Ch 5: Laying the groundworks for success

In chapter 5 of the book how to make money with social media, I cam across a very interesting and troubling statistic. According to this book, 84% of companies do not measure their return on investment for money they put into social media. This does not make sense to me. I feel that any smart businessperson should always find out if the money they are putting into a project is paying off. Granted, figuring out the effects that social media can have on a business may be hard to put into qualitative numbers all the time. At the same time, most people are bright enough to see if there is a positive trend using social media, or if the thousands of dollars they are putting toward using social media is not making any difference at all. If it is not helping, I would either revise it or get rid of it. If it is helping, I would tyr to make it more efficient and maybe put more money into social media. One will not be able to know if they do not track the results.

Ironic Tip for Getting Job

Tip number 4 in the article entitled "4 Tips for Landing a Job in Social Media" the tip says that you should not be boring when applying for a job. The writer talks about how making first impressions (especially in Social Media) is huge to landing a job. If one were to do just the normal amount of work, it would not stand out. What the author then said made me laugh a little. She said that social media is all about personality and it is your personality that you need to get across in your work. What I find funny is that it is through social media that many people are "losing" their personailties and are becoming more like boring robots. However, they are supposed to make a website where there is personality and life. There is only one place where you can go to for life and that is Christ for He is the bread of Life (John 6:35).

Some Interesting Thoughs About Facebook

I just read an article by Sam Laird. In this article, he discusses what life was like when he decided to decativate his Facebook account. This idea came from him realizing that Facebook and life were starting to become one and the same. When he stepped away from his Facebook, he realized that there were many things he was missing out on like pictures from parties he had been to or flirting with girls. A comparison that he made was that it is like a kid who doesn't have a television and his friends are reciting The Simpsons lines. If party pictures, flirting, and The Simpsons are what life is coming to, this world needs some change. Facebook should not be taking over peoples' lives, rather it should be a tool where people can stay in contact with friends, family, or co-workers. I feel as though this whole Facebook phase has got too out of control.

Connect With People Today

In reading out of the book "How to make money with Social Media", the author talked a lot about how in order to have customers tomorrow, you need to get to know people today. This is where social media can come in very handy. If you have 500 friends on Facebook, 200 followers on Twitter, and 100 people on LinkedIn, that is potentially 800 different people that you have the opportunity to do business with in the future. For this reason, it is very important that people start to build their social media pages, to pages that are set up for success when they start a career.

I recently read an article by Guy Kawasaki. In this article he gave 10 ways that a person can use LinkedIn to improve their  business, connections, and chances of getting jobs. One statistic that Kawasaki said was that people who have 20+ connections on LinkedIn are 34x more likely to be approached for a job than those who have less than 5 connections. This started to make me wonder why do not all graduating college students have an account. The economy is tough already, but it seems as though that the use of this social media would be a HUGE help in getting people connected with recruiters. Kawasaki also said that every single Fortune 500 company is represented on LinkedIn which means that there are  lot of recruiters looking to hire new employees. Colleges should be equiping students in the area of social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc.) so they can have the highest chance of landing a job.

Golden Gopher Basketball

The Minnesota Golden Gophers basketball team (14-5) pulled off two needed wins this past week. It first started off by beating the then #8 ranked Indiana Hoosiers 77-74. A few days later they took care of a Penn State team that is sure struggling to get going this year. By getting these two wins the Gophers all of a sudden launched themselves back into a realistic possibility of making the NCAA tournament.

As everyone knows, in order to get into the Tourney (unless you win your conference championship), a team needs at least 20 wins. I feel that this is very attainable now considering the rest of the schedule for the Gophers. This team needs six more wins to get to the 20 mark, and I think they can realistically win 7 of the remaining regular season games. They have 2 against Nebraska, 2 against Northwestern, 1 against Iowa, and 2 against Wisconsin. I know that Wisconsin has been ranked for most of the year, but they just do not have the offense to be considered super dangerous to play against. At the same time, a win against Wisconsin would add a lot to the Gophers resume during selection Sunday. The Gophers with all of their injuries still have a lot of athleticism and could potentially pull some upsets like they did against the Hoosiers in Indiana. They need another signature win to start climbing the list of voters for the Tourney. The next few games against Northwestern and #25 Illinois will be big tests for Minnesota and could be a big step in the right direction for the remainder of the year.