You’ve heard of the 6 degrees of separation I’m sure. It relates to an experiment during the 60s and 70s in the US where Stanley Milgram set about to prove that anyone was literally only 6 people away from contact.  The experiment had some success but only mildly. But let’s not let the facts get in the way of my story.  After all, the web and LinkedIn didn’t exist then.

Two weeks ago my husband and I were watching a movie on TV and the lead guy reminded me of Clint Eastwood. I wondered if it might be his son.  I googled the guy to find out information about him and wasn’t able to ascertain if he is related or not (different name and no mention of his parentage) however one of the google links led to a LinkedIn profile of the guy. And would you believe he was connected to me – 3 levels down!  I immediately sent a request to connect to him direct and introduced myself to him and why I was writing. He accepted 2 days later!  Amazing.  Who knows if it will lead to anywhere but now I’m connected to a Hollywood movie star.  woo hoo!

Yeah, me too. And what about thanking a client for something special? You meant to but it slipped your mind and now some time has passed, it seems almost irrelevant or an after thought.

How would you like to fix that problem? You don’t even have to go to the shops to buy a card or a postage stamp or anything, you can do it completely online. You would? Hoping you would say that.

Introducing my newest service…

As a distributor for Send Out Cards and also as a Virtual Assistant, I’m in the unique position of being able to set you up with an account and then help you create your lists and set up the sending process on your behalf.

What can I do for you?

• Create your account (there are three types available – Retail, Wholesale and Entrepreneur packages)
• Sort and import your Contact list or database
• Set up reminder services for birthdays, anniversaries or anything else you may have in your calendar
• Create and send personalised cards using your own images or the many thousand already available with Send Out Cards
• Create and maintain Campaigns for you.

You know personally what it means to you when someone takes the time to send a card to you expressing their thoughts and feelings. Now you can do the same without having to go to the shops to find the right card, write in it and then take it to the post box. It can be done completely from your computer – or mine if you want me to handle it on your behalf. Imagine… you never will forget a birthday again!

Why not try out a gift account on me and see how it works or give me a call and I’ll walk you through the process. +613 9754 8310 or email me.

All this social media stuff can certainly get you tied in a knot or going round and round in circles. Especially once you start adopting other methods for posting or linking various tools.

I had my blogfeeds set up to update at my Facebook profile regularly.

Then I joined Twitter and found I could use Twitterfeed to feed my Twitter account from my blogs.  So I linked those and then discovered Facebook had a Twitter application which I added.  Which is both good and bad.  My Facebook profile was now getting duplicates of my blog feeds – direct from the blogs and direct from Twitter.  So I disabled the blog feeds at Facebook as it only needs the information once.  But Twitter wasn’t updating my LinkedIn account so I needed to look at that.

Enter ping.fm – easy enough to set up but wouldn’t allow multiple custom URLs (my blogs) but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  Ping.fm will feed all these places but doesn’t pick up the feeds.  Which meant I had to physically enter posts at ping.fm and I didn’t want to have to log into yet another place – defeats the purpose if you’re spending all day just posting and nothing else.

So, what did I do to untangle this mess I’d gotten myself back into?

I revisited Twitterfeed and discovered it would feed ping.fm. I’d not noticed that before but perhaps that was because I wasn’t looking at the time – or perhaps it wasn’t available.  Whatever, it is now and I have noticed it. So, to me it made sense to set things up like this:

All blogfeeds > Twitterfeed which in turn fed Ping.fm.  That then fed Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin which kept my status updated at each place without duplicating information.  Mind you, I will keep revisiting and updating as there is always new tools being developed!

A recent conversation with a client set me thinking.  They wanted accounts set up at various social networking tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc and have everything automated (rss feed from blogs, automatic responses, etc) so that they could literally ‘set and forget’ the tools. This isn’t the first client who has requested this – I’ve had others ask for it too, thinking that engaging a Virtual Assistant to set things up for them and do occasional maintenance was all that is needed.  I don’t agree.

It made me realise that they didn’t understand the reason why these tools exist.  They’re not for automatic promotion of business services and products to generate quick sales, but rather to facilitate networking, relationship building and over time, may generate business. In fact I know they do because I’ve seen it happen for me and know others personally who have had that experience too.

In this day and age of instant gratification and quick responses, people tend to forget that some things need to have a seed planted, nurtured, watered and carefully grown over time.  And networking is one of those things, irrespective of what vehicle or tool is used. What do you think?

Regular readers will know I’ve been doing posts about various social networks. There’s a lot of good things about them but there are some things you need to be careful about too.

I was reading SpeakerNet News recently and saw a quote about the use of Facebook and Twitter and how you conduct yourself there. Now, may I say, that I think it is always important to conduct yourself professionally, or in the manner you would always want to be perceived.  No use in behaving one way in one place and different in another and not think anyone will notice.  They will.

Anyway, let me share with you what Rita Makana Risser has to say:

Peter Shankman reports on a speaker who twittered on his way to speak to FedEx in Memphis about how he would die if he had to live there. He showed up to a hostile audience! Be aware that what might seem cute or funny to your pals can be an insult to your audience or meeting planners. It might be a good idea to limit posts on politics to groups that share your political views. A political posting on Facebook by one of my friends for all her friends to see caused quite a bit of discussion ­ and not the good kind. Whether or not you want to use Facebook for business purposes, meeting planners and corporate types are looking at us wherever we show up, and making decisions based on what we post. You can have a business page on Facebook as well as a personal page, and that’s what I have done. Your personal page is for real friends and family; the business one is for everyone else.

I think what Rita says makes a lot of sense, don’t you?

Twitter, Facebook, behaviour, social networking

I’ve had a Twitter account for sometime now and it really took me sometime to understand what it is about.  But now I’m hooked!

I’ve signed up for some autoresponders on how to use Twitter and have been applying some of those things. In just 24 hours I’ve had an increase in 100 followers with several actually corresponding with me, which is great.  And I have a potential new project on the horizon simply from a chance (and flippant) comment to someone after they saw a tweet I’d made.  Amazing but that project has possibilities.

I also see our PM, Kevin Rudd, twittering about his activities and feel it’s great that he and his staff keep abreast of social networking tools to remain visible and up-to-date.

I’ve also learnt about Twitwall which allows you to add to your meagre bio at Twitter.  And it is free and connects to your existing Twitter account so picks up on your chosen background.

I see a lot of Virtual Assistants on there and many I know are finding new clients as a result. Just goest o show you can’t dismiss a new tool or fad too quickly on the web – people keep finding new things they can create to add to an idea and build new businesses just from that alone!

Have you begun twittering yet?

twitter, twitwall, tweet

I was at a breakfast a few weeks ago and the speaker was talking about the benefits of networking and the right and wrong ways.  She opened up for questions at the end of the session and someone from the back asked a question I’d never even considered before.  “What if people don’t want to connect and are avoiding your calls?’” The speaker told the person asking the question that it might be simply a case of the other person being busy.

I was surprised when the question was asked. I’m no wallflower and it just doesn’t occur to me that someone might be avoiding me , however, I realised that for some the fear of someone rejecting them could be very real.   So I want to encourage you here, if that’s you, please consider that people do get busy and often networking, or follow up (very few people do follow up) isn’t foremost in their agenda. Other things are.

You can do simple things to make the process easier for yourself:

• Send an email introducing yourself and reminding them of where you met and when (do this a few days later, not a few weeks). You could also suggest that you will give them a call in a few days.
• If you don’t hear back from them in 2 or 3 days, you could elect to ring them and ask them if they got your email and just continue any conversation you might have had when you met.  I always write on the back of their business cards anything relevant so I’m reminded of a topic I can continue.
• If they don’t answer the phone but you can leave a message, simply say you’re ringing as promised in your email to them a couple of days ago.
• Then let it sit for awhile.  If you come across emails (not jokes or warning messages) or media articles that might relate to that person, simply forward them on, saying that that article reminded you of them.

You may get pleasantly surprised with a return phone call or return email.  And have their details close to hand so you can grab it quickly if they do ring which will save you from being tongue-tied.

Networking isn’t as fearful as some might think and once you’ve done it a few times and discovered that no-one is going to bite your head off or something worse, then you should be set to establish a pattern of regular networking and follow up.  And if someone doesn’t respond, don’t worry – it’s their loss, especially if you had something of value for them.

networking, follow up, fear, relationship building

I was busy entering business cards into a database for a client this week but a few of the business cards were so difficult to read. Red writing on a green background, fonts that were smaller than 6pt, and difficult scripts.  Do people actually check what their cards are going to look like before they get printed? Or do they realise the mistake after they’ve taken receipt of them from the printer?

If you want people to be able to read your business card without a magnifying glass or someone to interpret for them, then you really should take care in the design and presentation of them.  And if you’re a graphic designer, then all the more care should be taken.  I’ve seen a few that would turn me off a graphic designer’s ability to do what I’d like them to do – simply through viewing their business card.  Your card is your ambassador in your absence – make it work for you!

Over the past 12 months I’ve written about the use of various tools for networking.  I did a series on LinkedIn and also on Yahoogroups.  And now I want to do one on Facebook.

As time passes I find that my own thoughts on which are worthwhile tools for business to use online changes considerably – perhaps because the tools themselves change and evolve and become more popular amongst the very networks that I spend time with.  At any rate, I finally succumbed to joining Facebook several months ago and used it only for personal contacts – family, friends, people from my church.  But then one of my clients told me about Mari Smith and the use of Facebook to develop Fan Clubs and promote your business and so, in doing the research for her, I ended up creating a new Facebook profile for my business contacts.

So, I plan to share with you my tips on setting up a Facebook profile for your business.

First – there is a difference between a regular Facebook profile and having a Facebook Page.  My business one here is a Facebook Page and if you scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on Advertising you’ll actually find on the right-hand column that you can set up a page.  But you’ll note the address is still a bit cumbersome and too long to give out to people, so what I did was purchased a domain and then forwarded it to the Facebook page address.

So why not go experimenting to see what you can do and I’ll give you more hints and tips soon about setting up Facebook for your business?  Once you do I’d love to be given your address so I can become a fan of your Facebook page.

Facebook page, Facebook profile, domain registration, social networking

I get a lot of people asking how to blog and what they need to do to get visitors, etc but when they get started all they do is just write a few posts and nothing else.  Some write more regularly than others but they do little else.

Some of the suggestions I give are:

1.  Don’t write posts that are too long; you could do a series of posts on the one topic instead.

2.  Ask questions so that readers are prompted to leave answers.

3.  Visit other people’s blogs and leave comments on them – often they will come back and visit yours and leave comments and so will some of their own visitors.

4.  Consider running a competition now and then – established bloggers do this to encourage subscribers or comments.  It might be a while before you can do this but keep it as a thought.

5. Subscribe to other blogs that might help you with hints and tips in blogging.  In fact, whenever they write something you find useful, it is good to leave a comment and always leave your blog address – these blogs get lots of visitors so it might draw some more traffic for your own: http://www.chrisg.com/, http://www.chrisbrogan.com/, http://www.problogger.net/, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

6. Join bloggers’ forums where you can learn from others also.  http://www.aussiebloggers.com.au/forum/, http://forum.authorityblogger.com/ are two I recommend. Some well known bloggers at both groups – one is an Aussie group, the other has leaders from the UK.

7. Search for blogs on similar topics and add them to your blogroll in the hope they will add you to theirs. They will see the incoming links in their dashboard. Leave comments when appropriate.

If you are writing a blog simply to write, then that’s fine, but if you really want to grow your readership then you need to be networking online too. People won’t know your blog exists unless they’re specifically looking for your topic or if they meet you via a comment, blogroll link, a forum of some sort or perhaps through other websites, article directories, and so on.  And if your goal is to earn some income by attracting advertisers or clicks on advertising, then building sufficient traffic for that to happen is imperative.

Networking online is a very worthwhile way of making connections for anyone who is doing anything online.

And don’t forget my free ebook offer ‘Blogging Basics‘ by learning from my own blogging experiences.

You might have more suggestions to help new bloggers and why not share them here?

blogging basics, networking online, how to blog, increase traffic