Dance With Strangers » linkedin

How To Purge Facebook and Feel So Good

Kyle Flaherty — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:25:19 +0000

A few weeks ago I talked about Facebook privacy and how I purged my “friends”. To be honest I meant to write this post the day after the original one but I’ve been simply blown away by the amount of people who sent me messages telling me how they were doing the same. Most did it for reasons outside of privacy, but the main theme was the need to simplify their lives a bit and that included social networking. It also inspired many debates with friends on how they do the same thing on LinkedIn, but use Facebook to connect with more people (this still seems absurd to me). Overall there is a sense that people are trying to find ways to connect with people, but reduce the noise, while protecting their online presence just a bit.

But there was one question I got the most. How did I make the decision on who to keep as a FBF and who to let go. Actually, it wasn’t hard. Before I did anything, I created this decision tree:

Seriously, this is what I did and it made complete sense for me because I’ve chosen to use Facebook to share my personal family life with friends. Your use of Facebook, or any social network, is completely your choice. Nobody can tell you how you should use it. But once you decide your goal for that social network think seriously about who you want in that network and be sure and clean it up once in a while in order to be true to your goal.

LinkedIn for B2B Sales Enablement, Engagement and Prospecting

Kyle Flaherty — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 03:41:35 +0000

Linkedin in is a powerful tool for B2B sales enablement, engagement and prospecting. This is a presentation given to our global sales force at BreakingPoint on how to use the capabilities of LinkedIn to move from being an online resume to online resource.

B2G Social Media, Easy As 1-2-3

Kyle Flaherty — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:55:22 +0000

The other day I got an email from Pam O’Neal (my Vice President of Marketing, for those of you new to our adventures here) telling me to check out an article in Washington Technology on using social media to connect to the top contractors, agencies and influential companies in the government space. Not only was Pam pointing out the article as a resource for us at BreakingPoint, but also how the author used LinkedIn at the end of his article.

Mark Amtower, the author, is a B2G marketing consultant and his resolution for 2010 was to be connected to at least one person, preferably three, at each of the top companies listed by Washington Technology by the end of March. Aggressive, most certainly. But Mark is a smart man obviously because he understands how to harness the interconnectedness of social media. Just head to the end of the article and presto, a hyperlink to Mark’s LinkedIn profile.

Nothing amazing at this point though, right? The magic actually didn’t happen until I connected with Mark on LinkedIn, that is when the addition of resourceful content, as usual, made it’s mark.

Within minutes of connecting with Mark there was a personalized response to me in my inbox. How do I know it was personal and not a really great form response? Pam had connected with Mark about an hour before and the emails were completely different. Nice touch. But here comes the move that I found to be brilliant; two invites to join groups that Mark had set up on LinkedIn, both extremely focused and full of resources.

Mark had gone from a random contact to a source of information in minutes and someone I was really looking forward to talking with and probably talking with about his services. Ultimately that was his goal through his resolution and he is making it happen by using some of the social media principles we have discussed here on the blog. But let’s rehash:

Be Accessible–Include links to where people can find you.
Integrate Social Media–Make sure you are integrating social into your byline articles, events, emails, etc.
Be Personable–There is a strong connection built quickly with personal communication.
Provide Resources, Not Promotions–Mark didn’t push me to a website that touted his skills, he introduced me to groups that can help me with my job.

Content is king and social media is the way to spread the word. Let’s all use Mark’s example as a social media best practice, whether for B2C, B2B or B2G.

Oh, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn too.