In one of my previous post I analyzed the membership information of Colorado related groups in LinkedIn. I defined the the total addressable market for Boulder Net group as professionals within LinkedIn who work within 50 mile radius of Boulder. The top ranked group has less than 1% of membership. One way to increase Boulder Net's membership could be to target these members of top ranked groups but the most the Boulder Net group can achieve is to be the same as those. Besides what is the unique value add from this group if the people in this group are already in another Colorado group.
The right approach I believe is to target the rest of the market, those who are not in any of the groups, which is about 94% of the market. That is the target segment. If this is the only group that has members who cannot be found in other groups, then that is an attractive value proposition for other members to join this group. In addition this group has a popular blog and significant web search engine presence. But I am looking for more ideas to improve the value add to the members. Please send your ideas to my email or post as comment.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Targeting the Right Segment for Boulder Net
LinkedIn Recommendations - It is not how many you have that counts
LinkedIn signals us that without recommendations our profiles are incomplete. It tells us to add two more recommendations to make it go from 95% to 100%. There is no obvious math behind this. Why 95%? If having 2 more recommendations will make make us go to 100%, why not keep adding more? Will adding more make our profile more than complete?
Many jobs posted on LinkedIn also state that the poster wants to hear only from applicants who have recommendations. Why would they base their decision to look at applicants based on whether or not they have been recommended? Probably if someone has not convinced anyone to write a glowing recommendation for them the it could be an indication of their influencing skills? Not really.
Do recommendations signal anything at all? Since LinkedIn requires the recommended to approve the recommendation before adding to their profile, any recommendation you see is only going to be positive.
In the movie Wizard of Oz, near the end the wizard would say to Tin Man, "Remember my sentimental friend, your heart is not measured by how much you love but how much you are loved by others".
Flipping that a bit,
" Your professional status and influencing skills are not measured by how many recommendations you have but how many have sought yours"
If you are nobody and your evaluation and opinion of others does not matter and hence no one sought your recommendation, then what does that say about you?
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Boulder Net Growth Chart
Does this growth chart point to the left tail of the growth curve with big jump waiting to happen? The total addressable market is 350,000 LinkedIn members who are stated to be within 50 mile radius of Boulder, CO.
Tom Peters on Is Your Job Safe
Here is an article I found through FT.com blog in Tom Peter's blog. The blog post is by author Raj Shetty. I do not agree with this approach of questioning yourself, more on that later. But now here is the link to the article and some of the questions
- Is your job core to what the company stands for?
- What will the company/department lose by eliminating your job?
- What is the assessment of your "value" in the eyes of the stakeholders?
- Is your job "offshorable?"
- Can you handle office politics well?
Membership Information for Colorado Based Groups In LinkedIn
The total addressable market size if 350,000 people who are within 50 mile radius of Boulder. Here is the information on membership of top 5 groups and of course the Boulder Net group. You can see that this group has just over 1/10 of 1% of addressable market. But compared to other groups it is 12% of top ranked group. That said, the Boulder Net group is not open enrollment and I still take the time to verify that there is some Colorado connection before accepting members.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Networking Before The Hard Times Hit
As the official unemployment rate hitting a sixteen year high of 7.2% there is concern in the minds of everyone, even those who have a relatively secure job. The Government numbers on job less count are an understatement of the real unemployment count which the Barrons editorial this week says is around 750,000 as opposed to 560,000. Many businesses have announced layoffs but have not carried them out yet, as the layoffs roll in, typically the week before or after Super Bowl, the numbers will increase.
Naturally people are joining networking sites and groups at a higher rate. But joining these sites and having 300+ connections is not an assured way to get jobs in a short period. Networking should be more about establishing a genuine conversation with the peers in your professional circle or in your locale. You may have to invest more in your network, tending it, helping others before you can make a withdrawal. That means the time to network is not when the layoff rumors float in your office corridors but long time before that. Building your network cannot be done in an on-demand basis but rather as a continuous process.
The members of Boulder Net LinkedIn group are connected by the locale. The group brings together diverse professionals. If you have not considered connecting with people in Boulder Net group for a professional conversation it is time now.
The Next Milestone 400 Members
The Boulder Net LinkedIn group has now reached 400 members milestone. Join the group to collaborate with professionals who are local to you. If you are thinking of relocating to Boulder, network now with local professionals to ease your move.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Google Trends For Searches on Colorado
If you should do a Google search for either "Boulder Network" or "Boulder Networking", the links related to the Boulder Professionals Network group will show up in the first two pages of the search results. But does that really matter? How often do people search for these terms?
To do a comparitive analysis I used Google Trends to see the relative search volume of "Boulder Network" and compare it to other relevant searches. To get some perspective I use "Denver Broncos" as the reference (as I expect this search to be more prevalent and more popular). Here is the Google trend:
I can safely state that search for Jobs is ranked higher than just "networking" or "social networking" specific to Colorado or Boulder. So coming up first in the Google search results mean very little if the search volume is negligible. If I want to have a bigger impact with the pages, they should come up top for search phrase, "Colorado Jobs".
Interestingly, the search volume for "colorado relocating" is negligible, however, "Colorado Real estate" comes up comparable to "Colorado Jobs" and "Denver Broncos". If I were to use "Paris Hilton" as reference, the previously popular "Denver Broncos" is now just 1/13th of Paris.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Second Best Place to Retire?
U.S. News writers profile 10 healthy retirement spots around the country, and Boulder is ranked number 2.
Retire? Is that going to be good?
The list of top 10 are
Sunday, August 3, 2008
60% growth in the last 1 month
What a difference one month makes!
The Boulder Net Linked In Group took six months to reach a milestone of 100 members.
But in the month of July it grew 60%, adding 60 members in 30 days.
What changed? LinkedIn finally added search functionality to the Groups. So when you search for Boulder, the Boulder Net shows up in the first page.
The other is the viral effect that is proportional to the number of members. As their LinkedIn status updates show that they joined the group, more people in their network see it and click on the group to join.
It will be interesting to see if this growth is just the initial bump or a sustainable one.
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