Still working on that whole getting-back-to-blogging-thing…
It’s a start, right??
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From the category archives:
Social Media
Cartoon by Hugh
I am always amused by blogging about blogging but I’ve done it before and this post came to me when I was lying in bed wide awake at 3:00 a.m.
I had just woken from a dream in which I was in a field being bombarded with large flying objects coming at me out of the sky, ducking for cover, while Laurie Ruettimann was trying to convince me to start a new multi-million dollar business venture with her in Tel Aviv keeping terrorists out.
??
And now you know why I have a lot of insomnia.
10 reason to start a blog
1. You have a goal. Whether your goal is to run an ultra- marathon or lose 50 pounds or learn to cook or build a basket-weaving business, you can learn about it through blogging. At the same time you can 2. document your journey in order to give you 3. accountability as well as 4. share it with others such as friends, family, colleagues, and/or others in the webosphere with similar interests.
5. To improve your career. Whether you have a business, are an employee, or just want to continue to 6. build your network by 7. sharing your expertise and conversing with others, a blog can help you. A blog can lead to 8. conference invitations, 9. speaking engagements, and 10. opportunities for new jobs and/or project work. It’s a place for you to demonstrate your knowledge and interests…and to be found.
Questions? Comments? What have I missed?
Why did you start your blog?
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Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod
With all the talk about Facebook and privacy issues recently I started thinking about how I manage my personal privacy online, and I’m curious how others handle this as well. I would imagine that a lot of us are doing it differently.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman, but I do think a lot about my personal physical security in addition to online privacy issues. With geolocation rising so quickly in popularity, I have more concerns about this now than ever.
Yesterday I had lunch with Miriam Salpeter of Keppie Careers and it came up in conversation that she once tried to find my home address through Google and could not. I can’t lie…this made me very happy!
I’m very careful about giving out my home address, and while I work from home I pay to have a virtual office address which is the legal address of my company and where all my mail goes.
Google Alerts
I have Google Alerts set up to notify me about anything containing my name or company name online. I also have alerts set up for my home address as well as my phone number. This allows me to monitor “what Google knows about me” without much effort, and if something arises that I’m not comfortable with I can take action accordingly.
You may have noticed that I sometimes tweet about my large, very overprotective dog. This is not by accident. 
I’m not as good about doing this as I used to be – usually for promotional reasons – but I do try to somewhat limit announcing my current or future whereabouts. So, if I’m going to Houston’s in Buckhead for lunch with a friend, I may state that I’m having lunch with that friend, but won’t say where until after we’ve left.
When I say “promotional reasons” I host and co-host tweetups from time to time, and naturally if you want people to show up you have to promote them in advance. So in those cases, or if I will be speaking somewhere or attending a conference, it’s a little more difficult to keep my future whereabouts a secret.
I’m kind of a privacy control freak on Facebook…constantly checking my privacy settings; and about a year ago I took down most of my photos. For example, I had some on there from college and from my high school reunion. Even when I did have these photos on Facebook, only a few people had access to them. But, with Facebook constantly messing with our privacy settings and not telling us they’ve done it, I decided better safe than sorry. Now the only photos I have on there at all are pictures of my dog, my family, and from business and networking events like ERE and #punkATL.
Additionally, I do not allow anyone to write on my wall, and as soon as someone tags me in a photo or video I look at it and untag it immediately if I’m not comfortable with it. You just don’t always know what people are going to do…what they may find perfectly acceptable to post, you may be horrified by.
I have my birth date listed, but not the year, and no one can see my profile unless they are friends directly with me. None of this “friends of friends” and “networks” stuff.
People who are not my friends on Facebook can’t even see what city or state I live in. Search results are set so that I only show up in Facebook searches for friends, and my profile information won’t show up in public search results.
If you haven’t yet read this warning about Facebook Connections, you need to. And I mean, stop and read it very thoroughly, and then go look at your “Friends” on Facebook and you’ll see that the list now includes many sites you’ve “shared” or “liked.” Next, look at the privacy settings for each of these “connections.” (I use two lists to manage how much someone can see of my Facebook profile. People I don’t know well are on a list that is more restrictive than people I know very well. This second list includes all of 10 people. Seriously. And I have known those 10 people a long, long time.)
Anyway, I did this, and these new “connections” Facebook had assigned to me without my knowledge or permission were not assigned to either of my lists so they could see anything and everything on my Facebook profile! Because I barely have anything on there of interest to anyone anymore it didn’t freak me out that much – but the IDEA they they have done this to all of us without our knowledge or permission certainly did.
Finally, I do not allow any third party applications to access any of my information.
There’s more, but I think you get the picture…click here to read more on the latest with Facebook’s privacy policies and issues.
My biggest concern with these is obviously announcing to the world where you are. So, I’m very careful about who I’m connected with on these applications, and I don’t always share my check-ins on Twitter or Facebook.
I also try to remember to check in when I’m leaving rather than when I arrive.
Who has time to deal with all of this??
It’s a fast-changing world and we have to keep up.
All of this may seem like a lot of work and you may wonder whether it’s worth it. That is something you have to decide for yourself.
For me the benefits of connecting with others online far outweighs the hassle of managing privacy settings. Plus, you know, it’s what I do for a living so unless I want to get a new career (I don’t), this is something I just need to deal with.
If you want to read another perspective on this subject, Craig Fisher recently wrote a great blog post, “Social Media Privacy? Get Over It.”
I’m curious: What do you do to protect yourself online?
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- Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod
Nearly a year ago I was a guest on the Gravity Free Radio Show with Erik Wolf + Stephanie Frost and was asked my thoughts on employers’ fears about their employees being active on social networking sites.
I stumbled upon a fantastic article on Advertising Age yesterday that outlines all of the reasons I laid out on this radio broadcast and then some.
I LOVE the tagline for this article: ”Collaboration Can Increase Productivity. That and Resistance Is Futile.”
I also love this article because it so succinctly sums up the conversation we had on the radio.
“Here are five reasons companies should allow social networking:
- Resistance is futile.
Workers increasingly have internet access on their smartphones. By the year 2013, 43% of global mobile internet users (607.5 million people worldwide) will be accessing social networks from their mobile devices, according to a new report from eMarketer. - Don’t assume people won’t find other ways to waste time.
Executives’ biggest concern? That social networking would lead to “notworking” instead of working. As the Economist report notes, “This assumes that people would actually work rather than find some other way to pass the time they have to spare.” - Social networks can actually make workers more productive. Three out of four of the 895 experts interviewed for the recent Pew Internet report “The Future of the Internet IV” said that use of the internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge, according to Janna Anderson, study co-author.
- You’ll miss great ideas.
Great ideas can come from any level of a company. Using social networks internally (wikis, blogs, forums, even IM) fosters collaboration and allows workers at all levels to contribute ideas. Experts emerge from within a company when collaboration is encouraged, and along with them come some of the best ideas that would otherwise be lost. Because people can comment on information, companies often learn of internal expertise they didn’t know about already.In most big companies, instead of collaborating, marketing competes with sales, advertising competes with PR, and so on, creating silos that prevent fresh ideas from being heard.I’ve consulted for companies where the marketing directs of divisions had never even met their counterparts in other divisions, let alone collaborated with them. As a result, they often were working on similar projects without sharing knowledge or resources. This wastes money and squanders ideas that could be helpful company-wide. - Employees are much more trustworthy than companies think.
Managers worry that employees will leak confidential information or speak poorly of the company. Most people have much more common sense than to jeopardize their jobs with wanton comments in social networks, especially these days. If you can’t trust your employees, you have one of two problems: You are hiring the wrong people or you are not properly training the people you hire.People who want to say something negative will find a way, with or without access to social networks, during business hours. However, negative feedback can also provide an early warning that changes need to be made, either in policy or employees.
All in all, companies have more to gain than to lose by allowing employee access to social networks. My bet is that it’ll take another two years for most companies to figure that out.”
AMEN!
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