Conan O’Brien marches to the beat of his own drummer.  No really, he does. When it comes to social media participation, the comedian blazes his own unique trail there too.  Let’s take a look at Conan’s new Twitter account, what he does “right” and “wrong”, and how you can benefit from breaking the rules once in a while too.

For those that don’t know, I’ll briefly sum up Conan O’Brien’s recent history.  He worked for years to become host of the most coveted talk show in America, got the job, and was essentially given the boot very shortly thereafter (unjustly in the eyes of many).  In the process, he gained a fiercely loyal fan base, known as Team Coco.

During his NBC tenure, Conan didn’t officially have his own social media presence.  In fact, he instead poked fun at celebrity social media usage via the recurring “Twitter Tracker” skit.  Fast forward to today, and the @ConanObrien Twitter account has nearly 700,000 followers.  How did he get here?  By breaking three standard “rules of social media”.

Rule #1:  Everyone else is already involved; you need to join social media networks immediately.

Common sentiment says that social networking is so hot right now that it simply can’t be ignored, and I agree.  But, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to dive headfirst into the social media deep-end.  I suspect Conan initially took a hands-off stance on Twitter and other social media outlets because he didn’t fully understand their full power, or how the systems truly work.  But, the recent outpouring of emotion from loyal fans likely erased any doubt – now was the time to join in.

So, on February 24^th, @ConanObrien’s profile read: “I had a show. Then I had a different show. Now I have a Twitter account.”

Lesson #1:  You can gain great amounts of knowledge and understanding from social networks just by watching and listening.  Start participating only when you truly feel ready.

Rule #2:  To succeed in social media, you must engage in widespread conversation.

In the first 24 hours on Twitter, Conan gained 300,000 followers.  Let’s be realistic – how could he possibly engage all these people in conversation?  How could he sort through these users to follow back a number of accounts?  It just isn’t possible.  So, how did Conan prove he cared about his fans?  He followed one of them back.  Just one.

In a brilliant move to prove he was listening to the “average” fan (without actually listening to all of them) Conan followed random user @LovelyButton.  What made her so special?  Nothing!  Or everything, depending on how you view it.

Lesson #2:  Social media is a zoo, and you’ll never connect with everyone.  So instead, focus on forming a smaller number of true, meaningful relationships.

Rule #3:  Put others first – share the work of others more than you share your own.

I am a huge advocate of sharing within Twitter – retweets, posting links, #FollowFriday, you name it.  So far, Conan is a one man show, tweeting only his own quips and barbs.  And you know what?  It works for him.  People follow Conan because they miss his TV show, and because they miss him. 

I don’t advocate you eliminate social sharing from your repertoire, but there is one lesson to be learned here.

Lesson #3:  Sharing is awesome, but remember this – people connect with you because of your unique voice.  Make sure your distinctive point of view shines through at all times.

What do you think – were rules were meant to be broken?  Are there any social media rules you love to break regularly?

Ryan Rancatore can be found discussing other crazy subjects and how they affect you at Personal Branding 101.  Connect with Ryan on Twitter at @RyanRancatore, or on Linkedin, Facebook, or Brazen Careerist.

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For many, LinkedIn causes confusion – what is it, exactly?  Is it a virtual Rolodex, a place to showcase one’s resume, or is it a social network?  My answer – yes, yes, and yes.  Here are 7 tips and tricks to greatly improve your LinkedIn experience and make it a site you want to visit every single day.

1.  Expand Your Network

With a limited number of connections, LinkedIn is going to be pretty darn boring for you.  There will be few updates for you to see, and virtually nobody will read your status changes.  So, how do you expand your network to include relevant connections?  Send the invitations yourself!  Don’t be shy about it, either.  I say go for the gusto, invite the CEO of your company to connect, invite the awesome presenter that enthralled you at the latest conference, invite anyone that you either know well or want to know better.

But, when you do send the invite, follow these tips for how to properly construct the invitation.

2. Be Creative With Your Headline

Most tend to assume that a LinkedIn headline should include only your precise job title.  Why?  The LinkedIn police aren’t going to hunt you down for adding a bit of creative flair to your profile.

After all, it is highly unlikely that your job title alone does you justice. You might officially be an “Account Executive”, but that title tells us next to nothing about what you actually do. Look to these examples for inspiration on how to amp up your LinkedIn headline.

Marci Reynolds – Operations Leader | Expertise in Call Centers – Sales Ops – eBusiness | Blogger & Social Media Enthusiast

Dan Schawbel – Personal Branding Expert, Bestselling Author, Speaker, Consultant, Columnist, Publisher and Blogger

Liz Isaacs – Connector ♦ Passionate Writing & Marketing Communications Strategist ♦ Writing Coach ♦ Author & Screenwriter

To make the change, navigate to LinkedIn > Edit My Profile > Edit Headline.

3.  Incorporate Twitter

LinkedIn and Twitter integrated with one another in November of 2009.  The unlikely pairing instantly changed the way many use and think of LinkedIn.  By incorporating a select* number of tweets into your LinkedIn status updates, you can form a much closer bond with many of your business contacts.

*But a word of caution – many LinkedIn users won’t be used to a Twitter-like bombardment of updates, so be thoughtful with your frequency.  And remember to keep everything business-appropriate.

4.  Access LinkedIn Via Mobile

Only staying connected to your network when you are chained to your desktop is so 2009.  Several months ago LinkedIn released a completely new interface for their iPhone app.  The result?  Functionality shot through the roof, and the mobile experience instantly improved.  The LinkedIn iPhone app is the reason I now visit LinkedIn every single day.

5.  Ask Questions

Most often my advice is for folks to answer questions on LinkedIn, showing their specific expertise via the official “Answers” section.  But this is about making your experience better, so go ahead, start off by asking a few questions of your own.  Here you will see the power of the LinkedIn community – try and stump them by asking a doozy of a question.

6.  Join Groups (Even Cool Ones)

I know what you are thinking.  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of LinkedIn groups, but why would I want to join? They seem boring.”  Maybe you are a skateboarding champ who happens to love The Simpsons, and you think there is no LinkedIn Group worth your while.  Think again!  You can join the “Action Sports Connect” and “Simpsons Fan” groups, and find a few like-minded individuals in your industry.

7.  Create Your Own Group

What is better than joining a group that suits an interest of yours?  Creating your own, of course.  You can create a group around any niche you want – be it topical, age-based, geographic, anything.  Sure, your group might start out small, and maybe it will stay small.  Who cares?  The connections you make via a small, tight-knit group in your industry are likely to be stronger than any formed in a group of thousands.

These are just seven ways of many to improve your LinkedIn experience.  If you haven’t logged in to LinkedIn for a long while, give it a shot again – I think you will like what you see.

Now seems like the perfect time to connect on LinkedIn, right?  Connect with Ryan Rancatore on LinkedIn here, or on Twitter here  @RyanRancatore.  Swing by Personal Branding 101 too if you are cruising for more personal branding tips and tricks.  

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The 2010 Winter Olympics have concluded, and as usual, I was inspired by consistently amazing performances from the world’s best athletes.  To win a gold medal is truly an incredible feat, given that an entire world of competition is fighting for that one single prize.  While an actual gold medal may never be possible for most of us, here are 5 features of every gold-medal winner that we can all emulate and incorporate into our personal brands.

1. Passion

It is highly possible that we can all be good at an activity without feeling true passion for it.  Maybe we can even be great at it.  But to be the best?  That requires an inner-passion that can’t be taught, learned, or faked.  I’d bet good money that every gold medal winner has a passion burning within them that keeps them up at night.

What about you?  I suspect you are building a brand around a certain niche or specialty.  Do you truly feel an inner-passion for that niche that keeps you up at night?  Without passion, you might still end up being pretty good – but to be the best, you simply can’t do without it.

2.  A Mentor

Before Kim Yu-Na of South Korea skated the highest-scoring performance in women’s figure skating history, she received a few last words of wisdom from her coach.  In fact, almost every athlete received coaching directly before and after their events.

Think about that for a minute – if  world-class performers rely so heavily on the tutorship of others, shouldn’t you?  In my opinion, mentorship can come from many angles.  Maybe it is your boss, maybe it is a family member, maybe it is even an expert blogger in your field.  Find someone smarter and more experienced than you, and learn everything you can from them.

3.  Practice, Practice, Practice

For almost every gold-medal winner, the story reads the same way: Start at age 3, get up at 5 a.m. every morning, practice, go to class, practice some more, repeat.  Even the youngest competitors have over a decade of practice under their belt, and thousands upon thousands of hours of refining their craft.

What about you?  Are you expecting instant success without the hard work?  Chris Brogan speaks of the fallacy of an “overnight success” in this video series.

4.  Specialized Skill-Set

If you took the gold-medal winners in curling and ski-jump and forced them to swap sports, I can guarantee they would both be terrible at the opposite sport.  Same goes for top personal brands.  Try forcing Gary Vaynerchuk and Brian Clark to switch places for a day.  You would get one awful wine video, and the worst copy-writing article you’ve ever read!  Both are brilliant at what they do, but also understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

And you?  Are you trying to be too many things at once?  Drill down your niche as precisely as you can, and crush that one area better than anyone else.

5. Previous Failure

Whether public or private, I’m certain that every current champion has experienced previous failure.  Take Apolo Ohno, for example.  He almost quit speed skating for good after finishing dead last in a major race as a youth.  For others, maybe it was a particular jump that was missed the first hundred times they tried it.

As Seth Godin points out brilliantly, “see failure as a learning event, not a destination, it makes you smarter, faster”.  We all fail, and some of us do it quite often!  It is how you rebound from failure that can turn you into a gold-medal winner.

These are just 5 of many features shared by Olympic champions.  Can you think of any more?

Ryan Rancatore sometimes fails, and sometimes succeeds, at building a gold-medal blog at Personal Branding 101.  Also connect with Ryan on Twitter at @RyanRancatore, or on Linkedin, Facebook, or Brazen Careerist.

Photo credit, adrian8_8

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If you are interested in personal branding, chances are strong that you regularly engage in some form of social media.  If so, I ask you this question – is social media truly beneficial to your brand, or is it a giant waste of your time? (Not a rhetorical question, let’s hear your answer in the comments section!)

For comparison’s sake, let me make a few generalizations about your social media activities.  My guess is that you are active on Facebook and/or Twitter, and have a profile set up on LinkedIn.  Aside from the “big three”, you probably have a few accounts at smaller niche sites.  Altogether, you might spend an average of 1 hour per day networking online.

Assuming the above is true, or close, you spend roughly 365 hours per year on social media.  Allow me to play the role of devil’s advocate, and offer a few alternative ways you could spend that 365 hours:

• -Take a college course from Harvard, Stanford, or Yale.
• -Work part-time at $10 per hour, and earn an extra $3,650.
• -Reading 1 page per minute, 300 pages per book, you could finish an extra 73 books, for free.
• -At 10 minutes per mile (a speed of 6 on the treadmill), you could run 2,190 miles per year.
• -Writing 1 page every 10 minutes, you could write 7 books of your own.
• -Find an internship, and work the equivalent of 2 full-time months.
• -Learn a new language. Or two.

Honesty time – I haven’t done any of the above.  Not even close.  Instead, while writing this article I’ve clicked links from Twitter, updated Facebook, and even formed a new connection on LinkedIn.  Why?  Because I’m a huge believer in the brand-building power of social media.

But, after reading the alternatives above, let me ask you again:  Is social media worth YOUR time? If so, prove it in the comments section below with concrete evidence – who have you met, what have you learned, or how exactly has your brand benefited as a direct result of social media?

Ryan Rancatore can also be found discussing social media and more at Personal Branding 101.  Connect with Ryan on Twitter at @RyanRancatore, or on Linkedin, Facebook, or Brazen Careerist.

Photo credit, gnackgnackgnack.

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