Mario Sundar

Updated with thoughtful comments from readers. Scroll down.

So, I was supposed to be in Austin today for my annual South by Southwest (SXSW) trek . But, given the certain constancy of Murphy’s Law, I find myself back in Toronto writing this blog post. Boy, what a day (and what a way) to cap a momentous week at work.

Earlier today, I found myself running to Gate No. 164 in Toronto International Airport after being detained for a random inspection at customs, which in my case, is regular enough at this point. Well, the last time I sat through one of these, it took me 15 minutes, but this time it took over an hour and as I sat waiting with a bunch of others, I noticed I had cut it too close this time.

I missed my flight by 5 minutes.

Worse still, all the United Airlines personnel had left the building since it was the last United flight for the day (finding this out took me a half hour!). Equally odd was my experience of having to make a U-turn and walk straight through Canadian immigration (with my I-94 still stamped on my passport) since there were no available flights for tomorrow. And, the best part was I panicked that my checked-in luggage was now somewhere en route to Austin, Texas. Luckily, a half hour later I did find it at Carousel No. 13 (So, all was not lost).

Eh, well. I could go on. But, that’d defeat the point of this post.

Shit happens. But our response to it builds character.

I bet there are two schools of thought. One who assume that individuals with strength of character deal with tough situations with grace. But, I’m sure that’s not the way it works. Rather, it’s our response to such situations over time that helps build that strength of character. Now, I’m sure there are worse things than missing an international flight narrowly by a few minutes. But, trying to salvage some minimal goodness out of it and not focusing on the negativity is sure as heck harder than it seems.

It also reminded me of a wonderful anecdote narrated by Mayor Cory Booker when he spoke at LinkedIn earlier this week. This one too involved an airport and a flight. He talked about how he found his good luck at finding perfect seats on a flight turn into a nightmare, but the choice he made helped turn it around and make it a pleasant experience for him and the family seated right next to him. Sure, I ruined a good story (you’ve got to hear him speak). But, even when the tough situation just involves you, the choices we make helps save our day.

So, here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna see my long-time-no-see friends, I was hoping to catch up with, on Sunday. And, there’s always another year, another South By Southwest. But, one thing’s for sure. I’m gonna use tomorrow in a productive fashion. Gonna get rid of my dumb phone that has been the bane of my existence, get my new iPhone, and get some blogging done.

Yes. If nothing else. The one good I can claim this resulted in, is get me to kick that writers-block squarely in the nuts. And, it’s back to blogging, baby.

Thanks for your thoughts and kind words! Here’s some:

Michael Lee Stallard

Death, Taxes, and Murphy's Law. : http://t.co/rvPAgih #wisdom #character—
Michael Lee Stallard (@michaelstallard) March 12, 2011

Flo!

@mariosundar that's really horrible dude. Didn't even know you were heading to sxsw! Hopefully the weather in Toronto is bearable now —
Florina X (@flojee) March 12, 2011

Paul Roetzer from PR 20/20

@mariosundar Sorry #SXSW didn't work out for you this year. Enjoyed your positive outlook on the situation though.—
Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) March 12, 2011

Those TabbedOut guys

@mariosundar sorry to hear!—
  (@TabbedOut) March 12, 2011

Wade Burgess

good post re: attitude about circumstances PRT @mariosundar: …my #sxsw fiasco yday. http://t.co/4Pa9uiA—
  (@wadeburgess) March 12, 2011

Ben Wise

@mariosundar If travel doesn't work out, at least Toronto isn't a bad place to be stuck —
Ben Wise (@ben_wise) March 12, 2011

And, to my good friends and peers. See you on Sunday.

@mariosundar we need to catch up tomorrow with @MSUAAJohn at #sxsw. When are you around? He's linkedin's biggest evangelist. Miss ya!—
Betsy Weber (@betsyweber) March 12, 2011

Filed under: Miscellaneous

This post too has its origins on Quora, so I recommend you check out the other answers on the thread. And, if you like my answer, consider voting for it. But, I digress. Here are some tips on enhancing productivity.

I agree with a lot of salient points that Yishan Wong raises, esp. batched email / IM processing, but I guess it’s effectiveness also depends on what kind of role you find yourself. For someone in Public Relations that just may not work out.

That said, I think there’s one simple approach that hasn’t been explicitly called out, that could truly make a difference:

1. Singletasking:

I was alerted to this through a post from Caterina Fake (http://mariosundar.com/2009/02/2…). It’s worth repeating here.

• Start work rightaway each morning
• minimize interruptions, feed reading, chat / IM
• maximize working on one thing at a time
• use phone or in-person visit for roadblocks or questions (not chat)
• send email anytime
• check email only at 10am, 1pm, and 4pm
• no email evenings or weekends
• focus on 1 – 3 activities each day
• stop work at 6pm no exceptions

Some of these remind me of Yishan’s tips. Also, if you’re brave enough to jettison email watching, I’d recommend saying so in your email signature in case people wonder why you haven’t responded yet. Again, depends on the precedent you’ve set.

2. Paper rocks!

I think just getting your tasks down on paper at the start of the day (maybe the prior day) helps keep in context the “why / high level picture” behind the numerous tasks you find yourselves doing each day.

Increasingly I’ve found Google Docs an effective replacement for my moleskine and saves me the trouble of figuring out a way to destroy the old notes. I break down my To-do page into the following cascaded task sets:

• Whiteboard: As soon as I get to my desk each day, I write down the 3 – 5 urgent tasks I know I need to complete rightaway.
• Today: Everything besides the 3 or 5 key tasks that also need to be complete today.
• Next: This is unlikely to be complete today but needs to happen to achieve milestones for the next week. So, if for e.g. I need to make a decision on finding a web dev consultant by next week, I may need to fire off a bunch of emails with project requirements and that may need to happen tomorrow.
• Weekend: Every once in a while, I remember something I need to buy at the groceries that I don’t want to lose track of. That goes here.

I also use separate browsers to compartmentalize my work units. Chrome full-screen for all google apps / work email, etc. and Firefox for all my browsing needs (as a blog editor, I need to do a ton of research online – Techmeme, etc).

Filed under: Miscellaneous

As a social media manager, it’s my job to monitor and track conversations related to “linkedin” as well as engage with the community when appropriate. This, in addition to more strategic global social media strategy, editing and managing content creation for the LinkedIn blog and select marketing projects at LinkedIn.

So, very quickly you learn that there’s only one way to prevent you from drowning in the chaos that’s coordinating multiple social media accounts (in my case, editing the linkedin blog, managing our twitter accounts – @mariosundar, curating @linkedin, and @linkedinnews) – with a lil help from TweetDeck and a simple ritual which I described earlier in How can I increase my productivity? – @singletasking.

Here’s how you stay productive while managing or dabbling in multiple social media accounts or social networking sites:

1. Be clear on your goals:

Why do you use Facebook or Twitter. In my case, LinkedIn and Twitter are sorta job requirements, and with Twitter – as you can imagine potentially distracting.

So, I outlined what my 3 key goals with Twitter were:

• Identify breaking news on LinkedIn as it happens and engage with our users should they have questions / I have a partner in crime, from our customer service team – Derek Homann, who does a terrific job supporting the customer service goal.
• Be the source of LinkedIn related news through the LinkedIn blog and use that as a means of engaging with our community of users on product news
• Amplify the conversations coming from within LinkedIn (for e.g. sharing tweets from folks who work at LinkedIn, when its relevant to the  conversation)

Now, all I needed was a tool that lets me monitor Twitter real-time, slice and dice that information as fast as I could, respond to high-priority items and get outta there. Enter TweetDeck.

2. Find the right tool to help accomplish those goals:

I think Seesmic may be a credible alternative, but I found Tweetdeck as a young Twitter user and there’s no turning back. Here’s how Tweetdeck helps me stay productive in line with my key goals mentioned above.

• Track Smart: I have a column on “linkedin” related tweets as they come in real-time (I love the ability to filter tweets by specific keywords – so show me all “linkedin” tweets except for the ones that say “Jobs” for e.g.) This way, every time I check in, there’s a manageable amount of tweets that I can sort through after cutting through the spam.
• Schedule tweets: Given that Twitter works best real-time, I automate relevant tweets every time we publish a new LinkedIn blog post. In addition, I schedule separate tweets including the name of the post author a couple more times – each time adding some value to the reader and surfacing the people behind the organization who are communicating with the end user.
• RT Smart: I also use the column on my linkedin colleagues (see below) to find appropriate tweets to RT through the @linkedin Twitter channel.

Adding 3 – 4 noiseless columns helps me focus on what matters. Currently, my Tweetdeck has 4 relevant columns: the “linkedin” column, and three twitter lists – folks in social media whose blogs and work I admire, my favorite LinkedIn peeps, and a high-quality stream of relevant breaking tech news (a Twitter list I curate – http://twitter.com/mariosundar/b…).

I do not check my own Twitter feed @mariosundar since it’s too noisy.

3. Check it only at certain times of the day:

Once you pick your signal streams, as Singletasking suggests, open TweetDeck only 3 times a day. Yes, I’m guilty of checking it more times, but I’m trying to bring it down to 3. And, therein lies the key to being productive on social media sites.

Know why you’re doing it, plan accordingly, and stick to the plan. Done.

Vote up my answer on Quora

Filed under: Miscellaneous

What are the hottest digital media startups right now? 7 answers on Quora

What are the hottest digital media startups right now?

Here’s my answer. If you’re on Quora, I’d appreciate it if you’d vote my answer up. Thanks!

Instapaper is the dark horse when it comes to digital media, and I suspect they could do to news media what TiVo did to television.

If Marco Arment (formerly w/ Tumblr) can scale the service right and market it to the right audiences, I suspect we could have a decent business brewing.

+1 to a couple of names mentioned on this thread. I think Tumblr & Quora  in particular, are nailing it.

I find myself starting my day on these sites to consume content that’s both geared towards my personal interests (tumblr) and career interests (quora), similar to how I felt with Twitter, Facebook and WordPress. I didn’t mention LinkedIn, since I work there.

That said, Tumblr is having it’s Friendster moment as it keeps struggling to stay afloat and online. Not a good sign. If they can handle it, they could turn out to be THE digital media upstart to watch out.”

BTW, moving forward, I hope to re-blog select Quora answers on this blog here. This one’s tagged under “future of digital media”.

If you write for a career blog, I’d highly recommend your reblogging it on Quora, since it helps you surface your content to yet another targeted audience. Think of it as yet another channel for the valuable content you create. More on that later.

If you’ve questions on Quora? Leave a comment or find me on twitter  @mariosundar / Mario Sundar.

Filed under: Miscellaneous

Now that’s a surprise. A lot of companies are dabbling in social media and trying to figure out what’s the right approach to social marketing. But, it’s telling that more of these firms trying it out are from the B2B world than B2C. There’s a lot to consume in this graphic but a few key points after the jump. Hat tip to Mashable.

Key points:

• More B2B companies (than B2C firms) dabbling in social media cluelessly (will explain)
• Those B2B firms are less active on social media than their B2C counterparts
• B2B firms also have less executive approval, less budgets and more of them think it’s irrelevance (uh!)
• Looks like Facebook and LinkedIn were ranked as the top two social networking sites that these B2B companies have tried out (Yes, I work at LinkedIn)
• Those that do measure social media ROI (half of them) find online marketing more effective than traditional (and I’m guessing online – encompasses social)

That’s your stats for the day. Hope you enjoyed it. I’ve got a couple more interesting posts lined up. So come back tomorrow for more.

And, the only thing I’d add is – whether you’re a B2B or B2C firm, NEVER start with the tools in mind. Always, start with goals and ROI. Here’s a post I wrote on the very same topic when corporate blogging was all the rage among companies.

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Filed under: Miscellaneous

Readers of this blog may have noticed this past week that I wrote of two posts on how business – both large corporations and small businesses – either don’t get social media or don’t get how to measure social media ROI. But as I’d mentioned earlier today, the new world of work is global in nature. How do companies in other parts of the world fare?

So, I found this recent study by German think tank – Brand Science Institute – enlightening in that it made similar conclusions (a tad more dramatically though) on how effective social media marketing is in Corporate Europe. Here are a few conclusions from that study, conducted over a 7 month period in companies spread across 12 countries, 563 marketers, and 52 brands in Europe.

Click through the presentation below for more.

81% of companies DO NOT have a clear social media strategy

87% of companies had to correct their social media expectations

Only 11% have clearly defined social media guidelines and more…

Filed under: Miscellaneous

Social networking sites are reshaping the world of work in a way we haven’t seen since the dawn of the Microsoft era. This blog series will shed some light on the huge advantages they bring to the workplace that will affect the way the next generation works.

A recent Harvard Business Review report highlights six fundamental shifts in the way we work. The post outlines 6 ways tomorrow’s office doesn’t have to be like a scene from “The Office”. Here’s what I found most interesting…

The New World of Work

Collaboration within the professional graph increases efficiency

Social networking sites have now been able to scale the number of connections (to the hundreds of millions, in some cases) and interactions (think of the immense potential here with millions of nodes) in the ecosystem, we should now be able to see increasing returns thanks to  the “collaboration curve”.

As it becomes increasingly possible to scale the number of connections and interactions between participants in a given environment, however, a new kind of performance curve is emerging: the collaboration curve. This is characterized by increasing returns: the more participants — and interactions between those participants — you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement accelerates.

The collaboration curve helps explain the rise of network-centric efforts ranging from open source software development to “crowdsourcing” to “creation spaces.” In nearly all of these group efforts, rapid leaps in performance improvement arise as participants get better faster by working with others. 

I think we’re just scratching the surface as we figure out ways to get better at how we work, using existing social networking ecosystems. LinkedIn alone has over 75 million professionals on the site, which should lead to numerous opportunities for increasing efficiencies at work. We are able to close deals better with help from friends of friends, ditto for finding a job, asking questions on LinkedIn groups helps us find answers on projects, that’d have otherwise taken us way more time in the past. Don’t you think so?

In what other ways have you seen social networking sites like LinkedIn change the way we work? Leave a comment.

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Filed under: Miscellaneous

Over at Mashable this past week, Erica Swallow compiles 15 interesting corporate blogs – some of which have found mention in our corporate blog rankings over the past 3 years. Guess which ones?

While I’ve shared similar tips in the past, there were a couple of new tips from the post that I wish to highlight.

1. Use the social graph to add “real voices” to your blog:

I think a lot of companies are collaborative group blogs with posts coming from different teams and a diverse array of employees from across the board. For e.g. at LinkedIn, we’ve had posts from nearly 90 of my colleagues (I’m the social media guy at LinkedIn and I edit our corporate blog) from across product, engineering, design, and our executive team. Google is another great example.

The official Google blog pulls insights from all over the company. Taking a quick look at posts from the past few days, I found updates posted by a software engineer, a technical program manager working on Google Apps for government, the vice president of search products and user experience, an entertainment marketing associate, and a university programs specialist — that’s a diverse crowd.

Connecting the people behind the products to the people using the products

What we’ve done on the LinkedIn blog, is to use our LinkedIn API to pull in the most recent LinkedIn profile image and summary for the post author. This gives you a better picture of who’s writing the post and if you’re interested in providing feedback to the author directly you can click through to their profile.

LinkedIn blog pulls in profile info on post authors

Facebook’s blog is very similar as they do the same pulling in the most current profile photo of their post authors. This is something all corporate blogs should be doing since it helps shine the spotlight where it should be shone – on the real voices of the company.

Again, I think this goes back to the basic ideal of social media within corporations – facilitating easier conversations between users and the teams that make the product. Read Hugh Macleod’s classic post on the Porous membrane and how that works within a socially smart organization.

Facebook's blog also pulls in author info frm social graph

2. To promote or NOT to promote a CEO blog:

CEO blogging is a challenging and frankly a debatable idea. But, if you have a CEO who not only likes to blog, but is actually good at it and can find the time for it – then go for it.

Erica even suggests promoting it:

You can’t put up a blog and expect people to just discover it. While that’s possible, it’s very unlikely. Just like any other business, marketing, or educational program you may run, you need to promote it.

There are a lot of ways to promote your blog, but one particular corporate blog is doing a great job with search engine marketing (SEM). Forrester Research’s CEO George Colony runs a blog called The Counterintuitive CEO. While searching for “ceo blog” on Google, you’ll run across his blog in the “sponsored links” section, where paid Google AdWords ads are displayed.

As you can see the first result that pops up when you search for CEO blog is the Top 10 CEO blog rankings that I did nearly 3 years ago.

Is promoting CEO blogs a good use of time & money?

One of blogging’s great advantages is that with a targeted content strategy (picking the right topics to blog about consistently) and a passionate CEO blogging, you don’t need to spend any $s on promoting it otherwise. More on that later.

What do you think? Is it worth spending money to promote your CEOs blog? Or is it spent more usefully in other marketing pursuits? Leave a comment on this blog or follow me on Twitter.

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So, while Erica’s post gives us a sneak peak at some interesting corporate blogs and goes over blogging basics I think at the end of the day – any company’s blog is valued based on two things COMMUNITY and CONTENT that’s useful to your community.

That’s pretty much it. That’s why I’ve been ranking corporate blogs based on their Technorati authority (for lack of a better metric), since it helps us identify how popular and engaging these blogs are with their community. Here are the Top 10 corporate blogs of the past few years.

And, if you’d like to see CEO blogs, check out the original killer post that started it all. Go here.

Filed under: Miscellaneous