Brazen Careerist is a Social Media Risk Management Tool for Gen Y

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Roxy

Like traditional societies, associations, advocacy groups, memberships, and unions, there is strength in the shear number of people Brazen Careerist has organized on your behalf that want to grow careers using social media.

On Wednesday evening, Brazen Careerist was gracious enough to let me produce their first webinar to launch the Networks feature on their site. I set up the technology but also fielded questions from the audience to feed to Penelope & Ryan. It wasn’t your mother’s webinar, and it was a lot of fun. What a creative and thoughtful community Brazen has.

The webinar was for those who started groups in Brazen’s site. For example, I had started the Associations group to find other young professionals who work at associations. Brazen had just made the decision to change Groups to Networks and the webinar showed us how to be better Network leaders. (If you look at my group, you can tell I need advice).

During the webinar many people wanted to know why they should invest time in Brazen instead of LinkedIn. Penelope thoughtfully responded that Brazen is a network of bloggers and that blogging can help you land jobs because it publishes your ideas when you don’t have the experience to land a job right after college or grad school.

Participants responded, But blog writing is scary. My ideas? Out there? Isn’t execution and experience better? How do I know this is safe?

No, it’s not safe. Like anything new, it is risky. Brazen Careerist is genius because it helps you manage your social media activity risk.

This table shows you why social media activities like blogging are scary to you and explains the difference between traditional career networking and social media career networking.

Why Using Social Media as a Career Networking Tool is Scary for Gen Y
Traditional Career Networking	Social Media Career Networking
Resume	Personal Brand
Safe	Scary
Execution	Ideas
Feels like work	Feels like play
Work/Life Balance	Lifestyle Design
Exchange business cards	Follow each other on Twitter
Known & Reliable	Transparent & Risky
You will get a job	You could get your dream business partnership
Focus on getting promoted	Focus on learning through new projects
Happy Hours, Conferences, Associations, Speed Networking	Meetups, Blog Posts, Blog Comments, Online Social Networks, Facebook Groups
General skills like accounting = job security = good career	The more niche, specific, and bold your ideas are, the better but harder

Brazen Careerist manages risk for you.

Your Social Media Career Networking Risks:

Someone might disagree with my ideas
I don’t have enough experience, and my ideas will be dumb, no one will hire me
What if my boss finds out and fires me
Blogging needs to be so niche, limiting myself to one topic will hurt me in the log run

How Brazen Careerist Manages Your Risks:

Network to show yourself, your boss, and others that blogging is a new career tool that normal people use
Advice at your fingertips from other smart people
Teaches you how to express your ideas to your intended audience and industry in a professional, thought-provoking manner
Has created a talent market of tech-savvy, entrepreneurial people – think strength in numbers rather than competing for the same jobs

Questions for fellow Network Leaders:

How can we leverage our Brazen networks to decrease our social media risk even more?

What could Brazen Careerist develop that would make us thought-leaders on the well-executed personal brand?

What type of education/training would help you be a better Network leader?

How can Brazen Careerist stand apart from LinkedIn as a career management tool for Gen Y?

Are we on Brazen an association? Union? Advocacy group? Society?

If we wanted 1 Thing in the world to change, what would it be and how would we do it?

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/envizion/ / CC BY 2.0

Ask the Expert: Yourself

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Roxy

Great discussion yesterday with Seth Godin, Holly Ross, and Beth Kanter about nonprofits, social media, and innovation.

Beth and Holly have great posts – read them before you read this because their sums were so good I’m going to write about something else.

I want to talk to the young professionals of our community.

I thought yesterday’s discussion would revolve around tactics to get other people to change – like how to prove a new technology to others in your org.

Really it was about how you can change – into a person who proves new technologies to others in your org.

I know of a technique that can help you do this. You will think it is weird and unnecessary but you have to do it. It’s called personal branding. It’s what we do now.

Personal branding forces you to figure out what you’re about and define that for others.

Some tools for this are starting a blog about your industry, commenting on other blogs about your industry, and learning as much as you possibly can about the problems in your industry. For nonprofits it might be fund raising in an economic downturn, delivering food to Somalia, or getting people to come to your event.

Blog writing will force you to come up with what you really think about an issue. It will help you gain your own clarity and insight, which can be empowering. Keep it about business and ideas and not about your cat or work place annoyances.

On the right of this page you area reading are most of my favorite blogs. Get yourself set up with Google Reader to have their updates come to you instead of wasting time going to them. You can even read them on your iPhone.

After a few months you will have enough knowledge to start solving real problems in your industry and connections with other people who can make things happen.

Then it’s just up to you to get things done.

If you already have a blog and are out there making things happen, please post your link below so I and others can connect with you.

Update: Great post on personal branding predictions for 2010 to check out.

How I Got Into Oprah’s Magazine

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Roxy

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan-light/ / CC BY 2.0

A little over a year ago this appeared in O Magazine:

After reading Suzy Welch’s article, I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth. For years Oprah’s show has been encouraging women to say no and to put ourselves first. Welch’s article tells us to say yes and to put our careers first. Other pieces in the issue encourage us to slow down and even to take a break from e-mail! I’m confused-should we say no or yes? I work for the consulting firm that chooses Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in America, and we favor employers who encourage a work-life balance, yet I don’t know of anyone who ever became a CEO by putting that into practice. How do we find the right balance for us? Is Welch suggesting that a woman can’t have it all?

Roxann Allen

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

Suzy’s response:You’ve hit the nail on the head, Roxann. Women’s lives these days can be confoundingly complex and filled with contradictions. My intention when I wrote the article wasn’t necessarily to urge women to put their careers first by always saying yes; it was more to explore the reality that when you say no, there are consequences. The best decisions are always informed decisions.

Jack Welch’s wife, Suzy Welch, wrote an article contradictory to what Oprah has been empowering women to do – balance a crazy life full of competing responsibilities like work, family, and “me” time. I emailed my note but did not expect to be put into the letters to the editor section or even to receive a response from Suzy herself!

How I got into the magazine

Obviously, it wasn’t my good looks because they couldn’t see me.

Looking back, these are the components of my very short note that got me noticed by O Magazine‘s editors:

Wrote for her audience – women
Wrote about a topic Oprah cares about - women and life/work balance (even if you don’t think there is a distinction, Oprah’s audience still does
Kept it short & to the point
Established credibility – mentioned that I worked on a high profile magazine article in Fortune Magazine
Established history with Oprah – that I’ve followed her for years and know what she cares about, that women should be empowered to balance all aspects of life
Interesting content – even Suzy Welch felt compelled to respond!

Some of you might think:

A) Any crazy person can get into the Letter to the Editor section or
B) No one ever reads that section anyway

And I might say:

A) The section is only a few pages away from Martha Beck’s column and
B) Baby steps, small actions, that you can test and learn from get you closer to a big goal

I may not have had a full column or been a favorite thing but I got to dissect and test what Oprah’s editors are looking for to give their audience.

What baby steps are you crossing off your list to get to your goal? How are you leveraging what, how, and who you know to push yourself farther?

I think you’ve been getting by on your good looks til now. What if you used that brain of yours to drive up some attention and move yourself forward?

Better Network Building and Discussion with Chris Guillebeau

Posted on November 1, 2009 by Roxy

Chris Guillebeau brought together around 30 members of his small army of remarkable people in DC at Busboys & Poets last week for a meetup.

Chris has the rare ability to make meaning for us world-changers while evading the guru trap by weaving strong ties among his readership.

Speaking of a small army, Seth Godin often talks about his new rule of 10 in new marketing – nowadays, all you need is 10 people to get something good going around your cause or project.

Chris built this in DC and introduced us to each other. I met several remarkable people, like Jeff, Thursday, Vik, Sheila, and Chase- only to name a few.

What’s cool is that they are all in the DC area and we actually got to know each other in person over quesadillas and beers at my favorite restaurant in DC.

Most of the people I met work in the nonprofit sector, which is not surprising given our city. They work on various causes from the environment to equal access that are important and they are passionate about.

What I learned about Meetups and the New Network Building in DC

Blogger community area meetups are a great way to meet remarkable people outside your normal circle. Start reading a blog that interests you and attend a speaking event where the blogger will be speaking to meet not just the blogger but others in their community.
Meetups and events are not always about the blogger or organizers. Chris graciously gave me a 10 minute interview but he mostly talked to everyone at his meetup in groups for only a few minutes and didn’t even get to speak with some people, although he tried. Most of the time I talked to other people who wanted to meet Chris, building not just his network but also our own. There were some amazing people there I was lucky to get to know.
Connect on Twitter after the event. It’s a great way to keep in touch with the new people you meet.

I do learning & networking events for a living, so the above 3 items are quite new and worth mentioning.

Discussion with Chris

Below is my just under 9-minute discussion with Chris at the restaurant where he entertains my questions about how his work started in international development in Western Africa and spread from there.

Chris volunteered with Mercy Ships on the coast of West Africa for 4 years, went to grad school in international studies, and started The Art of Non-Conformity during grad school, which has now grown into a meaningful writing career with his upcoming book of the same title, due out next year.

If you work in international development or nonprofits, he is a good person to know.

Stuff we talk about:

What he did leading up to The Art of Non-Conformity
Convergence – how his writing brings together the various experiences he’s had in his life so far
He also discusses with me a need for nonprofits to work more closely together and how we could join Dan Pallotta in his call for a Change the World Conference

Meatball Countdown: What if Seth wrote Trust Agents?

Posted on October 25, 2009 by Roxy

Two of my favorite teachers are Seth Godin and Chris Brogan. Seth is an expert in marketing and Chris is an expert in Communications – two of my favorite business functions that at a nonprofit we all get to do in some form or another.

I have their books stacked up with Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta that I am reading now and fantasize like a nerd about how a conversation with those three would go.

I think it would help win an important battle in nonprofit operations PR. We need nonprofit trust agents to educate themselves in new media and technology to spread the story that a nonprofit’s overhead is not a measure of its effectiveness or credibility. Nancy Lublin has already gotten us started. We need to talk about how innovations in mobile and internet technology create opportunities to transform nonprofit operations. Operations needs more seats at program planning tables.

Trust Agents are people who humanize the web, understand the systems, and how to make their own game, connect, and build fluid relationships. Does this sound like your CFO?

New Marketing allows us to know our audience, make things that they want, and tell them about it in places and ways they anticipate and want and to get out of their way. Online marketing is about messages that spread between people, not one-way announcements or ads directed at people to interrupt them and gain their attention to hear a message they weren’t interested in hearing anyway. New marketing does not ask, “How can we use this new marketing stuff?” but “How can we be an organization that people want to connect with in this new, transparent way?” Does your HR director know about new marketing?

Maybe we can address this during the upcoming interview with Seth and NTEN.

The Secret to Becoming Child-Like

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Roxy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cilesuns92/ / CC BY 2.0

Julien Smith challenged his readers this morning to add to his list of ways to train in becoming child-like. Here are two secrets I’ve learned in my twenties.

Make friends
People with at least 3 close friends at work are 88% more likely to be satisfied with their lives. When we were kids it was easy to make friends. We actually put effort into it. It does take time – to ask someone out to dinner, go for a walk in the park, or hang out at your family’s cabin for the weekend. It might be uncomfortable at times as you adapt to their habits and re-learn social graces. But it will actually make your other relationships stronger – if you do not have friends at work, make friends outside of work to give you something to look forward to at the end of the day. Go beyond hanging out with your wife’s friends. You will make your relationship with your significant other better if you have mates to give you a new perspective on yourself and relationships in general.

Wear Chucks with dress pants
This works especially if you are young and work in a rather casual workplace. But what if you were an executive and wore them? Why not? I wear them all the time with black and khaki pants. They send the message that you are comfortable, approachable, and playful. Try it on a Friday and see what happens.

How to Win a Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Roxy

Obama woke up at 6 am, same time I woke up, and someone told him, “Oh, hey, you won a Nobel Peace Prize.”

When I saw the news on Yahoo, I was elated – good for him!

Then several of my friends commented that he didn’t deserve it. What has he done? He’s too young. Hasn’t been in office long enough. He’s stealing my freedom. All talk no walk.

Why is his win so contentious?

The reason is the reason he won.

According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee he won for the creation of a “new climate in international politics.”

A “climate” is an intangible thing – it’s like an X factor thing – you can’t teach it or describe it or make it happen, it’s either there or it isn’t.

It’s really hard to tell why he won or should win. Does that matter now that he has?

When an opportunity comes it is how you roll with it that counts.

Julien Smith says you can’t even prepare for when “it” happens. You can only adapt to it.

Even Obama himself thought it was premature, but he’s not downplaying it or making an overly huge deal about it.

We will see how he adapts.

Meatball Sundaes and Squidoo

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Roxy

The non-profit blogger community couldn’t stop talking about Seth Godin’s “non” post of a few weeks ago.

Most of the conversation focused on his error calling out nonprofits for not being the most followed on Twitter.

I had to step in.

So I took a step back.

Right or wrong, Seth holds this opinion. He is an/the expert marketer. If he holds this view, there are probably others out there who do, too. We should all talk about it together.

So I asked Seth if he would do an interview with Beth Kanter about Squidoo, his online referral site, and how it can give context to a nonprofit’s digital footprint. He and Beth were more than willing, and that discussion will take place next month with the good folks at NTEN – Nonprofit Technology Network.

The focus will be on how nonprofits can not become meatball sundaes – Seth’s term and title of one of his books – for organizations that have not changed their structure and mission to be online.

I’m looking forward to the discussion!

Shift Happens

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Roxy

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Shift Happens

View more presentations from Jeff Brenman.

Cause Leaders

A site to inspire and empower change agents and movement builders

How I Got Into Oprah’s Magazine

Better Network Building and Discussion with Chris Guillebeau

The Secret to Becoming Child-Like

How to Win a Nobel Peace Prize

Meatball Sundaes and Squidoo

Shift Happens