Never a Lack of Ideas

I did it! I reached 500 contacts on LinkedIn. It's the highest number of contacts reported by the site — it only shows "500+" contacts from here forward. I've been watching my total ever since I hit 450 and I've been getting increasingly excited about hitting 500. When I hit 500 today, I expected a congratulatory email, a new view of the site, or maybe some other cool surprise when I logged in. But instead I got... nothing. Any Excuse for a Party LinkedIn is missing a perfect opportunity to reward its power users with something special when they hit 500 contacts. It would have been so easy for them to send me an email to say thank you for using the site. Or they could have Tweeted a congratulatory message to me today. But instead, my big moment was anticlimactic. I'm an important user for LinkedIn: I've given them tons of information about myself, and I'm on the site a lot, so I see a lot of ads. It's in their best interest to keep me co...

Let's spice up some things that are traditionally boring: LinkedIn requests and out-of-office emails. Why? Because doing so surprises and delights people, and it raises your cool factor (trust me, I'm an expert in cool factor...). LinkedIn Requests   Every time you request to connect with someone on LinkedIn, the same default email will be sent on your behalf if you don't change it: "I'd like to add you to my professional network." Boring! Why not spend five seconds and change it up? Here are three that I've sent recently to friends of mine: "Oh please, oh please, oh please!" "Let's be frienemies" — I sent this to a friend who is going to work at Yahoo. "Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!!!!" Each one of these emails elicited a response email to me, with a little joke in return. When was the last time someone replied to your default LinkedIn email? Out-of-Office Emails "I'm currently out of the office an...

Happy Halloween For the past two Halloweens, I have presented my lists of the top ten and next ten brands in the United States. I would remove Angry Birds from the list (what a difference a year makes!), but I'd keep everything else the same. My previous posts describe my criteria for these lists. So, in my final installment of this series, I give you my list of top brands #21-25: 21. Corona — There are thousands of brands of beer, but the one that stands out most makes us think of sitting on a beach every time a lime is placed inside one. 22. Tostitos — Go ahead, try to name another brand of tortilla chip. There's a party in every bag. 23. Christian Louboutin — There's only one brand of shoe recognizable simply by its red sole. Louboutin even has a trademark on the red sole in the US. 24. Tiffany & Co. — Every woman wants a gift in the little blue box, and every marketer marvels at the margins Tiffany brings in compared to its competitors. 25. Linked...