I have been in love with technology all my life because my dad was a Mechanical Engineer by profession and at home he was Mister “Fix It!” As his only child, he made sure I was part of his everyday routine of fixing things in the house. Came the introduction of computers to me, I was blown away. From DEC PDP-8 teletypes and IBM System 360 to Sharp MZ-80A, Commodore 64 and Apple II+, my world of technology changed. While my career shifted from I.T. to direct sales and media publishing, down to broadband internet, telecommunications and, today, call centers, I will stick to the old adage of habit: once a geek, always a geek!

Fast-forward to 2010. After a challenging 2008 and tumultuous 2009, the end of 2010 became a career-turner, from a semi-entrepreneur type of work style back to the multinational corporate world. The latter is not a downside – it’s in fact a blessing both financially and professionally. And the one thing that helped me get to where I am is using social media as a means to market myself in parallel to marketing the products and services I (used to) represent.

You see, if you market a product or a service using your personal profile in Facebook and LinkedIn, people are also looking at who you are. If you take care of how you strike a conversation in the online social media sphere, you will do well promoting yourself. In the end, when things go haywire with the organization you work for or represent, you can always use “yourself” to find the next big thing. Be it another job, another client or love interest, online social media marketing and networking truly does wonders and behind all the things that people say good and bad about it – it really works!

Since 2009, I started experimenting in online social media, trying to understand how to use the “dang thing” for business, especially the small business. As some of my profiles will read, I am fanatical about small businesses, cloud computing, customer contact solutions, and social media. As a Country Rep in the Philippines of a Canadian hosted call center solution, I understood its market to be small and mid-sized outsourcers who need the cost-effective model of a cloud-based solution and its quick implementation method. I used the major online social media platforms a lot, including blogging, to market the solution and got many responses from it along the way. During these years, I also developed the knack to create and maintain other blogs that focused on my interests while continuing to use the power of online social media networking as a means for face-to-face networking.

Here are some key insights into my experience using social media that worked to my advantage:

Tasting the snowflakes in Salt Lake County, Utah – “They’re not salty at all… LOL!”

BE YOURSELF. Who you are in real life must equal who you are inside the online social media world. The moment you become someone else online, your real life friends and acquaintances will start questioning your sincerity. Remember, the world is getting smaller and you will never know who knows who until you meet them online, especially the friends of your friends. But don’t overdo things, like changing your status every five minutes because you’re moving from one place to another. At the onset, your network may find it entertaining. Before the hour ends, you’re becoming an irritant. Too many YouTube links or Facebook App updates also spoil the real you. Being a funny in real life is posting a joke at most once a day, not every hour.

Once in a while every week, I post a nice, cute, mind-boggling or plain-cheesy quotation, something I can say out loud to my friends and they will not find me queer. Once every two weeks I share a YouTube link – not music videos but something still relevant to me, my work and my interests. Every day I share a website or blog link that’s related to work or something about general business, cloud computing, outsourcing or social media.

BE CONSISTENT. My online network knows me consistently. In my LinkedIn Groups, I’ll never share a funny YouTube video or an obscene Flickr photo; rather, it’s always an article or blog about what I do or related to the Group’s interest or theme. The same goes with my Facebook friends and the Fan Pages I manage. There is never anything that’s off-topic. If it happens that human nature forces me to post something irrelevant, it will occur “once in a blue moon” and never repeatedly; at least, I know my network of friends and acquaintances will forgive me for doing so because it’s just too funny or too important. Behind all these consistent things I do, people who have never met me will find out that their perception about me online is almost the same as when they finally meet me. So, there’s no surprise to new, “real life” acquaintances and they have to adjust to the “real me.”

ALWAYS REPLY AND COMMENT BACK. When people post something on your wall, reply or comment back. It’s just like in real life: if people say hello and you don’t respond back, you’re a snob. There is nothing so different to online social media life and real life. People are human beings and by the natural course of things, they live life pretty much the same online and off. However, be careful not to publicize private matters. For example, if your friend posts, “I’m in love,” you don’t go commenting back “Jack is lucky SnOB!” not until your friend mentions the name. Reading behind and around the words, your friend is only being childlike or comical. If you’re itching to know if that’s really about Jack, send a private message instead. Again, put yourself in real life. Hearing your friend say those words in public doesn’t mean you have to shout your response; whispering your query is the same as a private message.

Commenting, replying and messaging is a perfect way of igniting good conversation with your online network. The rule of thumb is, much like in real life, try to have the last response; but my recommendation is “try,” not force the issue you must have the last say. Going back, I always describe the internet and online social media as all about conversations. Repeatedly having good conversations with new acquaintances is a business or job opportunity lurking in the back you will never know until you actually do something about it.

Seriously at work while in Las Vegas. Seriously?

RESEARCH BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE. There are people who would like to be my friend in Facebook. If I don’t know the name from Adam or Eve, I check the common friends we have. If the list is all over the place, I Google the person. If it still doesn’t ring a bell, I message the person and politely ask where we’ve met. If I don’t hear back after three days, I click “Ignore.” The point is, take care of your online social media profile. It has never been about the amount of people you are friends with online yet never have one single conversation with them.

I know of one person who kept accepting friend requests. Being popular, he used his personal profile as a means to fill up his network. In reality, he wanted followers, not friends. Today, he’s managing two or three personal profiles, with some followers belonging to two of his three profiles. He should have had the insight to create a Fan Page and allow people to follow him there. Only after creating the second personal profile did he think of creating his Fan Page. So now, he has four profiles in Facebook to manage; and all his Facebook profiles are mixed with real friends, family and strangers.

In LinkedIn, I usually always accept requests for networking because I’ve never had any experience to excessive spamming. Most of the people I don’t know who I network with are usually in LinkedIn for the same reasons I am: business opportunities, knowledge-sharing, job hunting or anything that has to do with each other’s profession or industry. The only one irritant I encountered was someone who kept commenting unrelated messages in my posts to the Groups I belong to. Ninety-nine percent of the time he wrote things about himself so (he thought) that people who read it will be enticed to hire him on the spot. In a cordial manner, I warned him to stop and he quietly did.

Remember, you carry your personal profile “for life.” Regardless if you change jobs, careers, companies or even spouses, your online social media identity remains the same until you die. Deleting your profile and starting from scratch is like going back to the day your started your Facebook or LinkedIn profile – a slow climb through the years and something I myself wouldn’t think of doing.

Lastly, I only accept friend or network requests from people with real names, real profile pictures and at least a few dozens of friends already. If they were my real life friends and were just starting out, I’d have no problem accepting them right away. Personal profiles with company names get ignored in Facebook or the Facebook and LinkedIn Groups that I moderate. I have no choice with Fan Pages – they work just like Twitter.

IN SUMMARY: My boss (today) hired me a few months ago because he knew exactly what I was doing. He saw it in Facebook and LinkedIn. Some people in the same industry we belong to already commented (to him) about the brand of product I was carrying, which they saw, read or heard from the hundreds of posts and blogs I’ve shared in the past. He read the successes I made. The job he and his boss offered me was a blessing because it and they came in the right time. “Hope is not a method” is the title of a book I once read yet rings very much true in today’s everyday life. Prayers and your faith in God help but I know and believe God also wants me to do some action, not lay down on the bed the whole day praying.

Everything I did with my online social media profiles made it easier for people to find me and offer me a business opportunity or a job. It also allowed my kids to know what I was up to everyday without talking to them. Case-in-point, my entire high school batch relates my name to the phrase “call center,” with most of my network in Facebook and LinkedIn doing the same. Some friends already started to relate my name to the phrases “social media,” “Facebook,” “LinkedIn,” “cloud computing,” and “small businesses.” If there is an opportunity to meet face-to-face or call, I will attempt to do so only if the background of the person has something to do with what I do. Transforming online to real life is the final step to breaking ground on doing business together.

Bloggers Unite!!! At the inContact head office with Marketing Communications Director, social media guru and blogger, Heather Hurst.

Today, I work for a publicly-listed American company called inContact, Inc. (Nasdaq: SAAS, www.incontact.com). inContact provides a suite of web-based, subscription-based, in-the-cloud contact center solutions for every size and every kind of business, globally. Six weeks after being hired, inContact sent me and my colleagues to Salt Lake City, Utah, for a week of intensive training and meeting everyone at head office. Then, it sent us to Las Vegas, Nevada to attend their annual start-of-the-year sales kick-off conference, done at chic Red Rock resort-hotel, casino and spa. It was easy for me to accept inContact’s offer because it had everything I was looking for from my previous Canadian employer, in terms of the way they want to do business in the region.

The power of online social media marketing and networking isn’t just about companies, brands, products and services. The biggest impact happens to the person doing it. So, if you’re not in it, everyone else doing it is your competitor in life and job opportunities. If you’re in it, do it right. Good things from online social media won’t happen overnight – but, trust me, it will happen!

Online social media marketing and networking – “If you build it (right), they will come (for you)!” – it’s (right) (for you)!

There are, of course, those that think otherwise. For some reason, I may have hurt them or became the reason why they failed a business opportunity or the like. If in my good conscience I know I have done nothing wrong but gave everything my honest and sincere best, then I can sleep soundly and now worry about those who may think “otherwise.” Life is too short to keep hurt feelings or, worse, become vengeful with spite. I grew up with parents who were not perfect but were consistently nice and accommodating to everyone. That character rubbed in on me and made me live life according to those ideals. Despite the ordeals and hurtful encounters, never ever change the goodness in you – ever!

I haven’t written at all only because of the rut I went through. But, like any wounded prey, you lick your wounds, heal yourself, get up and start walking back to the path you came from. That path is still my intention of providing for my wife and children and being able to go back and live with them – near them. A short version of a long story is that I live thousands of miles away from my family but I never relinquished the aspiration to be back with them, forever.

My rut was the result of a few failed projects involving call centers, web development, content development and internet marketing. My realization to all these is that at the end of the day you are still who you want to be, and if those failures make you succumb to brooding and procrastination, you will have failed not only yourself but everyone around you. To be able to get back up on your feet and go back to your chosen path in life is difficult but not impossible. God and faith are very important – don’t be part the 5% population in the world that do not believe in God at all. God moves wonders in you to make a dash back to reality and life, and continue conveying compassion, love and understanding to everyone around.

Notice that many of the world’s richest people are, well, to put in direct perspective, “assholes.” Therefore, nice people don’t necessarily beget wealth – not that much, anyway. I don’t mind that at all. I’ve learned that our aspiration in life must not be about money but peace of mind. Regardless of how people think of you, if you think you have done no one wrong, or if you have sincerely apologized for the wrong that you have done, then there’s nothing from stopping you to live life according to your good principles in life.

Be a good person, no matter what the odds are. Money does grow on trees but it blossoms way above an oak tree – yeah, that tall. You need effort, determination, focus and ambition to have your picking. That’s how wealth is achieved. However, there are other people also trying to do just the same as you are, together in the same tree. If you think kicking them out of the tree to fall and hurt themselves, or trampling on them to speed up your ascent, will make it easier and faster for you to get your wealth, well, think a milion times before doing just that. Because, man, I’ll tell you – it isn’t worth it.

Today, two nice persons by the name of Fred C. and Chris P. have given me renewed life to a new business opportunity that I thought was lost. We recently met, rejuvinated the past intention to market and sell their service in the country, rekindled our professional relationship to a new par, and has now inspired me to rise up from the rut and go back to the path I was once at. Yes, you need people like Fred and Chris who are willing to help you, even if it’s just a nudge. You need people who are willing to support you in what you’re trying to do, people like my newfound friend, Gale P. You need to continue doing the “meet and greet” friendly, unobtrusive networking even if the likelihood of a sale isn’t there – there are always indirect means through your new professional acquaintances that isn’t apparent but will eventually result in closing a sale. Don’t do it out of self-interest because that kind of negative vibe will become obvious later on. Do your networking out of sincere interest to meet, greet and get to know the person well, especially friends and acquaintances you haven’t seen for a long time.

One thing you must always do is “be honest.” Never lie, cheat or steal. You don’t have to be great friends or BFFs but honesty is a quality that draws honest people closer to you than, say, your gift of gab. In the 80-20 rule of life, 20 percent of people may just want to use you. Be careful but be honest. If you can’t help the person who’s asking for money or your valuable time, tell them so. I was once in that situation where I asked people for money (I panicked) and half of them responded back. A big portion of that half said they couldn’t help me because of varied reasons. With sincere gratitude, I admonished appreciation for even just responding back to me. Many of them today are closer to me as friends or business acquaintance than before. The other half stayed silent and I’ll never know why; but that’s okay. They have their own reasons why and I for one cannot even think of judging people. My faith has taught me well that only God can judge us.

I have lived alone since, oh, for almost two years. Prior to that, I lived with my in-laws for about a half a year. I am an only child so maybe that’s the reason why I can survive without have anyone in my humble abode when I come home. After separating from my family, I pursued the course of entrepreneurship and have had my share of successes and failure, more of the latter. Good friends who became my business partners are now gone and, like always, I do not force myself to want someone to like me. Again, they have their reasons. Many other people I know, friends and acquaintances, continue to appreciate me as who I am; and I am thankful for them all the time. If I feel the angst to be around people, I just go to a coffee shop with my notebook computer and get into my creative self of looking for solutions to my issues and my problems. My notebook is my best tool of soltitude, tapping away on the keyboard, verbatim to my thoughts and without the need to edit what I first write. Regardless of my situation, I try to visit my in-laws every weekend and mingle with them on everyday banter of family life or things that have happened.

Recently, my father-in-law got sick and had to go through an Angioplasty surgery. I didn’t have to tell anyone that I felt so much compassion for him and what he was going through. I felt his pain. He is growing old yet continue to work for wealth because, somehow, I understand his need to fulfill many of his childhood aspirations. He is a kind and decent man. Just like me, he is an only child, too. I even asked my Facebook friends for their prayers, and many obliged openly or did it in their own non-public ways. My real father, Antonio Lumanlan Pekson, died 16 years ago and even if my father-in-law isn’t my blood relative, he is the only Dad I have today. (My Mom also lives far away from me.) My Catholic and Filipino traits rub on me to respect my parents and elders, be kind and honest to people, and never cheat, lie or steal – and of course, never kill. With that, I will always love my in-laws in my own humble way.

I’m now trying to get back on the road to recovery. I have been very busy tyring to come up with sales and marketing plans for the service I am trying to sell. KUNNECT is a hosted call center solution that allows any business center or call center, small or large, to perform its customer-centric services without the need for large capital investments, no need for a long set up duration and no expensive upfront fees. I love the product and the service, and I love the people behind it – Fred, Chris and everyone in KUNNECT. It has, as I mentioned, given me a renewed inspiration to fulfill my dreams once again but with the honest feeling that I’m doing the business market some good, too, in providing a cheaper but productive way to do business. And I’m doing it “on my own.” No more business partners. No more suckering myself into believing that good friends are the best kinds of business partners. They will always be my friends but I’ve learned late in life that it’s not always the best combination. Give them something to do on their own is better than working together but feeling you can’t argue about his personal self in the workplace. That’s a fine tightrope to walk.

Love God. Love your family. Love everyone around you even if they do the wrong things. Love your work, something which you spend a third of your life doing – sometimes even more. But most importantly, love yourself, too. To love yourself means you profess a positive aura that becomes very transparent to the people around you – and, like a virus, they get hooked on your positiveness and optimism, and project the same sentiments to others. All told, life is short but life is good, no matter what the odds are. Life is God’s gift to you – so, treasure it to its fullest potential.

Happy halloween!