Via Laughing Squid

The Future Belongs to the Curious from Skillshare on Vimeo.

Interesting promo video..found via NotCot

Via Laughingsquid

Ever wondered if Target or Wal-mart has cat remover? Monkey grabbers? Avatar on VHS? An oil painting of circus clowns storming the beach of Normandy? Double D training bras?…

I had a few main points that I made to the students. Would love some feedback on whether you agree or disagree with my recommendations :)

1. Figure out your brand
Everyone is their very own brand – make sure you figure out what you want to be known for, how you want to brand yourself, and if you’re going with your full name/a professional name: make sure you reserve it on every platform you can find! And a great tip I heard once from Gregory Ng: keep your avatar consist across the different networks you participate in online. I don’t follow this rule very well but it is a good thing to keep in mind.

2. Get on LinkedIn
It’s there. It’s free. Everyone’s doin’ it. And it’s so much easier than updating a resume every few months. When I’m looking up interns or people to hire, the first thing I look for on LinkedIn is recommendations. What are other people willing to say about you? They’re putting their reputation on the line by vouching for you. It’s not always enough to just slap your resume on the site. Make good use of the other features LinkedIn offers too!

3. Network
See my previous post: networking is critical to success in any career. Most people don’t get jobs in their career by applying through a site or something like that…no, most people are either referred by friends or find out through connections about different opportunities. I got my current full-time job at Shoeboxed through a connection of a connection of a connection. I was introduced to my sensei Ben Fisher through my friend Liz Hundley (now Liz Wile), who I shadowed for a day to figure out if I wanted to go to UNC. Ben randomly introduced me to Zaid Farooqui later on during my three years at UNC. Then Zaid introduced me years later to Chris Heivly who introduced me to my new job at Shoeboxed completely out of the blue. You never know what will come from networking. And guess what, college students: your peers are there for you to network with too. Don’t ever forget that! Those are some of the best connections you can have once you enter the real world.

4. Using a network personally is different from using it for marketing purposes
Don’t assume that because you have over 1,000 friends on Facebook that you will be great at utilizing Facebook as a marketing tool. Running a Facebook ad campaign is much different than writing a Note to everyone about that latest weird dream you had. Just keep that in mind.

5. Just do it
Yeah, yeah. Cliche. But it’s the biggest piece of advice given to me throughout my time as an advertising major at UNC: you better talk the talk and walk the walk if you’re going to go into something as a career. If you want to do advertising, make up ads for fun in your free time. If you want to develop games, learn on the free systems and make your own game. It comes up time and time again in all sorts of industries. Who’s going to hire a person to do their social media marketing that doesn’t have an account on Twitter these days? Not saying that Twitter is the end-all, be-all to social media marketing but if you don’t at least have an account in your name and a small presence, it doesn’t seem like you really know the platform in the least.

What do you think?

Reminds me of one of my favorite commercials:

There may be a trend in things that I find humorous..

Definitely recommend checking it out and keeping some of these tricks in mind! Here are a few of my favorite tricks pulled directly from the article:

3. Think About How You’re Different From Everyone Else
You don’t need to have a full-on existential crisis, but you do need to understand why someone would (or wouldn’t) want to network with you at this point. Consider how you can help your connections and how you stand out from your industry. If you need to, write out a few points so that you can get some ideas for conversation topics.

7. Look for People You Want to Network With Ahead of Time
It’s common to be able to look at the expected attendees for many events these days, and social networking can provide you added insight on who will be attending a given event with a little searching. Identify the best people to network with and make a point of introducing yourself at the event. (If I go to a networking event, I always try to pick at least one person I’d like to meet in advance…if I don’t know anyone at all, I tell myself to meet at least one new connection from the event)

8. Make Your Connections Deeper
Just meeting someone in passing at an event (or even online) is just a shallow connection. It’s a great starting point, but if you can take the time to make that connection deeper — say with meeting up for lunch or passing a few lengthy emails back and forth — you can make build a much deeper relationship. It can be as simple as telling yourself that you want to make one connection deeper every week and make a point of acting on that commitment.

11. Don’t Shy Away From People Who Don’t Seem Useful
You never know what the future may bring: You could change industries, strike out on your own, or generally need to know very different people down the line than you do today. Don’t brush off anyone who doesn’t fit in with your current networking needs just for that reason. (Seriously! Don’t get tunnel vision when it comes to networking)

12. Go Outside of Your Industry or Niche
It’s very tempting to build most of your connections within your own industry — especially if your goals focus on sales or business. But by going further afield, you can build a more useful network. It’s rare that any of us only need sales connections, after all. Vendors, media, and other potential contacts are crucial to a healthy network, even if they don’t directly work in your industry.

13. Connect Your Connections
Take the time to make helpful introductions within your own network. The more interconnected your network is, the easier it is to get your contacts to take action. It doesn’t hurt if you can build the reputation as the person always able to make a useful introduction. (I love connecting people who may be useful to each other or interested in similar fields. Especially when it comes to students seeking advice on different industries. Always take time to help a student if you can – it meant the world to me when professionals helped me in school and it’s always good to give back)

14. Follow-Up Is Always Your Responsibility
It’s easy enough to go to an event and hand out a stack of business cards — but the odds are that only 10-20% of the people that you connect with will follow up with you, even if you give them a great reason to do so. If you want to create connections that will actually be useful to you in the long run, you have to take responsibility for following up. (Giving out your card is the first step but you can’t assume anyone will get in touch with you. You know what happens when you assume..)

Another note not included: get on LinkedIn. Find people on LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn. I love it. It’s just so easy and nifty and wonderful…there’s no reason not to.

Seconds Of Beauty – 1st round compilation from The Beauty Of A Second on Vimeo.

Naturally, it’s kind of funky translated into Slideshare format. And it probably doesn’t make much sense without me talking along with it :) But I tried to share some helpful links by the end for people either interested in a. getting started with social media for the first time or b. aiming to use social media to help/promote/further communication in a club or organization.