Monitoring and Measuring Social Media for Your Business

Networking Tips For Business

If you are like me you may be wondering what to do every time you go to a networking event to get the most out of your time, money and effort.  I have been to Meetups, Mixers, Social Networking Groups and I have always walked way asking myself what could I do differently so that when I am in a situation where I am meeting new people, I can make meaningful and long lasting relationships.  Here are some tips that may help you that have helped me.

1. Keep in mind that networking is about being genuine and authentic, building trust and relationships, and seeing how you can help others.

2. Ask yourself what your goals are in participating in networking meetings so that you will pick groups that will help you get what you are looking for. Some meetings are based more on learning, making contacts, and/or volunteering rather than on strictly making business connections.

3. Visit as many groups as possible that spark your interest. Notice the tone and attitude of the group. Do the people sound supportive of one another? Does the leadership appear competent? Many groups will allow you to visit two times before joining.

4. Hold volunteer positions in organizations. This is a great way to stay visible and give back to groups that have helped you.

5. In networking conversations. This means questions that ask who, what, where, when, and how as opposed to those that can be answered with a simple yes or no. This form of questioning opens up the discussion and shows listeners that you are interested in them.

6. Become known as a powerful resource for others. When you are known as a strong resource, people remember to turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. This keeps you visible to them.

7. Have a clear understanding of what you do and why, for whom, and what makes your doing it special or different from others doing the same thing. In order to get referrals, you must first have a clear understanding of what you do that you can easily articulate to others.

8. Be able to articulate what you are looking for and how others may help you. Too often people in conversations ask, “How may I help you?” and no immediate answer comes to mind.

9. Follow through quickly and efficiently on referrals you are given. When people give you referrals, your actions are a reflection on them. Respect and honor that and your referrals will grow.

10. Call those you meet who may benefit from what you do and vice versa. Express that you enjoyed meeting them, and ask if you could get together and share ideas.

Why My Grandma Totally Rocks

By Elizabeth Brewer

Mrs. Petzold’s 5th Grade Class

Wagon Wheel Elementary School,  Trabuco Canyon, California

Are you really asking me why my grandma rocks?  That’s like asking why and elephant has a trunk! I’ll tell you why my grandma rocks.  Ask for an outfit?  She buys it.  Want some food?  She fixes it.  Need some advice?  She tells it how it is.  So, maybe she lectures me a lot about strangers and dangers and all that good stuff, but I realize that she is not nagging me.  She is preparing me.  And in the end, when my heart shatters from break ups or make ups or grieving no-lucks, I will always have that special person full of wisdom, full of youth, and full of heart to help me out at the end of a long day.  Just talking to talk? She doesn’t mind.  She like to listen.  Very needy?  No problem, she will do whatever you want. Hard homework?  She’ll help, just sit back and listen to her every word.  What else would you want in a grandma?  I pretty much got the perfect one, and an equally awesome grandpa to go with her.  Mhm, I am so lucky.  I’m not rambling on about some wonderful fictional character of awesomeness:  I am talking about my grandma.  And yeah, that’s why she totally rocks

Effective Twitter Tools for Following and Unfollowing

For those of you who may be new to Twitter and are wondering how to manage growing number of friends and followers on twitter these tools can offer a solution. If you want to follow back people who are following you or opposite – unfollow people who don’t follow you back check out these amazing tools.  Read More

Handy SEO Glossary

If you are like me and wonder what all the fancy speak means when SEO is being explained you might find this SEO Glossary helpful.  Please understand that SEO is all about relevancy and popularity.  If you want to learn quickly where your website might need SEO help, go to http://www.websitegrader.com and type in your domain.  If are selling products online and want to see how you stack up against your competition go to http://www.spyfu.com and type in your domain and see the statistics on your competitors and how they might be beating you to the punch.  SEO Glossary

6 Ways To Create Opportunities on LinkedIn

If used properly LinkedIn can be a great tool for creating opportunities.  This is a great article with some pointers on what you should do.  Again, be sure not to join groups and sit on the sidelines without getting involved.  Do not spam since constantly pushing your products or services all the time without interacting with people individually could be a turn off.  Try and connect on a personal level with people and the best way to do this is customize your invitations by adding their first name and why you want them to join your network.  If you are an Open Networker and you are just looking for volume be careful about who you accept especially if you are sharing your connections.  Learn More

Still Think Social Media Is A Fad?

Scott McLeods and Karl Fisch follow up their debut “Did You Know” video with this gem that speaks to the Social Media Revolution that is taking place on the planet. What I found interesting is the statistic on Blogging. There are over 200,000,000 people posting content daily on Blogs, Twitter and approximately 34% of blogging is opinions about products and service. Never before has word of mouth had such exponential influence on consumer behavior than  Social Media. To learn more go to www.socialnomics.com

Social Media: How To Go About It

I have been following Steve Goldner on Twitter and LinkedIn and he has put together a series of videos on how to go about using Social Media which I highly recommend viewing to those who need more information on what this explosion is all about.  I think many people are still jumping in on the buzz and failing to understand that Social Media is a dialog and not a monolog.

You may want to read my post on the “The 6 Most Common Mistakes on LinkedIn” as I continue to see after monitoring many of the discussions going on within the groups I belong to that many people are still spamming and not engaging in relationships directly with people or learning how they can help them in their business.

The view the videos on how to go about using Social Media visit http://socialsteve.wordpress.com/

45 Blog Post Ideas That Always Generate Buzz

Featured on www.thebuzz.com

image credit: addicted eyes (modified under cc 2.0 license)

This is a well written article on www.thebuzz.com that explains how Blogging is a great way to build a well-trafficked home for yourself or your business on the web.  A Blog, which is based on Real Simple Syndication (RSS) is a great method to organically increase your rankings by aggregating keyword dense content that is indexed by the search engines each time a post is made.   Many marketing bloggers are swooning over Twitter, FriendFeed, and other instant, fast-paced social communities lately but RSS is changing the way user generated content is distributed on the world wide web.  Read More

Return on Investment in Social Media

Posted by Bertalan Meskó in Healthcare, Slideshow.
trackback – Forwarded by Dr. Dwight Tapp

A few weeks ago, I talked about return on investment (ROI) in healthcare and I mentioned the term ROC. Instead of ROI, in the world of web 2.0 we should think ROC: Return On Connections

•Positive word of mouth
•Service recovery
•Message Influence
•Brand Monitoring
•Instant Feedback

Here is a new slideshow that focuses on this topic and provide us with many insightful pieces of advice: