Social Networking in a business environment - 1

Still too many people I am in contact with dismiss social networking as a passing craze for teenagers. Let me explain. An article in today's Sunday Times on Reid Harrison, founder of LinkedIn.com, prompted me to write this blog entry. He's expecting the reach of his website to double in the next 12 months from the current 32M, particularly fuelled by the global recession forcing people go to jobhunting when they did not expect to be. LinkedIn is a business networking site where you share elements of your CV in such a way that other people may contact you from seeing or searching on various key words. That may be an employer name, a job role or whatever. Headhunters have been using LinkedIn and other similar sites for some time now as an easy source of data, and I should know, I'm married to one!

And it's certainly not for just jobhunting. Employees of companies big and small, and the huge band of self-employed people can also benefit by the networking opportunities the site brings. For example, you may think "I'd like to get in touch with someone from company X for such-and-such a project", and a quick search on LinkedIn will bring you back the answers. By using a three-level network (think of that as "three degrees of separation"), you have better access to people within three steps of you, ie

1. people you know
2. people known to those at level 1
3. people known to those at level 2

Right now I have a little over 200 direct contacts (level 1) and nearly 4.5 MILLION, yes MILLION, across all three levels. Go on, sign up, and then link to me as the person who introduced you! New jobs, projects and opportunities could follow very soon.

Fuel prices - finding the cheapest and avoiding anger

If you are in the UK, here's how to find the cheapest fuel prices in your area. The website PetrolPrices.com is a great FREE service which tells you the cheapest five filling stations in a 5/10/15/20 (you choose) mile radius of a given postcode. If you sign up, also FREE, they will email you the latest prices weekly just so you can check you are getting the best deal. How does it all work? Well, they purchase data from the fuel card companies which gives date/time of the transaction, the filling station identity and the price. Sorted.

Another fuel-related tip. You'd have thought that I would be the first to use "pay at pump", but no.... I have tried it twice in recent months and the filling stations concerned have a limit on the amount a card with authorise via "pay at pump". This is often £50 or £60, and when I go to fill up, I need about £75 worth. Still, at least I get 50mpg on a long run out of my car, so who's complaining?

Save time - use a kiosk

Kiosk technology is coming at us from all directions, and it's another great time-saving use of technology. I went to Argos the other day to get a new mouse - my corporate purchasing department cannot supply a replacement mouse to a home-worker like me inside three weeks, so it seemed sensible to pop across to the shop (5 mins walk) and buy a spare one for myself. All my current spares were old little round socket ones, not USB :-(

So, you walk into Argos and you check out the massive catalogue first until you find your number, pop that into the stock checker to confirm they have the item, technology in itself. Then wander over to the kiosk, tap your item number and quantity in, check out, put your credit card in and the order is none. No contact with Miss Stroppalot behind the till any more.

Then Friday I went to the doctors (routine weight management advice, nothing more!) and there you not only book your appointments over the net, but you check in for your appointment using a kiosk - similar to the one in the photo. Brilliant and dead easy. No more contact with Hyacinth Bouquet behind the glass - yippee!

Over at the airport, lots more kiosks for saving you time checking in. Why queue ever again? I urge you - USE KIOSKS.

Did someone forget to include RSS in the marketing budget?

RSS is a technology that has not had the marketing push behind it that it deserves. For anyone interested in news, it is a very simple and effort-saving way of picking up the headlines and allowing you to review just the one(s) you want - and lots more info can be found at the Google Reader FAQ Page. On the other side, newspapers and broadcasters are generally very good at putting RSS feeds on their websites. Black mark of the bunch goes to the corporate press officers, though.

Woefully few companies issuing corporate press releases have RSS feeds - some people know I have a passing interest in helicopters, and I'd expect the major manufacturers to have RSS feeds on their websites. Shock Horror - NONE of them do - check out the websites of AgustaWestland, Bell, Eurocopter, MD Helicopters, Robinson and Sikorsky. I grant you that the parent companies of Bell (Textron) and Eurocopter (EADS) do have RSS feeds, but the helicopter manufacturers do not. Hang your heads in shame! Always look out for the RSS feed icon - the orange square with the white "radio waves" broadcasting from the "transmitter". They're usually seen on any blog - for example, check out the "Subscribe to Posts (Atom)" link at the bottom of this page.