Changes and New Opportunities

March 3, 2010 1 Comment

After nearly nine years full time at Caltech in alumni relations and communications, I’m moving on. My last day at Caltech is March 15. My time here represents the majority of my professional career, and Caltech has been “home” for a significant portion of my life.

But it’s time to explore new opportunities, next steps, and new ideas. And I can’t wait to hear your suggestions.

I’m not headed to a new position right away, but I’ll certainly be busy. I’m chairing the Social Media and Community conference for CASE in April, for example.  I plan to continue writing, speaking and working on independent projects.  I’m available for consulting. I’ll also be searching for a full time position: I’m open to relocating, and I am looking for something that will help me grow professionally.

And in the meantime, you know where to find me: adaptivate@gmail.com, @lizallen on Twitter, and right here at Adaptivate. Get in touch if you have suggestions, job leads, consulting opportunities, or if you just want to say hi.

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Ambient Awareness and Connecting Online

February 16, 2010 Leave a comment

What is ambient awareness? Here’s an example: right now you might know what your old college roommate had for breakfast this morning, even though you live 2,000 miles apart and haven’t traded emails or phone calls in months. And how do you know? You saw it on Facebook, in a tweet or a blog post. Social media has the power to keep friends connected and up-to-date on everything from vacations to favorite foods to new year’s resolutions, all without picking up the phone or penning a letter.

But beyond maintaining personal friendships, how might ambient awareness be useful?

It can help build community: Headmasters like Lee Burns of the Presbyterian Day School can communicate with students and parents using social media tools. By posting about a book he’s read and discussing how it relates to education, he gives the campus community the opportunity to join in on the conversation – both in person and online.

It can be a networking tool: these days, it’s not who you know but who you don’t know. Follow people in your field you respect and admire (read their blog or follow them on Twitter). Not sure where to start? Try sites like Twiangulate to identify those you aren’t following, but should be. Participate in the conversation by posting a comment when you have relevant thoughts and ideas to share. You stay informed about tools and trends, you build an online reputation for being an informed, engaged participant, and your interactions online may lead to offline networking connections.

It can promote a brand or initiative: companies like Coca-Cola are using Facebook not only to advertise their products, but as a way to spread the word about their philanthropic endeavors. You can use social media tools to augment your message for a new initiative, brand, product or goal, and interact with your constituents in a space they’re already invested in, keeping your fans aware of the latest info and updates.

Maybe all of this seems obvious, but it’s important to remember: social media lets you establish, build and maintain relationships in ways we were unable to easily accomplish before. Wield this tool wisely.

Thanks to Travis Warren of WhippleHill for making me aware of Lee Burns’s social media presence.

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Rating Social Media Prospects

November 8, 2009 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I participated in the CARA Statewide Conference. CARA is the California Advancement Researchers Association, a state chapter of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA), an “international professional association of development research and information management professionals” (from the CARA website).

Development Researchers are the hard working, inquisitive folks who toil behind-the-scenes to make successful front-line fundraisers well…successful. Simply put: development researchers gather, summarize and prepare reports with information about donors. The information they gather about a donor (who the prospect might know, their interests, the companies they’ve worked for or have invested in, what their level of giving might be) helps the fundraising effort in many ways, including rating the prospect on their wealth and likelihood to give.

This got me thinking: in a way, we’re all amateur researchers. When we read profiles, surf individual blogs or check out a Twitter feed, we’re researching. We may be looking for different information and have different motivations than the professionals, but we too look for facts, figures, insight and information about people in their social networking profiles, tweets, and blogs. We learn a lot about people we may have never met in person. A major difference between professional researchers and “the rest of us” is that we’re not looking for donations, we’re looking for relevance: is this person worth following, friending, or subscribing to?

When I evaluate a “social media prospect” (someone I don’t know who contributes online content via twitter, a blog, or other space) I use the following criteria as a guide:

  • Resources: does this person have interesting and informative tweets? Does their blog provide useful information that’s relevant to what I do or something I want to learn more about?
  • Networking: can this person help me to accomplish my goals, personally or professionally? And how might I be able to help them? Do they know someone I’d like to be introduced to?
  • Leads and insider info: is the person really “plugged in” to the latest news and info? Will I learn about new tools and trends early on because of a connection to them?
  • Quality: if tweets stray too far afield, are consistently about a topic I’m not interested in, or just plain offend, I’m unlikely to follow.

Do you have a social media prospect rating system? What are your metrics?

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LinkedIn: Translate My Notes to Searchable Text

August 26, 2009 Leave a comment

After 4+ years of use, LinkedIn continues to be a useful tool for me. I can find people pretty easily, look up connections, network. But in some ways, translating real-world networking into LinkedIn networking has proven to be a challenge. In fact, hanging on to a business card is a necessary supplement to connecting digitally. Here’s why:

When I meet someone at a conference and get their card, I make notes on the back of it – things like where we met (which conference in what city), the date, what we talked about. Later, I can refer to the card and remember who the person is and how I know them, then use those as a basis for re-introducing myself when I contact them via email or phone.

But LinkedIn doesn’t have an effective digital translation for this. They do have the newly integrated “tags” feature, and that’s a good start. You can apply a tag to individuals (“coworker,” “college friend,” “conference attendee” etc) but there isn’t a way to write a short narrative about the person.

I often go through my LinkedIn contacts list.  There are plenty of times when I stare at a name for a few seconds and think, “who is that?” And then I refer to the box of business cards in my desk drawer. LinkedIn, there must be a better way. 140 characters to describe each contact, perhaps?

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