What did you miss on 9th April?
Two excellent speakers – Lincoln on Linkedin and Graham on “Is the internet killing your business?”
Lincoln Coutts
Started with some interesting facts:
LinkedIn is 15 years old and has 25 million members in the UK, 550 million worldwide.
Most connected countries in order are UAE, Netherlands, Singapore, UK, Denmark
Most connected city is London
Most significant growth in the 40 to 50 age groups
Your profile on LinkedIn is your brand – all the words in your profile are searchable so choose wisely
Your Network is very important – when searching, your 2nd degree connections will come up first not your 1st
If you have 307 connections, 2nd degree 307 connections and 3rd degree have 307 connections, you will have 30 million accessible connections!!
LinkedIn has changed in the last 6 months in anticipation of GDPR
Settings and privacy policy have changed in the last 6 weeks
Make sure your public and private profiles are up to date and that your public profile only has information that you want to be found.
Salutary note – I went into my profile to check it (thinking I’m sure it’s fine) to find that the website on my profile is to a company I haven’t worked for in 7 years!! Rectified – thank you Lincoln.
And simplified my URL.
Make sure your Skills & Endorsements highlight your key skills.
Make sure you have both given and received recommendations.
Let people know what you’re looking for – there are 6,000 jobs under Interim
You can use job title search for NEDs – Lincoln found 25 posts available.
He recommended Nurole for Chairs/ Trustees – membership by invitation only, but you can request an invitation.
Also notactivelylooking.com to register your CV.
Last point – if you post something to share with your contacts and increase your visibility, it has to be good content.
Graham Jones – the Internet Psychologist
As Graham’s talk was all about technology and its effects, he used no technology at all!
The average age of people on Facebook is 28, so they were 2 when the first website was published.
Graham is a great story teller – the image of him getting on a train at Kings Cross before the days of the internet or mobile phone, to go to a meeting in Cambridge was amusingly told. He was in an empty carriage, which he thought a bit odd and when he went to the buffet car, there was a very smart attendant who told him he couldn’t buy a coffee. The reason being that the Queen was in the next carriage! Of course that couldn’t happen today but he had to wait until he got home later that night to tell his wife, rather than now, when he would have sent a tweet or a whats app.
The numbers of bits of information being posted on the internet is mind boggling – in 3 seconds there are 185,000 Google searches, 10 million emails and 120 new smartphones sold. In 1 minute 266,000 hours of Netflix are watched, 4.3 million Youtubes are posted, 1 million swipes on Tinder. If you are working, you receive on average 274 emails a day and the rate of growth is 16% per year. Between 1800 and 1900 the amount of data doubled in the world, now it doubles every 12 days.
So, the internet and smartphones are damaging productivity because they take up so much time and the fact that there is always more information to find, means that decision making is postponed.
Productivity is affected because on average people are distracted every 21 minutes for 4.4 seconds by an email when they are in the middle of a project and more importantly – they are less accurate after the interruption.
We need to establish a new habit – only look at emails once a day. Do it for 30 days and it will be embedded in your routine. And set expectations for your clients and peers that you will reply to any email within 48 hours. It works for Graham!
Coming up on Wednesday 9th May
At the luxurious Fox Williams offices at 5pm, Nick Looby will be telling us how to make the most of internet communications without drowning in the data.
At 6pm we will have time for meeting and chatting and greeting guests.
At 6.30pm our lovely host, Helen Farr will introduce Fox Williams and its ethos.
Pete Walter will then explain social media and give us some practical advice about making the best use of it for us.
After Pete’s talk, there will be wine and nibbles while we meet new people and carry on the conversations started earlier.
The next meeting is at Fox Williams on 9th May with Nick Looby at 5pm and Pete Walter after networking at 6.30pm – both meetings are relevant to all members and guests.
First time guests are free so please invite your contacts. Drinks and nibbles at 7.30.
WHERE: Fox Williams LLP, 10 Finsbury Square, London EC2A 1AF