Tomorrow at 4ET (1PT) I’m doing a webinar for Netshare called Facebook Essentials for Executives.  I’m jazzed about this webinar and have been preparing for it quite a bit.

Facebook has power in numbers – and I’m amazed at the connections I’ve made because of Facebook that I didn’t make in LinkedIn.  I’m also amazed at the conversation that happens in Facebook that isn’t happening elsewhere.

If you want to brush up on your Facebook understanding, or wrap your brain around a Facebook strategy for you, come on over to the webinar.  It isn’t free but it will be worth it.  Here’s the description:

Facebook is the website that has all eyes on it. They recently announced their 300 millionth signup. (for some perspective US Census Bureau reports the United States recently passed the 300MM mark.)

What does this mean to us as executives? How can we use Facebook as part of our career management strategy and how does it fit with LinkedIn and other social networks? Should executives even have a Facebook strategy? Considering the number of signups and visitors (hovering around 120M per month and the companies who are developing online marketing strategies that include Facebook), it is essential that we understand what it is and what we can do in it.

In this 90 minute session you will learn:

• Learn how to navigate through the noise and clutter of Facebook to find information relevant to you.
• Learn to set up your account and network and, once and for all, answer the question of how to separate your personal and professional contacts.
• Learn to use Lists, Groups and Pages as effectively as any marketer uses them in a commercial environment.
• Learn to develop a search strategy to help you network your way into key company or industry contacts.
• Learn to communicate with network contacts and help them get to know you better.
• Learn to keep abreast of current issues and opportunities within your network…to further develop relationships.
• Learn to find relevant audiences where you can find relevant contacts and further develop your professional brand.
• Learn to incorporate Facebook into an overall personal social marketing strategy.

Register here.

See ya there

There are lots of books on Twitter right now – I was supposed to write one of the earliest but I was in the middle of rewriting I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? and I wasn’t sure I wanted to write another technical book that would have to be updated every year!  I opted to not do that but instead create hands-on, visual webinar recording that shows you how to use Twitter.

Twitter for Job Seekers (the video) is specifically designed for professionals in a job search.

It is a 1 hour and 24 minues (and one second) video, walking you through what Twitter is, and how to use it in your job search.

It’s based on the idea that you want to find network contacts who can help you in your job search – find people to add to your own personal/professional network, as well as how to communicate with them after you find them.

There is also training on what to do with your own Twitter account. As a professional, what could or should you be tweeting?  (going into personal branding, and how to use Twitter as a Personal Branding tool)

I show you how to get value out of Twitter EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE A TWITTER ACCOUNT.  This is essential for many professionals who aren’t excited to jump on this bandwagon, but still want to tap into the power that Twitter.com has created.  There is significant power there – and you can tap into it without even signing up for an account.

I won’t try to convince anyone to get a Twitter account, but I do want you to learn how to use this tool so you can achieve your career management objectives.

To access the recording (as many times as you like) simply do the following:

1. Login to JibberJobber.com.  This is as security measure so this video isn’t shared out inappropriately.  If you don’t have a JibberJobber account, get one on the front page – it takes about 60 seconds.
2. Mouse over the Tools link (from the main menu) and go all the way down to Videos (click on the Videos link).
3. The last tab on Videos is “Premium Videos.” Twitter for Job Search is the last one there.

This $50 investment into your career management is worth it… once you are done you should have your brain wrapped around Twitter as a tool, and know how you are going to incorporate it into your job search strategy.

(if you are already logged into JibberJobber, simply click here)

Nick Corcodilos is the man behind the famous Ask The Headhunter.  Nick’s advice, opinion and wisdom has been read by hundreds of thousands – he has been syndicated for a long time.  Anytime I’ve read Nick’s stuff I found myself agreeing – even if I didn’t want to, his logic and perspective was strong.

Nick recently came out with a new book called How To Work With Headhunters.  I’ll write more about that later.

I sent Nick a LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD and hoped he would weigh in on it.  I was more than pleasantly surprised by the in-depth and two-thumbs-up report he gave on his blog.  You can read the entire post at LinkedIn for Job Seekers: A personal tutor.  Here are some things from his post that I really liked:

“I don’t write about many products or services because it’s rare that I find one worth writing about. Let’s face it, the Net is rife with hyped-up garbag-io.”

Totally – we’ve been beyond information overload for a long time.

“I expected a slick video of Jason in a suit lecturing me. (I dunno about you, but I can’t stand scripted videos and droning talking heads.) What makes this video so effective is that it focuses entirely on the LinkedIn screen while Jason stands over your shoulder and walks you through every important page, screen, feature and tool LinkedIn has to offer. There’s no droning…”

I hear this a lot – people expect me to be on a stage telling you what to do… in fact, you can see a short preview here, or a long preview here – you don’t see me speaking at all – it’s all my screen as I walk you through Linkedin, with my commentary and advice.

“My plan to skip around and get a feel for the DVD was dashed. I wound up taking my time and taking notes!”

There is a ton of meat in the DVD…

“I’m not job hunting, but I learned much of what I need to know to use LinkedIn for my business.”

Great point – I say it’s “not just for job seekers.”

“I think this product works so well because Jason Alba is immersed in JibberJobber and he spends all day long thinking about what helps job hunters.”

Another great point.  I actually think about social tools from two perspectives: (1) from the professional in career management, whether they are in a job search or not, and (2) from an entrepreneur/marketing perspective, so I can figure out how to grow my own business.

“LinkedIn for Job Seekers costs $49 (if you catch the current promo price). An hour with a tutor will cost you more than that.”

I charge $250/hour for consulting.  My DVD is over 2 hours long. The math is simple on this one

Nick, thanks a ton for this review, it really made my week when I saw it in my Google Alerts

This Wednesday I’m doing a webinar called LinkedIn for Executives.  I spent considerable time developing this webinar and am really jazzed about it, as it has evolved from the two other webinars I’ve done for executives for Expert Connections.

This 90 minute LinkedIn for Executives webinar will go over various scenerios on how EXECUTIVES can get more value out of LinkedIn:

• how an executive finds and communicates with a key contact
• how and what they do with Target Companies
• how they network into a company
• what they could do with the network contacts they grow
• how they can grow their network with relevant CxO and board members,
• etc….

The cost is $50 if you are a Netshare member, $60 if you aren’t.  Register at Experts Connection.

Just who am I to give this webinar?  Jason Alba:

• served as VP, CIO and General Manager at his last employer during the course of three years,
• got laid off and found himself in a job search where flipping burgers wasn’t an option (based on personal expenses),
• wrote the best-selling book I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? (see Amazon reviews here)
• Created the DVD LinkedIn for Job Seekers (see Amazon reviews here),
• Speaks across the United States on career management, LinkedIn, Social Marketing, etc.

I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? was the second LinkedIn book in print, and the first to be in a Second Edition.

You can learn more about my LinkedIn thoughts on my LinkedIn blog, but don’t miss the webinar on Wednesday!

I got a few emails yesterday about Keith Ferrazzi’s post How to Surpass 95% of your Competition with One Simple Gesture.

Absolutely, totally, 100% agree with him.

The email I got, though, was “I can do this in JibberJobber!” or “How can I do this in JibberJobber?”

Here’s my response, in video… I’ll show you from start to finish – the scenerio is that you meet someone for the very first time and want to implement Ferrazzi’s suggestion to surpass 95% of your competition… check this out:

(in the bottom right of the video below you’ll see the image with four arrows pointing out – if you click on that you can see this video in full screen)

Are you doing this? Do you agree with Keith Ferrazzi?

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Amy Franko, a business coach out of Ohio.  We had a very nice interview where we talked about a number of things – you can get a download of the interview (as well as a transcription) from this page (I’m #4).

Some of the stuff we talk about (her audience is not job seekers, it’s entrepreneurs):

• thoughts on being an entrepreneur,
• stuff about my book and how I’ve used it as a marketing tool,
• the name of a movie that had a major impact on me as an entrepreneur (I saw it on my way to a speaking gig in Turkey),
• and a number of thoughts on using LinkedIn.

If you have a few minutes and any entrepreneurial inclination, check it out

I can’t believe I missed THREE days of blogging!  This surgery-recovery thing is kicking my butt.  I was also pretty preoccupied with a new presentation I was putting together for masters level students at universities. I delivered it yesterday … I was nervous since I haven’t spoken for a while AND I knew I wanted to do a NEW presentation – it took a long time for me to figure out just what I wanted to do.  But I think I now have something I can use at other universities – especially as a presentation to kick off the school year.

One of my projects is to create new training on using tools I talk about for professionals.  In the title of this blog post I say “Twitter for JOB SEEKERS” – by now you should know that I think we are all job seekers.  My audience for this new webinar is professionals (including executives) in transition, or professionals who want to do Career Management better.

That would be YOU.

This webinar was one hour and twenty three minutes!  I couldn’t believe I got that much content in something so seemingly simple – but I talk about:

• how Twitter fits into an overall social strategy
• basics of Twitter, including RT, @, hashtags, etc.
• How to use Twitter as a personal branding tool
• How to use Twitter as a networking tool
• Tools that tap into Twitter that are powerful – including one MUST USE site, whether you use Twitter or not
• and some other miscellaneous alba-isms (come on, you gotta love the alba-isms :p)

The good news is I’m done with the recording.  The bad news is it is not ready for you to view yet – it should be available shortly… we’re working on a system that will allow you to watch this recording as a streaming video – I hope that it is up and ready next week.  Watch the blog for when it’s ready.

I got an email from one of my users recently…. while JibberJobber will help with some of this (he’s a Premium user on JibberJobber), he’s looking for something that is more intense, specifically for planning.  Here’s his question:

Can you recommend the best PLANNING resources you’ve come across? I’m finding I’m a little scatter brained at the moment in planning what I need to do and could use the help.

I use Todo on my iPhone, which is a great app, and it syncs flawlessly with Toodledo, so some way to take JibberJobber with me would be great.

I don’t really have a “planning” system that I use, outside of my Outlook Calendar (soon to be integrated with JibberJobber… oh and I’m not even going to preannounce JibberJobber on the iPhone or Blackberry (oops, did I just preannounce that??).

Do you have any suggestions?

Every once in a while I get emails from users that really make my day month year.  Here’s one I got a couple of weeks ago – I am sharing this in its entirety because there is a lot of good stuff in here.  This comes from John Greegan, who first reached out to me to tell me we had a typo somewhere.  He starts off answering my question “how did you come across JibberJobber?”

A google search, mainly.  A college professor who taught job search skills to those about to graduate mentioned to me that job hunting today is not the same as it was the last time I found myself in the job market in the mid 80’s.  “One of the things that is different today”, he said, “is the level of organization and effort often required in a successful job search, and there are several web-based tools available to meet that demand.” Though he didn’t mention any tools by name, he did say that a good search with the keywords “Organize Job Search” would help.  This, and my previous experience as an open-source software user, was the catalyst that sent me to the web.

However, my first stop on the web wasn’t google.  It was sourceforge.net [note from Jason: anyone who goes to sourceforge.net for a solution is serious!], where I’ve had a lot of luck finding tools I needed at my previous job.  Not finding enough there, I then turned to google.  That search returned lots of articles of advice, mainly centered around buying thinks like a Franklin Planner, handwriting in your company and job info, ranking, etc…all still hand-work.  JibberJobber, Virtual Job Coach, JobFiler, HappyJobSearch and Becomed [note from Jason: I think this is the first time I have mentioned any of my competitors on this blog :p] were the tools that I spent a day teasing out of various drill-downs from that list.  JibberJobber was topmost on the top-level list.

Wanting to ensure that I used the best tool I could find, I spent the next day researching and comparing these four and found JibberJobber to be the most robust and sensible tool.

Did John just say JibberJobber is the most robust and sensible tool?  Considering his very technical background, I’m flattered!

He goes on to say, in another email:

While we’re at it, I’d like to take a moment to tell you how happy I am with JibberJobber.  Like so many others, I’ve been collecting companies I want to track on a spreadsheet or in a file folder.  I thought I had a list of about 35 or so, but when I did all the initial data entry using JibberJobber I found that I had actually compiled a list closer to 70!  I felt very good about my job search when I looked at the company panel at the end of that day!  Tomorrow I’m meeting with the folks at the Career Center (an offshoot of the State of MN workforce center), and when I demo this for them (they want to see how I’ve organized my career management/job search thus far, and that just happens to be on JibberJobber), I have no doubt they’re going to be impressed.

Now, I normally don’t talk about WHO upgrades to premium, but I really liked what he said below (in the bold):

I’m going to upgrade my account to Premium in the next few days.  With 70 companies in my list I’m nearing the limit (and I expect to exceed that limit), and since this is the most important activity I’m engaged in at the moment [note from Jason: LOVE this.  Organizing your job search is NOT trivial... it really is quite important, and John recognizes it as "the most important activity" he's engaged in] it only makes sense to spend the $9.95/mo and get the best and most efficient use of the product.

Pretty awesome, eh?  John gets it, and I am so glad to hear that a college professor gave him that advice!  My faith is getting restored in college professors (remember this post?)!

Here’s the other half of the Tools I Use post.  Friday was about the software I use, today is about the hardware.  Again, in no particular order:

Split Keyboard: I type so much that I need something ergonomic.  I tried a split keyboard when I worked for the FBI doing a lot of typing and it became a must-have.  I never have pain in my wrists from typing unless I am on my laptop a lot, or have to use someone else’s keyboard.

USB headset: As mentioned on Friday, I use Skype… so this headset is how I answer the phone or make calls out.  I love how it is hands-free so I can be on a call and take notes the entire time.

Optical mouse with a scroll wheel: You know the mouse that has that wheel on the top, so you can easily scroll up and down a website?  If I don’t have the wheel I’m apt to go nutz.  Seriously.  I hate using a mouse that does not have the scroll wheel.

UPS: This is that big battery backup that you plug all your stuff into… I’ve had a few brownouts and my UPS easily keeps my computer up.  There’s nothing fun about an electrical problem that causes your machine to reboot… my UPS is awesome.

Two monitors: I cannot do it with one monitor anymore… I have one that is 19″ wide and another that is 22″ wide, and I use all of it.  One day I’ll have four monitors… if you don’t think you can use two monitors you simply haven’t tried.  When I’m on the road and have to use just my laptop monitor I really feel the limitation.

Palm Treo: This is my phone… I don’t know if my next one will be an iPhone (sexy but crappy phone service), a BlackBerry (which I can use on my Sprint account), or a Palm Pre… but for now this does what I want.  I should note that I DO NOT do email or surf the web on my phone… I had to draw the line somewhere and this was it.  I don’t want email to get at me 24×7!

Thumb Drives: When I’m on the road I rely on my thumb drives to transfer my presentations. I didn’t think they were a big deal but I use them all the time when on the road.

Magellan GPS: I call this my “Lady,” and she is crucial to my travels.  I bought a 4″ wide for $175 (it was a floor model) and have loved it from day one.  My Lady has saved me on many trips, and the amount of stress from navigating a new city has gone from 100 to 0 from that day on.

Honorable Mention: Dymo Twin Turbo LabelWriter: Since I got my LinkedIn DVDs in, and started shipping them, this has become my new best friend.  I bought the twin since it prints two different labels… on the left is the shipping label (with your name and my return address) and on the right is the stamps… it is SO awesome to be able to fulfill all of my DVDs from my desk, without having to go to the post office (as long as it the package goes domestic).

What hardware tools do you live by?