I spent the entire 2010 summer passing out resumes, interviewing with companies large and small, and working my butt of to try to find just an internship. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for people with entire careers under their belts trying to find new jobs.

A while back I came across this video by Max Radi at Ignite Portland 8.

The sticking point for this video is at the 4:25 mark. Max explains that our generation is in a bind because we’re looking for Jobs to give us experience, but we are often denied jobs because of a lack of experience. We’re caught in a place where expectations by companies are set in a way that college students seeking internships sometimes what we want to do isn’t necessarily our field of study.

I love social media, I’d love to work in marketing. My problem, I’m an International Business Major…It’s possible I might come out with a minor in marketing, but most people looking for social media people are looking for communications, or PR…That’s not me. But as Max mentions, why not hire someone and mold them, train them to be the person that you need them to be and from then on you have someone exactly qualified and right where you want them.

In today’s economy chances can’t be taken in hiring the wrong person, and that’s understandable. What we study in college doesn’t guarantee we’ll know what you want us to know when you hire us. The training you give us has little bearing on our past experience, or what you expect us to know.

Remember, we need the experience too. If you’re hiring someone for an internship, why not hire the person with the least experience, and give the person with more experience the opportunity for an entry-level position. This will let you mold the intern to the way you want them.

What do you think? How is your company hiring interns?

Related posts:

1. Define Your Culture
2. Meeting the People That Help You Get There
3. Culture Not Clique – Relationship Series pt. 1

The problem is that Marketers, Accountants, and Financial Managers are all concerned about ROI. It’s always been a debate with social media, it will continue to be until the tools to monitor and analyze direct ROI become more accessible and efficient. Every one wants to know, what are we getting back from our money, but we business people are not the only ones worried about the ROI of our social and online marketing efforts.

Give the people a way to get ROI from what you build.

It’s an interesting way to think about the ROI of a consumer for your efforts. We business people have ours, but the clients look for an entirely different perspective. They want your Twitter to be a stream of intelligent and intelligible content, relevant to your business and relevant to the type of followers. Facebook should be an expansion and an easy way to get connected, talk back (in a good way) to them, and share longer information that can’t be done in 140 characters on Twitter.

More importantly, your website should definitely be easy to navigate, and have a very natural feel to the way it works and is laid out. These simple factors matter to the people who approach the tools you use to engage them because it’s their time on the line too. They want to know the information you’re giving in a high-quality, quick, and easy. Time and Knowledge are the two biggest returns for consumers online. If you can give those two aspects directly back to all your readers and people you engage with on an every day basis, you will be a bright shining star in their book.

Next time you develop something for your clients, think about their time and their return on investment with your product. Are they getting back what they expect, and more?! Give back to them too.

Related posts:

1. Student Branding vs Professional Branding
2. Going Beyond The Sale
3. Shut Up & Listen

When was the last time, during a work day, that you took an honest-to-goodness nap. Whether you went home and took one or sat in the break room for 20-30 minutes and just napped.

While this might go contrary to about 100% of businesses in the U.S., as a college student, like many, I am a firm believer in quality nap time. This 30-minute part of my day is one that increases productivity, mental awareness, and physical stamina. During my time in Spain this was only reinforced by the type of workday they had. Like the American schedule they would begin their workday at 9am and work until 2 or 3pm (most commonly 2). They would then take a two hour break, and come back to work at 4-5pm and work until 6-8pm. That two hour break is the reason that 5 Hour Energy only exists in the U.S.

In that two hour break time workers have time to go home, see their family, eat lunch, take a nap, and come back to work. They are still getting a full day’s work and in fact are more productive because of it. Now I’m not saying sit around your workplace and nap at your desk so you can increase productivity later, but go home, relax, take a load off your shoulders then worry about it when you get back to the office. You’ll have a clearer mind, a more focused mind, and you will be a hell of a lot better for it just because of a 30 minute nap.

Think about it, if you work from home give it a shot.

What do you think? Leave a comment and thanks for reading my 200th blog post!

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1. Productivity: Is There Really Such a Thing?

Know What’s Ahead

According to the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study,

Eight in ten CEOs expect their environment to grow significantly more complex but only 49 percent believe their organizations are equipped to deal with it successfully – the largest leadership challenge identified in eight years of research.

While being one of the most difficult things to predict in today’s business world, the expectation of growth and the understand of the direction in which it’s heading matters just as much as understanding the culture of a business in itself. More importantly is embracing the changes that occur every day. Listening to employees, accepting feedback and changing the aspects of your culture will lead to better employees and better clients.

Understanding your employees is a factor that is as strong as the culture, and in fact is your culture. Every person inside your company is an integral part, know who you’re working with, hire people that might not necessarily be the top pick as far as their individual job, but help to define the future of your company and where you will go as part of that culture.

Value Time

Time whether in the long run or the short run should always be beneficial to you, your employees, or your employer. Knowing that everything has its commitments really focus on what needs to be done. As an employer though, much more productivity (and creativity) has been shown to occur when the people are given the opportunity to take matters into their own hands. Give employees the chance to do something they love, do something they want to do for themselves, and see where it takes the company.

Valuing time isn’t just a part of the company, but it’s a part of the lives of the people who work for that company. If things are going well, hell, give people some time to go home early to their kids and spouse. Time value shouldn’t just be taken for the money that could have been made, letting employees know that you care about them and their families. That’s Culture.

Defining your culture is a part of many, many aspects, it’s the way you treat people, the way you grow and the way you engage your customers.

What defines your culture?

Related posts:

1. Culture Not Clique – Relationship Series pt. 1
2. 3 Ways to Truly Build Communities
3. Consumers Think ROI Too

A couple days ago I saw this on the Home Page of the Huffington Post. The article in summary explains the way that the credit card industry is, even with changes from the CARD act, are finding ways to apply new charges, cracked-out interest rates, and every little bit of money they can squeeze out of a suffering economy.

Be Better

Don’t get me wrong though, there are honest businesses; Those kinds of large corporations who make mistakes, accept their mistakes and live up to their reputation. A while back the news story of 6pm.com, who accidentally posted many prices as $49.95, hit the mainstream. This mistake lead to a net loss of $1.6 Million. 6pm.com is owned by Zappos (owned by Amazon). To rephrase, they honored the $49.95 price-tag even if the item costs $100 more.

Even though, they were obviously in the red, this didn’t stop the companies from being honest about their mistake and honoring their prices. It cost them in money, but did it help build their brand confidence and loyalty? You bet your ass it did.

Be Straightforward

If you’re honest from the beginning of a relationship, whether with a client or a partner, the expectations change. The expectation of a solid follow through, consistent honesty and transparency will always be an integral part of your business. The reason the credit card industry manages to screw you over, and over, and over again, is because even with the CARD Act’s new regulations, it still doesn’t stop them from finding new fees.

The policy of a no Bullshit company seems to be like a fading facet. Is your company like that?

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2. The Small Business Impact
3. My Card

I use my personal brand here with the self-titled blog: GregdeLima.com for a few purposes:

• Networking
• Sharing Ideas
• Giving other people a place to learn
• Share my thoughts whether you like them or not

The purpose of using my Personal Brand as a money making opportunity, whether though ads or affiliate marketing is not my priority, nor is it even close to being one. But some people see their personal brand as an opportunity to reap the benefits of “twitterati” status, to keep making more money than the amounts they make as consultants.

A personal brand for me, is a way of self-promotion, making a name for yourself, and proving your worth in whatever field you focus on. If you are a marketer, a scientist, a camp director, whatever; your personal brand is a form of expression and proof, not a lucrative money making machine.

Granted, if they have the traffic they deserve it, without a doubt. But I find there to be a problem when making money from your personal blog, is your priority. Business and personal should be separate.

But that’s just me… What do you think?

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1. Does Blogging Make a Difference?

The general statement is that,

Gen-Y isn’t leaving social media.

And while that might be true, the focus around that statement isn’t as is should be. The assumption that we’re addicts and the fact that simply because we have grown up with all these Web 2.0 tools means we will forever be online is a general assumption that could be a terrible demise.

The statistic that has gained the most flame and fanfare is that, 67% of experts agree that,

By 2020, Members of Generation Y (today’s “digital natives”) will continue to be ambient broadcasters who disclose a great deal of personal information in order to stay connected and take advantage of social, economic, and political opportunities.

The problem I have with this isn’t the “experts” that aren’t even Gen-Y’ers, or the fact they’re basing off of statistics that aren’t data backed, but are opinions. Opinions cannot be measured. There may be people who agree with opinions, but there is no data to back an opinion.

The assumption that the Gen-Y’s willingness to share, express ourselves online, and as a whole be more “social” online cannot be true for just Gen-Y. There are plenty, if not, a vast majority of people who are outside of the millennial age-range who share as much, if not more than us.

The growth of the demographic range that isn’t millennial, is equally important for marketing purposes as the focus of the Pew Internet Poll. We, as millennials, are not the only people willing to share our data, nor are we the people who will become the most sharers in the future. As it stands I know more people outside of my generation who are more likely to share about their lives and become some of the most “stalk able” people online.

Two friends of mine have their baby children on Twitter with their own accounts and updates. Over at Pingdom they have graphs of Ages of Social Network Users.

Of the top user groups, ages 24-44 dominate for the majority the social networks sphere. So how does it compare to say that Gen-Y will become the major factor in the future of the sharing network? Yes, Gen-Y has the potential to become a massive force in the sharing world in 2020. At the same time however, we are more conscientious of the fact of how are data is used. We have grown up with Spam emails, Facebook Privacy issues, and an overall knowledge of our privacy. We are cautious in what we do and how we do it.

What do you think of the way Gen-Y uses social media? Will we be as the Pew internet poll says? Leave a comment!

Download the Pew Internet Study.

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1. It’s Not About Us
2. 3 Ways to Truly Build Communities
3. Long or Short Social Strategy: Part 1 – Long Term

Now, I haven’t really complained about Facebook recommendations before, because hey sometimes they’re actually relevant and have led me to find new interesting pages or new articles it can depend.

In all honesty though, take a look at the related page – FarmVille Sheep - WTF? There are over 2,000,000 (yes, 2 Million) who Like this page. I get if you like the game or whatever, but the sheep themselves…people need to find new hobbies.

More relevant though are:

1. How are Bing & Farmville Sheep even comparable to be recommended with eachother?
2. I have hidden all Farmville related things from my news feed.
3. I have never played Farmville.

So why dear Facebook, are you giving me ads related to things I have obviously indicated negatively towards?

Does this happen to you? Tell me your most ridiculous recommended page or friend via Facebook!

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2. You Can’t Get Everyone
3. Social Media Is Ruining The News

If you’re not having fun with what you’re doing, why are you doing it? Do you have time to do something you enjoy after work? The problem is not enough people have the guts to say, “To hell with it, I’m going to go do what I Love.” That’s about as large of a problem as sitting around and working just to make money. Now, I understand that there are people who live paycheck to paycheck, I’m one of them. But every day that I write something, or that I dedicate my time to doing so, the project I work on is a project that I will enjoy.

I have been doing some unpaid internship work for eWayDirect and have been contributing to their blog. Why? Because I enjoy writing, I enjoy social media, and to be a part of a team where I can enjoy what I do and help others, to me, is a quality that can never be over looked.

So I ask you, what are you doing to have fun? Are you enjoying your work? Tell me about your fun, leave a comment!

No related posts.

The issue here is that there are people that use Facebook for things other than playing Farmville or whatever the next Zynga game is, and use it to connect with their friends or share pictures or use Facebook for what it was originally intended for. A Social Network!

As marketers we try to get to those people, tap into what their needs are and create a desire for a product or a service. But there comes a point where the users of these social networks don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s going on in the Ads sidebar of Facebook or any ad whatsoever.  Especially my generation -”Gen Y”- is so used to being bombarded with pop-ups, cause I mean, hey…we grew up with it. That simple ads must become relevant, built upon our necessities in a way that isn’t intrusive, but is interesting enough to make us click on it. No easy feat when an ad can receive a .025% Click Through Rate commonly.

One of my favorite ad platforms is Hulu’s. Every time a commercial is show, it asks, “Is this Ad relevant to you?” I use that button every time a commercial comes up! Why am I being shown an ad for birth control? I’m quite positive I’m not a female, so I click No. The next day I got a beer ad for a beer I enjoy, might have been Heineken(I think?), and what happened? I swear to you the next day I bought Heineken instead of Yuengling, a tough feat being I love my Yuengling!

The truth of it all is, not everyone wants to be engaged. Not everyone goes home opens Google Reader and starts reading 50 different blogs a day. Not everyone comments on the blogs or ReTweets on Twitter.  We cannot shut these people out of traditional marketing techniques, and at the same time we cannot make them use Social Media or Social Networks in the way we want them to.

Sure you might call me too nice about it, or not strong enough in my techniques. But that’s just it, the consumer needs to be respected, not forced and cajoled. If you’re not creating something that satisfies a need, what benefit are you giving the consumer?

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1. Be Everywhere?
2. Student Branding vs Professional Branding
3. We’re Losing the Social