Tag: Social media

Twitter speech

Before there was “elevator speech” . Now Twitter speech (or CV) offers a quick summation of one’s career mission.

Best and worst of  wise cracks and fortune-cookie wisdom.

Modern-day equivalent of digital tombstones. Tombstones leave behind relationship-defining legacies  i.e. mother, teacher, sister etc…

In The Last Lecture, the author expounded on the importance of relationships.

Imagine yourself looking up to the fluorescent lights in the ICU, tubes in nose, trying to utter your last 140 characters.

What would you say, “I am sorry for all the lost times”, “I am proud of you”, or “I wish I were given more time to see you grow”.

I have said enough on these blogs. It lasts me a life time.

So my Twitter speech would be: “Dare to live, dare to love, dare to win, dare to fail, dare to face yourself in the mirror”.

What’ s your Twitter speech? Your last lecture? Your last blog? Your last Social Media update? Your last e-mail? Your last chat?

Your last sound bite.  Your bumper stickers? Your tatoo and tombstone inscription? (I deleted a dead friend from LinkedIn connection yesterday. Felt weird!).

So many tools, so little time to show or simplify our personal brand. No wonder marketing people insist on improving their Elevator Speech.

It seems that our brain cannot grab lengthy and winding abstract. In the age of over-stimuli and algorithm, our brain wants “instant Google” and our body, instant noodle., preferably spoon-fed, one tweet at a time. I am sure within a few short years, people will talk in Tweets and  choppy chats like campaign slogans even when bandwidth is more abundant and Twitter itself is no longer “over capacity”.  In our Twitter age, elevator speech itself needs a make-over. It needs to be twitterized. Gone are the days when we came back to the office, with a stack of pink telephone messages, asking us to “Please call your mom. ”

 

the art of showing

In Impressive First Impressions, author Vu Pham introduces the concept of “reset”.  By that he means, we constantly need to reset our first impressions according to each context and situation:  at work, at play, at home.

The same guy.  When he was at the top of his game, generated a different impression than when he is at the bottom. Still, in either case, he needs to press reset. (He who appears to be a winner often has the ball passed to him).

As Jackson Brown Jr. puts it, “opportunity dances with those already on the dancing floor”.

Showing up is difficult. Woody Allen went even further to ascribe 90% of success to showing up. The” Road Less Traveled” opens with a single sentence ” Life is difficult”.

When the book came out, it was a sensational bestseller.

Before the screen (first, second and third screen) permeates our lives. Another book came out to advocate a screen Sabbatical. e.g. turn off your TV, your computer and your phone on Saturday, for instance.

Our addiction to the screen fueled the economy of Asia Tigers, just as our addiction for oil, the Middle East nations.

These days, we don’t talk about being telegenic (reserved for the likes of  Peter Jennings). Instead, we talk about web presence,  our digital footprint, our online reputation etc..

As men traveled through the centuries leaving behind traces and tracks on the sand of time, so will our descendants with their digital fingerprints.

This is an exciting time to be alive. To show up, on and off-line. You need to press reset every time, to cultivate that impressive first impressions. Here is our chance to self-reinvent which only made possible this side of the web.

Reflections on connections

The medium (social network) resembles Amazon software source code (we recommend to you these people, read their profiles).

You have to open a personal account like you would at Harmony.com, and boom, you start the handshakes : “Hello, my name is…”.

Personal branding 2.0. Except, when it comes to cross-cultural connection, the First and Last names in Vietnamese are in reverse.

With one or two middle names in the mix, good luck at finding your high school friends. I couldn’t. We met again in the late 80’s.

But I can’t find him on LinkedIn.

Anyhow, LinkedIn has made it as a serious site for professionals to keep in contact, keep each other updated . It is like an elevator that takes

you up to the roof top to join an exclusive party in progress.

There are a variety of personality in life, and online.

Some just show up for the event. Others want to get the most out of it.

For me, I enjoy being exposed to links that I otherwise would miss.

It’s as if through my old and new acquaintances, I have a window to a whole new world (without leaving my desktop).

And not to mention Connections of connections.

The network effect.

At some point, we will be “connection-overloaded”. Like an old teacher at a reunion, who can recognize an old student’s face but cannot recall his name.

But one thing is for sure: we will never be alone again, professionally. There will always be someone out there who needs to hire and fire, to explore an opportunity or recruit a candidate. Or stumble upon an aha moment. And most beautiful of all, when there is a shared event (9/11 or Haiti), we grieve together, as human family should.

No matter how you want to stratify this, at the core, we all want the same thing: building an enduring personal brand, in an increasingly globalized world. Competition gave way to collaboration. And the industrial mind-set is so passe in this Post-industrial age (cloud computing and mobile computing) that if we refused to change, it would be like riding a horse carriage, reading under a lantern. Ford and Edison have done well with or without the buy-in of the Amish.

For my 300 Linked- in friends, you are my Amish family. Interacting locally (on LinkedIn), while living globally. That way, I won’t be like a sales colleague who was caught staring at the office phone and said, “it doesn’t ring”. Well, pick it up and call someone. Anyone. You are in sales. And not at an in-bound call center.

And in this Web 2.0 environment, Google them first before making that call. And be sure to first Google yourself, to see it in the eyes of the beholder.