Flicker Credit: Phi1317

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with my friends Chad Parizman and Lynsay Caylor to a class of very bright full-time MBA students at the University of Tennessee. Our topic was social media monetization, although we certainly talked more broadly then that in our time with the class. I enjoyed hearing their questions, and learning more about the challenges that Chad faces at Scripps and Lynsay at Pilot.

The most striking thing to me about the class were their answers to a few questions Chad asked about their social involvement.

How many of you have updated your Facebook status in the last week? 80%

How many of you have updated Twitter in the last few hours? 45%

How many of you only have a Twitter account to study it? 60%

How many of you use LinkedIn? 65%

(The room was also about 75% PC and 25% Apple)

I found these answers very interesting, particularly the LinkedIn stat. Facebook and Twitter stats are pretty consistent with what I’ve experienced, but I was very surprised that there were students who were not on LinkedIn. I don’t consider it to be the end all be all, but there are MBA students who have had jobs and are going back to school to further their career. Blew my mind that they weren’t on LinkedIn. The opposite take away  is that LinkedIn isn’t a go to for these smart saavy students, so either it doesn’t present a value proposition to them OR they are unclear how to make best use of it.  This will be an interesting one to watch.

I closed with the following advice “79% of the Fortune 100 currently uses social media in one form or another. Most of you expect to get jobs in the Fortune 500 and once hired they will expect you as a younger MBA to know social media. You don’t need to love every service, but you do need to use them and understand their application to business.”

I hope they jumped on and started experimenting. If you had a final statement, what would you have shared?

[UPDATE] eMarketer today launched some statistics on job sites used by HR professionals as well as the following quote, “The most helpful tools for career advancement were professional networks such as LinkedIn as well as best-practice communities, each named by about two-thirds of HR executives.”

UPDATED: With slides below

We all know that the world has been quickly transformed (you might also say overloaded) by social media.  News anchors are on twitter and ESPN has a social media policy, and you’ve only just signed up for facebook!  No worries, if you’re in Knoxville – you may be interested to join me (and a few friends, see Katie’s post on the topic) tomorrow as we explain our views and answer your questions at “Social Media 101: For Grownups” a panel put on by Leadership Knoxville.

The topics and presenters:

Social media is the new “civic” club. Learn how to make it useful personally and professionally. Presented by Katie Allison Granju Director of Digital & Social Media at Ackermann PR.
Nuts & Bolts of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. How to get started and what you need to know now. Presented by Bob Wilson Director of New Media at Moxley Carmichael.

Social Media Business Success! Hear how the use of social media and personal branding has produced measurable ROI in this challenging economy. Presented by Suzy Trotta Realtor at Coldwell Banker Business Benefits of Social Media

Social Media in the Enterprise. Hear how Ruby Tuesday, Inc. uses social media to build awareness and traffic to build its business and strengthen its brand. Presented by me.

The details:

Reserve your seat today!

Wednesday, Oct. 28th
4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

LK Alumni $20 per person

Opens to General Public $30 per person

Knoxville Chamber Markethouse Room
17 Market Square

Laptops encouraged – wireless provided!

rsvp@leadershipknoxville.com

865.523.9137

To go on the record: I hate messages that aren’t email (I don’t really love email, but at least it’s standardized). Facebook messages, twitter DM’s, Linkedin messages and a host of other isolated systemic proprietary messages are perpetual pricks in my side as I attempt to stay connected and informed.  Why you ask?  Because each of those sites (except twitter) makes me use their interface to reply.  Which I understand drives their page views and impressions and helps drive their revenues and/or valuations, but leaves me in a lurch when I read the message you send me on facebook in my email and then I neglect to jump over to facebook.com and write you back, thus killing the exchange.

Not to mention, like most of you I’ve got a lot of these accounts hiding out, and I’d like them all to be connected.  You know, so that when someone sends me a facebook message I can find that in my giant file called “Archive” in Gmail as well as the reply I sent them back when I search for communications from them.  So like Michael Arrington called for an imap for our facebook inbox I’d appreciate that type of interconnectivity between my email and my facebook.

But recently I had an epiphany. (Well at least call it a moment of enlightenment) – Facebook is that giant folder, at least for my address book.  Let’s take the following scenario.  I want to email connect with a friend from college.

Pre-my enlightenment I’d look him up in my address book and see what the address I had for him was.  Maybe if I was lucky he’d be on Plaxo and would be updated.  If not, I’d then resort to polling friends and trying to see who had his info.

Post-my enlightenment I just hop onto facebook and shoot him a message.  I don’t need his email (though facebook would have that too) because we’re both on facebook.

Truthfully, I’d still like to have his updated email in my address book and not stuck in facebook – but for now, I’ll take access to him over no access.

What about you?