LinkedIn is a great business search engine

By now those of you who have read some of my posts know that I have no real use for Plaxo (although I am a ‘member’) but am a regular user of LinkedIn. I have yet to become what I see a number of people are which is what I call a ‘serial networker’. Those with more than 500 contacts fit this moniker. I have over 300 and personally know and have met almost every single person in my network. This is unlike Twitter on which I have nearly 600 followers but have met under 30. More on following large groups of people on Twitter in a subsequent post.

But I really think LinkedIn provides are great tool and service for business people. Since the information is self-provided it is generally accurate if not a bit embellished. (Save for the prevaricators that are no doubt members as well but hopefully not in my network).

Whenever I am given a new contact via referral the first thing I do is type their name into the search function of LinkedIn. It does not work every time since there are still many folks who are not on LinkedIn or there are times when there are too many John Smiths to figure even if you know the geographic location. Since the information is what people provide on their own and when you do get a proper profile you get a snapshot of their location, career path, education and even a few interests. This is BEFORE you have even LinkedIn with them. And answering questions in specific areas does build your standing and reputation as a resource which has helped me and our company gain business.

But it gets better than that. Search by company can provide position locations for job searches. Industries can be investigated by category. And people with whom you have lost touch can be found (yes this is done on Facebook and other social networks as well). Of course you can get great information via Google and Yahoo but I have found LinkedIn to be faster and quite reliable.

Did I mention that Linkedin is free? They do have a revenue model for enhanced access and the ability to send messages to people with whom you would like to be in touch but have no contact. More importantly introductions via people you are connected to work out really well as there is a level of inherent trust built in.

I don’t understand why anyone would not want to be listed on LinkedIn. The days of reveling in ones anonymity are over. People can find out things about you in many other places. Just ask and read about Justice Scalia this past week. Wouldn’t want them to find out things about you from your own perspective?
Have a great holiday weekend.

Dominating Twitter -

Dominating Twitter - new blog post - http://htxt.it/yAh4

Do ALL social networ

Do ALL social networks HAVE to be about commerce? New blog post - www.markkolier.wordpress.com

Finally an explanation of why I cannot use my mobile phone on the plane

Of course I am not sure if I believe it or not. Last night a flight attendant did do something unusual. When admonishing a passenger for not turning off his phone she explained that mobile phones are operative to about 10,000 feet.

When a passenger is on a mobile phone control tower instructions in their headphones are accompanied by a high pitched noise. Apparently this is not bad if one person is on the phone but if there are a plane full of people the cacophony in the pilot’s headset makes it difficult to communicate with the control tower. This sounded strangely plausible to me. But what was best was the flight attendant’s willingness to lift the curtain a bit and let passengers (i.e. customers) in on what should not be a secret.

Why have I never heard this before? I know that should it be true (and I have no reason to doubt it but somehow do anyway) I would not want the pilot of the plane I was flying on having noise and consequently an inability to hear instructions from the people who are watching little blips on the screen all day.

Airlines are hardly specialists in communicating with their customers. On countless occasions reasons for delays go unreported or worse when you get information it’s something like – ‘ATC has put a hold on air traffic so we have to wait to hear back from them before we can take off. Thanks for your patience.’ Then they offer no communication (or water or food) often for an hour or more! This is how mutinies are born!

So to have an explanation for something that we all have been thinking about for a long time (or at least I have) was refreshing and I can go with it. For now. I still cannot figure out why or how an Ipod or headphones would interfere with communications so maybe that will be explained on my next flight. But I am not counting on that.

Airline Madness! Why I am going to visit Detroit and Cincinnati for 30 minutes each

I have to go to Minneapolis next week for a meeting or two. It’s a one day trip out of necessity as I have things going both before and after that require my being close to the office. It’s about a 2 ½ - 3 hour direct flight to get to Minneapolis from a New York area airport. Kind of like going to Chicago and it’s normally pretty easy and reasonably priced to get to Chicago.

Not so much for Minneapolis. Direct flight – (and there are a few but not many choices) - $ 1,470.00. No I did not use Priceline as I need to be there at a particular time and cannot deal with the uncertainty that is Priceline. But going through Detroit to get to Minneapolis and coming back to New York City through Cincinnati the fare was $ 163.00. Not $ 1,163.00. $ 163.00 ROUND TRIP! I am thinking it is unlikely the Detroit and Northern Kentucky (where the Cincinnati Airport is located) Airport authority is that strong a lobby to build traffic for wayward travelers, (however it would be terrific idea if they had!).

But by flying more total miles and taking 4 planes instead of 2, I saved more than $ 1,300.00 How can this make any sense? It doesn’t for me so it must make sense for the Delta/Northwest right? Both Detroit (Northwest) and Delta (Cincinnati) have hubs in these cities and have many flights going every which way from those hubs. So I imagine that there are unsold seats on planes leaving from those hubs and somehow it makes good business sense (to the airline) to fleece the customer who wants to go direct from New York to Minneapolis. What they end up with is a customer who is aggravated and I have not even gone to the airport yet. Yes I will be fine and people who live further from major cities like New York have to deal with this all the time.

I have done quite a bit of traveling this year and plan to continue that trend. I have not had big time complaints with the airlines this year. Most flights I have taken have been reasonably on time and the service (less and less) was pretty much what I expected. Yet out of all the things I have done this by far bothers me the most. Customer loyalty? Why would I be loyal to an airline that runs me through the wringer? Why would you? It’s not a service proposition – domestic air travel here in the United States is pretty uniformly dreadful. So price continues to rule the day. Would I have paid more to go direct? Yes but nowhere near $ 1,300!

I’m willing to bet that almost all people do not run their business this way. How long would our companies last if we did? What say you?

Live Concerts are a better value than sporting events

The opening of two sparkling new baseball parks in the Metropolitan New York area gave critics and fans (sometimes they are one in the same) plenty of things about which to complain and praise. I was at Citi Field (maybe we should call it U.S. Government Field) opening night. The ballpark is beautiful but of course compared to rickety old Shea Stadium that’s not saying much. Yet I grew up watching the Mets at Shea. Citi Field seems to me like another team’s ballpark. I expect that to change when I attend more games but I could not even get to see a third of the stadium as I actually was there to watch a baseball game. One comment I heard was that the Mets (and Yankees too I presume) are more interested in attracting consumers than baseball fans. At an average ticket price of well over $ 100 many baseball fans are priced out of the equation.

I read this morning that despite the current deep recession live concert sales are up more than 18% 2008 over 2007. And if you have paid any attention to live concert ticket prices they appear to me to be no less expensive than baseball games at the new parks (or football games for that matter) – probably a good deal more. Of course $ 200 plus for Miley Cyrus is something I cannot fathom. And I have gone to the New York Philharmonic a few times recently and their ticket prices for a good orchestra seat are slightly less than a good seat at Citi Field.

But live concerts are a better value by far in my opinion. And I love sporting events. Yo-Yo-Ma and Miley Cyrus don’t have off nights when they perform. Or if they do it’s for the most part unnoticed by those in attendance. The orchestra, the ensemble, and frankly all the professional in the performing arts (on and off Broadway are great examples) have a much higher standard of accountability than athletes. How do professional baseball players, football players and other athletes not know the rules of the game? If a pitcher has a bad game he comes out in the third inning. I don’t believe I have ever heard of an artist leaving the stage saying ‘I just don’t have it tonight’ – or their manager pulling them off stage for the same reason.

There’s no question in my mind what is the better value. That does not mean I won’t be going back to Citi Field to see my beloved Mets soon, (and I will also venture to the Bronx to see the Yankees even though I cannot stand them though I do like Jeter) because I’m a baseball fan. But people that go to live concerts are there for the performance and experience. I am not certain of the same with sporting events anymore.

Agree? Disagree? What do you think?

I need new skills. You do too.

Even though I run my own company I feel I still must answer to my employees, clients and colleagues. Everyone is counting on me to keep up with what is new in communications, advertising and specifically direct response marketing. A ton of pressure right? Yes and no.

I realize there is no way for me to be the most knowledgeable about all the new developments and things that are on the marketplace. But I do strive to know enough to be able to discuss what’s going on with those that know more than me (there are a lot of these people).

Engaging smart people in conversation is easier than you might think – social networks, twitter queries all enable me to find a little just about anyone - unless they mask their identity or choose not to engage. Even then you can find things out about people.

So I have developed new skills - blogging, reading social media data, trying to help clients realize where they should be engaged in both new and old media which requires me to know more things about new and old media. I don’t know how to write HTML code or any code for that matter but would be interested in at least better understanding the difficulties and complexity – after all our company has developers that do these things but they remain sort of a holy grail to me since I just have no clue.

What I know most of all is that I will continue to have to learn new things. This results in reading about the same thing in multiple places (the internet is the home of the derivative article and viewpoint) which is a total waste of time. The internet is also a great place to waste a lot of time.

You can never be tired of learning new things. You can be tired and not feel like it sometimes. But you, like me, need new skills. Skills you will need tomorrow and beyond. Why not start today?