Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Do you often attend in-person or ‘Live’ events? Seminars or training events, even meetups – whether local or requiring travel – can be a great way to learn and network with other business individuals. Referrals, contacts and even friendships can develop at events and seminars. After each event you’ll want to take a breath. But, don’t breathe too long. There is work to be done that mustn’t wait. Seize the day!

The tendency is to think about the exciting things you learned and the people you met – for a while. After a week, you seem to lose your enthusiasm and settle back into life before the event. That is the last thing you want to do especially where your business is concerned.

Now, is the time to cement that lasting impression that you believe you made on the people you met at the seminar. Don’t let a moment go by, from the time you get home, that you are not harnessing the power of that meeting. Besides you know yourself that out of sight truly does mean out of mind if there is no contact for a while.

Here are a few tips to help you get the ball rolling on that pocket full of business cards, that camera full of pictures and that briefcase (or tote) full of helpful handouts and resources.

1. Create a new plan. Now that your head is swimming with ideas, take out that handy notebook and look at what you’ve jotted down. If you have been putting off a new program or service for one reason or another, this may be the perfect time to get going. Find out a new way to streamline the process and create a plan to get the ball rolling right now.
2. Email your new colleagues. Each business card in your hand should contain the website and email address of the one who handed it to you. Contact each person individually and tell them what a great time you had meeting them. To give them a mental picture of you, include your picture at the end of the email. What will impress them is if you can recount one tidbit from your conversation with them and include it also.
3. Get involved in online social networking. Find your new connections on all the social networks: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Invite them to be friends or followers (depending on the site) so you can keep in contact.
4. Blog about the experience. Get your readers interested in the event happenings. Share your experiences and any new business takeaway advice you received.
5. Develop new products. Talk about leveraging! You can turn that one seminar presentation into a wealth of digital products. Create an e-course on your topic. Use the handouts as filler for your monthly newsletter, content for your site or new topics for video media. Those brainstorming techniques you developed at the event will come in handy now.

What did you learn at your last live event? Did you do anything with the knowledge? Hopefully you did. If not, use these five tips to reawaken the enthusiasm and create new action items.

Technorati Tags: events, seminars, Social Media, social networking, training seminars

I was reading Denise Wakeman‘s Biz Tips Blog – one of my favourites to follow. She is always full of great info for us beginner bloggers.

Anyhow, this week she had a post in regards to an interview she will be doing with Paul Chaney and they opened up the comments so if you had a question regarding social media, you can ask it directly. I have been wondering lately what the best practice is with regards to making tags and categories on your blog.

I asked…wasn’t sure if it fit into the topic, and it was a bit off, so instead Denise took my question and turned it into a blog post on the Build a Better Blog by answering it. It was great. I got a full out explanation about tags and categories for blog posts.

I’m not sure how many of my readers wonder this as well so today’s topic is a link to the answer Denise posted. I hope it helps you all as much as it did me.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Social Media

Social Media

Well, today was quite a day… as a social media virtual assistant, I had a very hairy day as Twitter and Facebook both succumbed to Denial of Service Attacks, which appeared to be coordinated attacks too. Their systems in effect were shut down and people could not sign in nor post any updates.

It meant that several items of work done for clients and also to do for clients could not happen.  It also was a wakeup call to me, and hopefully many others, that you should not keep all your social networking eggs in one basket. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Marketing, Social Media, social networking, virtual assistant

A Mini-Course on Blogging!  Great idea to learn more about marketing your blog and all in 2 weeks!

VAclassroom is a favourite learning place of mine, much of my social media training was done with them.  This month they have rolled out another innovative way to learn virtually – the Mini Course! The first one is all about Blog Marketing!  What a timely topic too considering that more than 10,000 blogs are started everyday according to WordPress

The 2-week mini-course titled, “Blog Marketing Tips, Tools & Tactics” and starts on August 10th, ending Aug 24th.  The program includes self study as well as live components.

The registration doors are officially OPEN NOW and seats are going fast. They have 60 32 3 seats still available for this training program.  You can use this discount code VABLOG to knock $10 off their special price of $67 when you register.

Whether you are looking to learn for yourself as a blogger or new to blogs, or are looking to add to your services offerings – it’s a fantastic way to learn more about blogging and in a condensed time period at a great price!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Social Media, training, virtual assistant

Paul McCartney is playing in Halifax this Saturday, his only show in Canada too! He’ll be playing on the Halifax Common – a green space meant to be open to share for use by all residents and I believe they are expecting 60,000 people.

Anyhow, in my attempt to win tickets for my brother-in-law, I have been listening to News95.7 and the Beatles & Paul McCartney have been playing over and over in my head. I won’t describe to you the horror I put so many people through today as I sang my song (made up by me) to the listeners of the show -  you had to go on air and sing to be in the draw to win.

That’s my segue to, the title of my blog post today! I chose this song to showcase my social media experience this past week to my readers. Social media is more than a marketing channel/tool, it is also about networking and connecting with others.

Last Friday I had a client run into some issues with her Facebook fanpage. I was asked to figure out why it wasn’t working properly. After much searching, I found myself stumped. So… I started putting out my ‘feelers’ to see if anyone else could help figure it out. I used Twitter, facebook and some blogs all weekend and through until yesterday.

Finally this morning, 5 days later, I found the answer with a little help from a friend of sorts; but many ‘friends’ were trying to help me figure it out. These were not people I have ever met, yet they were attempting to help me just the same.

What was in it for them, you might ask? Nothing.  So why would they bother? Simple, to help out a ‘friend’ who happens to be someone they have never met and probably never will. Being helpful is the only reason why any of these people made contact with me. Connecting and networking… that’s all it was about and I am so grateful they took the time to help me, and ultimately my client.

The next time you are talking about social media and Twitter and Facebook and don’t seem to get it all… try thinking of it as the water cooler or staffroom in your office. When you are sitting at your office stumped on a problem, where do you turn? To your co-workers in the office… well, social media works in the same way sometimes; the only difference being that the ‘office’ of each party involved most likely spans a great distance and they may never meet face to face.

The ‘bug’ was noticed by Salman Ansari, with  Involver .   Salman, I really appreciate your help. It was a simple solution, but one that took an extra set of eyes!  Involver is a company that has some great Facebook Applications for Pages – definitely check them out! I use them with many of my clients. Salman, you also helped out someone else having the same problem, she contacted me after seeing the posts, and once I found the fix, I passed on the info to ehr as well!

Thanks to everyone else  (I hope I do not forget anyone) who helped by retweeting my posts or commenting back on a blog or sending me a message on Facebook or Twitter.  I am grateful for the time you gave to me and my problem.

Melissa Ward Dawn Riley Net Weave Mari Smith

Darlene Victoria Cindy Bruce Green Lasagna

Technorati Tags: facebook, networking, Social Media, thanks, virtual assistant