Young Leader: AIESEC alumnus knows the secret of life (and exchange)

AIESEC alumnus knows the secret of life (and exchange)

If you ever been in AIESEC you know there is one phenomenon that is equal everywhere: when current AIESEC members meet the organization’s alumni, the alumnus almost always regard their period in AIESEC the best in the universe possible and giving the impression that the current AIESEC members don’t know what they are doing (and start giving advice – obviously not considering the current situation of the organization). It’s an illusion of the bright past, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that now that I am an alumnus, I can do the same!

So here are my hints for AIESEC, now that I am only an alumnus

Sergio shares his thoughts on how to improve AIESEC, even though I think the organization shouldn’t listen to everything us alumni say (especially recent – we think we know everything), Sergio does have some really valid point.

An area that I find especially interesting is to see how the social media strategy of AIESEC evolves, especially from the perspective that there is such a wealth of stories and conversations happening within the organization – and these are just waiting to be much more open forum. If I’d add my opinion to the mix I’d say the key thing is for AIESEC to let go of the idea that we’re doing social media for promotion or marketing – rather the tools that we provide internally in AIESEC should be ways of telling stories and engaging conversations, of connecting the tribe and allowing more people to connect with and join this tribe – whether they are partner representatives, alumni or university students.

I really hope that information management & online collaboration gets the maturity within the organization that other areas such as finances, planning or internal processes have got! And, with the current leadership I have a good hunch they just might! 🙂

Microviral

Recently I have been spending the few precious moments I have between studying and working by reading up more on microfinance. It’s a field that has got an enormous amounts of interest from the world and yet still seems just to be getting started. In these harsh financial times it is interesting to follow if the financing is still there and how it impacts.

I have also been checking out a lot of the services that have mushroomed for peer-to-peer microlending, that is services that gives you the opportunity to invest some money into a business in say Pakistan through a microloan. I’ve got a future post where I’ll tell you more about that.

For now, I’d just like to share a video that should go viral created to raise awareness of microlending and especially to women (which is the basis for microlending anyway):

3 competencies needed to be successful online…

I have somehow repeatedly over the last few years ended up working with promoting stuff/places/services/peoples online, and it has caused me time and time again realize that there are some competencies that anyone who thinks internet will be a big part of their lives needs to handle:

  • Being offline

    You need to be able to create attention, contacts, networks offline. Some of the most successful people online also possess great respect offline. This encompasses everything from networking, presentations, negotiations etc.

  • Being searchable

    Search engines control the user experience of most regular users of the Internet. Spend some time and money on learning how to position and advertise yourself online. Learn about SEO, SEM, Adwords, Facebook advertising or whatever ticks you. Start a small webpage and promote that.
  • Being social

    Learn how to interact with the Internet, don’t just be a visitor of websites, interact with them. Start a small blog, comment on others, develop a good MSN/Facebook/LinkedIn/whatever account with your contacts. Stay in touch with them, communicate and then allow your network to enable what you do – from gathering input to promoting your product.

Even if you’re not going to work in the search engine marketing industry, or going to blog-for-profit, I find these skills to be useful for any project online – the amateur as well as the professional.

Now I should get back to work honing my own competencies in these areas 🙂

How much information do you share?

I tend to share A LOT of information about myself. I don’t know if it could get me in trouble, but I feel that if I live in a country (Sweden) that would gladly publish a lot of information about me (such as passport photos, addresses, credit ratings, etc.) I shouldn’t be too worried about what I publish on the internet.

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User generated ads – Facebook

So, CNET has now launched a way of advertising products on your facebook (well, gadgets that is). Basically this builds on the idea I’ve been discussing previously – that users are happy to promote products that they like at the same time as they’re basically putting ads for the products on their profiles. So – how will the “user generated ads” move forward next?

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Having something to say

What strikes me when we’ve been online constantly when we’ve been
working here at Rebtel is that you always have to have something to
say. Engaging in maybe 50-100 conversations be it through blogging, on
chat, messaging, etc. you constantly need to keep updating, dialoguing,
posting and so on. Me and Björn discussed the feeling of almost feeling strained in having anything remotely intelligent to say all the time 🙂

I guess this is the challenge in the Age of Conversation. Do check out the book, it’s written by 100 bloggers who have each contributed to it. For sure an interesting read, though I’ve only flipped through the first couple of pages.

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Being (in)visible in the masses

Facebook is a big place. A big, big place. In big places – it’s hard to be a single person and stand-out of the crowd, but this is exactly what me and Björn have been trying to do over the past month. I must tell you, it’s not an easy thing – we’ve been out talking to the people we know, deepening our connections with them, getting to know new people, creating groups, publishing content and so on an so forth.

There are a few other people who’d like to be visislbe on facebook – and they’ve been doing it a bit differently. I’m talking about the major companies putting out ads in facebook – in the feeds, on the sidebar, through flyers and so on. What I’m thinking about is – which approach is the most effective one, the social route taken by me and Björn or the traditional marketing route taken by Verizon, HotChicks.com or other ad posters.

I know which one I think is in the long-run.  Mashable seems to corroborate my opinion.

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Ad-based revenues

So, Facebook is constantly expanding the opportunity to increase the amount of ads we see on their site. First we have the ads inside the feeds and then the flyer feature. I can see the flyers be really useful for say student organisations – but currently I have four flyers out of which three are “Adult Friend Finder” softporn sites. Voi, voi, voi Facebook – where is this heading?

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Social networking in plain english

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Facebook posts ad in feed!

Here’s something new to me that I just came across – an ad posted in the feed of my facebook page. Here it’s Verizon that’s got to push their WiFi add into my feed.

I’m not sure I like this from a user’s point of view (especially if they’re not extremely careful about what they put here and how often), but I can see that it will have a much bigger impact for add traffic – especially when including the Share button, it’s actually possible that if this catches on we might have viral ads on facebook… I thought the “application” invitations were pesky – now I have to stand people sharing ads with me?

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