At present, LinkedIn is the largest professional network with 80 million members (compared to Facebook’s 500 million).
So, now let’s consider 10 reasons why you should NOT join LinkedIn:
TOP 10 REASONS
You have NO need to:
10. consolidate resources 1–8 and your institutional Website profile into 1 location (see previous blog for 1-8)
9. build a network of like-minded (teaching, research, writing, clinical) colleagues
8. contact colleagues and students in your field easily and quickly
7. market your expertise and build credibility with colleagues
6. share your writing or research with colleagues
5. consult, speak, or provide other professional services
4. hunt for another job in or out of your field
3. search for the best candidates for job openings you're trying to fill
2. be part of multiple communities of scholars other than your association
And the NUMBER ONE REASON:
1. have important questions answered promptly by experts you don’t even know who are all over the world (beyond your association listserv)
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
If you are convinced that you have no need for any item on that list, then get back to work. Stop fooling around with my blog. If, however, there is at least one reason you might benefit from LinkedIn, then stay with me.
This blog series will describe how you can use LinkedIn with minimal time investment, but with the possibility of a worthwhile ROI. Future blogs will describe how to prepare your professional profile and other critical elements.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
WHY WRITING?
I receive occasional requests from junior faculty and students, usually on my LinkedIn professional network, for tips on writing and publishing. It seems everybody has to write, especially professsionals in all fields. No one can escape. Writing-wise, it’s kinda like “No Professional Left Behind!.” People are talking less and texting and typing on social media networks more than at any time previously. They’re writing more, but not necessarily at a high level of quality.
Just about everybody (meaning, colleagues) I talk to about writing has problems writing. Most are not satisfied with the quality and/or quantity of what they write. They feel they can produce more and always do it better. But it’s tough to do.
There are buckets of books, online writing groups (academic and nonacademic), workshops, and other resources that can help you in your writing quest. So why do I need to throw my blog into the writing ring? Because I know you love my metaphors and I might be able to contribute some new tidbit of advice that might shoot your writing to levels beyond your wildest imagination, or maybe not. I thought I’d give it a whirl, plus, my blogs are free and occasionally funny. The other options are neither.
WHAT THIS BLOG DOES NOT COVER
If you’re interested in publishing pointers, fawgettaboutit. Two previous blog series dealt with writing and publishing for professional journals (4/22—5/9/10) and books (9/18—10/5/09). This blog is also not about grammar and mechanics. Spelchek and copy editors do a great job with that.
WHAT THIS BLOG COVERS
It’s about strategies to improve the quality and quantity of what you write professionally, but also personally. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a research, theoretical model, lit review, historical, commentary, or even murder mystery piece, OR a blog, e-mail, social media comment, article, chapter, or book. These are generic suggestions that work, I think.
TOP 10 SECRET TIPS PREVIEW
Here’s the list that will be addressed in the next few blogs:
10. WRITE EVERYDAY
9. WRITE EVERYWHERE YOU CAN
8. WRITE FOR A NICHE
7. WRITE WITH A PURPOSE AND OUTCOME IN MIND
6. WRITE ON TOPICS ABOUT WHICH YOU ARE PASSIONATE
5. ADOPT A MENTOR OR COACH TO REVIEW DRAFTS
4. THINK DRAFT
3. PROOFREAD THOROUGHLY
2. MINIMIZE DISTRACTIONS AND INTERRUPTIONS
1. FIND AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER OR WRITING GROUP
Read any, all, or none of the upcoming blogs on these tips. If you just get 1 or 2 ideas from this series, it will have been a total waste of my time. I’m shooting for 3. Let me know my hit rate and any comments or suggestions, as usual. My next blog will examine how to WRITE EVERYDAY.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
Are you ready for 2.0? Me neither. Hold on to your keyboards. Here we go:
WEB 2.0 (2004–present)
This 2nd generation was “read-write” (Berners-Lee), social Web with interaction, active participation, and content generation. The term was coined by Darcy DiNucci (1999). It’s been called the “participatory Web” compared to Web 1.0 as the “Web-as-information source” (Decrem, 2006). It had a user-centered design to foster interactive information sharing so that users could be contributors, producers, and consumers. Examples include web applications, social media, video sharing, blogs, wikis, mashups, and folksonomies (categorizing content through tags) (see Wikipedia on Web 2.0).
USER-ORIENTED AND INTERACTIVE: Encyclopedia Britannica Online was replaced with Wikipedia, which relies on users (collectively) to constantly and quickly generate content. Users can write their own content and comment on others’ content through blogs, network groups, and social media. They can post their own social and professional profiles for others to review and create pages to advertise their businesses, events, and products on these sites. Users can even build their own social network with Ning. Other interactive services include Skype, online banking, and job and employee searching on LinkedIn and many other sites.
RELIANCE ON USER CONTRIBUTIONS: Some Webs rely almost entirely on user contributions, such as (a) social (Facebook, Twitter, Digg) and professional networks (LinkedIn), which permit users to create and share audio, video, text, and multimedia content, (b) photo (Flickr) and video (Flickr, YouTube) distribution and sharing sites, and (c) professional listservs. Without these contributions, most of these sites might vanish into cyber-air.
BOTTOM LINE: Overall, Web 2.0 facilitates creativity, information sharing and dissemination, dynamic, ever-changing content, and collaboration which has led to Web-based communities and the hosted services listed above. It radically changed the way people use the Internet, from 1-way to every which-way.
Tomorrow I’ll examine some of the criticisms of Web 2.0, and then on to Web 3.0.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
