I believe we should all seek to do something meaningful with our lives. While paying the bills is essential, we should try to pursue something that we truly get excited about and enjoy doing on a daily basis. We should try to impact the world in a positive way, even if in a small way.

I’m personally passionate about the convergence of technology, marketing, and the social web. I feel like a huge nerd reading the sentence I just wrote, but it’s true. I like to think, learn, and talk about those three things as much as I enjoy playing sports and listening to music. It’s how I’m wired. If you’re reading this, you might be wired like that too.

So this is a short version of the story of how I went from being a social media participant to a social media content producer to a social media manager, in less than one year…

Up until two and a half weeks ago, I was a tech and business consultant. For the three years prior to that, I had been a consultant with a promising career. I had worked on challenging and interesting projects concerning innovative mobile web sites, IT cost-reductions and, my favorite, identifying social media opportunities for communications service providers.

It was going pretty good. However, my interest in social media was growing. I found myself thinking about the rapidly changing social web on a daily basis. I read blogs like TechCrunch and magazines like AdAge. I listened to podcasts like Buzz Out Loud and kept up with the latest in social media thanks to people I had started to get to know as friends (instead of followers) on Twitter.

I was fascinated by all things social on the Internet and I wanted to further explore the future of the web. I needed a creative outlet. I needed a new “home base.” (more…)

Ryan Paugh is the co-founder and community manager of Brazen Careerist, a career management tool for next-generation professionals. Ryan and I had a great conversation on the 26th episode of The Social Nerdia Show! live podcast.

We talked about his transition from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, Generation Y, the job market, and the social way to manage your career. Ryan also gave some great tips for those interested in becoming online community managers.

You can listen to the interview in its entirety on the Flash player below, by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes, and by streaming it live every Thursday night on blogtalkradio.

The current state of the job market is not exactly exciting. With the stock market slowly recovering to 1999 levels and a high unemployment that is truly worthy of a ‘Great Recession,’ there are still some good news. I’m serious. First of all, companies are starting to hire again and everyone is a bit more optimistic about the future. Second,  people are becoming much more willing to connect online and recommend others for positions.

And that’s why Brazen Careerist is a site you need to check out, especially if you’re young. While Monster and CareerBuilder are good to browse for countless of too-good-to-be-true and questionable positions, and LinkedIn is the place to share your resume with an established network, Brazen Careerist “helps you build your network,” as Ryan told me. He also pointed out that “young professionals don’t have a lot of experience and connections, and they need a place to build those connections online.”

Getting a job has a lot to do with who you know. Social networks can definitely help. From connecting with old high school friends to getting to know your current friends even better, social networks are becoming an extension of who we are and a map of who we know. As we learn to collaborate better with others online, a collaborative approach to career management makes sense. Ryan said it quite well: ”Collaboration for your career management is something new. Traditionally, it was something very competitive, but it’s not the best way to do it. At Brazen Careerist we encourage people to have that idea sharing mentality, it’s a Web 2.0 mentality. We’re sharing instead of hoarding information for ourselves.” (more…)

Bob Knorpp is the host of The BeanCast, a weekly round table podcast that gathers advertising and marketing thought leaders (aka actual ad experts) to discuss industry issues and current events. After many years in the ad industry, he started The Cool Beans Group, a marketing consultancy that provides B2B and B2C expertise in branding, strategic thinking, social media, and more. I had a great time talking to Bob on The Social Nerdia Show! and you can about our conversation, including 7 social media insights, below.

You can listen to the show in its unedited greatness using the BlogTalkRadio player, subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and/or streaming it on your mobile phone using Stitcher.

Podcasts are now everywhere and there is one for everything. Bob explained that “the competition (in podcasting) is really steep and there are so many choices… the chances of getting noticed are minuscule.” And yet, The BeanCast has made quite an impression on a lot of people in the ad industry. The show’s forward-looking slogan “The Best Marketing Podcast Anywhere,” is becoming a reality with every weekly show. With only a year and a half of being on the online airwaves, the show has gone from a water cooler experiment to an influential conversation that is a must-listen for anyone even remotely interested in marketing. As Bob told me, “you don’t need to build a huge audience to have impact, you just need to reach the right people.”

Reaching the right people is not enough though. To truly create an impact on a growing audience, Bob makes sure that The BeanCast is entertaining. “As much as I try to present a forum for smart people to present their ideas, my primary objective is to have an entertaining program.. that stimulates conversations.” The payoff of the show is a combination of information, entertainment and relevancy. And that’s probably why The BeanCast is one of my favorite podcasts: it showcases the thought-provoking views of experienced people in the ad industry, without being boring. (more…)

Doug Aamoth is the Reviews Editor for CrunchGear.com, a TechCrunch blog that covers gadgets, gear, and computer hardware. TechCrunch started in 2005 and CrunchGear was added to the network in 2006 when Michael Arrington expanded the site to include a blog that focused on gadgets. Doug has been with the CrunchGear team since 2007 and he now also hosts the CrunchGear live podcast on Wednesdays at 3pm Eastern.

Doug spends a lot of his time reviewing products so I asked him about some of his favorites. He mentioned the Acer netbook 751h and he also told me that he just got iPhones on a family plan with his wife. “It’s hard not to talk about the iPhone. It’s still so far ahead of other phones.” But not all of his reviews are about phones and computers. I’ve noticed that he often writes about random things and deals, from sandals with metal detectors to left-handed underpants. “We try to have something up at the very least every half other so it’s hard to fill a day some times.” CrunchGear as a site does about 50 posts and Doug writes about 5-10 per day.

A lot of Doug’s work is reactive. 10% of the time Doug contacts a company, while they will contact him the other 90% of the time. Doug wakes up every day without really knowing what he’s going to write about because about 90% of what goes up on CrunchGear is reactive. And reactive can mean hard work. “It’s not the picture that most people get of bloggers waking up at noon. I wake up at 7am and work full steam.. until about 9 at night.” (more…)

The Social Nerdia Show! Episode #20 is now available for streaming below, on blogtalkradio, or as a podcast on iTunes.

In this episode, @socialnerdia and first-time co-host @domineconcept talk about the latest..

Tech News: eBay finally sells a large portion of Skype, personalized in-videogame ads, Augemented Reality in your eyes with Wi-Fi in your brain, Wikipedia color schemes

Not-So Tech News: Disney acquires Marvel, Fox’s Twitter commentaries on re-runs, and Macaulay Culkin rumored to be real father to MJ’s “Blanket”

Upcoming Movie Releases: Gamer, Extract, Amreeka

Upcoming Music Releases: They Might Be Giants – Here Comes Science, Derek Webb – Stockholm Syndrome, David Bazan – Curse Your Branches, Andrew WK – 55 Cadillac, The Used – Artwork

Randomized Topic of the Day: Crowdsourcing (CP+B / Brammo, Fiat)

Announcement: Don’t forget!!! Today’s the last day to vote for SXSW panels… Please vote for “Here Come All the Latino Bloggers“ http://bit.ly/votesxsw

Brett Erlich is the co-host of The Rotten Tomatoes Show, as well as a writer, co-host and associate producer for InfoMania. Both shows are on Current TV and you need to watch them if you haven’t already. Take a second, stop watching CNN or MTV and go watch some Current.

I had an awesome time talking to Brett on The Social Nerdia Show! and you can listen to it below, on blogtalkradio, or as a downloadable/five-star-reviewable/subscribable podcast on iTunes).

I’ve been a fan of Current for a while now. With shows like Vanguard and Super News!, it’s as if Current knows what I want to watch. So when I heard that The Rotten Tomatoes Show (based on rottentomatoes.com) was coming to my television via Current, I got very excited. With hosts like Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox, as well as a ton of clever viewer-created movie reviews, the show has become a part of Thursday nights for me.

Brett told me about how the show got started, how they select the user-generated reviews, and how much he enjoys working at Current. The show is a great example of what you can do by combining television and the web. Part of its success is that they are crowdsourcing some of the best material to movie fans and critics sitting in their living rooms.  Brett explained that it’s good that the show is more than just the opinion of the hosts and that “the more people we have contributing opinons, the better the show gets.”

So many people becoming film critics and spreading the word like a virus has definitely made it a bit challenging for movie studios. They can no longer simply depend on great marketing and polished trailers. For a movie to succeed, it might actually have to be good these days. Word of mouth has gone from casual conversation at a dinner party to millions of random people sharing thoughts in the internets. Sure, some movies like Snakes on a Plane bomb even with great online buzz, but I doubt District 9 would be the movie it is if it had come out 10 years ago.  (more…)