New Link-Fest for all things LinkedIn

Have you ever wished it was easier to find information about LinkedIn from all the different resources on web? Well, as of today, it IS a bit easier.


Nathan Kievman, the founder of LinkedStrategies and a frequent speaker, trainer, blogger and writer about all things LinkedIn, has just created a wonderful new central resource of links for finding all kinds of information about LinkedIn.


http://www.linkedstrategies.com/about-linkedin/


The list includes sections on:

• LinkedIn Facts (historical and current)
• Official LinkedIn Resources
• Official Groups for LinkedIn (including some for employees only)
• Statistics on LinkedIn Membership Worldwide
• A list of almost every published book written about LinkedIn with links
• A collection of LinkedIn Profile SEO optimization guides, including videos
• Articles on Career Management and Job Search using LinkedIn
• And, naturally, a collection of articles and resources on how to network on LinkedIn
• There's also a short list of links to some of LinkedIn's best known consultants and writers

As you would expect from a LinkedIn consultant, the site appears to be well tagged and SEO optimized for easy finding through the usual search engines, too.


This is also a good place to start your own research about LinkedIn. Be sure to look around the rest of Nate's site, too, for blog posts, books and more.

Tags: LinkedIn, Nathan Kievman, blogs, consultants, LinkedIn facts, social media

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Women’s Health Organization Scorned

Dispute Surprisingly Shows Which Organization is More Adept at Social Media and PR 

This week has seen a social media and press explosion between two of the country’s largest and well-known health agencies: The Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer organization and Planned Parenthood.

Regardless of how you feel about the news or the organizations, a fascinating part of the media event is how the two organizations have or have not used social media and the press to present their views on the program. The sad part is that, on initial impression, the Komen Foundation might have permanently damaged their ability to unite women across the political spectrum to their cause.

The facts in brief:

Just before Christmas, the board of the Komen Foundation decided to remove grant funding for any organization that is under congressional investigation. Unfortunately, that was a rather narrowly defined decision because it was also decided only one organization that received grants from Komen was under investigation, Planned Parenthood. The investigation? One by a single pro-life Congressman, Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida. This decision ended five years of funding of several Planned Parenthood clinics by the Komen Foundation, funding which had been criticized by various anti-abortion/pro-life groups.

After learning of the decision, Planned Parenthood was rebuffed in its efforts to discuss the matter with Komen leaders. It took a long time, at least a month, before the decision was reported in the press on January 31, 2012. However, Planned Parenthood clearly had done a better job preparing for the social media and the press than Komen. In fact, Komen appears to have been surprised by the reaction and unable to respond for nearly three days – which may have made all the difference in the debate.

Kivi Leroux Miller, author of Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog, yesterday did a communications analysis of the two organizations, and finds that Komen was unable to even post a tweet about the issue, while online activists were suddenly mobilizing against them.

Let’s compare media exchange between the two organizations.

When the news of Komen’s decision was broken by AP on Monday (Jan. 31st), the initial public reaction was entirely from Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood's national website offered a press release, clearly posing the defunding as a political act, stating: "Anti-choice groups in America have repeatedly threatened the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation for partnering with Planned Parenthood to provide these lifesaving cancer screenings and news articles suggest that the Komen Foundation ultimately succumbed to these pressures." Then, in boldface quotes:

“We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America."

Planned Parenthood, in the same press release announced the creation of a new “Breast Health Emergency Fund” to restore the funding for those screening exams, and announced the lead gift of $250,000 from the Amy and Lee Fikes’ foundation.

Curiously, the Amy and Lee Fikes’ Foundation is unknown on the web except from this press announcement. GuideStar.com has no record of it, although there is a legitimate Leland Fikes Foundation. This suggests the foundation may have have been founded to deal with the Planned Parenthood controversy, which is fine. But it points to a possible aspect of Planned Parenthood’s preparation which may be another story remaining to be written.

This press announcement was followed by online campaigns by a variety of individuals on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, as well as political groups like MoveOn.org, to raise money for the Emergency Fund. In fact, if early reports are accurate, online pledges have already replaced a good part of the lost funding from Komen with over $400,000 already pledged.

According to Planned Parenthood, the Komen foundation funded 170,000 breast cancer screening exams over five years, out of 4 million exams performed over the same period. Putting this in perspective, 170,000 clinical exams is a lot, but it appears (if we’re really comparing apples to apples here) that Komen funded 4.25% of Planned Parenthood’s breast screening exams. This is far from insignificant, but certainly not a major hit to the overall funding of the program. Seeing that Komen’s funding went to just 19 of the Planned Parenthood’s 800 health centers, though, those individual centers would probably be affected severely.

One activist, Alison Fine, co-author of The Networked Nonprofit, quickly set up a web page called “Komen Kan Kiss My Mammogram!” announcing the goal of raising $1 million for Planned Parenthood. As of 4:55 pm on Feb. 2nd, they claim to have raised $3555 from 809 people. Perhaps this is a drop in the financial bucket, but it may be representative of many of the suddenly mobilized activists.

A distributed cartoon has been making the rounds

 

Komen seems to have been surprised by the controversy. For three days there was nary a tweet or a Facebook update concerning the issue, let alone a press release on their web site.

Finally, late Wednesday or early Thursday, Komen’s website posted a video from their founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker. In brief, she stated that the defunding is a result of a long review on funding priorities and never mentions Planned Parenthood by name. She also restated her organization's pledge to serve all women who need breast cancer screenings.

It seems reasonable to think that Ms. Brinker, as a former Ambassador and CEO of one of the nation's best-known charities, has some experience with media. Unfortunately, her video demeanor shows her as not only serious, but worried. Also, apparently reading from notes just off camera, she keeps her eyes glued to the script and not quite on the camera. This has the unfortunate side-effect of not making eye contact with the viewer. Reading some of the early comments under the video, this has produced a flurry of negative comments, some of them going far beyond political to the personal.

Although the Komen organization claims that the decision to defund was not political, the response of at least one anti-abortion group was almost gloating, according to Fox News:

"As a breast cancer survivor, I applaud the decision made by the Komen Foundation to discontinue their partnership with the billion-dollar, abortion mega-provider, Planned Parenthood," Americans United for Life President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest said. "The work of the Komen Foundation has life-saving potential and should not be intertwined with an industry dealing in death."

Sadly, even Presidential politics are being dragged into the affair, “About 250,000 people have signed a petition on the website MoveOn.org, a political supporter of President Barack Obama, calling on Komen to reverse its decision, Sarah Lane, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.” Italics mine. Quote from NewsMax.com.

The fact that MoveOn.org supports Pres. Obama wouldn’t appear to have anything to do with their decision to create a petition. Chances are MoveOn would do the same thing no matter who was president. However, if the Komen group wanted to keep left vs. right wing politics separate from their funding decision, it now appears that it is out of their hands.

Even the satirical e-card site Someecards has weighed in on the controversy:


 

So, what will be the fallout from the controversy?

The Susan B. Komen Foundation, which has had a wonderful national reputation for its fight against breast cancer, may have permanently stained its pink ribbon campaign, which up to now was seen as apolitical. According to yesterday’s blog post on Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog), ”Komen for the Cure, it seems, is no longer a breast cancer charity, but a pro-life breast cancer charity.”

Although there have been tweets and comments around social media from women saying they will no longer support Komen, there is a possibility that there will also be increased funding from conservative, anti-abortion groups which have boycotted the Komen Foundation because of its support of some Planned Parenthood clinics.

Planned Parenthood, no stranger to controversy or to Congressional and other investigations, appears to have had the more nimble response. By being the first to comment publicly, they have framed the defunding as clearly a political move. It has mobilized its own funding campaign, and has been joined by other social and political groups. They may be able to recoup the lost money in a few days’ campaign, no mean feat.

Permanently damaged is the good done by cooperation between the two associations and the appearance that breast cancer is a cause that unites all women and should be above mere politics.

Both organizations may lose some of their reputation by the dispute. Oddly, they may both increase funding as the issue becomes politicized, at least in the short term. It’s hard to see how the Komen Foundation is not the more injured party in the long term, but we will see.

http://www.plannedparenthood.org

http://ww5.komen.org/ 


Since this article was first published, I found a news post published last night (2-1-12) from the pro-life web site LifeNews.com announcing that the Komen Foundation has also removed funding from several cancer research groups which also do research with live stem-cells. The organizations which are no longer funded, according to the report, are Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the University of Kansas Medical Center, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the Society for Women’s Health Research and Yale University. - AB


This media situation continues to develop at a frenetic pace. Just this afternoon Republican New York City Mayor announced his own donation of $250,000 to Planned Parenthood to help make up for the lost funding from Komen, according to The Daily News, saying “Politics have no place in health care,” Bloomberg said in a statement on Thursday. “Breast cancer screening saves lives and hundreds of thousands of women rely on Planned Parenthood for access to care. We should be helping women access that care, not placing barriers in their way.”

Tags: nonprofits, funding, fundraising, social media, press, Planned Parenthood, Komen

Networking Styles Part 2, for Job Hunters

Finding your LinkedIn "Style" of Networking

PART II Your networking style if you are in a job search.

In our last post  we discussed the different styles of online networking, from timid to gregarious.

Your decision on which networking style you want to use should depend on your networking goals.  Your personality and approach to marketing Me, Inc., are also factors. Some people who are bashful in person-to-person networking (my kind of people, actually) may find online networking more comfortable. Those who are trying to create networks in new career fields or in other physical locations (say, Chicago, San Francisco, Boise, Lubbock or Shreveport) may find online networking and phone networking essential.

When is the best time to grow your network for a job hunt? This question is similar to the (Japanese, I believe) adage:

When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago.

When is the second best time to plant a tree? Today.

Likewise, the best time to grow your network for a job hunt was three or four years ago. The next best time is right now. (If you actually did start to network on LinkedIn, collect recommendations, and develop your profile years ago, congratulations! Now is a good time to get a bit more aggressive.)

If you are job-hunting, there are practical reasons for creating a larger network. Many companies are now using employee referrals to vet potential hires. Some companies even give bonuses to employees if those referrals result in hires. One of the current trends in HR circles is to use employee's connections to help find new employees instead of using expensive search services and recruiters

[See earlier blog post. ]

Therefore, to find connections from your list of target companies, you want to use the LinkedIn's Company listings. Look for people in your geographic area or work in the same locations you want to. Find out what professional (or other groups) they belong to that are of mutual interest. Join them.

If that seems too much like stalking, see if they have a Twitter or other social media link on their profile. If so, that's an invitation to connect with them there. Also check and see if they advertise themselves as a LION. If so, feel free to send them a personalized invitation. Note that some LIONs get so many requests to connect, it could be difficult to get noticed in the crowd. If they have a blog, that's also an invitation to read it and leave a comment.

Once you get to know these people, they could be great advocates for you if the right job opens up. (This is similar to the approach that Richard Bolles has espoused for many years in What Color Is Your Parachute?, way, way before online social networks.)

When you join professional groups on LinkedIn, if you have a free account LinkedIn may still put a few obstacles in your path to contacting 3rd degree connections. Mainly, they may hide the last names of 3rd degree (or further) connections and make it difficult to send them a message (unless it's one of their $10 InMail messages.) There are many ways around these restrictions, but one way is to connect with one or two LIONs in that group. (LION = LinkedIn Open Network.) Do that and nearly everybody in that group, however large, will be a 2nd degree connection. That's a good incentive to accept an invitation from a LION in that group, too. How do you know if a person is a LION? Look at their profile. Many LIONs actually post in their profile the term, LION, or announce that they accept all invitations.

You can also make it easier for other people to find you when they have the same problem of indentifying you. It’s easy. Just re-type your name in the Headline section (just below your name, next to your photo). You do that by clicking the Edit button next to your name when you edit your profile. This way if a group member points at your photo in a group, they might see your first name and last initial from the name field, but they will also see your full name in your headline. You can also add your full name to your links to your Twitter address and other accounts on your profile. This can make it much, much easier for people to find and identify you for jobs and networking.

Also, when people write you a recommendation on LinkedIn, simply ask them to use your full name in the recommendation. If an HR person is searching recommendations instead of entire profiles, your name will pop up there, too.

You can also be strategic in accepting invitations, especially if you get one of those boring, canned "I'd like to invite you to join my LinkedIn network" invitations. When you get that invitation, that could mean one of three things:

1. The person sending the invitation doesn't know how to personalize their invitation, especially when LinkedIn gives them the option to connect with people. (That means they’re a newbie and might not be particularly helpful to you.)

2. The person doesn't really care enough about you to send a personalized invitation, they just want to collect connections. (Why would you want to connect with somebody who won’t even take the time to personalize an invitation?)

3. They assume you are an open networker and will accept most if not all invitations. (A less impersonal, but still careless error unless, of course, you actually ARE an open networker.)

There actually is a fourth possibility: they clicked the wrong button and sent you an invitation by mistake. It does happen. Again, this is not usually a great way to start a networking relationship.

If you get one of these impersonal invitations from somebody, be strategic. Look at their profile. If that person is in your field or one of your groups, consider accepting the invitation and writing back, "I'm happy to connect. Was there a particular reason you sent me an invitation? How can I help you?" This could be a good way to start a conversation. If they don't write back in a reasonable time, you can always disconnect.

If that invitation is from a person in the HR field, they might be working strategically to build their network for their specialty, or they may be flailing, randomly sending out invitations to anybody they can find who is connected. Again, if they are a specialist in your field or in your region, consider accepting the invitation. If (as in some recent invitations I've received) they work in an entirely different part of the country (or world) and/or place clients in a field unrelated to yours, you can simply hit the Ignore button with a clear conscience.

When job hunting, you also need to make sure your profile is close to or at 100% completion. Use keywords for your occupation in your job descriptions and use those to make it easier for HR people to find you, too. There are other techniques we'll talk about in other posts, too.

If you are thinking of planting your tree now, start digging.