Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

If your business doesn’t connect with your customers, individually and as a community, demanding customers will not only ignore you, but will actively keep other customers away. For example, while the customer paradigm is shifting rapidly to smartphones, a survey last year indicated that just 12 percent of small businesses had that reach.

A recent book by David L. Rogers, titled The Network is Your Customer, elaborates on this paradigm shift, and outlines the following five key strategies to thrive in this digital age, prioritized from the most basic to the most complex in value to the customer:

1. Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.
2. Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.
3. Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.
4. Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.
5. Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

• Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.
• Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.
• Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

This book outlines a good process for planning and implementing a customer network strategy to match your customers, your business, and your objectives – whether you need to drive sales, reduce costs, gain customer insight, or build breakthrough products and services.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

If your startup can’t be bothered with social media, or has no plan to take advantage of it, then you are definitely at risk these days. But simply jumping in is not enough. Before you start spending money and time being a user, you need to understand how it can help you and your business. Using it randomly or incorrectly is a waste of your precious time.

Sherrie Madia and Paul Borgese have addressed the positives of this challenge in their book, “The Social Media Survival Guide,” on “everything you need to know to grow your business exponentially with social media.” They also identify clearly the five key social media mistakes that I often see, along the following lines:

1. Diving in without a strategic plan. Don’t start podcasting, blogging, tweeting, “friending” on Facebook, and posting YouTube videos until you know what your messages are, who will manage them, who your audience is, and how they and you are going to benefit from the content and relationship.
2. Not having a social media policy. Your social media policy needs to outline how team members behave in the online universe during and outside of work. It should include education on style preferences and confidentiality. All messaging coming from employees should be aligned with your company’s values and brand.
3. Failing to tailor the plan to your target audience. Hone in on sites, tools, and applications your target audience is using. Is your audience out walking in the park without technology or are they technology lovers who never parted with their BlackBerry or iPhone? Research your target market to find out who they are and how to reach them.
4. Producing weak, unfocused, or unhelpful content. The same messaging rules that apply to classic public relations and branding apply to social media. Create strong, smart, well-thought-out content. Don’t waste their time with self-serving promotion. Give them something they can use – tips, incentives, new ideas, fun, and inspiration.
5. Allowing your social media efforts to stagnate. Gone are the days when companies could put up a website that sat on the screen like an electronic business card. Social media is about maintaining a dynamic conversation between you and your customers. Done right, it’s not a one-off campaign by a handful of staff; it’s a long-term commitment.

To avoid these mistakes and create compelling and relevant content, you need to focus your startup on the following initiatives:

• Develop a social media plan that targets audience and your business objectives.
• Combine social media seamlessly within your traditional marketing plan.
• Use social media to engage customers in new ways and sharpen your brand.
• Find the right people to staff your campaign and curate its content and evolution.
• Manage your “e-putation” and avoid the most common mistakes of social media novices.
• Measure the effectiveness of your efforts and expenditures – as well as competitors.
• Turn your social media efforts into profit, rather than just another expense.

According to the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2012” from Ad-ology, Social media for small business marketing has reached its tipping point. Just ten percent say they will not use social media in 2012, down from 24 percent for 2011 and 39 percent for 2010. Lead generation continues to be the biggest benefit of social networking for U.S. small businesses. Other popular benefits were keeping up with the industry, monitoring online conversations, and finding vendors/suppliers.

Many companies believe that getting involved in social media is easy. They mistakenly assume that anyone who uses Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter for personal networking can do it for business. But personal versus business use requires two dramatically different skill sets. I recommend that you “test the waters” before you jump, but setting on the sidelines won’t get you there. Use the many resources available, like the Internet and this book, but now is the time to start.

Many of the businesses and entrepreneurs I know still don’t realize that they need to use and understand the Internet, even if their interest is not e-commerce. Maybe you have also heard a lot of Internet terms, but are not sure you can explain how, when, and why they are relevant to your business success. Here is a quick test of your real Internet savvy.

See how many of the following “new” Internet concepts you recognize, and can explain in terms of value to your business. If you have heard the lingo, but most of these are not in your startup business plan, you are already in jeopardy as an entrepreneur:

1. Blogging. A blog is basically a journal (“web log”) that is published on the web. Business blogs are an extension of your website and can effectively communicate the value of your business. You are now reading one of about 50 million out there already. Blogs composed of video clips are called “vlogs.”
2. Social media marketing. Today there are huge communities online, like Facebook and Twitter, which grew in popularity for socializing with friends. For businesses, these are now prime sources of business networking, customer service, and client leads. Facebook alone has 800 million active members. Do you have a business presence there?
3. Search engine marketing (SEM). This popular form of Internet marketing seeks to increase website ranking in search engine results. Techniques include search engine optimization (SEO) and paid result placement. No SEM plan means you are missing a huge marketing opportunity.
4. Viral marketing. This is a marketing program on the Internet that you make so popular it spreads like a virus, like “word of mouth.” Examples include give-aways, contests, and celebrity stunts that grab attention. Viral marketing costs real money, but is often worth it.
5. Streaming video. Watching video has now surpassed text searching, with popular sites like YouTube, so you see more video ads – in banners, news lead-ins, and site placements. Most videos are now in-stream (no download first), and new ones can be interactive, with clickable hot spots.
6. Internet radio. Sometimes called blogtalk radio, this is essentially the same as regularly broadcast radio, except it is streamed (realtime) on the Internet from websites such as AccuRadio, which alone reaches nearly a million listeners per month. People simply log on and listen. Use them to deliver a business message.
7. Podcasting. This is a variation on Internet radio, named from iPods and broadcasting. A pod-caster creates music and/or business material and makes it available for Internet download to iPods or other devices, where users may then listen at their convenience.
8. Pay per click (PPC). This is how you make money from advertising – someone else runs ads on your site or your blog, and you get paid for everyone who clicks on the ad. Rates per click are very low, so don’t try to live on ad revenues until visit rates are very high.
9. Crowdsourcing. This is a term indicating the use of “crowd wisdom” to get a task done free by interested people on the Internet. Wikipedia started this, but it is also used for technical support, software, and product reviews. You can use it for your business.
10. Wiki. This is an Internet website that allows the easy creation and editing of interlinked web pages via a web browser text editor. Wikis are used to create collaborative websites on a given subject, maintain corporate intranets, and build simple data bases.

Just for fun, I’ve come up with a scoring system based on my own non-scientific survey to help you rate yourself on your level of Internet business acumen. How many of the terms defined above have you personally used or explained in the context of your business?

• 8 to 10 – Excellent business savvy (or a Gen-Y)
• 5 to 7 – Average, keeping up with the crowd
• 2 to 4 – Beginner, struggling to catch up
• 0 or 1 – Wake up, the business world has moved on

The Internet is here – there is no going back. It’s probably the biggest source of change and innovation in business today. As entrepreneurs and business people, it behooves us all find and adopt changes which can improve our startup. These days, a static business is a dying business. How dynamic is yours?

These days, your online Internet reputation is your reputation. Of course, having no reputation is usually better than a bad one, but don’t wait for someone else to establish a good one for you. It’s time for every business and business person to proactively create a positive presence, before someone else puts you in a defensive mode that is hard to win.

The first step in the process is to claim your online identity. This is simple in concept, but requires real effort and can be time consuming, and even expensive, if someone gets there before you and tries to sell you the rights to your preferred business or personal domain name. See my previous article on “When to Pay a Premium for Your Company Domain Name ”

Michael Fertik and David Thompson bring this issue and many others together in their book “Wild West 2.0.” After you claim your identity with placeholder domain names, accounts in social networks, and common blogging platforms, your next challenge is to create enough positive content as a “Google wall” to keep negative info out of the top Google search results.

Positive content, such as information and pictures on your accomplishments, achievements, and friends, paints you in a good light. Neutral content, including your membership in business associations, and company affiliations, can at best balance false negative information, or at least make the negatives harder to find.

Here are some of the easiest methods we both recommend for creating positive and neutral content:

• Blogging. There are several major free blogging platforms you can use to claim your identity, including WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal. If you add new content periodically, it is likely to become a secure and important part of your online resume, and it will come out at the top of any Google searches on your identity.

• Twittering. An even easier way of getting your positive messages to the top of Google rankings is “micro-blogging” through Twitter. This is especially useful in providing links to other positive and neutral content.

• Profile sites. There are several free and paid services, such as LinkedIn and Visible.me, that allow users to create a short personal profile and to link to other relevant sites. Simply engaging in forum discussions and exchanging comments establishes positive content.

• Other user-created content sites. Sites like Flickr, Webshots, and YouTube allow users to create and share photos and videos, and create short profiles. You can use these sites to your advantage by uploading relevant and positive content and prominently including your name in the subject or description.

• Professional directories. Many professions offer free online directories of members or similar sites for professional networking. These sites are often highly ranked in search engine results because they are heavily linked. If there is a directory relevant to your business or profession, use it.

If you have already been a victim of online reputation damage (accidentally or maliciously), proactively reach out to friends and co-workers to explain the problem. They can assist you by linking to positive and neutral content about you, thus displacing or minimizing the negative content.

For your startup, one study found that reputation damage is a bigger risk to most companies than natural disaster or even terrorism. Remember that during the startup phase where your company is not yet a brand, you are the company, so your reputation and that of your company are tightly linked.

The Internet has been a powerful and disruptive technology. The good news is that you can use it to advantage. But you can’t ignore it, and pretend there is no danger. Just like in prior generations with the Wild West, people who put up a good offense to protect themselves were the ones who survived and prospered. Take heed, and take action.

With as many as 100 million active blogs (web logs) in English alone on the Internet, how can you find and read the ones you need to be a leader in your business domain? I’m a speed reader, but that’s a challenge for even the best of us. Yet we know keeping up with the latest trends and techniques can make all the difference in ensuring that your business stands the test of time.

I’ll summarize below some of the strategies and tools I use to tackle this challenge. But I’m sure there are some good ones I’m missing, so I’m soliciting your input as well.

1. Business site expert blogs. Almost every traditional major business news site, like Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, and HBR.org have blogs which are contributed by experts in different business areas. I review these, as well as contribute entries occasionally for entrepreneurs and startups.
2. Blog aggregators. One of my favorites in this category is MyAlltop, run by a well-known name with entrepreneurs, Guy Kawasaki. This site allows you to build your own page of selected blogs and news sites from the Alltop selection of the “best of the best.” Other popular aggregators include TheHuffingtonPost and BusinessInsider.
3. Follow thought leaders on Twitter. Most great bloggers, like Mark Suster and Scott Edward Walker, are also active on Twitter. That means they send tweets to announce their latest entries, and they usually re-tweet others of value to their followers. You might even get personalized answers to business questions (try us on @akira_hirai).
4. LinkedIn groups news links. There are several popular ‘groups’ you can join on LinkedIn that are focused on entrepreneurs and startups, like On Startups, Founders & CEO Club, and Startup Specialists, to name a few. They feature news links daily from popular blogs, and well as relevant discussion topics. I’m there every day.
5. Facebook for Business news links. Similar to LinkedIn, Facebook has a group for business topics, which also includes daily blog news links and discussion topics. I review news there, as well as posting my own link occasionally.
6. User generated news links. Digg, BizSugar and Hacker News sites populated by user contributed links, who want to share their favorite item. These then get voted up or down in popularity by other users, so the hottest ones bubble to the top. I quickly found that ‘most popular’ doesn’t mean most useful, so use with care.
7. Community bloggers platforms. There are now several platforms, like Bloggersbase and Brazen Careerist (for Gen-Y) where bloggers can post or repost articles, categorized by area of interest. If you are a budding blogger, these are a place to start, and even earn ranking points if voted up by other readers.
8. Bookmark favorites. Every browser has a simple way of tagging favorite URLs, so they can be accessed quickly from your own browser. Other sites, like delicious and StumbleUpon, go several steps further by allowing access to the list from any computer, anytime, and anywhere. Also you can tag them into collections, search them, and share with others.
9. Email subscription. If you like the latest blog entry from your favorite sources, like Seth Godin, to be sent to you automatically via email, it’s still available. I recommend you be very selective on this one, as many blogs will clog even the best email system.
10. Blog catalogs. Finally, if you just want to search the universe of blogs to find ones of interest, try sites like BlogCatalog and HubPages. They will help you through the maze, and promote yours at the same time.

We all need information filters these days to find the nuggets of gold in a sea of sand. But I do recommend that you spend some time each day catching up on the real world around you. Otherwise, you are just keeping your head in the sand, and you won’t see the changes you need to survive.

I have a friend who runs a nationwide “traditional” business, and business has been down, like it has been for most people. I suggested that he add some social network marketing initiatives, and his answer was he is “too busy.” He is not alone, according to a recent study, which concludes that only 47% of companies use social media today for marketing, despite the fact that 78% of executives polled feel it’s critical for success.

What’s the problem? It seems to me that there is abundant proof in the marketplace of the financial returns to both large and small businesses, the low cost of entry, and the ubiquity of social networks. Dell announced years ago that it had earned $3 million in revenue from using Twitter, and other businesses report daily on increases in web traffic up to 800%.

I suspect that a good part of the problem is that startup and small business owners still don’t know where or how to start. They don’t know if they should move to social networks for lead generation, branding, customer loyalty, or for direct marketing and e-commerce. My advice is to pick one, start slow, and spread out as you learn. Here are some specifics:

• Create a business profile on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. A business profile starts with a business account using your company logo as your picture (avatar), rather than your photo or a picture of your cat. If you are in consulting, you are the business, so use a professional headshot. Don’t mix your personal and business profiles or messages.

• Develop a marketing strategy specific to this media. Don’t use the same message on Twitter you developed for email blasts and postcard blitzes. Social media demands two-way communication, rather than outbound only. Read everything you can about viral marketing. It’s not free, so budget appropriately, but not excessively.

• Start social networking with peers. Pick a base, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, to be your community, and work the territory, much like you may have learned to work a room of peers at a tradeshow or convention, or local business organization. Find out what other people are doing, and what works for them. People love to share what they know.

• Experiment with social media tools. The basic tools are the platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But don’t stop there. There is TweetDeck to help you use Twitter, and YouTube for video sharing. A most valuable tool is WordPress or TypePad for blogging. You need these to add the human element to your business or service.

• Proactively learn from the experts. Maybe it’s time to sign up for a few free Webinars, or even invest in an expert consultant in this area. Successful people don’t wait for their kids to teach them about new technologies, or wait to be the last one on the block to try new things. It’s all available for “free” on the Internet, but your time is a valuable resource.

• Define relevant metrics and measure. That means first take some baseline measurements of, for example, lead arrival rate today, and costs associated with your current media marketing. If you don’t have this baseline, you will never know if you are making progress. Then continue to measure and learn what works, at what cost.

If used correctly, I guarantee you that social media marketing can improve your business with new leads, by bringing traffic to your website, creating a buzz around your product or brand, creating inbound links to increase your search engine ranking, and improving loyalty and trust with your customers. How could you be too busy to work on these things?

Of course, if you found this blog though your own initiative, I have to give you credit for being ahead of the pack. So print it off and deliver it to a friend who is not so high-tech. My challenge to you, then, is to kick it up a notch! When is the last time you produced a video for your business, or a podcast, or sponsored a contest with free gifts? Or are you too busy?

If you are an entrepreneur today, and not using social media to promote your business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. But, contrary to what most people preach, it isn’t entirely free. Most social media outlets don’t require a subscription charge, but they certainly require an investment – in people, in technology, your reputation, and your time.

There are hundreds of consultants out there who will take your money for guidance in this area, but I recommend that you start with some free resources on the Internet, or one of the many recent books on this topic. One I just read, “How to Make Money with Social Media” by Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah, Ph.D., hits all the right points from my perspective:

• There are risks as well as benefits. As with many startup activities, you only have one chance for a great first impression. You can jump into social media with a poor brand definition, poorly focused content, unrealistic expectations of customer service, or be killed by malware or viruses.

• Assess social media relevance to your product or service. If your business is industrial B2B products, social media should be low on your list. Spend your time and money on other platforms. If you are selling to consumers, especially younger ones, your business won’t survive without an effective social media presence.

• Attracting key stakeholders requires sensitivity. For some customers and many investors, a heavy focus on social networks and viral marketing may be a negative, rather than a positive. A balance of conventional and social communication and marketing is always advised.

• Pick the right platform for your business. Within each of the platform categories defined above, there is a right one and a wrong one for your audience. For example, LinkedIn is attuned to business professionals, Facebook is dominated by the social and upwardly mobile crowd, and MySpace is for tweens and creative types.

• Communication and writing skills are required. Heavy texting experience is not a qualification for communicating via social media. In additional to strong journalistic writing and storytelling, you need business acumen, strategic thinking and planning, and the ability to do the right research. These days, video production is also a useful skill.

• Make social media an integrated part of an overall strategy. An integrated marketing strategy starts with an overall brand management strategy, delivered through online and offline communications, promotions, and customer engagement vehicles. Your Twitter and YouTube messages better match your print advertising message.

• Find the right tools to analyze the ROI. Return-On-Investment metrics are not new, but the tools are different. Get familiar with current social media tools, such as Google Analytics, Omniture, and HootSuite analytics. Over time, put together the data you need to measure your progress on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis.

The key social media platforms today include communications (WordPress blogs, Twitter), collaboration (Wikipedia, StumbleUpon), and multimedia (YouTube, Flickr). In looking ahead, don’t forget the mobile platforms (iPhone, Android), and location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla).

As with any resource or tool, you need to optimize your social media costs against a targeted return. That means first setting a strategy and plan for what you want to achieve, then executing the plan efficiently, and measuring results. It’s not free, but it’s an investment that you can’t afford not to make.

Even though the world is getting smaller, due to easy global connectivity, people still feel alone if not well-connected locally. There is also more going on in every location, so this personal need and super sensitivity to the local community has spawned a new breed of Internet startups, called “hyperlocal.” The term first appeared five years ago, but the model is now very common.

At first this was limited to news sites that concentrated on a segment of a community, like West Seattle, but the concept is now being applied to advertising and promotion sites, blogging sites, and even legal services sites. These hyperlocal sites don’t have to compete with global sites, and always have unique content, community advertising, and local issues.

Foursquare is good example of a modern hyperlocal site, which describes itself as “50% friend-finder, 30% social city guide, 20% nightlife game.” It also shows how such a website can scale by adding new cities. When you enter one of these cities, you simply check-in to tell the service where you are, and you begin to earn points and unlock badges for discovering new things.

Much of this is still evolving, but I think it has great potential. Here are some of the dimensions of hyperlocal, summarized by Alex Gamela in an interview with Adrian Holovaty of EveryBlock:

• Geographic granularity. Give people a way to follow news around a particular block. This is the main focus of EveryBlock, where they give each city block its own Web page, its own RSS feed and its own e-mail alerts.

• Geographic customization. Give people a way to draw custom geographic boundaries to specify their area of interest. Their “custom locations” feature lets you draw an arbitrary area in your neighborhood that selects the streets you’re interested in following.

• Geographic messaging. Give people a way to post news to specific geographic areas. Their “Notify your neighbors” feature lets people post messages (news reports, classifieds, etc.) to their blocks, with a sophisticated level of targeting.

• Subject matter granularity. Give people information that’s “too small” or otherwise not important enough for mainstream news sites, such as restaurant inspections, building permits, and fire department dispatches.

• Topic customization. Give people ways to control which types of information they get and how often they get it. For example, EveryBlock lets you choose which types of information you want to get daily, weekly or “as it happens”.

When you extend this to include social media marketing, you can imagine that startups and small businesses are in fact at an advantage over their less flexible big brothers. They can offer real-time feedback and immediate rewards for hyperlocal activity, by members of that community, for members of the community.

Hyperlocal blogs like My Ballard can find unique content that doesn’t compete with major players and newspapers for attention. They are free to write about neighborhood events, charities, schools, and local causes. The big news outlets don’t have the staff or resources to chase these types of stories.

I predict that hyperlocal services sites will continue to emerge and flourish. Many years ago, a community law firm could have a rewarding law practice, financially and personally fulfilling, by becoming a part of the community. In the new digital age, it’s possible again, even easier and faster.

With the advent of the iPhone and Blackberry, location-based apps are becoming commonplace. Especially in local communities, people want to know where the sales are, and who is hanging out where. This is not just a fad.

Hyperlocal can be the “beginning” for your startup, allowing you to test your business model and your marketing plan before you scale. Or it can be the final destination, if you are looking for a fun family business in the new world. Just like Mister Rogers neighborhood, I recommend it as a familiar place for your startup to “learn the ropes” before you take on the whole world.

The Internet and social media have totally destroyed the meaning of the word “friend” and even changed it from a noun to a verb. On Twitter and MySpace, many young people follow hundreds of friends before age twenty, all without ever having said or heard a word from most of them. Top Facebook users proudly proclaim their “whale” status, with 5,000 friends or more.

On the other hand, we shouldn’t confuse online friends with real friendships. Real friends help each other. In my experience, many of the people who “friend” me online today have only their interests in mind, and they aren’t interested in knowing me or helping me at all.

According to most dictionary definitions, a friend is a person you know well and regard with affection and trust. This definition seems totally lost on many people today. In my opinion, it’s impossible to know, like, and trust someone you have never met. Maybe that’s why so many people are hurt or defrauded every day by someone they assumed was their “friend” on the Internet.

So how many friends are enough for people? I did some scouting through the Internet to find any academic studies on the subject, and here are a few tidbits:

• Everyone needs at least one friend. Most psychologists agree that starting from a very young age, a friend is critical to the building of social skills, and help develop a balanced view of morality, integrity, and right versus wrong. That’s why good parents play an active role in selecting others for their children to interact with as friends.
• Limits of the human brain. Robin Dunbar, Oxford professor and anthropologist has posed a theory that the number of friends is limited by the size of the human brain, specifically the neocortex. “Dunbar’s number,” as this hypothesis has become known, is 150. Facebook cuts you off now if you try to exceed 5,000.
• With age, count becomes less important than quality. By the time we reach 30 years of age, our desire to socialize and maintain friendships already is shrinking, according to a study by psychologists at the Institute for Social Research (ISR). Fewer friends is often viewed as a good thing, and good friends are the real value.
• Trusted friends are on the decline in our society. Between 1985 and 2004, according to a survey by Duke and the University of Arizona, people with no trusted friends doubled, and now totals almost one quarter of the population. My guess is this is more a statement of a decline in overall values, rather than people not needing trusted friends.
• Although total friends are up, the number of confidants is down. Only trusted friends can become confidants. In the same survey above, people also admitted that confidants are down even more than trusted friends, by almost a third. To me, this follows from earlier points – it hard to have confidants when you don’t have friendships.

In these days of social networking and business networking, it seems that all cultural pressures point to more friends as being better. Yet lots of people like me, who are not so gregarious, find that real friendships take lots of energy. One is probably enough, and I can only handle a few comfortably. More leads to stress and drama.

With business clients and even peers that you believe are friends, you also have to remember not to break the first rule of business relationships, which is to quickly spill your troubles. In a business context in the real world, this is usually taken as a sign of weakness. Expose yourself to family and real friends; otherwise keep on your happy face.

So one of these days, when you are texting your “bff” (best friend forever), that you have never met, think about the meaning as well as the words you use. I fear that real friendships may be slipping from our grasp, and that is sad.

Friendship is the glue of meaningful personal relationships, and the lubrication that expedites business transactions. It’s not the number of friends, but the quality of the friendship that makes the difference. If you don’t want to be alone despite many friends, spend more time on quality, and less time counting.

With the advent of LinkedIn, Facebook, and dozens of other websites requiring your profile, the old-fashioned written resume is simply an artifact of a hiring practice that is slow to change, and should be abolished. In fact, if your profile is not already on one of these sites, it probably means that you aren’t in the business market anyway.

Today, most personnel organizations readily admit that they already use the Internet to cross-check what they see in your written resume. You can bet that if the stories don’t match, they will more likely believe the online version. That’s why I emphasized in an earlier article how important it is to keep your online image clean.

In reality, it doesn’t matter whether you are preparing an online profile for your favorite social network, or a written resume (Curriculum Vitae) in the old-fashioned sense, you need to make certain that it helps your case rather than hurts it. Here are some tips on how to make yours stand out above the crowd:

• Focus on results. By focusing on results produced and on the needs of the employer, you’ll stand clearly apart from 90 percent of other applicants. Their profiles say, in effect: “I worked these jobs.” Your profile should say: “Here are results you can expect.” That’s much more refreshing and enticing.

• Make it look professional. You only get one chance for a good first impression. Choose a couple of readable font styles and sizes, and no bright colors or highlighting. Spell check and proofread many times – a single typo or incorrect word can get you rejected.

• Include a current picture. Every professional needs to look professional. You can’t hide, so be proactive and look your best (online or on paper), with a small headshot, rather than force the recruiter to find some not-so-attractive shots on Facebook or Twitter outside your profile. A cartoon picture or picture of your pet won’t impress anyone.

• Don’t leave time gaps. Big time gaps in your professional life are a red flag. Did you skip those years because you were raising a family, unemployed, or in jail? A short entry for the period, stated as positively as possible, will leave a better impression, and avoid embarrassing questions later.

• References on request. Mention that references are available, but including them in the profile can leave the impression that these are very generic. Personal references should be customized to support specific requests from a potential employer, and confirmed by you prior to employer contact.

Executives tell me that they are continually frustrated that most of the resumes they see still sound like “job descriptions?” We need to know what you did, not what you were supposed to do. Words like “assisted” and “supported” are not results. Fuzzy words will hurt you.

Offline, it’s a good strategy to customize your resume to match each opportunity. For example, if you are looking at an entrepreneurial position, show a background in leadership. Mention entrepreneurial groups, and highlight groups you started all the way back to college. If it’s an executive position, highlight your results in that context.

I suspect the day is near when Wikipedia will make even social network profiles obsolete, meaning that every professional will have a public profile entry, maintained by a vast number of “online volunteers” (see Bill Gates, for example). The “open source” cross-check process seems to keep these fairly accurate, and the constraints on who is a “public person” go down every day.

Based on what I see today on Facebook, a lot of people have a long way to go in building that professional resume to show the world. Now is the time to check yours and make sure it highlights your strengths, rather than your shortcomings, before it shows up on Wikipedia and your employer’s desk.