It happens a lot, people I haven’t heard from in a long time, people I barely know from a past job try to connect with me on LinkedIn.  I know exactly what is going on — they’re out of work.

It’s sad.  I don’t like seeing people out of work, freaking out about where their next position is going to come from.  You don’t want to see anybody in that position.

Understanding how terrible it is, it perplexes me why people ignore social media and specifically LinkedIn until it’s too late.  Scurrying around to make connections and asking for referrals after you’ve been layed-off is too late.   Relationships and connections online are just like those offline, they have to be nurtured.  Trying to connect at the last minute doesn’t work.

I’m hiring for a new sales person and I am amazed at how inactive in social media most of the candidates are.   None, I mean none to date have any semblance of an online presence.   It blows me away.  Social media and social networking, in some form are here to stay.   Being engaged and having a presence will be pre-requisites to finding a job.   Until then, leveraging social media and being proactive are a great way to differentiate ones self, as it appears so few people are taking advantage of it’s benefits.

I get them more often than I would like.  The email from an old colleague requesting I join their network.  They’re looking for work or about to be laid-off.   I accept their request, but think isn’t it a bit late for this?

You can’t build a network when you need it.  You need to build it when you don’t.  It’s like credit.  If you don’t have it before you need it, you’ll never get it.

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Last week I created my About.me splash page.  I posted about it a few days ago, you can see it here.

I think About.me is cool and timely as more and more of our identity is moving online.  Setting up an About.me profile should take no more than 10 minutes, but it took me a lot longer than that.

Writing my bio took 10 minutes.  Adding my online sites, like this blog or Twitter and Facebook took less than 5 minutes.  What took the bulk of my time was the picture.  I anguished over what picture to add.  I knew what ever picture I put up would set the tone for everything else.  It would create the first impression and what made it so difficult is unlike offline where we operate between different personas, online incorporates all of our personas. My About.me page needed to capture the entire me, not just one part me and the pic was going to play a HUGE role in that.

Offline we have always separated our multiple personas (our work, home, buddies, etc.) carefully cultivating each for the appropriate situation.  The online world doesn’t work that way.  At least I don’t think it should and it’s this confluence of my entire person into one page that made picking my picture so difficult.

I’m a sales executive.  I’ve run sales teams for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies.  I am dead serious about my work.  I continue to be very successful developing highly productive and professional sales teams.  I am very proud of the impact I have on organizations.  I am a student of sales and business and continually look for ways to improve, grow and strengthen myself, my team and the organizations I work for.  I’m a driver. I get at problems with vengeance and measure myself on what I accomplish.

What I’m not is a corporate cog.  I am the guy who calls out the elephant in the room. I won’t be bullied.  I won’t do things just because.  I can’t stand hierarchy without merit.  I respect hierarchy with merit.  I’m a risk taker, but not foolish.  I thrive on data, but am never bound by it. I am very young at heart, but DON’T confuse that with being immature. I am competitive and when I take on things, I like to be the best.  I am a PSIA certified ski instructor. I love bump skiing and I am learning to throw huge air, despite the fact that I’m 42. (check out my day in the foam pit) I’m also a husband and a dad to 3 crazy little girls. There is nothing simple about me and that’s what made picking out my picture so difficult.

A pic in a 3 button suit, with a spread collar, french cuff shirt, wasn’t going to cut it. (but yes I do have that outfit, I am in sales remember.)  It’s to stiff. A plain, casual pic wasn’t going to cut either.  It doesn’t tell a story.  And that was why it was so hard to pick my pic.  How do you tell an accurate story of the entire you without over emphasizing just one part of who you are?

Just like you, I am complicated with multiple facets to who I am.  It’s the confluence of these traits that makes me good at what I do.

Being online makes it more difficult to build walls.  We are going to have to learn to manage all of our different personas in one.  It will be clumsy for a while.  We’ll make mistakes, however in the end, we will all have a much better understanding of who we are engaging with and that is good for everyone.

This is the About.me page.

So what do you think?   Did I pick the right picture?  What does my About.me page say to you about me?

About.me put’s your entire online presence in one place, accessible through a simple URL.   It takes nothing to get started.  You upload your picture, pick the colors, the fonts, write your bio and add your sites.  That’s it.

Once you site is set up visitors can see your entire presence without ever leaving the page, as About.me pulls in your latest tweets, your blog RSS Feed, your tumbler feed, etc. It doesn’t require visitors move around the internet trying to learn about you.  It gives them a snapshot, that then allows them to explore further if they are interested.  I think this is a creative approach.

About.me also provides analytics.  It gives you information on number of visits, what visitors clicked on, your social media reach and more.

What I like most about  About .me is its simplicity.   I now have one place to steer people when they ask for my email, or a way to connect with me.   I am going to put the URL in my email signature, on my LinkedIn page, and my business cards.

Now, I need to figure out how to get it some google juice.  Because, getting my About.me to be in the top 5 search results would be sweet.  Find that address, and you find everything.

About.me is another example of the move to an online world were your online presence will be our greatest asset.

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He’s probably right.  But thats not enough of a reason not to build an online presence.  It could get him a new job in the future, it could create a relationship he may need to close a deal someday, it could get him information he needed that he DIDN’T know existed.  It could do a lot of things he is unaware of today, that could help him in the future.  He is not alone.  His thinking is like that of most people I talk to who aren’t actively building and online presence.  It’s too linear.

The problem isn’t him but humanity.  We are purpose driven.

Since the cave man days our actions have been purpose driven.  If you wanted something from the guy across the cave you got up and took it from him.  If you were hungry you went out and killed some food.  Over the years we became more civilized, but we were still purpose driven.  If you wanted to talk to someone you sent a letter.  If you wanted a job, you applied for it.  Then the phone and T.V. came along.  Still driven by purpose, you knew who you were calling and why and we knew what we were going to watch on TV and when.  Communication has rarely,  if ever, been done without a direct purpose.  Everything was linear.  We played in the known.

Social media and social networks play in the unknown.  They aren’t linear.  They aren’t purpose driven.  When we tweet something, we don’t know who we are tweeting or if someone is even their to receive it.  When we blog, we don’t know who is going to read it, or who is going to comment.  We don’t know if people will like it or hate it.  We put our stuff on LinkedIn not knowing who if anyone is going to find it.  Social media is anything but purpose driven.  It’s this reason most people don’t get social media. They are thinking from the linear brain we’ve all been indoctrinated with.  If doing X doesn’t get me Y right now, I don’t have time.

Social media and social networking don’t work in a linear fashion.  They operate in a broader, less confined manner.   Users have to be OK not knowing, not getting what they want right away and able to handle getting what they didn’t expect.  Social media and social networking give life to the phrase; we dont know what we don’t know.

Many people see it as a waste of time.  To the linear mind it is.  It’s not like a phone call or and email.  It’s not like getting up and walking across the cave and getting what you want.  What it does do, quite often is give you what you didn’t know you wanted and many times that’s far more valuable.

It’s easy to focus on getting what you want and thinking in a linear fashion.  It’s measurable.   It also requires you block everything out.  Social media and social networking are different, they get you what you didn’t know you wanted and that’s a big deal.

Social networking and social media expand your world.  They make you more accessible, they provide more information, they extend your influence.  If those aren’t reason enough to “get” social media it must not be linear enough.

Social media and social networking have a place, it’s just going to take time to change 10,000 years of thinking.  It’s time to get out of the cave.

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So, why?   Why is that we read some blogs religiously and others sporadically.

Conventional wisdom will say it’s the content.  It’s the subject matter.  It’s the writing style.  I agree, but I think it’s more than that.   I think it’s a connection.

Blogs are personal.  More so than a newspaper article.   There is no editor white washing any personality from the story.   Blogs are extensions of the authors personality.  This personal element of blogging allows people to create a connection to the blog itself.   It’s this connection that draws us to one blog over another despite content or subject matter.

I definitely have a connection to my favorite blogs.   In some cases, the connection was created through the comments overtime. Other times it’s the authors perspective and attitude.  Sometimes it is a combination.   What I do know is the blogs I favorite have a personality to them that resonates with me.   Like friends, it’s the personalities that draw me to them and determine how much time I want to spend with them.

I was flattered when a former employee told me that he reads my blog everyday.   I have other friends and former employees who read this blog sporadically and I know I have friends and former employees who dont’ read this blog at all.  It takes more than just a personal relationship to create a blog connection.

How do you create a connection with readers?   You can’t.

Trying to create a connection with your readers is like trying to get the kids at the popular lunch table to like you.   Either they will or they won’t.  All you can do is be yourself.   We’ve been trained to avoid controversy, not to offend, and not to be provocative in a public setting.  Blogging is for sure a public setting.  This approach does nothing to connect with readers.   I constantly remind myself of this when I post.  I post through my personality.  I post with the conviction that this is my blog and therefore an extension of me.   Some will connect with A Sales Guy and read it everyday, others will like it and read it when they remember, they rest will just come and go.   I’m OK with this, because it’s exactly how I read others blogs.

What is it about one blog vs another?   Why do you find yourself reading some blogs everyday, while only reading others a few days a week?

Is it a connection thing for you too?

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They need to raise the white flag and just copy Facebook right down to the details. Otherwise the war is over before Google even got to the battlefield. -Michael Arrington

Arrington’s argument is Facebook is making inroads on Googles self serve ad business and if Google wants to compete they need to play Facebook’s game better than Facebook. Arrington suggests it’s not improbable by 2015 Facebook and Google could be running neck and neck. I’m not sure I agree or disagree with Arrington’s 2015 prognostication, but what I am pretty sure is, Google’s not going to stem any Facebook tide by cloning them.

The reason Arrington’s plan won’t work is because of the simple rule of sales — there needs to be user value. There is no value to users in cloning Facebook.

Google needs a horse in the social networking race to be able to defend itself against Facebook over the long run. And the only way they’re going to be able to compete effectively is to just clone the darn thing.

The value in social networks IS the network. It won’t matter how many new features or bells and whistles Google can add on top of the “clone”.   They won’t make a lick of difference without the network.

Yes, Facebook blew up in a crowded social networking space. They took MySpace out of the game. The difference between then and now is that social media was in the growth stage of the product or business life-cycle. Millions and millions of people were still deciding if social networking was for them. They were the late majority. This late majority were our Mom’s, Dad’s, Grandparents, business professionals etc. Feeling Myspace was too juvenile this late majority chose Facebook.  Facebook took social networking mainstream.

Social networking has now entered the mature stage. Only late, late majority and the laggards remain. This means that Google has to convince Facebook users to switch and that ain’t gonna happen for a clone with a few extra features. The value is the network. No network, no value. There will need to be a seminal event or trigger to drive the switch.

The main value in Facebook is everyone  expects everyone they know or once knew to be on the site. Switching to a site where this doesn’t exist and then wait for their friends to show up is going to take a lot more than clone with improved privacy settings and an easy export tool.

Arrington is thinking like a technologist.  Clone and offer a few cool new features and functions and it will sell. Unfortunately, like almost every other sale, features and functions don’t sell, value does.  In this case the value is the network and Google can’t control that.

The other challenge Arrington misses, is users are more than engaged, they are INVESTED.  They have invested time and in some cases money in followers, pages, applications, games and more.  Users will not just simply walk away from that level of investment and start over for a clone.

I think Google needs to think like a start-up and innovate.  Don’t clone, but get ahead of Facebook. There is always a next something. There was Friendster, then there was Myspace, then there was Facebook, then there was Twitter, then there was Foursquare, what’s next? That is what Google should be focused on. Not trying to be Facebook. That is so 2007.

Google — build a new network, don’t try to steal someone else’s. It’s much easier.

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I’ve talked about it before.  The most valuable asset we will have in the future will be our online presence.  It will act as an enabler to much of our life including; the schools we go to, the jobs we get, the person we marry and more.

There are a lot of things parents are responsible for with kids; education, values, safety, etc.  I’m adding one more to the list and it’s buying their names, literally.

Twitter has been a fantastic tool for me and today was no different.

Yesterday I suggested (on Twitter) that I saw no reason the new IPad 3g shouldn’t have text messaging. Someone saw my rant and suggested I use Google Voice. I’ve been considering playing around with Google Voice for a while, so I thought this is as good a time as any.

Not having an invite I Twittered a requests for one. Within 5 min. I had a bunch of people who had an invite for me.

You just couldn’t do this a few years ago.

I am fascinated with the new level of connection and collaboration social media enables. It is truly an asset to those who take advantage of it.

Thanks to all my Twitter followers who offered up an invite to Google Voice. I’ll “talk” to you soon!

To find candidates USV blogged about the openings on their website and Fred Wilson a partner in the firm posted about them on his blog. No recruiter, no Monster.com postings, no 3rd party sourcing. Just two blog posts. USV and Fred have built a huge following. They already had an audience.

I have no visibility into how many applications were submitted, but if the number of comments is any indication, it’s over 100.

What really makes this interesting is that USV asked candidates for just 3 things: a link to their LinkedIn profile, a way to be contacted and a cover letter. They asked the cover letter contain nothing more than links to the candidates online presence. That’s it. No resume required.

USV is using online presence as the key criteria to identify the ideal candidates for their next associates. I love this idea. It’s a heck of a filter. Anyone who hasn’t taken the time to build their online presence is automatically filtered out. No need to reply. Harsh, but it’s where things are going.

What I like about this approach is it focuses on what what the candidates do, not what they say. It’s hard to B.S. your way around an empty Twitter and Facebook profile. You can’t “hide” the fact that you don’t have a blog or haven’t posted in 6 months. By focusing on applicants online presence, USV will have amazing insight into how candidates, think, write, interact, engage, and collaborate. An online presence is a living resume that doesn’t lie.

I think USV is going about this the right way. You can learn a lot about someone by following, reading and engaging with their online presence. An online presence isn’t a polished document with an agenda like a resume and that is exactly the problem with resumes. They hide as much as they share. Watching and engaging with someones online presence is the closest thing to be a fly on the wall. You get to see the real person.

If you don’t have an online presence, you’re not going to a job with one of the most prestigious venture capital firms in the country and that is too bad, because you could be a wonderful fit for them. If you are one of the lucky ones who is hired, your online presence catapulted you into the exciting and lucrative world of venture capital and that is worth something.

How much is an online presence worth? In this case it’s worth 2 years at Union Square Ventures; investors in Twitter, FourSquare, Disqus and more of the Internets hottest properties. That’s worth a lot.

USV will not be the last company to hire this way. More and more companies will use an online presence in their hiring decisions.

An online presence will be the most valuable asset you will own. Start investing!

It’s a great post re-affirming what I’ve been saying on this blog for over a year. I’ve dedicated a page to it. It’s that important. Our online presence will be THE asset of the future.

His quote on the influence of social networking tools is powerful:

People use social networking tools to figure out who they can trust and rely on for decision making. By the end of this decade, power and influence will shift largely to those people with the best reputations and trust networks, from people with money and nominal power. That is, peer networks will confer legitimacy on people emerging from the grassroots.

Our networks are moving online. Our weak-tie networks are expanding. The tools to measure and quantify our networks are readily available. Trust, power, and influence will be at the core of these networks and those with the best networks will be the winners.

Soon it won’t be OK NOT to have a strong online presence. It will be too difficult to compete.

Craig is spot on when he says:

This shift is already happening, gradually creating a new power and influence equilibrium with new checks and balances. It will seem dramatic when its tipping point occurs, even though we’re living through it now.

He’s right!

It will be even more dramatic for those who wait for the tipping point.

Start investing in your online presence and brand NOW! Like any good investment, it’s best to invest early as it takes time grow and have the best returns when you get in in the beginning.