Companies NEED to change.

Trust is at an all time low. The ever changing, increasingly real-time, social landscape present reputational risk issues for business owners.

Look at the #trafigua episode on twitter, add in a “comcast on my couch” or a “united breaks guitars”… there’s a threat online that bad news and experiences from customers can go viral… but how long till we see the first company vs company bad experience – either deliberate, or via a leak – go viral?

Take this example:

Its quite feasible that a small business owner could be forced under by late payments (and a failure of their own credit control) from a larger company – what if they then wrote a damning blog article about said company which goes viral because people empathise with the “little guy” – imagine googling your brand name and finding a story like this on the first page, what would the impact be to your future business dealings?

It’s an issue that highlights for me, why it’s more important than ever to act in a fair and ethical way.

Looking deeper into the issue, it’s no longer good enough for people to act within the law – the law could change in the future to represent changing moral/ethical standards with retrospective implications. Politicians largely acted within the rules for expenses – those rules are now changing, with real implications – had they acted morally, would the situation be the same?

Bar Camp Bournemouth #2 is in the early planning stages – likely to be Easter next year (as last year) – if you’ve got anything you could contribute (sponsorship / time / ideas) please contact myself or Tom Harvey.

It was a really great event, I met a lot of good people and learnt some good… and random stuff.

Previous post on Bar Camp #1

If you’ve been to one of the talks or training sessions I’ve run on LinkedIn you’ll know I rec. getting to at least 100 connections before you’ll see much return from LinkedIn.

I’ve had 2 emails this week, asking for reminders or more ideas on growing your network. So… I present a few ideas for growing your network:

1) Import an address book, all email packages can export their address book in some format – CSV has been most reliable to me so far. See also – LinkedIn help.

2) Look at the people you may know window in the top left of the home screen, click more to see a list of 10 – press F5 to refresh and it will make more suggestions.

3) Set a custom URL for your profile (like Luke Williams) and include it in your email footer and on your website/blog.

4) When you add someone on LinkedIn, have a look at their connections for people you may know as well.

5) (to steal from Rich) “Cross Pollinate” Twitter/update facebook… sky-write a message “I’m growing my network on linkedin, if I don’t have you already please add me LINK”.

6) See that pile of business cards there near your monitor (in your drawer / in a cupboard…)? You only need name and email to add people on LinkedIn – great excuse to say “Hi, how are you? I’m growing my network on LinkedIn and I’d like to invite you to connect with me.”

7) Go to the contacts section on LinkedIn it’ll show people who’ve recently added new connections with an eerie orange grow – go have a look, it might be someone you know too.

If there are any you’d like to add, please do so below in comments

Its something I always cover in training and in talks, but I still see it, again and again and again.

At the talk I gave in Hampshire, one of the attendees asked at what point messages became spam – a great question.

I’m reminded of the quote from Justice Potter Stewart in the US when defining obscene pornography, and I think it’s very true of spam, “I know it, when i see it”.

But how do I explain that to others?

If you are sending a high volume of messages to a large number of un-interested people…

If you’re interrupting and not adding anything to the conversation…

If you’re buying followers/fans/friends, just to have larger numbers…

If you’re commenting under a pseudonym…

If you’re asking a question and answering it at the same time…

If you’re talking and not listening…

Its probably spam.

Your thoughts, as always, welcome.