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LinkedIn is a powerful social networking tool that I feel goes under the radar with so much emphasis placed on Twitter and Facebook. I think one of the things that turns people away from LinkedIn is that on the surface it is restrictive on how you communicate and network with other people. Under their basic plan, you must have some sort of relationship with the person in order to send a direct message to them- which is quite frustrating as it defeats the purpose of a networking site. If you decide to upgrade to one of their premium subscriptions, you are limited to how many messages you can send on a monthly basis.

This is a little loophole I use to connect with anyone in my fields of interest without paying for one of the premium services. This social networking “trick” leverages LinkedIn’s powerful groups features and search function-

Hope this will help you accelerate whatever plans you have in store for 2010.

(Word of caution: LinkedIn is very protective of how people connect on their site. Do not just use this as a means to add as many “connections” to your LinkedIn profile. If too many people flag you when you try to add them under the guise “I do not know this person”, you will be warned and possibly kicked off. Use this tool as a means to sincerely network with others.)

My first internship was with a high net worth financial advisor when I was a junior in college. Though many of the technical things I thought would be important at the time have left my memory, his lessons on success remain with me to this day:

“Being successful is really easy: 1.) Always say please and thank you, 2.) State what you are going to do, 3.) Do what you say, 4.) If you make a mistake, say your sorry, 5.) and then tell the person how you will correct your mistake.”

In struggling with some obstacles I have encountered in both my professional and personal life, this lesson popped up in my head. I haven’t followed through on some of the things I set out to do. I then thought about some of the more successful people I’ve followed and met- the follow through was one key to their success: taking action and taking more action when they messed up… but always doing what they said they would.

If you truly want to be successful, especially in today’s times, all you have to do is show up and follow through. It’s easy to give up and blame “these times”. The successful ones in the years to come won’t come from a hardened class that bared “these times”, it will be from a small class of people who just decided to live a life of integrity and follow through.

Jimmy V week is coming to an end. A great coach and person who dedicated his final time here on Earth to a cause greater than himself, a true inspiration. Take some time and watch his famous speech.

Some inspirational quotes from Jimmy V:

“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” Mohandas Gandhi

Thousands of men can walk with their head up high without having to deal with that odd look… women can be proud to claim they know their man again… Movember officially ended a few days ago (even though the donation collection period ends December 9^th at 5:00PM http://joshua.momoneymocures.com). Coincidentally, it ended on my birthday and can’t think of a better gift I have received- to have raised over $3,000 in donations (a lot more still on the way), making new friends, and strengthening ties with existing friends.

I had a grand plan of using social media to raise awareness and donations. Half of that plan was right, the other not so much. Here are the lessons about online fundraising learned throughout the month:

· Our team created itself. Once I got my mind focused on raising money and growing the mustache, the team built itself. Passion creates action and within a few days of posting on Facebook what I was doing I was joined by close friends and some I lost touch with, their passion brought others on the team. No one picked up the telephone and asked anyone to join the team, it was viral in nature and fun to see the team evolve.

· Social media is great for awareness, horrible for donations. I posted on almost a daily basis on Facebook, Twitter, our team website (www.MoMoneyMocures.com), and tested some things out on YouTube and this blog. I gave up on posting frequently towards the end because it was not producing any results. The traffic stats from Google Analytics, StatPress, and StumbleUpon’s Su.pr indicated we did in fact receive a fair amount of traffic this month but the fact is there was little conversion towards getting people to donate.

· Personal engagement is the key in donations. I worked hard and probably too many hours online trying to reach out to friends for donations and to raise awareness. The time would have been better spent contacting them personally via phone or through a text message than online. While social media is great to help spread messages along, there was no sense of urgency or a call to action attached to it. When I participated in St. Baldricks, I had a very clear message and sense of urgency- 8 days to $1,000. This time around, that same hysteria was not created. This was my fault for not executing right, but at the end of the day I should have personally engaged more people. Once I started to actually get on the phone I was able to ramp up more donations.

· Reciprocate. I had a plan to use some donations and gift certificates to start a little raffle/auction for the end of Movember. It has gone horribly (to this point with about 2 people signed up). A reciprocation program with tangible prizes to donors should have been implemented at the very beginning, but we will see how this finishes out. Looking back over the month, I believe there should have been an incentive to donors making our team’s fundraising efforts in the paradigm of mutual benefit instead of a traditional fundraising paradigms where donors are just given the satisfaction of being part of a great cause.

How do you think social media can help make a better and lasting change?

Found this article a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty insightful, short, and to the point. What else would you add?

The article is from Markus Frind of Plenty of Fish and can be found HERE

I found myself reading an entrepreneurship  forum today talking about the Inc Article. I thought I would post here as well as some others might find this useful.

1. I hardly call myself lazy or a sloth. I built the site in 2 weeks 5 years ago. Since then and even now all the user interaction happens in only a handful of pages. At the end of the day there are only so many ways in which you can reorder the search results. It’s like trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic, it accomplishes nothing.

2. The only way to grow a site once its running its self is to have brilliant ideas. Great ideas don’t come from sitting in front of the computer screen for 8 hours of the day wondering what to do next. You have to inspired or have a really deep understanding of what is going on. So a Brilliant idea may start a business but you need to have many many more brilliant ideas if you are going to go from one of many to an industry leader.

3. Opportunity/luck doesn’t come to you, You are the one that creates it. I debated with myself for weeks before posting the million dollar check, and I figured the best way of doing that was by creating a blog and give myself a voice. I knew my free site competitors where going to venture capitalists and asking for huge sums of money, and my competitors where claiming to be first movers etc. After posting that check their chances of raising money went to 0. The wall street journal called after reading that post. WSJ article came out, next day the Today Show Called. The next week my total US site traffic was up over 50% and kept on growing. In Fact many things i’ve written on my blog have made it into the national papers. Inc Magazine story was a result of my blog, and i’ll be going on a national talk show next week again as a direct result of my blog. I post a lot of things on my blog, many of which seem like bragging, but when reporters read that it gives them an idea for a story which is the whole point of a blog anyways.

4. Work smart not hard. If all you do is work hard making incremental improvements you are just like a hamster running in a wheel and never really getting anywhere. If you want to get somewhere you need to come up with great ideas, or something that is significantly better than the competition and execute on that. Then you go back again and do the same thing over and over. Far too many people think entrepreneurship is like an attendance award, where you can win just by showing up.