Toulouse networks

If you’re using social networks in any one of these four ways, you’re doing it all wrong.

You cannot have social media goals. It’s like having copy machine goals. The copy machine is a business tool, and if you need it, it’s there to help you meet one of your business goals. Treat social media the same way.

The best way to understand which tools will help meet which goals is to cut through the crap that the buzz is built on. Figure out who is really using social media to meet their goals, and how they are doing it.

Lie #1: LinkedIn is for networking.

Networking should be at the forefront of every entrepreneur’s mind. Research from the Darden School of Business shows that startups are most likely to succeed when the founder is great at networking. But LinkedIn isn’t going to help you on that front.

LinkedIn is for displaying your network, not building it. For example, you can go on LinkedIn and find out that I’m really well connected. But most of you already know I’m well connected — I’m a print journalist, blogger, and startup founder, which are all very network-intensive jobs. Which means I didn’t build my network via LinkedIn networking tools. I built it offline.

Networks are built on relationships, which grow from conversation. LinkedIn is not for conversations. So you need to go somewhere else to build your network, and then when it’s big, display it on LinkedIn so you’ll look great.

Lie #2: Twitter is for conversation.

Twitter is an index of people with whom you might want to talk. It’s a great index — you can search by topic to find out who is interested in what, and then talk to them about mutually interesting topics. It used to be that you’d have to suffer through endlessly boring events at conferences striking up conversation to find the people to talk to later. Twitter makes that conference drudgery superfluous; you can talk to anyone you want, by topic or specialty, super fast.

The problem with using Twitter for conversation is that you’re going to need way more than 140 characters to make a genuine connection. So Twitter is great for finding people who have similar ideas, and for keeping track of them in a high-level way.

But you still need to go elsewhere — offline or online — to solidify the relationship to the point where you would actually care about each other in the way a solid network connection does, but Twitter is a good start.

Lie #3: Blogs are personal journals.

A personal blog is a record of what you’re thinking, and that record will represent you online, as a high-ranking search result when someone googles you or your company. So stop using your blog as a diary.

Use a blog as an intellectual exercise to force you into thinking in a disciplined way about things that interest you (or your company). The blogosphere is a cocktail party for the intelligentsia. Make sure you are a part of that so that you can help shape ideas as they grow. There’s no better tool for PR than wielding influence as a blogger.

CEOs from companies like Zappos and Fog Creek Software are well known for leveraging their personal blogs to create the core messages of the company brand.

Lie #4: With social media you can get people to do [fill in the blank]

Social media is about being nice. The people who are best at meeting their goals through social media are the most generous as well. When you use social media, give way more than you get. And remember that giving something that requires someone to do something for you (Download my book! Test out my free software!) is not giving. Ask people how you can help them. Read enough about someone to understand what they need and then surprise them. Be interesting without expecting anything in return. You could think of social media as its own economy: Interestingness is the currency; kindness is the way that currency is transported.

Avoir une visibilité sur Internet ne se fait pas tout seul. Sur les réseaux sociaux, cela vaut la peine de vous investir, afin que votre profil tape dans l'oeil des recruteurs. 

Les entreprises sont de plus en plus nombreuses à se servir de Facebook, Twitter, Viadeo ou Linkedin. Pour optimiser votre recherche d'emploi, vous devez exister sur les réseaux sociaux, être visible.

Si vous cherchez un emploi dans la communication, le marketing, Internet, les médias... c'est même primordial.

Mais n'attendez pas d'être à la recherche d'un emploi pour créer votre identité numérique. "Cela prend du temps donc il vaut mieux commencer à s'inscrire sur les réseaux sociaux pendant ses études", précise Laurent Brouat, directeur associé du cabinet Link Humans et expert du recrutement 2.0.

Avant tout, soyez vous-même. Ne vous survendez pas et ne vous inventez pas de qualifications. Ainsi, si vous avez fait un stage de chargé de projet dans la com', ne le transformez pas en un CDD chef de projet. Il serait dommage d'avoir fait tout ce travail, pour que tout s'effondre au cours de l'entretien d'embauche.

Interagissez avec les recruteurs sur Viadeo ou Linkedin

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LinkedIn Corp.'s town hall meeting with President Obama on Monday was set in motion just 10 days before when the White House contacted the Mountain View company to suggest the event.

It was a natural link - the world's largest professional social network is increasingly tapping a lucrative market for job recruiting, and the president sought another venue to promote his jobs bill.

Whether Obama finds enough support for his American Jobs Act or not, the town hall was almost an hour-long infomercial for LinkedIn. About 80,000 people viewed the live video feed over the Internet, and the event became part of widespread news coverage of Obama's visit to Silicon Valley.

"Since LinkedIn has really positioned themselves as the professional social and business networking place on the Web, this is a coup of enormous value to the company and its brand," said veteran San Francisco public relations consultant Sam Singer. "It sets them apart from Facebook and from Google+. From LinkedIn's perspective, you just don't get a better day than today."

LinkedIn Chief Executive Officer Jeff Weiner moderated the discussion, themed "Putting America Back to Work," in the auditorium of the Computer History Museum less than a mile from the company's headquarters.

Obama and Weiner sat on stools in the middle of an audience of about 300 people, including LinkedIn members who were selected for the questions they had submitted online, invited White House guests and more than 50 employees.

LinkedIn stock jumps

The company's logos were strategically placed on the walls to appear in the background of the TV camera shots. LinkedIn also announced it was donating up to 100,000 LinkedIn paid subscriptions worth $5 million to the Startup America Partnership, a private organization launched at the White House earlier this year to help young companies.

Investors may have taken note. LinkedIn stock that dropped to $72.14 per share in early trading jumped after the town hall began and closed at $78.70 per share, a 4 percent gain, on the New York Stock Exchange.

"We're first and foremost very appreciative to the president and to the White House for recognizing the platform as a way to get the word out there," Weiner said in an interview after the event. "I think it's recognition of the power not only of LinkedIn but increasingly of social platforms that connect hundreds of millions of people around the world."

This is Obama's second social-media town hall in the Bay Area in five months. Palo Alto's Facebook hosted the president for a more general discussion in April, and video of the event garnered more than 1 million views on Facebook Live in the first 24 hours.

This time, the focus was on jobs and the economy, two major issues that figure to dominate the upcoming presidential race.

The White House initiated the idea with LinkedIn. Brian Deese, deputy director of the National Economic Council, said the administration wanted to further "explain and discuss" the American Jobs Act and saw a "unique opportunity" because of LinkedIn's social network of business professionals.

Singer said it was interesting that Obama's communications team was using LinkedIn to target members "who were interested specifically on jobs and the economy." He expects Obama's presidential opponents will also try to use a similar narrowcast as the campaign heats up.

Questions selected

As Facebook did, LinkedIn also solicited questions beforehand from its 120 million members worldwide, and at one point last Friday, Weiner said there was one question posted every five seconds. However, just as with the Facebook town hall, only a selected handful of questions made it through to Obama and none were particularly tough for him to field.

Among the wide-ranging questions left online:

-- "Why won't we impose tariffs on imported goods from countries such as India and China as they do with our imports?"

-- "Have you considered forgiving student loans, partially or in full, as an economic stimulus measure?"

-- "Will you please resign and allow America to prosper again?"

One question that elicited a big laugh from the crowd came from Doug Edwards, 53, who asked, "Would you please raise my taxes?" Edwards was an early employee at Google Inc. and retired in 2005 as director of consumer marketing and brand management.

He also said he is part of a group of "patriotic millionaires" who advocate higher taxes on the rich. "It reflects our civic responsibility," he said after the event.

E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista @ sfchronicle.com.