The Caffeinated Blog

All I Want for Christmas: Cool Books for the Online Marketer in Your Life

Do you have an online marketer or "web 2.0-head" in your life, and no clue what to get that person for Christmas?  Have you been sitting up nights agonizing over what to buy for your favorite blogger (who may or may not be me...hey, just sayin')? 

Have no fear, Caffeinated readers, I've done the wishlisting for you!  Here are 7 books on my holiday wishlist, guaranteed to be perfect gifts for your social media geek, blogger, or online marketer.  And all are under $20 too!

News: Are Facebook Widgets Facing Imminent Death?

Just read this post on Valleywag (courtesy of Newsgator Widgets Blog) about how Facebook widgets will soon be going to Web App Heaven - and that "one goal of the Facebook redesign was to kill pointless widgets that cluttered user-profiles". 

Take a look at this chart documenting the dramatic drop in widget usage:

Newsgator wondered how this would affect the widget space in general.  My opinion is that it won't - there are plenty of other ways widgets can be used, such as on blogs, desktops, and as mobile apps.  But my question is why does Facebook want to kill them?  Sure, they say they're "pointless" and "clutter user-profiles"; but if they were so popular before the redesign, why kill off a good thing?  That seems even more pointless to me.

What's your opinion?  Will the imminent death of Facebook apps kill widgets forever, or just make the other widget spaces stronger?

Unlock the Full Potential of Your LinkedIn Profile

Up until recently, my husband thought the end-all be-all of job searching was blasting his resume to tons of hiring managers and recruiters via a plethora of job sites, both large and small.  Now, I’m not saying that this is bad or won’t work; however, I’ve managed to convince him that there is more to the job search than resume blasting.

Enter LinkedIn.

He wasn’t easily convinced; but after I helped him to optimize and revitalize his stale LinkedIn profile, he finally saw the light that networking with real people, in addition to his resume blasting efforts, could actually have some value. 

So are you using your LinkedIn profile to its fullest potential?  Whether you’re looking for a new job or new business  – it’s important that you build your LinkedIn profile in order to attract these potentially valuable contacts.  Today I’m going to share with you my tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile:

Building Your Headline

• Think beyond your current job title and towards your future.  Your profile headline (located directly under your name) should convey as succinctly as possible (within 70 characters or less) not only what you do currently, but what you would like to do as well.  Think of it from the perspective of an employer searching for a candidate, or a prospective partner searching for an opportunity. 
• Use keywords that are highly relevant to your space and for which you would want your profile to show up. 
• Don’t be too broad.  While your current job title may be “project manager”, that means different things in different industries.  What is your specialty?  Are you an IT project manager?  A construction project manager? 

Listing Your Experience

• Stay within the constraints of your actual current and past titles, but make sure to create keyword-rich experience blurbs for each.
• Don’t forget your Summary and Specialties sections! The summary should be a paragraph or two that describe, in a nutshell, your experience and is optimized with your niche keywords.  Don’t make this too long – make it succinct and scannable for readers.  Your specialities should be a well-optimized, comprehensive list of your areas of expertise.
• Make sure to add links to your company’s (or your) website, your blog, RSS feed, and/or portfolio.

Getting Recommendations

• Evaluate your network of connections and determine who you could ask for recommendations from.  Try to choose current and past colleagues from different levels (your direct reports, same level, you report to) with whom you maintain a good relationship and you’re confident will vouch for you.
• When requesting recommendations, use something more personalized than the default text LinkedIn provides for recommendation requests.
• Do unto others…many times you’ll receive a good recommendation from someone without having to ask for it – simply because you gave them a good recommendation.  But even if you do have to ask, providing a good recommendation for that person certainly sweetens the pot.

Joining Groups

• LinkedIn now has the functionality in place to search for groups – so take advantage of it.  You can find any number of professional, alumni, or interest groups to join. 
• I like to look for groups that have a sizable membership.  The more people in a group, the more people with whom you share a common interest.  You can find out how many people are in a group just by clicking on the group name.
• Groups provide excellent networking opportunities, because they give you common ground on which to network and connect with other members.
• You can decide which groups you want to be visible in your profile.  Depending on your particular goals, you may want to hide some of your group memberships.

Listing Your Interests, Honors, and Awards

• Yes – list your personal interests (that are appropriate to list on a public business profile)!  This section is searchable, and you never know what common interest may bring you your next valuable business or career connection. 
• Honors and Awards are icing on the cake – but only list professional honors that are relevant to your area of expertise.

I’ll be posting more ways to use LinkedIn to find and interact with contacts, but your profile is definitely the best place to start making the most of LinkedIn.  In the meantime, please comment below if there’s anything that has (or even hasn’t) worked for you.

Twitter Debate: Innovative or Gimmicky?

I just jumped on the Twitter bandwagon yesterday.  I've been resisting it for a while, despite reading all the Twittervangelism out there.  I finally decided to give it a try, and so far it's been quite interesting.  It has potential for the obsessive-compulsive in me.

I've now become intrigued with the Obama-McCain Twitter debate.  I found out about it watching Attack of the Show on G4 yesterday, where they had a highly intellectual discussion about it with a panel of spotty teenage guys wearing cowboy hats and huge sunglasses in front of Stickcams.  Only on AOTS...but I digress.

The discussion, as short as it was for the attention span of a 16 year old guy, was actually quite interesting because they talked about whether the Twitter debate was actually an excellent way to use current Web 2.0 technology to reach out to young voters, or if it was just plain pandering.  The two guys that responded thought it was the latter.

I also read this blog post from Sean Maguire at Marketing Pilgrim, where he predicts that Obama will win the presidency because he's "most savvy in online politics" (i.e. social media, texting, email, etc.).  The comments that follow are quite lively and slightly more interesting than the post itself - not because the post wasn't at all interesting, but because the comments (naturally) degraded into a debate that completely missed the point of the original post.  Having subscribed to follow-up comments, I witnessed the whole thing, blow by blow.

I'd like to hear your opinions: is the Twitter debate going to win over the online community, or will they see it as pandering and gimmicky? Will Obama win because of his online political savviness?

Microsoft Offers to Buy Yahoo...Who Saw This Coming?

This is extremely interesting...

 Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

As soon as I saw this, my first thought went to search (obviously): how search results on Yahoo would be affected, and if/how the two paid search platforms would be combined.

I'm sure that many search marketers like me are equally concerned, especially given that the Microsoft adCenter platform is widely regarded as a mess (I personally would have to agree).  And thought many don't really dig Yahoo's panama platform, it sure beats adCenter's slowness and inefficiency.

And how would the two search engines be combined (Yahoo Live? Microhoo?)  Again, Yahoo's results are so much better than MSN's/Live's/whatever the hell it is today.

Point here is that the implications would be huge.  Could this merger actually   pose a formidable threat to Google?

I want to hear from the SEMs reading this - do you think a Yahoo/Microsoft merger would be a good or bad thing?

When Wikis Go Awry

I know this has been circulating for a few weeks (I missed it somehow); but I've just read an interesting article about the software a student developed to identify who was editing Wikipedia entries.  Of course, many large corporations, organizations, and major religions were up in arms over this.  Among the "revelations" listed:

      "- Microsoft tried to cover up the XBOX 360 failure rate

- Apple edit Microsoft entries, adding more negative comments about its rival

- Bill Gates revenge? Microsoft edits Apple entries, adding more negative comments about its rival

- The Vatican edits Irish Catholic politician Gerry Adams page

       - In the 9/11 Wikipedia article, the NRA added that 'Iraq was involved in 9/11'

 
      - Scientology removes criticism and negatives article from Scientology page"

So, how much of this is really a surprise?  If you had a Wikipedia page, wouldn't you remove anything negative?  It's all just spin - PR 101 (of course, we all know the saying "there's no such thing as bad PR").

However, now I'm interested to know how involved Wikipedia is going to get in this whole debacle.  Now that they can see who is editing pages, will they start to ban certain IPs from editing certain pages?  How "human-edited" is Wikipedia going to be in the end?  They already don't allow so-called "advertising" links to be posted in any entries (define "advertising").  How much more will they have to intervene (and should they intervene)?