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Some time ago, I published a piece on JonERP.com riffing on the power of pull, which was inspired by the book of the same name, but geared towards individuals rather than the corporate focus of the book. It was my tribute to listening and context in a world where most of us are in relentless broadcast mode, in a desperate bid for our slice of attention amidst a media pie that is getting more crowded by the day. Believing that our friends will surface everything we need to read is naive and lazy. I went into a further rant on this topic in my blog post, "Twitter is not a content meritocracy." Though the "Power of Pull" was not about pimping tools, I did say that Google Reader was the ideal tool for those who want to get a leg up by pulling the best content into one location.
Another video highlight from 2009 I am now posting on this blog is my "How (Not) to Behave on Twitter" video. I taped this when I was in a bit of a pissed off mood about some common misbehaviors on Twitter I find particularly annoying. But after the fact, I thought there was some decent stuff on this video on the best ways to use Twitter to your advantage if you’re an SAP professional, and maybe a few laughs besides.
When I posted this on the SAP Community Network, I said, about the video, "In this unforgiving yet low key rant, Jon Reed of JonERP.com presents, for Twitter users, ‘how not to behave’ on Twitter if you want to use it for business - either for your employer or yourself." That’s a pretty good summary of what you’re about to see. Oh, and if you want to track me on Twitter and ask me quesions in real time, find me at @jonerp.
There is something of a quietly simmering debate on whether Twitter is an adequate replacement for RSS or not. I’m not sure the debate can be settled, because so much of it depends on how the individual uses these tools, but I’ll give my take on this and how it impacts those who have a stake in SAP (and ERP) trends - as well as how to monitor my new shared ERP news feed.
Yesterday, someone asked me what we could expect out of Sapphire this year, in terms of SAP’s major announcements. Guessing at these scoops is good fun because SAP makes a point of keeping keynote announcements under wraps, and no, not even SAP Mentors get a look at the envelopes that Leo Apotheker and other keynoters will be opening. But that question got me thinking. I realized that at Sapphire, there are always three lines of questioning: 1. The agenda SAP is trying to set; 2. The agenda customers are truly interested in, and 3. The questions I am most interested in. So let’s take a look at how these might overlap, or not.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about marketing yourself as an SAP consultant lately. That’s not a surprise given that jobs are hard to come by, for reasons I get into in my recent podcast with SAP Mentor Vijay Vijayasankar on the impact of offshoring on SAP consulting. I’m getting enough questions on the topic of self-marketing that I’m actually about to do a webcast that addresses these themes with MBO partners and ERP-Consulting.com. There’s an understandable confusion about which social media web sites can actually help with a SAP job search. Add to that the overhype that has come into play with Facebook and Twitter in particular, and you wind up with too many web sites, too little time.
One good starting point is to separate out active job hunting from the long term pursuit of “building a great consulting network.” For the immediate gratification of finding a position next week, the job boards are still a big factor. When you think about LinkedIn, sending frantic emails to your contacts every week that you’re looking for a new position is going to backfire. So what tactics do work on LinkedIn? And what kind of payoff are we going after?
Twitter has become a real asset to me in my work tracking SAP market and skills trends. More importantly, it has deepened my relationships with many very smart and interesting people in the SAP community. As a result, I decided to do a couple of YouTube videos on my Twitter experiences and make some recommendations on how to go about following SAP folks on Twitter. I did this partially because I think there are misconceptions about how to use Twitter that you need to throw out in order to use Twitter effectively. I’ll share the videos I did in this post, as well as some additional thoughts I didn’t get to share in the videos about making your Twitter experience worthwhile. Editor’s note: the YouTube videos may not display properly in your browser. Until we fix it, you can see the videos referred to here.
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