Scott Social Media Allen

Current

Director of Online Marketing at American Guitar Academy
Advisory Board Member at NutshellMail
Advisory Board Member at StandardAnswer.com, Inc.

Advisory Board Member at The Medici Summit
Community Leader, Sales & Marketing Channel at Work.com
Blogger at Linked Intelligence
Executive Editor, LinkedIn Series at Happy About
Coauthor, "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online" at TheVirtualHandshake.com (Self-employed)

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5 more...

Past

About.com Entrepreneurs Guide at About.com
Managing Partner at Link to Your World
VP of Product Management, VP of Professional Services at Mongoose Technology

Professional Services Practice Manager at Viador
Solution Specialist at Platinum Technology
Senior Data Architect & Database Administrator at Harte-Hanks Response Management
Senior Programmer at Harte-Hanks Response Management

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4 more...

Education

University of Texas
Rice University
SJS

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Recommended

63 people have recommended Scott Social Media

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

Scott Social Media Allen’s Summary

Five quick facts about Scott Allen:
- Scott Allen is a social media and social networking consultant, author and speaker.
- Scott Allen is uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person,
- But Scott Allen likes coming up at the top of search results for his name,
- And Scott Allen also likes experimenting with LinkedIn and other social networking sites,
- So Scott Allen sometimes does peculiar things with his profile. :-)

Now that I've appeased the search engine...

In a nutshell, I was a social media and social networking guy before they were called that. I taught my first online networking workshop in December 2002!

My great passion is helping people build business relationships online. In that regard, I am:
- Coauthor, "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online"
- Coauthor, "The Emergence of The Relationship Economy"
- Executive Editor, Happy About LinkedIn Series, including Jason Alba's "I'm on LinkedIn -- Now What??"
- Contributing author, "Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business and Culture"
- Monthly columnist for FastCompany.com.

I also:
- Consult with companies on how to leverage social networking for sales, marketing, and business development
- Teach workshops and teleclasses on the topic
- Deliver keynote addresses or program sessions on the topic

My co-authors and I also provide a wealth of free resources through The Virtual Handshake Blog and our e-newsletter. See TheVirtualHandshake.com for more info.

I also have twenty years of experience as a technology executive, entrepreneur, and consultant and am currently the Entrepreneurs Guide at About.com, a subsidiary of The New York Times Company.

Scott Social Media Allen’s Specialties:

Online business networking, entrepreneurship, web publicity, online social networking, social software

Scott Social Media Allen’s Experience

Director of Online Marketing

American Guitar Academy

(Music industry)

February 2009 — Present (6 months)

American Guitar Academy's patent-pending learning process has helped thousands of musicians in the Portland area master guitar and bass faster than they ever thought possible.

AGA is now expanding worldwide via the web, offering live video guitar lessons via Skype. I'm working with AGA to launch the service and spread the word.

Want to learn guitar or take your playing to the next level? Contact me about a free lesson.
Advisory Board Member

NutshellMail

(Internet industry)

August 2008 — Present (1 year)

Email is still the killer app of the internet. NutshellMail allows users to monitor their personal email accounts and social networking sites all in a central digest, even through corporate firewalls and email systems. I think this is one of the key components of social web aggregation and think the company has a bright future, so I'm trying to help them get there.
Advisory Board Member

StandardAnswer.com, Inc.

(Internet industry)

May 2008 — Present (1 year 3 months)

Social networking application launching early 2009. Yes, this really is something different and exciting, and I don't say that lightly. Contact me for more information.
Advisory Board Member

The Medici Summit

(Internet industry)

2008 — Present (1 year)

The Medici Summit is an annual executive conference designed to educate, illuminate, and inspire. Attendees hear from successful innovators and thought leaders, but more importantly they spent two days elbow-to-elbow interacting with our experts and practicing simple, but challenging exercises designed to generate new ideas and apply the lessons they learned.

The conference is based on Frans Johansson's "The Medici Effect", which looks at how individuals, teams and organizations can foster innovation at the intersection of different fields, cultures and industries.
Community Leader, Sales & Marketing Channel

Work.com

(Privately Held; Online Media industry)

August 2006 — Present (3 years)

Work.com is a community-based site for over 1,800 business how-to articles. A content rating system gives the best content the highest visibility. As a community leader, I help encourage participation in the Sales & Marketing Channel at Work.com, leave comments and ratings on articles in the channel and throughout the network, recruit contributing experts to author how-to guides, and contribute ideas for improving the channel and the site to Work.com editorial staff.
Blogger

Linked Intelligence

(Online Media industry)

August 2006 — Present (3 years)

I write the Linked Intelligence blog, "The smart source for all things LinkedIn™", offering tips on using LinkedIn, announcements and analysis of new LinkedIn features, member success stories, links and commentary to news stories about LinkedIn, and LinkedIn educational events.
Executive Editor, LinkedIn Series

Happy About

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Publishing industry)

February 2006 — Present (3 years 6 months)

As Executive Editor at Happy About, I am creating a series of specialty books on the application of LinkedIn to specific business needs. The first book, "LinkedIn for Recruiting", is already in publication and has received rave reviews. Watch soon for Jason Alba's book, "I'm on LinkedIn...Now What???" I am currently seeking authors and interview subjects for the upcoming projects, "LinkedIn for Professional Services Marketing", "LinkedIn for Enterprise Sales" and "LinkedIn for Entrepreneurs".
Coauthor, "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online"
TheVirtualHandshake.com (Self-employed)

(Self-Employed; Myself Only; Writing and Editing industry)

December 2002 — Present (6 years 8 months)

Since 2002, I have been researching, practicing, and writing extensively about online business networking. I have numerous success stories of my own, plus dozens I have collected from others.

I am co-author of "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online", the first mass-market book that shows business professionals how to leverage social software and online communities to grow their business and advance their career.

Our weblog, TheVirtualHandshake.com/blog, provides news, tips, and reviews about blogging, social networking sites, and business-oriented online communities.
I teach teleclasses and web seminars, and coach individuals on using sites like LinkedIn, Ryze, and Ecademy most effectively.
About.com Entrepreneurs Guide

About.com

(Public Company; NYT; Internet industry)

November 2002 — May 2009 (6 years 7 months)

I provided original & guest articles, how-to guides, book reviews, news commentary, and annotated links to the very best information on the web to help tens of thousands current and future entrepreneurs find, follow, and fulfill their vision of business ownership. During my tenure I wrote some of the web's most popular articles on business topics including passive income, naming your business, pricing strategies, choosing a business to start, making money online and more.
Managing Partner

Link to Your World

(Management Consulting industry)

August 2007 — January 2009 (1 year 6 months)

Link to Your World is the foremost collaborative association of professionals specializing in the systemic shifts of the emerging social networking space. Link to Your World Managing Partners are some of the top thinkers in the social media and social networking space. Together we are shaping the future of social media and the medium of social networking.
VP of Product Management, VP of Professional Services

Mongoose Technology

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

November 2000 — August 2002 (1 year 10 months)

I started at Mongoose in charge of a growing professional services group, which covered sales engineers and training, as well. In my last few months, to get our 3.0 product on track and out the door, I shifted into product management/marketing, including the product release plan, development of demos, QA, etc.
Professional Services Practice Manager

Viador

(Public Company; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)

April 1999 — November 2000 (1 year 8 months)

I started at Viador, an enterprise portal software company, as a Senior Sales Engineer. Because of my contributions in training and a couple of very successful consulting engagements, I was promoted to Western U.S. Regional Manager for Professional Services, where I managed a highly distributed team of nearly 20 field consultants. Following some reorganization, I shifted to the position of Knowledge Management Practice Manager, focusing on clients for whom knowledge management was their primary purpose for implementing a portal. My group was also responsible for developing internal KM practices in the company.
Solution Specialist

Platinum Technology

(Public Company; Computer Software industry)

October 1998 — April 1999 (7 months)

I started as a pre-sales Solution Specialist in the application lifecycle product group, focusing on ADvantage and the Process Continuum suite of enterprise project management and process design tools. I ended up working on several post-sales consulting engagements, as well.
Senior Data Architect & Database Administrator

Harte-Hanks Response Management

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; HHS; Marketing and Advertising industry)

March 1998 — November 1998 (9 months)

In this role, I worked with the lead developers to design and implement the client-server database architecture and managed the migration of data from our Foxpro 2.0 system to a client-server system using Visual Foxpro as the front end and a variety of databases as back-end -- customers could choose between DB2, Sybase, Oracle and SQL Server. I wrote and implemented data architecture standards, naming conventions and backup and disaster recovery plans. I managed a team of three other DBA/data architects.
Senior Programmer

Harte-Hanks Response Management

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; HHS; Marketing and Advertising industry)

March 1997 — March 1998 (1 year 1 month)

As senior developer, I led the team of programmers working on the inbound telemarketing system and lead referral and tracking system for Harte-Hanks' client, IBM. Harte-Hanks developed BPOPS, a web-based application for business partner referrals used by both Harte-Hanks and IBM employees and partners. By improving the existing code architecture and training my team, I was able to reduce the team size from a peak of 10 down to 4 when I changed roles (don't worry -- they all went to work on something else within the company!).

Scott Social Media Allen’s Education

University of Texas

B.S. , Communications , September 1985 — December 1986
Rice University

Electrical Engineering / Computer Science September 1983 — May 1985

Jones College

Activities and Societies:

Jazz band
SJS

High school , 1977 — 1983