Andrew Hennigan's Blog

One of the questions that I often hear in networking workshops is how to separate private and work networks. This is a problem for anyone but especially for those who are transitioning from study to work and need to add a layer of professional networking on top of their existing friends-and-family networking. Whatever your situation here are five answers to the question.. 1 . THERE ISN'T A SINGLE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION -- there are many different ways of doing it -- but you have to choose some kind of answer. The worst thing to do is just to let things happen because then it is usually bad things that happen. Worse still, things can happen and you are not even aware of it because something you say to one person puts off someone else and they never mention it. 2. IF YOU CHOOSE SEPARATE NETWORKS DO IT RIGHT. One solution is to keep Facebook for friends and family and LinkedIn for work. This sounds simple enough though in practice you need to be ...

With dozens of new websites coming every day, to impress me you either have to do something very original or do something very well. A startup called Gidsy has managed to do both. Described as a "marketplace for experiences", Gidsy brings together people who are looking for interesting new experiences and people who have an activity to share with other people. You can, for example, book a place in a stop-motion animation workshop, a graffiti tour of the city, a bar crawl or even a trip in a Paternoster elevator -- the kind with no doors that never stop. Initially it is limited to Berlin and New York, but other cities will be added in future. With just two cities there is already enough content to show effectively how the idea works. Gidsy is interesting for people who are looking for something new to try but it is equally interesting for people who have something to sell. When you are in Berlin you can probably find plenty of activities through the usual channels, but...

So you don't like the way you look in photos? You are not alone. Most people feel the same way -- and this includes some of the pin-ups and fashion icons you drool over. Just being in the majority isn't going to make it feel better, so is there anything concretely you can do if you feel like this? Yes, it turns out that there are a few things you can try, and here are the top five in no particular order. 1. GET USED TO THE WAY YOU REALLY LOOK .  Most of the time you see yourself in a mirror, which flips the image left-to-right. This means that unless your face is perfectly symmetrical, you really do look different in a photo. You can test this by flipping a photo left to right with Photoshop. Most likely you will like it better that way and everyone else will say it looks odd. But the real solution is to get used to seeing yourself the right way round. This doesn't mean smashing all the mirrors, but simply printing out a few photos and putting them where you can see t...

Most people are happy to share information about their relationships with other people through social networking sites, though in all normal cases this information is shared voluntarily. But a recent announcement by a Washington political publisher raises the possibility of someone, somewhere might one day assemble and share this kind of information without your knowledge and without your approval. CQ Press is a political publisher that has for years published directories for congressional and federal staffs, relying on voluntary disclosures to collect information. Initially these directories were meant to provide only information on the present and then be discarded when each new edition came out.  One day someone at CQ realized the company was sitting on a mine of useful information and digitized all of the data from directories going back to the 1990s. Combined together, the content of these directories gave the company a completely new product -- the possibility to track...

When Google rolled out their first search site in 1998 their website amazed everyone for its simplicity. At that time most websites seemed to strive for the chaotic jumble favored by portals like Yahoo, where the aim appeared to be to use every word, every font and every color that ever existed in the same page. Sadly, though Google inspired many me-too search sites, most other websites continued the tradition of complexity, though perhaps with a little more elegance as website creators became more design-focused and less concerned with the underlying technology. This year I was pleased to see the emergence of many new sites which moved clearly towards elegant simplicity where the complexity of the machinery in the website was hidden from view and the user interface a pleasure to see and to use. Websites like the Vox.io internet telephony service and the Zerply networking site are two examples I use regularly and are very easy on the eyes but clearly functional. There are plenty...

Every so often I get connection requests on LinkedIn from people I don't really know. Some users actually welcome any connection requests -- these are the "open networkers" -- but many people are like me and prefer to connect to people they know in some way. This does not mean I don't like to be contacted by new people, but I prefer to get to know them before I connect. This is not as hard as it sounds and here are some practical tips to help you do it the right way. 1. DON'T START WITH THE INVITATION . When I get a cold invite I will usually leave it on hold and initiate a dialog with the requester but not everyone is so patient. You will get better results if you first establish contact with someone and engage with them so that you are not such a stranger when you eventually invite them. 2. ENGAGE WITH THE PERSON THROUGH STATUS UPDATES, GROUP DISCUSSIONS, OTHER SITES . If you don't know a person already then you should engage with them first to get to...

Twitter usernames are given on a first come first served basis so unless you were quick to register your name and your brands -- as I suggested in this post -- it is quite likely that they have already been taken by someone else. What's more infuriating, though, is that very often they are taken by someone who apparently leaves the account inactive. This means that many people ask how can you obtain an inactive Twitter username? If the name you want to obtain is your registered trademark then the process is very simple. You just fill in the Reporting a Trademark Issue form on the Twitter support website. This is the easiest case and the only one that is likely to get you a fast result at the time of writing. Because of this some people have considered even registering a trademark just to have the proof of ownership needed to make a claim. You can file a trademark application through the US Patent and Trademark Office website but this costs hundreds of dollars and does ...

After less than a decade of activity, the world of social media is littered with ghost towns that have not disappeared but practically nobody goes there anymore. Since they are not in the public eye many pages have been created and then forgotten. Maybe the community manager that started them has changed job, or maybe they were never official projects anyway. But whatever the reason, there are now many abandoned pages for brands and promotions that are still there, untouched for several years. I was reminded of this thanks to the work of Badreddine Lehalali, one of my social media communication students at the IAE Graduate School of Management, near Aix en Provence (hint to recruiters: there are some seriously smart people here). He was studying the social media of sports drink companies and found two interesting relics: a Bebo page about the Powerade Never Give Up 2009 challenge, and an old Powerade Myspace page from the same era. Just in case they are taken down I have plac...

A few days ago I wrote about some less than obvious ways that culture can impact your meetings ( Three Non-Obvious Issues in Multicultural Meetings ). Since that was so popular here are three equally unexpected ways in which cultural differences can derail an email exchange. RISKY REMINDERS . Depending on where you come from you might think that sending reminders is a sensible, practical idea, but this is far from universal. In some cultures you would be expected to send a message about something long in advance of the deadline and then to send a reminder later. If you don't send the reminder people might assume that you have changed their mind and that you no longer need what you asked for. In other cultures you should send a single message with your request and then wait. If you send a reminder it might be perceived as rudeness. How do you know what to do? One way is to look at what the other person usually does. Do they send reminders or just a single message? If in doubt a...

Many people are frustrated by the amount of time that they have to spend in conference calls that are inefficient and unproductive. Avoiding these calls is one answer, but then you are out of the loop both for information and decision making. A much better strategy is to apply best practices and systematic preparation to make them faster, leaner, more effective. You can do this even if you are just participating, but the chair can contribute the most. Here's how: FOR EVERYONE 1. CALL IN EARLY. One reason is that if everyone calls in before the scheduled time you can start on time, but even if the others come in later it makes it much easier for you to introduce yourself and get to know the others before the work starts. This is especially important if you are new to the group and don't know anyone yet. 2. PREPARE YOUR GOALS. Why are you on the call? What would you like to achieve? It is a good idea to think about what your goals are before the call starts. If you have...