For those of you who follow sports and even for those of you who don’t, you may have seen the story that Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas has been ” suspended indefinitely” for bringing four handguns to his locker at the Washington, D.C. Verizon Center — as well as allegedly leaving a threatening note for a teammate telling him to “pick one.”

Oh – and to further taint what the NBA would like to be a squeaky-clean image, the dispute with teammate Javaris Crittendon (who allegedly also brandished a LOADED handgun) was over gambling debts.  Nice.  And there’s the oh-too-cute picture of Arenas making a bang-bang gesture is the Wizards team huddle.  Nice.

Until recently, Arenas was literally a poster-boy for the NBA.  He had a blog on NBA.com (gone) as well as his own Twitter account (gonzo as well), which apparently helped him get into hot water.

ABC News, in an article entitled “Did the Twitter ramblings of Washington Wizards’ star point guard Gilbert Arenas cause him to be suspended indefinitely by the NBA?” stated:

It’s certainly starting to look that way and now the hoop star may regret using the social networking tool to speak his mind about the recent off-court incident that has him in hot water.

Clueless

I live and work in Washington, DC, and while quirky and immature, it seems that the NBA and the Washington Wizards have tolerated Arenas’ social media forays — and profited from them as well.  If you tweet and gain hundreds of thousands of followers, you gain more popularity and you — and the NBA — benefit from it. Financially, dude.  More shirts, more hats, more $$$.

Until you say something they don’t like after you do something stupid.  After the story broke, Arenas tweeted:

“i wake up this morning and seen i was the new JOHN WAYNE..lmao media is too funny,”

Peter Vescey of the New York Post broke the gun story.  Arenas then tweeted:

“As for the reporter who broke the story – NY post should eject Peter V FROM WRITNG EVERY AGAIN,”

Hmm.  Seems like Ol’ Gil doesn’t get it.

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project said that Twitter and other Web sites are a blessing and a curse for professional athletes:

“They have a new way to engage the public, their fans, and new ways to show a playful side of themselves…a way for them to bond even more deeply with their fans. But things that might seem private or more intimate, playful or spontaneous, appealing in one context, all of a sudden when they’re tweeted out to a wide audience, could take on a different context.”

You’re off the mark, Lee.  Tweeting something to a wide audience is not “taking on a different context.”  That statement is like saying that you have been misquoted in your own autobiography.  Plus, it’s hard to be taken out of context in 140 characters.

Double Standard

If the NBA wants their marketable athletes to tweet, let them tweet.  But don’t express horror when they say something that you don’t like, or say something that makes them look dumber than a bag of rocks (hello, handlers).  Moreover, you can’t he “half pregnant” – either let the athletes use Twitter when and how they want or not at all.  ABC notes:

Under the new social media policy, athletes cannot tweet during game time, which includes the 45 minutes before a game starts, half-time and the period after a game that is traditionally used for press conferences and media interviews. Violators can be fined by the league and face additional sanctions by their team. The NFL has similar restrictions on the time periods when players may not use social media.

My point is this:  the NBA WANTS their athletes to find ways to market themselves.  It furthers their reach, their audience and their brand.  The NBA WANTS people like Gilbert Arenas to blog on their platform.  And I tweet all the time at work, in restaurants, wherever.  And it rarely distracts me from what I get paid to do.

Here are some screen shots below that show how the NBA is either a little sloppy or a little clueless:

Gilbert is listed under “NBA Player Blogs.”  Ok.  Cool.  Let me click some more:

“Agent Zero Blog File.”  Wow.  You mean the NBA could have suspended him indefinitely and left his blog up?  Wait — it’s moved:

Doh!

I think that Gilbert Arenas is yet another example of a man-child, pampered athlete whose exploits may have never seen the light of day, save for some investigative reporting by the New York Post. I think that the NBA was happy to have a man-child, pampered athlete use social media — as evidence by the fact that they HOSTED A BLOG FOR HIM.  So presumably, they were ok with him tweeting.

But Gilbert did something irrevocably stupid and then made it worse using his Twitter account.  That was shut down.  Gilbert was no longer a squeaky-clean poster boy, so the NBA shut down his blog (note to Webmaster – “page not found” is stupid and sloppy.  Just link to David Stern’s statement, dammit).

Man-child Tweeting?  Good.  Man-child blogging?  It’s all good, baby.

Idiot bringing four handguns to his workplace over gambling debt and then blaming others?  David Stern to Gilbert: you are SO outta here, baby.

My final point is that when Gilbert was finally facing his indefinite suspension and grand jury investigation, if you let him blog while he was the poster boy, why not let him blog when he is apologizing all over the place?  And why not let him do it on NBA.com?  That would demonstrate openness, transparency and prove that social media is not only ok, it can be a pretty good crisis communications tool.

But you can’t have it both ways, Mr. Stern.

Mark

Hey Georgetown (and public relations) peeps.  Thanks to Robert French, I discovered a new tool for Twitter at the best possible time for a lot of folks.

It’s a Twitter search and I am pulling in an .rss feed for the term “public relations.”  It’s on the right-hand column on my blog, so visit early and often.

The jobs are out there!

Mark

The problem of visiting your in-laws (among so many others) is that you miss out on cool stuff when you are away from your computer (along, while anguished sitting on Interstate 95, I did my first mobile post).

Thanks to Neil Corman, I felt a) informed about Peter Shankman (he of the HARO – Help a Reporter Out)’s trivia giveaway on Boxing Day, December 26.  The bottom line, well-described by Neil, was this:

It was an interesting Boxing Day on Twitter, and if you even checked out your timeline at any time during the day you most likely saw ‘@skydiver‘ appearing.  On this day after Christmas Peter Shankman continued something he started on the day before Christmas with the intention of clearing the piles of SWAG from his office by playing “Twitter Trivia”, however this suddenly took off into a huge event with the help of the PR Rep of OGIO who wanted to give away a bag.

Peter asked trivia questions on Twitter, took the answers on the same, and handed out what sounded like a boatload of some cool stuff, including a four days three nights lodging in either Reno, Sparks, North Lake Tahoe or South Lake Tahoe, lift tickets included.  Peter also mentioned that his Twitter following grew by 400 in the first 30 minutes (there is another “I TOLD YOU SO” for all of the people who think that Twitter is useless).

My take away?

First, like the blogosphere, we are starting to see some real leaders emerge in the “Twitterverse.” People who know how to use it — and attract more followers.  I think that folks like Peter and Chris Brogan who are emerging as Twitter “A Listers.”

Second, you don’t have to be super hi-tech to be a thought leader or an “A Lister”  (although apparently Peter and Brian Shaler set up a Web cam so people could watch what was going on);   it still amazes me that Peter’s “Help a Reporter Out” email is plan ol’ text, started that way and remains that way.

And believe me, this is going to the last Boxing Day that a) I sit in the car all day and b) miss out on some cool trivia and subsequent schwag.

Mark

On Sunday, I wrote about establishing a personal reputation/brand using social media tools, including Twitter.  And thanks to Lauren Ban, I found some very good advice from Darren Rowse of TwiTip on how to build a following on Twitter.

Patience.

For those of you who slogged through my 1,200 word piece about finding a job using social media, you have patience, my friends.  For the rest of your (normal?) people, here are Darren’s top tips:

• A strong community is built on a solid foundation. Determine your goals. What do you hope to gain from your Twitter experience? When you are clear on what you want you can then develop a strategy for moving forward.
• Start with people who are already in your community. Follow the folks who you already know and interact with through your blog or web site.
• When you are considering a follow, visit the profile. Are your interests similar? Do they have a web site you can visit? What do their recent tweets look like? You want a community of like minded folks as much as possible. With that said, don’t be afraid to take a chance now and then, especially if their profile speaks to you for some reason.
• Don’t worry so much about the numbers. The idea here is to have meaningful interaction. It’s not a race to see who can have the most followers.
• Your community will grow. Let things move at their natural pace. Forcing the experience will reduce the effectiveness.
• Treat your community well. Pay attention to what folks are doing and saying. When you are able, answer questions that are asked. If you find something helpful, tweet it for your community. It’s not always about business, so try now and again to keep it real with a “how is everything going?” tweet. An engaged community is a healthy community. It’s easier to have an engaged community when the focus is on the people – not the numbers.

Good advice and a good read.  Thanks, Lauren, for tweeting it.

Mark

P.S. – If you liked this, please appeal to my impatient side and follow me on Twitter.

I had an economic wake-up call this week.  Big time.

A friend of mine and one of the smartest social media people out there, someone who has not only succeeded on the biggest stage possible, took a money-hemorrhaging business and turned it into a money maker in four years — was told about six weeks ago that we was “redundant” and given a pink slip.

In addition to making me really mad for my friend, this was a severe wake-up call for me.  If my friend could lose his job, a star in an otherwise sinking ship, someone whom I admire greatly and think he’s a lot smarter than me — then I  gave some serious thought to maintaining or establishing a market for yourself when we are facing severe economic times.

Quick note:  times are horrendous and I am loathe to blog about this because I think that most recessions are 51 percent fiscal and 49 percent psychological — but this one hit home.  So I came up with some suggestions that I think could apply to most people — to establish or protect your “personal brand” (and by writing “personal brand,” I know that I am inviting the wrath of Geoff Livingston).

So below are a few tips and those that I would encourage folks to consider as they would from the perspective of someone who does not know you personally, but can discover a lot of wonderful things about you online.

1. LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn. I have not used this as much as I could or should since Facebook and Twitter are a lot more fun, but read any “How To Find a Job” book or article and it will tell you that the best start is by networking.  It used to be hanging out around “Association of This and That” breakfast meetings, but now you can do it online.  Seek out and  connections that could benefit you.  When I went back and checked my own LinkedIn profile, I had forgotten that I was linked to the DC Recruiters LinkedIn group.  This group has never benefited me, but I have never reached out to them either.
2. Two Faced-Facebook. I have written about this in the past, but consider setting up a second, open-to-the-public Facebook profile.  Not the one with you doing kegstands, but the one with you in a business suit listing all of your accomplishments and muckety-muck friends (whom you will warn under penalty of death not to tag you passed out on the floor clutching a Bud Light).
3. Blog, blog, blog.  You have to be smart or passionate about something. It takes zero time to set up a free Word Press account, and about $100 a year to do a self-hosted Word Press account with your own domain (what I have done).  Then, with a career/personal brand-building focus, start writing about, and connecting with others in your field or desired field.  As an example, when I started this blog (erasing my last one..sniff) if you Googled “Mark Story” I was about #40, making me virtually (pun intended) invisible in search engines.  Plus, there are a urologist, sports writer and photographer all named “Mark Story” (and the photographer grabbed “markstory.com.”).  I checked the other day and was amazed that now, my LinkedIn profile is the #1 result and my blog is #5 and #6.  I did not set out to do this, but it happened literally, organically.
4. Play around with some other resume services out there.  I tend to think that Monster.com is probably getting crowded, and there are a few executive recruitment firms out there that let you build your own online, schnazzy resume.  Or you could just grab a domain that is your name (unless you are late to the game, like me) and build one yourself.  You don’t have to be an HTML guru, just use WordPress as your content management system.  If it’s good enough for Number 10 Downing Street, then WordPress could probably  handle your resume.
5. You might get mixed results now, but still try a recruitment firm.  If you are an executive, there is a list of executive recruitment firms out there (some of which do not accept unsolicited resumes – they want to find you).  Bottom line is that it better to have a bunch of people looking for you and you looking than just you looking for a new or even potential gig.

And for the most controversial statement of all (and this is based upon my early career experience in the recruiting field) remember that the initial, front-line search for candidates in a down economy is based upon a search for the negative. That’s right, I said “negative.”  What I mean by this is the amount of resumes that are being sent and processed is increasing exponentially.  Nine times out of 10, the person who is the gatekeeper and holds your possibility of an interview in his or her hands is a lower to mid-level person who links “God, I have to go through 300 resumes today.”  Never — ever — give him or her a reason to exclude you.  This individual’s job is to get to the “right” resume for the position and it means eliminating all of those that don’t fit. So if you do all of the above, you are in decent shape.  Do be in better shape:

1. Customize your resume to the position opening.  If they use the word “new media,” swap out the words “social media” for “new media” in your resume.  Write carefully (and for God’s sake, error-free) and tell a story using your resume (in the order in which the job description does) of why you are might for the position.
2. List ALL of the above in your resume.  LinkedIn profile, personal Web site, Congresional Medal of Honor, blog, etc.  They are going to look for it anyway, so make it easier for them to find the stuff that you want them to find.

This is all just a top-line approach in what should be a semi-full time job in this economy.  And one more note:  when I was in recruiting in President REAGAN’S second term, the rule of thumb was for every $10,000 you want to make, give it one month.  I think that if you do some or all of the above, you can shorten that time frame.

And I am happy to report that my pal did indeed land a new gig.  I just Googled him, and he had 10,100 results.  That’s some online presence.  Good luck, pal.

Mark