It’s amazing how a new networking tool can soon become addictive, if you let it!  Where once I thought I only needed one blog and now own many (on different topics), it would seem the same applies to Twitter profiles, depending on the audience or followers you want to attract.  I now have 3 profiles. The first one is about me, what I do, what I’m interested in and who I’m following. The second relates specifically to the Virtual Assistant industry and is relatively new. The third is about my passion of photography and is slowly growing a list of followers plus I’m following many.  Each has a profile and image that matches what the profile relates to – mainly to keep me from getting mixed up when posting or replying. Because with multiple profiles I needed to find a platform to manage them without logging in and out constantly, so enter Splitweet.com which is useful but doesn’t automatically choose the right profile to post with so you do need to keep watch. But I believe it’s relatively new so is sure to grow and have enhancements over time. It does work a treat!

In the process I’m meeting lots of new people and learning new things, and having a bit of fun with it too.

So, enters a new blog which I’ll be co-authoring with another lady who is very conversant with Twitter. I’ll introduce her soon when she’s ready. In the meantime you can get a preview of the site that is sure to grow quite quickly. It’s kind of a play on of the words Twitter and Dictionary and is meant to be a resource on all things about Twitter.  It’s called The Twitionary.

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?

Seems a lot of new words being created these days, all thanks to Twitter.  If you still don’t know or understand what it is about, perhaps this Twittervideo will help explain about Twitterverse, or was that the Twittersphere?  All tongue in cheek of course!  Thanks to Alex who brought this to my attention. Enjoy!

There is so much information about Twitter out there these days and once you get into it, you’ll find that the number of followers will increase quite quickly (definitely daily) and that the more you are following, the more you’ll have to tweet about.  It’s definitely a great marketing tool. Just today someone who follows me responded to someone I don’t know who wanted to learn about the Virtual Assistant industry. They replied to the tweet and added my username @kathiemt which alerted me immediately to the conversation.

I contacted the other lady to find that she has a granddaughter looking to work from home before she has her baby and the VA industry would be perfect for her.

Now, if I wasn’t on Twitter and the first lady I mentioned wasn’t following me, then she wouldn’t have been able to refer someone else to my VA network.  Works really well and is just another example of a referral based network in action.

Now Twitter isn’t all about referrals but it is about building relationships and getting to know what others do. And it’s great for viral marketing.

I thought this article by Naomi Trower about Viral Marketing with Twitter a good one to share with you.

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