Do you have a Google Alert set up for your content?
Every Monday I get two Google alerts sent to me to monitor certain content. One of the reasons I started doing this was because of my regular contact with the Library of Congress as the Assistant Copyeditor of Kaplan Financial (before it moved to Wisconsin). I would regularly register books and content to prevent plagiarism, and reading through those contracts taught me quite a bit about fair use versus publishing violations.
There was also the matter of being employed with two other companies as the Web Editor, where I regularly went to other Web sites to notify them when they were taking content from my employers' Web sites. These other sites would put my employers' articles on their sites without contacting me or the reporters and finance managers. What bothered me was not that I had to constantly look for these legal issues but how often it would happen. Even worse was when it was constantly happening to me.
I'm starting to see the differences in the way Chicago Public Libraries are going to operate in 2010. By now you probably know the library hours will be cut short in January 2010. Within the past couple months, Rogers Park library now puts books on shelves that are being held for library patrons instead of waiting in lines to decrease checkout times.
We already have the perks of reserving our own library books online instead of being on hold for a ridiculously long time. For those who want to reserve Internet computers, you can put in your own library card, check for availability and disappear until your reservation time. But oftentimes, while picking up books, I see those who are not computer savvy struggling to use computers and overworked librarians who don't have time to walk each person through the steps of reserving books and Internet time.
This is yet another advantage of the library--computer courses. The unemployment rate in November 2009 was down 10 percent with 15.4 million unemployed people in the U.S. And while manufacturing employment is down by 41,000 and construction by 27,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in professional and business services through temporary help agencies has increased by 86,000.
With the job market being as difficult as it is, some people are going above and beyond the typical cover letter, resume and samples. I've already talked about the guy who wore a suit coat, boxers and no pants in downtown Chicago in the blog "Man with no pants looks for job in downtown Chicago."
But this next guy, Eric Romer, went above and beyond for a job in Los Angeles. He created a Web site asking the company to hire him, created a video using the product, a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account about the company. Before today, I'd never even heard of Headblade, but thanks to his marketing in this video below, I know what this company is for now.
Call me a snob. I'm woman enough to take it. But I can't for the life of me figure out why do people send Facebook requests with no personal message to someone they don't know. I guess those who hunger for friends will accept it and just won't care, but I actually want to know who's on my Facebook page, looking at my pics, reading my information and being able to be kept abreast of my activities.
Think about it. If the person sending you a Facebook request doesn't even have anything to say when they first send you an add, what in the world are you two going to talk about when they're on your Facebook friends list? I ignored many MySpace and LinkedIn requests for the same reason. When someone is just on your page and never talks to you, that's basically just a spy. Or worse, a MySpace stalker. Then there are the ones I really don't understand--the ones who have social media networking accounts and only log in long enough to sign up and disappear for months at a time. Close the account, dear, please.
I also don't understand the folks who join Facebook groups and don't interact with the members or read the posts or even comment on why they came. Maybe I'm taking this Facebook or social media networking thing too seriously, but I've learned time and time again that when you want to network with someone, you must be active.
If you go to someone's Web site and read a blog or entry, leave a comment. In the signature line, leave your name or your own Web site. It's a way to promote yourself and support his or her page too. Respond to links and entries from your readers or Facebook friends who comment on your links. You don't have to respond to everything, but if you're clicking on the doggone thing you may as well say what you thought about it.
