photo by Richard What & Tom Ryder

Since 2006, my team and I have searched high and low for examples of digital leadership from people like Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk, and even studied President Barack Obama’s use of digital technology to win the election, and then the Nobel Peace Prize. From there, we turned to companies as far ranging as Cirque du Soleil, BT (formerly British Telecom), the TED conference and Best Buy. After lengthy interviews and in-depth analysis, a few simple patterns emerged. Here are some of the top rules for positioning yourself as a leader in the digital age. See if any of them surprise you:

Your Influence Is Greatest When You Are At The Center Of The Action.
Just being online isn’t enough. You need to get out there and start building bridges with several communities (professional organizations, industry organizations, minority-run organizations, woman’s organizations, tech meet-ups, innovation meet-ups, emerging market meet-ups etc.) Follow up with all new contacts via social networks. It is the easiest way to keep your new contacts abreast of your new developments, without having to constantly pester them with newsletters and emails. The more connected you are and are perceived to be, the more visibility you have- that’s a given.

What might not be as obvious is that being in the center of your network also gives you access to more information, sooner - a competitive edge with which to make better business decisions.

Your Online & Offline Presences Reinforce One Another.
Leverage your social capital (the power of those amazing friends who want to help you succeed! Just ask a question to your facebook/twitter and linkedin friends and see how many great responses you get- that’s your social capital at work). When your social capital starts affecting people outside of your networks, I refer to that in my first book, 33 Million People in The Room, as ‘cultural capital’ (you are now influencing the culture at large). Why? Most likely because you are perceived to be adding value to the lives of the people in your community. The next step is to translate your social connections into real-world influence.

Keep Strengthening Social Ties As Your Influence Spreads.

Photo by Richard Vandentillart

When your influence spreads beyond immediate social circles, your social capital turns into cultural capital, which has the power to attract financial success. Why? People and companies are attracted to ‘leaders’ and digital leadership is no different. The more you are perceived as an authentic leader within the culture, the more you become a magnet, an attractor. Offers come to you by the thousands. The old quandary changes from ‘how will I pay rent this month’ to ‘how do I decide which opportunities to pursue’.

Social Capital + Cultural Capital Attracts Financial Capital

Are you a future Digital Leader?

Just think of the issues digital leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk must face daily for example. With about 1 million Twitter followers (depending on the day), Vaynerchuk’s success is astonishing, yet the pattern to his success is quite simple: social capital + cultural capital attracts financial capital. The proof in in the pudding so to speak- this year Vaynerchuk signed a 7 figure book deal and released his best selling book, ‘Crush It‘.

If the words “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” come to mind:  wouldn’t you like to have those problems too?

While my last post was about media literacy, this one is more focused on digital literacy and how it affects your career. Many of us are aware there exists a digital divide: some people have access to digital technology while others don’t, particularly in extremely poor rural areas and in developing countries. What we rarely hear about is the digital divide happening right here, in our homes, neighborhoods and in our companies.

Digital literacy is the difference between knowing how to consume digital media (like searching for information on the internet) and knowing how to communicate, produce and distribute a message using digital media (like starting a blog or producing and uploading a useful video to youtube). While the divide between those who are digitally literate and those who aren’t is generally thought of as a demographic issue, I tend to think of it as a psychographic barrier as well. In other words, the ability to use digital technology isn’t determined solely on where and when you were born, it is also determined by a person’s affinity to technology in general and to digital media in particular.

For those of you who want to tap into the current zeitgeist around the digital literacy required these days to build a career using social networking, here’s an interview with personal branding coach to the millennial generation, Dan Schawbel, who shares insights and tips from his new best-selling book: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success. (Kaplan Publishing, April 2009).

While 33 million People in the Room details how entrepreneurs and companies can build social and cultural capital using social networking, Me 2.0 takes a different tact to communicate a similar message, what is the main hypothesis behind your book?

The main hypothesis behind Me 2.0 is that everyone needs to “command their career.”  Tom Peters, the inventor of personal branding, always stated that we have to be the chief marketer for the brand called us.  He was all about Me Inc. and how we had to think of ourselves as companies and use the same strategies to stand out.

Being the commander of your career means that you’re accountable for your successes and failures.  You have to take ownership and full responsibility for your career.

Although, you might seek advice from teachers and managers, you know who you are, what you’re capable of and have to make the decisions.  You need to be in the drivers seat and that’s the only way you’re going to succeed.  The four steps I’ve outlined in Me 2.0 (discover, create, communicate, maintain) are aligned to this main idea.

What are some of the new ideas and tips that emerge from your book that people can apply immediately?

• Reserve your name on the leading social networks, while purchasing your domain name and being an active contributor to your own blog.
• Get endorsements as much as you can from your managers, teachers, etc.
• Always think about how you can use what you’ve accomplished in the past to get your next opportunity in the future.
• Understand that the number of Twitter followers, Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts is a marketing list that you can tap at anytime.  They are internet assets!
• Have a clear branding strategy before you engage online and offline.
• Focus on relationships instead of making money.  The personal equity will get you further than paper currency.

What companies/ individuals are best representing the strategy and tactics described in ‘Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success’?
When it comes to personal branding, Donald Trump, Oprah, and Madonna are three of the top ones that people have heard of.  Celebrity internet brands examples are Kevin Rose, Pete Cashmore, Rohit Bhargava and Jeremiah Owyang.   Companies that have strong brands through social media are Zappos, Comcast, EMC (I work there), and Ford.

*What specific tips do you have to effectively leverage each of the social tools: video on the net, blog, twitter, facebook, other?

• Blogs are more important than all the social networks combined because they are hubs of information  and are something you can control.
• Decide weather you’re better at doing video or writing.  Invest more of your energy in the one you do the best and promote that over time.
• Don’t be afraid of using these tools.  Instead, figure out which ones work the best for you.
• Learn about your audience before updating your status messages on social networks.  You don’t want to send the wrong signals to employers or friends.

‘Me 2.0′ is directed at gen Y, yet more and more evidence supports the idea that the ability to use social tools effectively to build career success isn’t directly correlated to demographics but rather with psychographics (head space) as well as affinity and access to technology. With that in mind, what can the ‘every person’ learn by picking up your book?
Every person can learn a little bit more about themselves from reading this book.  It’s also a source of inspiration and contains a proven set of tools that will work for anyone.  You don’t just learn about what’s available, you get to put it into practice.  A lot of research went into writing Me 2.0 and I think everyone will be challenged and see the potential of social media for personal brand building.

Dan’s book is in stores now and we’d love to get your comments on it, as well as any more tips you might have for building your personal brand using social networking. Time to share with the rest of the class..

Juliette

Overworked, Public, Economist – These are the 3 words Paul Krugman used to described himself as we sat back in Princeton, NJ for our interview. Add to that the titles ‘New York Times columnist’, ‘Princeton Professor of Economics’ and ‘2008 Nobel Prize laureate in Economics’ and you begin to get a sense of the man behind all of the big headlines.

In Part 2 of my conversation with Krugman, we discuss everything from the impact of the Yes We Can generation, to political nominations within the Obama administration to the small world theory.

You 2.0 meets the Yes We Can generation

An interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (Part 2)
By Juliette Powell

Where do you see the biggest impact of social networking and social media in the next 4 years?
Krugman: Some of it has already happened.

There have been some proposed appointments in the national security area, or at least floated appointments, that have essentially been torpedoed because the online community said no. ‘these guys are unacceptable!’ and rightly so.

There will be other areas affected but remember that basic policy formulation won’t come out of this stuff because it’s detailed. It will always require somebody sitting at a desk with lines of access and so on… But fast critique now demands that issues be brought to the front of the table when they were no being considered in the past.

Yes, the online community is gaining in power and influence and the effects are compounded because we realize it. Yes, it will be harder for this (Obama) administration to slip!

In the later Clinton years, the administration took on more of a managerial role and wasn’t as pro-corporate as a republican administration but less of a force for democratic change than one would have hoped.  That’s partly because they had a hostile congress but it’s also that there was no effective community saying: ‘Hey this is not what we elected you for!’ I think the Obama administration will have that kind of community and a good thing too!

Now that people all over the world have seen the impact that a single person can have using social networking technology – do you think that’s going to change the way that we view our own possibility to actually take control of our own destinies?

Krugman: I think there is something like that happening and it’s not just what is happening in America. What I hear a lot, is that many countries, including very oppressive regimes –

It starts as people having Facebook profiles just for friends, then something happens. It turns out that that same technology, that same involvement is also a way of getting political action together. People can be mobilized and I think it changes a lot of things.

In the 18th century, when we lived in small towns and everybody could participate and then we moved to this world where the power became very distant and news media far away, dictated how you saw the world. Now I don’t want to romanticize it but I think that it’s going to affect a lot of the world.

Take the famous Jacques Chirac quote: “The internet is an Anglo Saxon network’, that is no longer true at all. I watch my own links for my blog posts and I can see that we really are a small world. I’m seeing Chinese links, Korean links, Russian links. It’s a world now where this involvement has spread to very many cultures and indeed it is a very small world.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived in Princeton, New Jersey to interview Paul Krugman. I had been reading him for years in the Times and he was one of the reasons I had studied economics yet a sense of relief washed over me when I met a slightly harried Krugman in the unmarked video conferencing room reserved for our encounter.  The bearded genius with the earnest eyes greeted me warmly and told me he only had a few minutes to spare; his wife had just called because she was making pasta, the water was boiling and she wanted to know when to throw in the pasta and he wanted to get home before heading to Stockholm to pick up the coveted 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. Krugman won for his ‘analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity’. When I told him I’d share our interview with you on this blog, he graciously extended our allotted time together to answer more questions. The result is a multi-part Q and A.

In part 1, Krugman and I discuss topics ranging from the impact of the democratization of American politics on the connected masses to the role of social capital on the economic recovery. The full transcript of my Krugman interview, along with his videotaped responses will be posted here in the coming days.

An interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (Part 1)
By Juliette Powell

Given the current economic climate, what do you feel the role of building social and cultural capital plays in our recovery?

Krugman: We’ve gone thru an era of emphasis on individual initiative and individual rights. The “greed is good’ era, and now we’ve learned the hard way that that can go very wrong. 70 years ago Franklin D Roosevelt said: ‘We’ve always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.’ Now we know that it’s bad economics.

We are now at a time when some of those virtues of cooperation, which is what social capital is about, have been rediscovered and with luck, this can be turned into something of lasting benefit, not just getting out of the recession.

For anybody who has followed Obama’s election and looked at the impact of his team’s online campaign, it is clear that many first time voters and people that wouldn’t have considered themselves politically inclined were empowered to self-organize and use social networking tools to help rock the vote. In your opinion, what kind of impact will people’s use of social media tools really have on the Obama administration’s decisions moving forward?

Krugman: We can’t be too romantic about this. Legislation still has to be drafted by teams of people putting every semi-colon in the right place. Economic crisis management will still be done by people sitting in government offices. Conversely, there is a democratization of the ability to express opinion and to make analysis. Here’s an example that most people wouldn’t be aware of:

We had a proposal for a financial bailout presented by Henry Paulson, the current Treasury Secretary. This was the voice of authority and most of the traditional media were highly respectful of it- not me - but most everyone else was. Yet very quickly, an enormous online discussion broke out and grew into a sense of outrage around the proposal. So the quality of the economics blogging around the economic bailout was incredible. You had a lot of smart people who knew a lot about economics but in the past wouldn’t have had any ability to get their views out quickly. They were not in official positions. The number of trained economists who also have newspaper columns is – one – me. These other people did not, but their discussion. I think it helped move the policy.

Within 3 weeks the treasury had effectively completely abandoned the original approach (to the economic bailout) because everyone who wasn’t in a position of power said: this doesn’t make sense!

We can see a lot of things like that happening in the future. Still, don’t underestimate the influence of people who can treat a congressman to luxurious dinners. Being online unfortunately is never going to do away with that entirely but there is a real democratization of access.

If you were one of the people who participated in the online discussion about the economic bailout, our healthcare system or the way to maximize the usefulness of the social tools put out by the Obama team, we want to hear your experiences or send us the name and blog of an online community member who helped you understand the issues better.

Keep checking in for Part 2 of my interview with Paul Krugman, where we discuss the impact of social media and social networking tools on everything from business to globalization to national security.

~> j*

While most of us feel powerless as we collectively witness the seemingly endless disintegration of our financial, economic and political institutions, I tend to forget that we do still have a considerable amount of power - the power to elect a new President who reflects the nation we aspire to be, and the power to choose the people who, on a day to day basis, shape the fabric of our lives. As more and more people lose faith in our institutions, may this forum be an opportunity to celebrate the real heroes in our lives.

Why invest in relationships?
Whether I’m looking for a new job, a new apartment or a new point of view, my friends, colleagues and acquaintances are an invaluable resource for gathering useful information.  As the value of markets go down, the value of our relationships to navigate these uncertain times goes up.

With a little help from your friends, your network has the ability to keep you connected to business and social opportunities that you would not be privy to otherwise. In a world where most people’s financial capital is getting scarcer by the day, one cannot overemphasize the importance of building your social capital.  Reinforcing the foundations of your relationships has always been a good idea; nowadays, it’s essential.

Luckily, thanks to social networking platforms, it’s easier than ever to manage and cultivate relationships. Take my friend Kitt Grant for instance. Kitt is a television producer on shows like 360 with Anderson Cooper and the Today show. Because of the nature of her job, she’s always looking for interesting people to book as show guests. Last year Kit became a member of  the ‘A Small World’ (ASW) social network and started looking through member profiles. The next thing I knew, she had befriended me and we’ve been looking for ways to add value to each other’s lives ever since. With her inquisitive nature and easy smile, a few minutes spent listening to Kitt talk about her job and you naturally want to start suggesting people who might be a good fit for her next tv segment. Far from being a one-sided relationship, Kitt took an immediate interest in my company, the Gathering Think Tank and even reviewed the first draft of my book. From that experience, I began to think about the awesome power a network can wield when the people within it work together. But let’s get back to the power of just 2 networked people for a moment.

Say you have lunch with a friend, and between the 2 of you, you share 25 friends and friends of friends. If I were to calculate the number of potential connections between you and your friend, it would work out to 2 to the power of 25 or over 33 million possible connections.

There may only be 2 people at the table, but there are 33 Million People In The Room!

Of course not all of these connections could humanely be explored in one lifetime so the trick is to invest in those relationships that have the highest probability of giving you the maximum return on your time investment.

How do you find the most valuable people in your network?
Start with the people you know on your favorite social network. As Kitt found out, friends and friends of friends are a lifeline when it comes to linking you quickly with the information you need to make the best decisions about your next steps. As you go through your friends’ online networks, notice who is a natural born information hub. These are the people to invest in and learn from when consciously building your social capital. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, here are a few clues.

Invest in people who:

§    Care about others and really work to help others get ahead as they get ahead.
§    Pass on helpful and pertinent information.
§    Are tirelessly on the scene - and this doesn’t mean they attend lots of parties – they are actually the people producing the cool, worthwhile events, products and campaigns.
§    Know who they are and are very entertaining.
§    Are full of passion about what they do. It’s not about the money. It’s about changing the world!

Taking notes from Kitt’s winning networking strategy: once you’ve determined who to invest your time in, it’s in your best interest to stimulate and develop those relationships. With social networking tools, your entire network is at your fingertips.

How easy could it be to:

§    Forward along helpful articles, topical blog posts and other relevant information to various affinity groups within you network?
§   What about recommending suppliers or former co-workers?

All of these small things make a big impression. The resulting dividends on your time investment could be exponential. Chances are, your network is rife with high quality people who successfully build relationships and add value to your community.

I’d like to feature your real life stories about who they are. It could be you, a friend, a friend of a friend – whatever works!

Contact me at j (at) juliettepowell (dot) com or facebook me your stories today!

~ > j*