I will pause. And I suggest that you do too. Why? There’s too many things we do in life and too many things we forget about. Pauses help us reflect on where we’ve been and understand where we’re going. Here’s a few examples of mine.

1. I write in my note-book day after day and don’t look at old pages, thoughts, ideas.
2. I record music ideas, musical samples, movements, but I don’t have time to go back and listen to them.
3. I like learning through reading other people’s thoughts on various subjects, but I don’t have time to summarize things.
4. I love bookmarking sites, but I don’t go back to look at what I favoured.
5. I get a kick out of getting new projects, but I rarely pause to look at how my past projects perform.
6. I enjoy meeting people and hearing their stories, but I rarely stay in touch with those that interested me the most.
7. I start new social media accounts to try new tools, but I don’t go back to check on their status.
8. I work, and as many of you, I work a lot. I don’t think of what’s next, I just work.
9. I want to learn how to write, so I blog, but I don’t look back at older posts to see if I improved.
10. I like sharing things with people, friends, followers, but I don’t go back to see what I shared and why.
11. I love my family, but I don’t pause to say what they mean to me and how much I love them.

I will pause. And I suggest you do too. What will YOU pause for?

There’s a weekend ahead, a great time to pause and reflect on things. I recommend you put together a list and use this weekend to pause.

Today will remain on my memory as the day the world lost a great visionary. The reason I don’t talk about Apple products is that I’ve never owned any. However, I’ve admired Steve Jobs as a leader for a long time. Without his visionary leadership companies like Apple and Pixar would not develop into what they are today. I just re-watched one of the videos of Steve Jobs presenting and wanted to share it with you.

Share the video with your friends and colleagues (you don’t have to share this page, just share the Youtube video with your networks) and spread the three stories from the video.

Do you know about people with your name doing similar things?

In 2005 a man by the name of Alexander Zagoumenov wrote a book called “How to promote your website on the Internet?“. And that man was not me. It just happened that we both are into online marketing and our first and last names match :)

I’m not exactly sure about the correct spelling of his name in English, but I suppose it was something along the lines of “zagoumenov” or ” zagumenov”. Over the last couple of years I’ve got a few emails asking for a book. So, I just want to make things straight with this post. I have not written a book. Yet.

BTW, over the past few years the number of people with the same last name has increased significantly. And just when I thought that my last name was unique, it appeared to be common in Russia.

So, do you know about people with your name doing similar things? Feel free to share it here!

Yesterday I shared how Linkedin celebrated April 1st with their audiences. It was quite funny and some of you loved it on Facebook. I was quite surprised why Google didn’t even change their logo, I was really hoping they do something great. And they did. I hate to spoil it for you, so before scrolling down go here to find out all about Gmail Motion. Then continue reading…

I though, holy smokes, Google innovates again and decided to check it out.

Morning everyone and happy April 1st! I just noticed how LinkedIn decided to greet its users with a smile. Here’s a list of people I may know ;)

Clicked to check out Robin Hood’s experience and here’s what I got “Accomplished fundraiser with over 15 years of experience…”:

Here’s what I got on Bing.com:

Here’s what Google says for “fools day”, but I was expecting more from you, guys. Still most of the day is ahead!

Finally, here’s a cool list of The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time

I’m sure there will be much more images of how world’s companies celebrate this day along with their audiences. How do You celebrate April 1st with your audiences?

I’ve been thinking about “connections” more since I read “Never eat alone” by Keith Ferazzi. I’ve been maintaining and gradually building my network profiles on Linkedin and Facebook since 2007. It’s 2011 and I got something to say on the matter.

It’s important to have many connections. Linkedin uses this notion to sell  premium accounts. Business development people buy into it and build 500+ profiles. Then, they send Linkedin messages like:

Hello there ! Since we are working in the same field, I thought we could connect on Linkedin and share some knowledge ! Hope you don’t mind :)

First, I’m wondering if people really respond to these requests. Second, does the number of connections gained this way matter? Here’s a few thoughts to explain my point.

Depth of connections. A tricky thing. Number of connection points between two people. And I’m not talking about how many people these two know in common. It’s rather, a number of interests that connect two people. For example, there are people that I connect with as a marketer, sportsman, musician. These kinds of connections are much deeper than connections based on one interest: musician only OR marketer only.

We don’t know many things about people we work with. Here’s an example. I recently attended a great event. It was a social gathering to celebrate 2010. There were people from many walks of life: politics, business, arts. In 2010 we were all drawn together to support Barb Higgins. During the campaign each of us was focused on his / her own function as a campaign member. Things went by fast. After the end of the campaign we all got back to our regular lives.

Here we were, at the end of 2010 at this event organized by Scout Communications. That night I’ve had a few great conversations with these people I thought I knew. What I realized was that I didn’t know much about them. These people ended up being so interesting, so diverse and clever in so many areas. I learned about their families, hobbies, backgrounds. And it allowed me to connect with them on a number of different levels making our connection stronger.

Side note: Number of friends in common does not mean we’re close or we ever met. A cool example is a person that’s being recommended as a friend on Facebook has 76 friends in common and I don’t even know this person.

Keep in touch with your connections. No matter how many connections you have, if you don’t keep in touch, connections get weak. But not to worry, there’s a number of tools and processes you can use to ensure you’re staying in touch.

• Etacts: This is (was) my favourite (but died on Jan 31, 2011). Etacts integrates with Gmail, scans your history of conversations and shows who you should contact soon. You can customize which people you want to contact and how often.
• Gist: It’s a set of tools that allows you to keep your network connections in one place, manage information, and schedule and track correspondence. If you prefer Gmail as your email communications tool, Gist now has a plugin for it.
• Linkedin connections tagging. You can tag your connections in My Connections manager with appropriate keywords. This will allow you to group your network by interests or ways you’ve met. For example, music, business, conference, skiing, etc.
• Facebook friends lists. In a very similar to Linkedin way you can group people into “lists”. Again, you can create lists by interests, geography, etc. Then, assign your friends to one or more lists.

It’s not as important who you are online as it’s important who you are as a person. I’ve been thinking long about the “online vs. offline” dichotomy. Should you create one persona for online and one for offline? Should there be multiple online personas: “marketer”, “musician”, etc.? Or should there be one? The more I think about it, the more I lean towards one. Here are some great benefits to having one web persona:

• You’re not polluting the web with multiple profiles. One of the main reasons there’s lots of garbage online is exactly this.
• You’re not confusing people with multiple usernames. If people ever want to get in touch with you, they should be able to by conducting a simple Google search.
• You’re staying transparent to the world. People are more likely to develop relationships with people that are transparent.

Develop as a balanced person. Although they say that  it’s better to be a “master of one” than “Jack of all trades”, I think it only applies to the field of business, which is a very narrow thing comparing to “You” as a whole. I think “you” ARE much more diverse and interesting than your business specialization. So, my take at being a balanced individual is that in order to succeed, think unconventionally and be a leader in the field one should be able to draw from various fields of life.

The bottom line is that the number of connections does not matter at all. I have many connections but I feel very unfortunate that I don’t have time to keep up with all the wonderful people I’ve met in my life. Hence I will commit to two things here:

1. I will start integrating all various groups I’m part of: geography, language, business, arts, sports.
2. I will improve communication within my current network of friends and colleagues.

These are the lessons learned so far:

1. Trying to get as many connections as possible is an erroneous goal. Sales people can probably justify that by the rules of statistics.
2. When you meet a person try to connect on more than one level.
3. Keep in touch with your connections. Connections get weak if you don’t develop them. There’s a saying in Russian that translates “an old friend is better that two of the new ones”.
4. Develop as a balanced person in multiple areas. Make your connections more colourful.

I hope to hear some of your experiences with connections and the ways you stay in touch with your network using some of the online communications (read as social media) tools.

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