reBlog from Mirna Bard: What, LinkedIn Has Free Hidden Treasure?

This quote says it all. This is a very interesting article I found today:

I am calling these trainings “Treasure” because they show you everything you need to know about LinkedIn and the only way you can truly leverage and maximize your time on this site.Mirna Bard, What, LinkedIn Has Free Hidden Treasure?, Mar 2010

This is a great “how-to” article that you should read if you are interested in expanding your business opportunities on LinkedIn.

New LinkedIn group has promising future

Whether you run a small business, or in career transition, you can become indifferent, even depressed, about all the networking groups that have sprung up over the last year since the economic meltdown. At twenty-to-fifty dollars a pop, you begin to wonder what the ROI can be for all your time and money. I attended an event last night that proved to be the unexpected.

A new LinkedIn networking group in my geographic area is the Orange County Product Managers. Started in June of 2009, and with a membership of 296, this fledgling group is a grassroots organization with no sponsorship, but just the thought of facilitating the exchange of ideas, resources and contacts between product management and product marketing professionals in Orange County, California. The “January Mixer” I attended was apparently only their second, but it was well planned, organized, and executed. What else would you expect from professional marketers?

The entrance fee was only ten dollars at the door, and the venue was the JT Schmid’s Restaurant & Brewery, in Tustin, California. Snacks and all the beer you could drink were included.

From the time you entered the party area, you were engaged in interesting and meaningful conversation. Attended by forty to fifty people, it was a packed room and the event ran long past its scheduled two hours. People just kept talking!

People that I meet were from a wide range of industries, including automotive, medical, electronics, security, packaged goods, and more. There was a very energetic discussion regarding the best ways for B2B companies to use online social networks, blogs, and Web 2.0 principles. Everyone came away with new ideas and perspectives.

Speaking with Mack McCoy, a member of the Product Development and Management Association of Southern California (PDMA SoCal), I learned about another exciting event that will be taking place at the end of February on the campus of UC Irvine.

The “ProductCamp SoCal” is a FREE collaborative, user-organized unconference, focused on Brand/Product Development, Management, and Marketing topics. Mack explained that at a ProductCamp, everyone participates by presenting, leading roundtable discussions, helping with logistics, securing sponsorships, or volunteering. This type of event has been held successfully in other locations around the United States, Canada, and Australia. This will be the first one in Southern California and definitely an event to checkout at: http://sites.google.com/site/productcampsocal/ .

So check out the Orange County Product Managers group on LinkedIn and plan on attending their next event. Also, consider attending ProductCamp SoCal if you are looking for interesting and energetic insights into the latest branding, management, and marketing practices.

As always, God bless you and yours.

New Beginnings

How can I restart my blogs after four months of silence without a quick explanation? Because I can?

Seriously, much of the time I was revisiting my old profession and hobby, photography. Once upon at time I was a semi-professional photographer, shooting weddings and the like, in Colorado, with aspirations of becoming a freelance photojournalist. Life got in the way and I ended up in hi-tech marketing. Now, many years later, I have thousands of slides and negatives sitting in boxes, and a collection of Nikon and Mamiya-Sekor cameras gathering dust.  

In the past few years, my wife and I have been shooting digital with several point-and-shoot cameras. Turns out my wife has a real instinct for getting great shots. I bought her a Nikon D3000 digital-SLR for her birthday and we have both been enjoying the phenomenal ease of control, and image quality, that it provides.  

That inspired me to learn the art of digitizing those before mentioned slides and negatives, thanks to a Canon 8800F scanner and VueScan Professional software. Rounding out our digital suite is an Epson Stylus Photo R1800 wide format printer.  

Enough said about all that, just don’t be surprised when you see us invading your space with a camera. Watch for photos on this blog in the future.  

So how many of you have revisited an old profession or hobby while transitioning to a new career? Maybe that hobby is your new career. Comment if you like on this blog and God bless you and yours.

Looking for business networking opportunities?

When looking for opportunities to network, do not forget to check on events hosted by companies and organizations that service your targets.  Many of these events are open to the public for a small fee to defer their cost of refreshments.  Not only are these events good for building professional and social networks, they are informative and entertaining as well.  Attend these events as you would any other business activity; dress well, carry business cards, be prepared to participate and discuss the meeting topics, and be on your game, it’s show time. 

I recently attended the Meet the Media Breakfast in Newport Beach, California, hosted by the local office of BusinessWire, the leading business news distribution service and part of the Berkshire Hathaway empire.  As is typical of these BusinessWire breakfasts, they invite representatives of the local print, radio, and television media to speak in a panel.  This time they had speakers from the print media, including the Orange County Register, the OC Metro, and the Orange County Business Journal, all of which encompass the best local outlets for public relations. 

The key takeaway from the panel is that traditional print media outlets have turned to the internet to build and sustain their presence in the community, and to supplement their revenues with online advertising while their print advertising is dwindling.  Only the Business Journal continues to have a strong print readership among executives in the community.  I think execs just want to showoff by having a current copy lying around their office.  For a fee, the Business Journal also provides everything on-line, which to me is more practical as you don’t wait for the postman, it’s accessible everywhere that you are, and it is searchable.

The BusinessWire speaker emphasized the importance of creating PR content that is SEO savvy, and will garner high positions on Google and other search engines.  This is also an important point for you networkers.  All companies are turning to the internet to find everything from new employees, to consultants, to VARs, to local service companies, so you must be SEO savvy to gain their attention.  You hear this repeatedly; that you should get on social networks, blog, and post yourself wherever you can.  These are all good ideas, but you will also need a strategy and a plan before consuming all your time and energy in these activities.  I will discuss this in an upcoming post on this blog.

By the way, I did meet a potential customer for my consulting business, as well as reestablishing a business relationship with someone that I worked with ten years ago.  In addition, this event gave me the opportunity to update the BusinessWire Regional Manager on what I have been doing.  That is what networking is all about, so with the coffee, juice, and Danish, it was well worth the entry fee.  So scan the internet and your local media for the next business event.  God bless you and yours.

Hello world!

I guess that is an appropriate title for my first blog entry.  Even though I have been writing magazine articles, letters, manuals, poems, advertising copy, scripts, song lyrics, and business literature for decades, this is my first posting to the internet for myself as myself.  My greatest hope is that my thoughts will entertain, provoke, and inspire those that choose to read.  I am confident that this is the start of a great adventure.  God bless you and yours.