San Diego Signing Party
This morning I attended a great event at the San Diego Hall of Champions. It was the Letter of Intent Signing Party for HS athletes all across San Diego. The event began at 8am, but many of the excited parents and athletes were there quite early. It was fun to see them wear sweatshirts and hats from the universities they’ll be attending next fall. Today was the first of seven days in which athletes who play basketball, volleyball, swimming, tennis, golf, lacrosse, girls water polo, baseball, softball and wrestling can officially commit to college scholarships. (Lots of golfers in attendance today!)
After a welcome from the Marketing Director, Jesse Lovejoy, our own San Diego Padre, Carlos Quentin took the stage to deliver an inspirational message to the families. Carlos is a San Diego native and played baseball for University High School (now known as Cathedral Catholic High School). He went on to play baseball at Stanford before going pro.
His message was very simple, yet profound. “Continue making the decisions you are already making.” He elaborated that the student athletes have already put in hard work in school, made commitments to their team and sport, and made difficult choices along the way to get to a point where they are signing intent letters for some of the finest universities in America. He warned them that they were joining an elite group of people – for some they will be teammates with Olympians and national champions. He even mentioned that they might feel intimidated by their fellow athletes or the geniuses in their classes. But he encouraged them that if they continue making the tough decisions in the fashion they have to date, that they will be the best, they will be elite and they will continue to pave the path to achieve their dreams.
Carlos is a great example for local athletes to follow. He mentioned that San Diego grows great athletes and smart students. He actually graduated in 3 1/3 years at Stanford. That’s pretty impressive. And as a San Diegan, he’s living his dream playing for the San Diego Padres.
After his motivational speech, each high school was called onto the stage and the student athletes had the opportunity to say their name, sport and what university they will play for and attend. There were local news channels there to interview select athletes and I’m sure we’ll see many on the evening news.
Hats off to the team at the San Diego Hall of Champions. It was a very special day for parents and their students and the moment was made even more special by bringing the community together to celebrate the achievements of San Diego’s high school athletes. Congratulations to all of the families. Well deserved recognition and honors today! I look forward to attending the next signing in February!
LinkedIn Updates
LinkedIn has made several upgrades lately. Have you noticed? Not only has LinkedIn changed the total design and function of the website, but they have been adding more features over the past few months in order to make the site more interactive. Here’s a few of the big updates to note:
LinkedIn Today
When you land on the page, you’ll automatically see the news feed. This is similar to your Facebook Timeline or Twitter feed. You’ll see the header above the feed called “LinkedIn Today” which entices you to click on various news pieces and share articles with your connections. This is so that we can enjoy a more interesting feed than Sally Smith is now connected to Joe Jones.
Once you click “LinkedIn Today” you’ll be taken to a magazine layout of news articles for your perusal. World news and business articles await your discovery. It’s a great resource to share on LinkedIn and your other social sites, too.
Follow
You’ll notice that you can now “follow” business and thought leaders who write articles just for the LinkedIn audience. It’s tough to get directly to the list, though. There is no ability to click from the menu. There is no section on the sidebar. I think I discovered this feature because it showed up in my news feed. I went to the LinkedIn Help Page and found this comment:
Visit http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/whoToFollow to see the initial list of thought leaders who can be followed. Currently, only a small, hand-picked set of thought leaders can be followed from their LinkedIn profiles.
Not so user-friendly, but once you do land on this main page, you are treated to a wonderful list of influencers.
Follow the people you want to have show up in your news feed or just browse through the articles on offer. Underneath the header, you can click on the word “Following” to manage who you already follow. I’m not quite sure why LinkedIn would make it so difficult to get to this page. Great feature, but not completely thought out.
Endorsements
One of the features recently added was “Skills.” LinkedIn did this to assist college graduates who perhaps don’t yet have the work experience to fill out a resume. In addition, they now allow you to “Endorse” those skills for any of your connections. Have you noticed that when you view a profile, this box appears to encourage you to endorse specific skills?
This is a nice feature which somewhat replaces “Recommendations.” Previously, you had to ask for people to recommend you, and it was a letter your contact had to write on your behalf. That feature is still available, but now they can go into your profile and just click on the skills they want to endorse. This saves time and is very user-friendly. It also gives greater opportunity for your contacts to endorse you without a request.
Make sure you take the time to add skills to your profile. This will help you get found when hiring managers are doing searches. On top of that, take a moment to go through your contacts and endorse their skills. Perhaps you are working on a project with someone … give them a boost on LinkedIn. If you get off the phone with a business contact, head to LinkedIn and endorse some of their skills. In order to play nice on LinkedIn, it’s a good idea to take a look at who has endorsed some of your skills and then go onto their profile and endorse them right back. Good professional karma.
New Profile
Finally, LinkedIn is rolling out new profile designs. I’ve requested mine, but have not yet received the upgrade. So stay tuned for more information soon.
I would love to hear what features you are enjoying most on the re-vamped LinkedIn. Are these new features making the site easier to use? Are there certain features that are helping you do business better or increasing your contact base? Please share with me. I’m happy to provide updates on my blog or in next month’s newsletter.
Instagram Web Profiles
Hello Instagram web profiles. It’s great to see you! Did you know that you can now view Instagram photos online? Previously, you could only browse via your mobile device. Since Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, many have wondered if we would see a web version. While it is nice to be able to view the photos in a larger format, the web version is more limiting than the mobile app, it does give us reason to review our privacy settings and re-strategize our activity.
Initially, I was excited to see Instagram online. But one much needed feature for the web profiles is a search function. I have found myself looking at my phone and the web simultaneously to pull up usernames and view photos. The hashtag feature is not live yet on the web version, so you cannot click a hashtag to view photos tagged with that topic. Essentially, you have to know the username in order to view photos. You can click on the people who have liked or commented on your photo and view their gallery, follow them from the web, as well as like and comment on their photo. However, you cannot view the list of your followers nor who you are following. One item to note, if your account is already private, then it is private online, too. If you want to change this setting, you’ll have to go to your phone to make your account private.
I will say that it was really nice to be able to type comments on my big keyboard, versus plucking away on my iPhone. I also find it much easier to delete spam comments and report users on my phone than online. If you try to do it online, you have to enter your e-mail address as well as the username (which you will need to copy and paste) and then you will be notified after you submit the details that “Facebook will send you an e-mail shortly” (which they never do). At this point in time it appears that web profiles are simply a way to view the photos in a larger format. It does not appear that they want users to move away from their mobile devices. (And why would they after Instagram surpassed Twitter in daily active users?) It will be interesting to see how they develop the features for web profiles.
What’s significant for users (both brand and individuals) is that you can now promote your web profile and allow more fans to see your photos. This means more eyeballs looking at your strategically uploaded images. And if you had no strategy prior to this web profile launch, then it’s a good time to think about what photos (and graphics) you want people to see. Businesses can take advantage of this medium to promote product, events and services, as well as share the company culture. You can streamline your photo strategy by using Instagram to feed your Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, for example. Individuals can paint a picture of their hobbies, interests and character. This is essential for students, student-athletes and those in search of employment. When admissions officers, athletic scouts, and hiring managers stumble across your Instagram account, what will they find?
If you want to take a look at my Instagram profile, click HERE. I use this account to feed my personal website and therefore have several of my favorite travel photos uploaded. Let me know what you think of the Instagram Web Profiles. I’m curious how/if you are using the new feature. Please leave a comment below! Thanks!
Student-Athlete Social Media DOs and DONTs
In a recent interview with UTTV, I was asked what student-athletes should consider when using social media. We only had time to review the top 5 do’s and don’ts for social media, but these tips are pretty essential to being successful online. This advice is suitable for both high school and college athletes, but students in general can find some applicable tips here, too. Let’s start first with what you shouldn’t do.
DON’Ts
1. Use foul language, smack talk, gossip or bully.
These actions speak to your character. Is this who you really are? Is this how you want to be remembered? Probably not. Clean it up and have respect for yourself, your teammates and every other player in your sport.
2. Post photos of yourself with alcohol if you are under 21 years old.
Again, you will be seen as a liability. If you are under 21 and drinking, you are breaking the law. Your photo is evidence of this. Posting party photos will do nothing to help you in the long run. You put your parents, teachers and coaches in the position to discipline you.
3. Post personal information like telephone number or address.
A friend of mine told me that his 16 year-old son was so excited when he got his driver’s license, that he posted a picture of his license online. Doh! Identity theft remains a huge problem! Posting your name, address and documents numbers, like your driver’s license, only makes it easier for thieves to target you. Are your parents on vacation? Great! But that’s not something the world needs to know. Don’t post nitty gritty details that welcome problems into your life.
4. Post rap lyrics, racial or sexual comments.
This may be a very cool trend right now, but as coaches, the media, the public and potential employers look at your social behavior, they may or may not understand that what you’ve posted is song lyrics. They may take those words and opinions as yours. A lot of rap lyrics use foul language (see #1) and are racially or sexually explicit. When you post rap lyrics like this, you are connecting yourself with those words and that image. Listen to all the rap music you want, but refrain from quoting the songs on your social accounts. Most of those who look at your posts just aren’t that cool to get it.
5. Friend people you don’t know.
When you friend or follow someone, you associate yourself with them and everything they post and share online. If you don’t know the person, don’t allow them into your circle of friends on Facebook. You can set up the subscribe feature on Facebook so that people you don’t know can enjoy your public posts (see #1 below). Before you follow someone on Twitter, check out what types of tweets they post and make sure they are someone you want to be associated with.
Since Beaming Bohemian promotes positive and purposeful communication, we’ll end with a list of things you should do in social media.
DOs
1. Understand the settings, functions & features of the networks you’re on.
If you take the time to do this, you will be better equipped to control the content you share. You can take advantage of certain features to promote yourself, but also to keep other conversations more private. When you understand how each network truly works, you will be more effective in your communication with these tools.
2. Allow your parents to help you.
If you are a high school student, this is a time when you really do want your parents to assist you. Their guidance in your communication style and strategic planning will help you be more successful. And it opens up the conversation in your family about how social media can help you, as well as hurt you if you make mistakes (see #3 above). You can help your parents better understand what networks are available, and your parents can help you network with recruits and with your personal marketing plan. Make this a family project.
3. Take care with who you friend & follow.
Point #5 above touches on this. But in this positive piece of advice, I’d like you to pay more attention to who you friend and follow and be more assertive in your practices. Actively look for people on Twitter that are coaches who you want to meet or people who will boost your profile. Be strict about your friending procedures on Facebook to better protect your account. Build a following and network that will advance your efforts to get noticed by college coaches or hiring managers. It’s nice to be friendly and subscribe to a #teamfollowback concept, but if you have spammers, bots and shady characters following you, you really, really do not want to follow them back. Get comfortable using the “block” and “report spam” features.
4. Make your bio work for you.
It’s a good idea to brand your accounts so that there is a consistent look and presence across all your accounts. Use the same picture for all your accounts. Your bio can work for you if you let it. For example, if you are a high school student-athlete, try posting, “Junior at Valhalla High School. Second baseman looking to play for a DII school out of state.” If you are in college, try, “Third year at UCSB, playing water polo and studying Communications. Can’t wait to work for Google.” You get the idea. Let people know who you are, but also how they might help you network. Both of these examples are far more effective than others I’ve found:
Ballin’ is a habit
Baconators & tea. Tie dye & toboggans, I give a thumbs up. Pure momma’s boy. Up is my favorite movie. I enjoy back dimples.
A turns into an if the next word begins with a vowel, but im not a rapper #EAT #work #Weightroom
Put the wind in win some, lose some; the star in starting over.
5. Have a plan for posting photos and news for public view.
In a nutshell, be strategic. You need to think in the long term and how you can use these social communication tools to get you into the college you’d like, to build your professional profile and to get you hired after college. All trends point toward college coaches and recruits using social networks as part of their recruitment process. If you are fighting for a spot on the team, matched up against another with equal talent and skill, your online profile will come into play. What will it say about you? When the hiring manager looks for you online after they’ve reviewed your application (3 out of 4 hiring managers do), what will they find? If you’ve taken the time to build your personal brand, to plan out some content and strategize your communications, athletic and employment recruiters will quickly understand that your are a quality candidate and that you care about your online profile. Your professionalism will be noted.
Ultimately, it is never too early for social media users to get in good habits. If you are going to participate online, think in the positive and have a purpose. You can use social media to aimlessly converse and chit chat, or you can gain a competitive edge and make these tools work in your favor. I hope you’ll be proactive and take the time to communicate well.
Intensity
USC posted this photo on Facebook on October 6th. I love this photo. I wish more sports teams (and even businesses) would post this type of behind-the-scenes snapshots. This picture, this moment, speaks volumes. You can imagine yourself as one of the players, gearing up and getting psyched for the big game. You can imagine what might be going through their minds as they stare themselves down. We feel the intensity of this experience. We can connect with the guys on an emotional level, mostly because we’ve all had a moment like this wear we are staring ourselves in the face and putting on our ceremonial war paint. Very easy to connect with these two players emotionally. People are moved by emotions.
I hope other teams and businesses take a note from this photo and start posting more moments like this from their story. This is the type of content that reels us in. We want to know more. We want to cheer for these two players in particular because we feel like we’ve been standing right next to them, getting ready for the game.
Kudos to UCS for their awesome social campaign this year. And cheers to the photographer for capturing this powerful image to help shed light on the story of football.
I wish all the athletes who have games this weekend the same moment of intensity prior to their game. Take a good look in the mirror. You got this.
What Crock-Pot Could Have Cooked Up
This tweet landed in my stream today:
Crock-Pot launches NFL-branded slow cookers http://t.co/fGUfQAHI #sportsbiz (via @sports_business)
— Tariq Ahmad (@tariq_ahmad) October 15, 2012
And it immediately got me thinking about what Crock-Pot could have cooked up for marketing this awesome new product!
I mean … look at that! Your favorite team’s colors and logo is on a Crock-Pot! Die-hard football fans are likely to be the same people who consume the most chili on this planet. How many times have you been to a football party where chili was served? Crock-Pot, the NFL and chili are nearly a branding match made in heaven!!!
And so, I keep scratching my head as to why the release of this perfectly branded product is so ill-timed and flying very under the radar. My marketing instincts were shouting at me…Here’s what I would have done, if I were the marketing guru at Crock-Pot:
Once the approval from the NFL was received to use the team colors and logos on a crockpot, I would have then reached out to each team’s Community Relations Director. Together, we would have held chili contests in the summer time, keeping the buzz going and engaging fans for all teams in the off season. For each team, a winning chili recipe would have been selected to accompany the team Crock-Pot. So if you bought the San Diego Chargers Crock-Pot, the San Diego fan’s winning chili recipe would be inside. Wait, there’s more!
The product would have been released shortly before pre-season with an ad-campaign featuring the chili recipe winners from each team. Crock-Pot could have partnered with S&W to feature the award-winning ingredients of football’s chili recipes (side note, but still a good opportunity). Through the season, there would be chili cook-offs across the nation between the recipe winners featured in the team-themed Crock-Pot. Could have been set up like a tournament where the brackets are put up online and you follow your team’s chili recipe winner through the brackets. That would have led to a Superbowl Sunday chili cook-off finale extravaganza to determine which team’s fan had the winning recipe in all the league. Imagine the commercials. You could end up with some rare “live commercials” campaign during the Superbowl.
The social media marketing, promotion and engagement opportunities would be endless. Voting could have occurred online, in addition to the live chili cook-off events. People who try the included recipes could give reviews, share photos, etc. Fan participation surrounding the competition on the field and for the Crock-Pot chili challenge would spike. Gazillions of NFL Crock-Pots would have been sold. And there would be millions of satisfied bellies full of chili.
Really – how tough is it NOT to see the possibilities here? This is common sense to me. What a huge opportunity missed by Crock-Pot and the NFL. I mean, REALLY! If you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen, get out of the Crock-Pot!
How would you have marketed this product?
How do you want to be remembered?
There is no question that social media has revolutionized the way we communicate. For any of us old enough to remember when cell phones became more readily available, or when e-mail etiquette manuals were being passed around (ALL CAPS MEANS YOU ARE SHOUTING), or even when we hovered around a computer in the office in the early ’90s searching via Netscape Navigator to see what we could find on the internet, we know that social media is an evolving medium.
For better or worse, social media has allowed us to share as many tiny details about our lives as we so choose to share. It has allowed brands to personally converse with fans and loyal customers. You can probably think of a few friends or people you follow, who seem to share just the perfect mix of personal insights, news and fun information. You can probably think of a few friends who share way too much information. And then there’s the few who make us wonder why they’ve opened an account at all.
For those who take the time to understand how social media works, how each platform delivers information and to what audience, you have an amazing opportunity to control what people know about you, and your personal reputation.
And that’s the thing. Much like the word of a member of high society in the Victorian era, our reputations rest on the information that is out there, floating about society. Except in this day and age, it’s what information is circulating on the internet. The growing trend is that employers, admissions officers, consumers, dates, clients and coaches are checking out how you check out online. And if they find something that doesn’t reflect well on your persona, you are marked, and you may miss out on the opportunities you seek.
Hiring managers have cited that pictures, foul language, even a lack of information or no account, and what appears to be gossip or bullying have lead them to pass on candidates for jobs. Student-athletes have lost scholarships for sexually and racially explicit tweets. Potential employees have lost opportunities for posting comments about their job interviews and offers. Brands who mismanage their social networks, lost customers.
And yet, even with all these examples making the news, many folks continue to carelessly post all sorts of nonsense, without a worry as to how that will affect their reputation. So I’d like to pose a question to you, that may help curb thoughtless status updates, blog entries, photos and tweets.
How do you want to be remembered?
Do you want to be remembered as the high school athlete who gets passed over by your dream team because your Facebook albums contain too many photos with you holding a bottle of beer? Or do you want to be the athlete who is chosen over the other player not because your skills are all that more extraordinary, but because it is clear from your online profile that you are a stellar person and would be an asset to the team on many levels?
Do you want to be remembered as the employee who posts complaints about work and the boss all the time, which leads to a co-worker presenting said boss with screenshots of your rants and you getting fired? Or would you like to be the one who through cheerleading for your company online, gains such a quality personal following that you end up becoming the spokes person for the company?
Do you want to be remembered as the “idiot” who posted *that* post that got the team sanctioned by the NCAA? Or would you prefer to be the one who makes the winning play and becomes a Twitter trend.
Do you want to be remembered as the CEO who kept grumbling, “I’m too old for this stuff,” and missed the opportunity to personally communicate with thousands of brand fans and consumers, costing the company an increase in revenue? Or do you want to be remembered as that CEO who set the trend for other CEOs to follow, because you took the time to “get” social media and use it to be accessible, engage your audiences, build brand loyalty and increase sales?
Do you want to be remembered as the coach who banned your athletes from using Twitter? Or do you want to be the coach who empowers your players to use social media to build the team’s reputation, increase game attendance, and give a unique view and behind-the-scenes access to fans?
Do you want to be remembered as the lawyer who lied to the judge about a grandparent’s funeral to extend a trial only to be caught on Facebook with vacation photos? Or do you want to be remembered as the attorney who implemented a training program so that everyone in the firm could boost their client base and connect with the community?
Do you want to be the student whose online content catches the eye of the admissions officer, who promptly rejects your college application because you are clearly a liability? Or do you want to be the student who uses social media to develop a campaign, showing off your character and strengths, which gets you noticed and accepted by the college of your dreams?
Do you want to be remembered as the friend who shares way too much information, racy photos and inappropriate comments? Or do you want to be the person who everyone loves to follow, because you are an inspiration and always post the most engaging content?
What you say, do and post online does matter. Nothing is private. And it all speaks to who you are and your reputation.
How do you want to be remembered?
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