Please Keep Your Clothes On

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Mark Twain

If only Mark Twain was right. Lucky for him he didn’t live in the age of the Kardashians and social media! I used to say that the Kardashians were famous for nothing; but I was wrong. They’re the queens of naked cries for attention. As pathetic as it is, they’ve started a trend. Every mediocre celebrity who can’t get into the press for any legitimate reason is following the Kardashians and posting naked selfies. None of these people have any talent but they do have breasts that stand up, sizable rear ends and a very good Brazilian wax. The selfies they post would not so long ago have been considered pornography and relegated to Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler. Unfortunately they’re on every social media site on the planet.

Given that the Kardashians are role models (doesn’t that scare you!) for legions of young women, is it any wonder that sexting is so popular? And how many times have you seen young women walking down the street with their asses hanging out of their shorts, skirts so short you can tell if they’ve had a recent wax and see through tops with no bra? When did displaying your wares like a vendor in a cheap flea market become acceptable?

As a society we need to stop letting people like the Kardashians control social media. We need to replace them with legitimate role models that are bringing about positive change in our world. And we need to teach young women that getting naked is never the way to seek attention. Please keep your clothes on and show us your other attributes.

Life is like one big Mardi Gras. But instead of showing your boobs, show people your brain, and if they like what they see, you’ll have more beads than you know what to do with.

Ellen Degeneres

Make someone smile today.

Geri

Bye-Bye LinkedIn

What’s this ‘LinkedIn’? Is that like Facebook for old people?

Someecards

I’ve been on LinkedIn since it was in beta. In the early days it really was an online business networking site, but that didn’t last too long. Social media became a numbers game – whoever has the most, wins! And so a new crop of LinkedIn members devoted themselves to gaming the system – connecting with the most people, joining the most groups (this was later capped at 50) ... It’s value as a business networking site quickly became diluted.

Gradually LinkedIn morphed into a quasi-Facebook site full of political commentary and feel good stories. Instead of fulfilling its promise as a business networking site, it became a site of shameless self-promotion. And it became a fertile hunting ground for recruiters who make up the lion share of LinkedIn’s revenue. In addition to recruiters, LinkedIn became very attractive to cybercriminals using fake LinkedIn profiles to connect with legitimate business people; many with access to sensitive information. In fact it’s estimated that LinkedIn has over 35 million fake profiles. LinkedIn does absolutely nothing about this large and growing problem. Over the years I reported fake profiles, with proof that they were fake, to no avail. Remember, it's a numbers game and the more members that LinkedIn has (even if they are fake), the better it looks.

Like it or not, it’s necessary to maintain a LinkedIn profile for credibility purposes, especially if you’re job hunting. Unfortunately LinkedIn’s job board has a very poor relational database; it just spews jobs that have no bearing on the parameters or time frames you select. And none of the jobs posted are exclusive to LinkedIn. They can be found on other sites like Indeed and Workopolis which are much easier to use and have much more effective relational databases.

The death knell for LinkedIn came after the purchase by Microsoft. They immediately changed the user interface and made a cumbersome site now impossible to use. I could collect pension by the time it loads; when it finally loads it doesn’t recognize me and many of the search features that actually had some value no longer exist. I’ve spoken with friends and colleagues who have all had the same experience. If you’re using Chrome apparently there is a work-around to get you back to the original interface but not for any other browser yet (I use Firefox).

All I have to say is Bye-Bye LinkedIn. I’ll leave my profile up but not waste my time on the site anymore. I can do my job hunting on Indeed and Workopolis.

I wish all social media was as non-addictive as LinkedIn.

someecards

Make someone smile today.

Geri

Why I Left Twitter

Twitter is the perpetual cocktail party where everyone is talking at once but nobody is saying anything.

@TeresaMedeiros

We now live in a culture of over-sharing. I can’t for the life of me understand why people think that photos of what they eat for breakfast (or do with every moment of their waking hours) are interesting. Another Twitter habit that boggles the mind is people that tweet multiple times of day and say nothing. I was deluged by inspirational quotes that didn’t inspire me, or fillers that had no relevance. Whatever I may have found interesting was buried so deep in the noise, that it never surfaced.

Twitter, like most social media networks, is overrun by fake users; in fact according to SocialPilot, there are currently approximately 20 million fake Twitter users. Add to that the spammers, scammers and porn queens advertising their wares, and there remains very little of significance. It got to the point where I spent most of my time on Twitter deleting all but quality users (and there remained very few).

The reality is that I saw absolutely no benefit from Twitter. It was a complete and utter waste of my time and I have so many things I’d rather be doing. So, I left Twitter.Do you get any benefit from Twitter? If so, feel free to share.

I don't understand this whole Twitter, Facebook stuff. I don't get it. Make a phone call. Talk to somebody.

James Avery

Make someone smile today.

Geri

Online Dating Sites Refuse to Protect You From Scammers or Predators

It’s right there in the name. It’s not ‘Great Cupid’ or even ‘Good Cupid’. It’s OK Cupid.

Helen Hong, Comedienne

Let’s get real; online dating sites are in it for the money, whether they’re paid or free sites. And, they can be monetized in a multitude of ways including:

• Paid Memberships

• Premium Content or Add-On Features

• Advertising

• Affiliate Networks

• Live Events

The bottom line is that they’re all looking to make as much money as possible. And in order to make as much money as possible they have to show value. How do they show value? By the number of registered members of course! Remember, social media is just a numbers game and the one who has the most, wins. Online dating sites need to boast as many registered members as possible to attract new members, advertising dollars and the like. So even if they know that members are scammers or predators, it’s not in their best interests to delete their profiles from the site because that reduces their numbers which makes them less attractive to new members and advertising dollars.

The easiest way to identify scammers and online predators is to drag and drop their photos into Google Image Search. In fact I do that with anyone that contacts me on an online dating site, whether or not my alarm bells have gone off. And I have identified SEVERAL scammers and online predators who were either impersonating someone or using someone else’s photo. On every occasion that I identified one of these creeps, I reported them to the online dating sites and provided iron clad evidence - the URL to the person they were impersonating or to the location of where they absconded with the photo. NOT ONCE were any of these scammers or predators booted off the sites. Online dating sites don’t care about you or your safety; they only care about the money you can generate for them.

The moral of the story is that you have to look out for yourself. Be diligent and always do a Google Image Search. It’s free, easy to do and can save you a lot of grief.

Today, if you own a smartphone, you’re carrying a 24-7 singles bar in your pocket.

Aziz Ansari, Actor

Make someone smile today.

Geri

Don’t Get Sucked Into Social Media Hype!

Everyone's like sheep on social media; like, one person starts making noise, and everyone's like, 'Hey, yeah!' and then you got a whole bunch of people making noise at you.

Earl Sweatshirt

It always amazes me when I see headlines like the ones below:

• More than 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn

• Become a marketing superstar by generating leads with social media

• Tapping into social media can transform your lead generation

That’s all fine and well but these headlines don’t tell the real story. In fact social media is the least effective way to generate B2B leads. According to www.placester.com this diagram demonstrates the most effective methods for generating B2B leads.

 

                                                                                           

As you can see, social media effectively generates leads 5% of the time. So, LinkedIn accounts for 80% of 5% - Big Whoop! How much time and effort are you wasting on social media platforms when you could actually be devoting your efforts on strategies that may actually work? To add insult to injury there is a whole cottage industry of companies out there who (for a fee of course) will show you how to improve your LinkedIn profile, how to get more LinkedIn connections, etc. Have you been sucked in?

The reality is that social media doesn’t work as a B2B lead generation tool and LinkedIn is still no more than Mecca for recruiters. Would you really have invested your time and effort into attempting to generate leads on LinkedIn if you knew that the headlines were all deceptive and the rate of effectiveness was 80% of 5%?

Speaking of LinkedIn, I came across this article by Robert Hennessey. The study surveyed 200 B2B marketing professionals in the U.S. who were screened based on their experience with various lead generation channels, tactics and metrics. The study was conducted by lead generation technology reviewer Software Advice a Gartner company. Here are the highlights of the study:

• Marketers found trade shows, referral marketing and in-house email marketing to be the best channels for generating large numbers of high-quality leads

• Videos were not only the most-used type of content (used by 92%); they were most commonly cited as producing a very high volume of leads

• Most B2B marketers (79%) use at least 11 different marketing software applications, with 97% using email marketing software

Don’t get sucked into social media hype and don’t be seduced by salacious headlines. Do your homework and make sound business decisions.

Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.

Brene Brown

Make someone smile today.

Geri