Social Capital Mentor

Deep Networking - Work Together With Others

My brother Charles recently called me to talk through a small, but common, networking dilemma: there were two networking-related events on the same night and he was trying to decide which one to go to. He’s getting into the green-building industry and both events would expose him to people in that field. He was leaning [...]

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30% More Productive

I was on an airplane a few days ago reading an article in the February issue of Harvard Business Review (How Social Networks Network Best, by Alex Pentland). Alex is the director of human dynamics research at the MIT Media Lab and has been studying the way teams of business people work together. Here’s some mildly [...]

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Reminder from HBR: Stay Active & Organized

We’ve said it before, and I’m going to keep saying it: You’ve got to stay active in a downturn. David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter wrote a great article in the February issue of Harvard Business Review titled Seize Advantage in a Downturn. It’s about developing a corporate assessment and action plan for dealing with the [...]

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What We Can Learn from Great Presenters

Saturday night a bunch of us were hanging out in the beautiful Peabody hotel lobby after a full day of attending, presenting, socializing, and networking at the IA Summit in Memphis. A new friend, Kristi, said “I felt sorry for our presenter. Her talk was good, but we kept hearing all this laughter coming through [...]

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I’m Going to Memphis

I love conferences. The apathetic, pessimistic, burned out folks stay home. Cool by me. I’d rather spend time with the motivated and energized. It’s a great way to meet people, connect, get inspired. I’m going to Memphis for the IA Summit, as part of my Awasu Design work. Richard Anderson and I are running a working [...]

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It’s the Social, not the Media

“Social media” is all the rage these days. Facebook updates, Twitter “tweets”, and LinkedIn… links? I’m a big fan, but to be totally clear: these tools, just like email, webinars, and others are just tools. They don’t produce business for you. Human beings are social creatures Alexandra Levit says it quite well in today’s article in Forbes.com: Finally, [...]

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Avoiding the Chopping Block: Internal Networking

When people talk about networking, they are usually referring to something external. If they’re a hard skills-type of person like an engineer or scientist, they tend to think of networking as an activity for “salespeople” and other less-evolved beings. This is absolutely the wrong attitude, especially for the current time. In our current times of regular [...]

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How to Network - A Networking Event Process

Maybe you already know how to network You’re right at home at a networking event. You recognize the importance of a strong social network. You’re the King of the Elevator Pitch and you can small talk over cocktails and appetizers like you were born idle rich. But beyond a very impressive stack of business cards, what do [...]

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Develop Your Social Capital; Turn Contacts into Relationships

Tony Adam just wrote a great post about the quality of your business relationships on his awesome blog. I’ve been thinking all day about his words and I can’t emphasize how much I agree. I think we have the same goal here: to help people realize the power of Social Capital. It’s definitely not about [...]

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Golden Advice for Using LinkedIn: Help People

I’m going to cut to the punch line. Remember the Golden Rule; help people with their career and they will help you. LinkedIn is great LinkedIn is the latest tool for business networking and it’s great. Really great. Of course, with anything that’s great, there’s no shortage of advice on how to use it well. Guy Kawasaki’s [...]

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