“Jesus” is the least connected word on LinkedIn.  How did Dan Zarella, author of “Zarella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness,” arrive at this interesting but seemingly apropos of nothing conclusion?  As usual, he studied the data.  (The method is less important than the result.  I trust Mr. Zarella’s methodology only to a certain point.  I believe his pseudo-scientific approach allows him to identify correlations, from which he makes logical conclusions.  But that’s as far as it goes.)

The blog post where he published his findings (which I’ll divulge shortly) is not completely clear about the meaning of “connected words.”  What I think he means is this: Words that appear in the titles and summaries of LinkedIn profiles and how they correlate to the number of people that person is connected to.

At any rate the conclusion about the word “Jesus” is no surprise, given the purpose of LinkedIn.  What’s more surprising is the most connected word, which is “recruiters.”

Besides the fact that it’s plural (go ahead, imagine using it in a sentence) I find it interesting that LinkedIn holds fast to its original roots of being a place to network for job opportunities.  When I joined in 2004 I did so because I was considering looking for a full-time job.  I ended up changing my mind about job hunting and didn’t use my account for several years.

Somewhere around 2007 or so it started to get more press as a professional networking site I started using it again.  In 2009 when I was promoting my business, Avarra Solutions, I started using it heavily and seeing it’s real value to small businesses as a professional social networking tool.

Go ahead and look at the infographic Dan posted.  Look at the top nine words on the Most Connected Words list.  Four of them have something to do with job hunting.  Three are related to networking.  So still after all this time, the most heavily connected people on LinkedIn have something to do with looking for employment.

So if you’re looking for work, or if you’re thinking of hiring someone in your business, LinkedIn is definitely still the place to be.

I recently heard about a site called Klout, which apparently is a scoring mechanism that gauges your social reach.  I have no idea how it works, and I’m not sure I care all that much, especially after I visited the site.

It sounded like a neat idea at first.  So I went to the site’s home page and it gave me some marketing scoop about how I needed to know my Klout score.  In order to get any further information I had to sign up.  But here’s the thing… I can’t just sign up.  I have to sign up with either Twitter or Facebook.

I’m very  protective of my Facebook account.  Although I use it for business, I don’t let “just anybody” gain access to it.  I don’t use any apps (except HootSuite) and I don’t play games.  If I do let a site use my Facebook account, it’s with very limited access.

Klout on the other hand wanted access to all my friends, all my posts, and my pages.  Um, no, I don’t think so.

So I signed up with Twitter, which to me posed no threat.  After this, Klout took me to another screen asking me to add my Facebook account.  Skip!  On the next screen I was told I have score of -23.  Just kidding, it was higher than that, but not much.  So the bottom line is that Klout wants me to connect my Facebook page, Like it’s Facebook page, and tell all my friends about it.  Then it will up my score.

I’m sorry, what benefit am I getting out of this again?

My rant is getting off track.  What I really wanted to point out is that this seems to be the beginning of a bad trend.  Many sites I sign up for want me to use my Facebook account to sign up.  I know why they want me to do this, because they get huge benefits.  But how does this help me?  How does it make my life better, easier, funner, or more valuable?

I really think this is getting out of hand.  The world wide web has become one big churning roiling marketing mechanism.  The marketers clearly win by getting access to our information (which most people, unbelievably, freely give).  But hat do we, the consumers, get?  A better score.  Seriously?

Am I just jaded because of the business I’m in?  Let me know what you think.

Earlier this week I told you about our new “E-Connect Your Business” program and why I developed it.  Now I will explain it in more detail, and how it might benefit you.

First of all, this is clearly a service that businesses need.  The first week after I announced it I had two businesses sign up.  I’m almost afraid to send out the mailing I had planned for fear we’ll get overrun with phone calls!  Sounds like a good thing, but it’s a new program and I want to do it right.

E-Connect Your Business uses a collaborative approach to implementing a company’s e-marketing programs.  Nobody knows the business better than the business’s owner and its key staff.  Blindly handing over your marketing to somebody without having input into the detail activities is not likely to succeed.  That’s why an important part of our program is that the business client needs to commit to a certain level of involvement in not only the strategic direction of their e-marketing program, but also in the creation of the content that will get distributed throughout the various channels.

The business needs to assign internal resources to work with us in several key roles:

1. Make decisions about the channels and methods to be used to distribute the marketing message, based on the business’s needs.  This is the strategic roadmap.
2. Educate us about the nuances of the business to help us understand how best to position your offerings to your audience.  This helps us choose the specific sites and activities we will pursue on your behalf.
3. Provide content, in the form of ideas, topics, articles, raw material, etc., which we then edit, optimize, and distribute in various forms.  We can also write content for you, which you would then review, edit, and sign off on.
4. Review reports, progress, recommendations for adjustments and course corrections.  Have discussions and make decisions about these recommendations.
5. Be an advocate within the client business to get decisions made and changes effected.  Provide a conduit for us to communicate with the right players and departments within the company as needed.

The real underlying success factor here is that the business resources have a stake in the program, but our staff takes care of all the technical details and manages the entire program.  This takes all the hassle out of it for the business!  We do the work, and you get the results.

It’s really a beautiful model.  Everybody does what they like to do best.  You run your business, we do your e-marketing.  You get the results (more business for you), and we get another happy customer (more business for us).  Everyone wins!

For more information about E-Connect Your Business, visit EConnectPro.com, or e-mail connect@emarketingconnection.com.  Limited time introductory pricing.

I recently started offering a new program for businesses that “just want someone to do it for us.”  I had not planned on offering this service, and I didn’t even think I wanted it to be part of my business model.  But I’ve learned a few things recently that changed my mind.

I spent the past 18 months teaching other small business owners how to do their own e-marketing.  What I found is that very few of them will actually take it to the level where they are seeing significant results.

I tell them:  “If you follow the program the way I show it to you, I guarantee you will see results.”  And the ones who do follow it see the results!  The problem is not the program. The program works.

The problem is that most business owners are too busy to be able to carve out the time they need to do it right.

Usually it starts out well.  The person is motivated and sincere and even having fun.  Then a business emergency gets in the way, and then another, and another, and soon the day-to-day running of the business consistently takes priority.  The e-marketing program gets shelved with the thought, “I’ll start it again as soon as I have time.”

The reason the business owner wanted to do it himself in the first place is probably one of two things.  Either he is on a tight budget and wants to save money, or it seems interesting and he sincerely wants to learn how to do it.

What usually happens is the business owner ends up spending time he could hardly afford to spend (time is money after all) and gets nothing for his effort because he abandoned the program before it took off.  He might even say, “it didn’t work” and end up with a bad taste in his mouth over the whole thing.

This was a hard lesson for me to learn, but now that I’ve seen it happen again and again, it makes complete sense.  We don’t offer the live workshops any more, but we do still have the video training program, which is the exact same material as the live workshops, just delivered by pre-recorded video.  It’s a very affordable self-study program for business owners who really feel they want to try to do it themselves.

So, I am now turning my focus on our new service, E-Connect Your Business.  Two levels of service offer the business owner the option to hand over the e-marketing program to a professional.  An added benefit to the business is that now someone else is on the hook for the results!

In my next post, I’ll offer some additional info about this new program.  In the meantime, if you want to learn more about E-Connect Your Business, visit EConnectPro.com, or e-mail connect@emarketingconnection.com.

Last week Colonial Beach Virginia got hit with 21″ of rain in less than 48 hours.  People said it wasn’t even coming in drops, it was coming in sheets.  Here where I live, an hour away, it was raining too.  It rained for days and it was discouraging and frustrating and everyone was complaining.  But it was nothing like Colonial Beach got.

I have property down there, with renters.  They were having problems (water coming in the house, etc.) and wanted to know what to do.  I was utterly helpless.  I had no idea what was going on, and even they didn’t know.  Apparently the whole town was drowning but nobody could tell me anything, even the fire chief told my husband “Don’t come here, you can’t get through.”  All the roads were closed.

Fortunately for social media and the up to the minute online news feeds of my local paper, I was able to glean a little bit of what was happening down there.  I even made phone calls to other people I know who lived in the town, to see if they knew anything.  One person told me “when I left yesterday everything was fine.”  Um… yeah… thanks.

My only source of reliable information was the Internet.  That in and of itself is not that big of a revelation.  The thing is… the information came to me from other people.  Citizens.  Regular people.  Not the police, not the fire department, not the town officials, no spokespeople.  Just regular folks.  Neighbors and concerned citizens.  From near-real-time comments on news stories to friends on Facebook, I managed to piece together what was happening down there.

Even the online news stories were only able to give a quick snapshot of what was known at a particular time.  [Actually the newspaper's Facebook page did a better job of offering regular updates than their web site did.]  But the comments people made on the news story kept coming in, with people offering observations, comments, helpful advice, and neighborly support.  People banded together during a difficult and scary time, and helped each other get through.

For all the issues I have about social media, this experience was a real sanity-saver for me.  It didn’t keep the ceiling in the kitchen from falling down, but it helped me hold it together, and made me appreciate the real value of social media.