites that people are flocking to) is that it matters who you know. The goal of having a thousand or more friends online is that you’re well known. Connected. A click away. I wonder if there’s a more useful measure: who trusts you?”

I really think that Godin is spot on. The plethora of social network sites will each raise the bar in 2008, particularly those supporting business professionals. Those that do a remarkable job will win and those that don’t will be bought – ironically for their members.

You see the way I see it, is that all the social networking sites want today is users, more users, more eyeballs, and more traffic. Their offerings are geared around this fact…….it’s an ethos based around getting users to create as many new users as possible.

That is why they create stuff like this:

And as a result, members of these sites are caught up in a fake narrative, “the larger the quantity of friends or contacts or watch lists you have – the more influence or connected you are.” Offcourse this can be right. But it’s not a rule. And it’s not the whole truth. I think continuous improvement of Social Networks will bear fruit.

It is pretty obvious Trust would be a great dimension for social networks to embrace. So would Influence or Buzz (or both). And when elements like this are developed I believe Social Networks will be onto something very significant indeed.

I hope when this concept is implemented however, it is more scientific (for example) than LinkedIn’s current ‘recommendations’, which is just a partial attempt to add intrinsic value; and is actually pretty valueless.

No, I am thinking Social Networks need some kind of ‘Golden Ratio’ that is both complex (like the actual Golden Ratio) that can be translated into something very simple and easily understood for network or community members. For instance if you park the equation elements of the Golden Ratio to one side for a moment, some very simple manifestations occur: like the distance from outstretched fingertip to fingertip equalling your height, or the length of your forearm equalling your foot size.

Suddenly it would be much easier to understand the value of connections, visualise them, interpret them and apply them appropriately. I’d really love some kind of ’sphere of Influence’ or Trust ‘rating’ to be applied to Social Networks.

Suddenly Digg, Technorati, Open Social and LinkedIn and Facebook bring on whole new dimensions – particularly for business users.

How would you like Social Networking sites to unfold or mature?

Social Graphs 101

Loads of people will be talking about Social Graphs in the not too distant future. Especially marketers. And especially marketers at high technology firms.

Got a Linkedin profile, but can’t be bothered ‘starting again’ or ‘replicating’ your personal network on Facebook, or Myspace or Hi5 – or visa versa? Worried about inaccuracy about data about you on Flickr that you haven’t updated recently, or that beta site that you can’t remember the name of? Or how about the theft / poor reuse of identity data concerning you? Want more control and the ability to manage your ‘relationship’ data? Offcourse you do.

Jeremiah Owyang recently penned a really good synopsis of what a Social Graph actually is – and what it means to you or your business.

To be honest I anticipate a real shift in the way that marketers have to re-design, or extend their community based marketing platforms or strategies to reflect this innovation. It is simply too logical, and I can’t see anything stopping this transition.

And when this innovation reaches a tipping point, won’t it be great logging into a website or web-service that leverages a central sign-on or Open-Social .api – and as a result ‘automatically’ promoting content with my permission that the ‘service’ knows is relevant to me…..like train timetables or advertisements or where to pick up my prescription medicine or a hire car.