This post seems to have two separate thoughts and I will bring them together at the end. 

Recently, while on Facebook, two separate situations made me fully aware of just how much information there is about us. One teenage cousin posted an extremely explicit status update about a recent (ahem) "encounter" with a boyfriend. WAY too much information for me. And later, when I announced that I was going on vacation, a friend commented on my status and asked when I was going. I was reluctant to answer because anyone who viewed my status would see the dates that my house was going to stand empty… and ready for a thief. Not all of my 300 friends are people I would trust. (Yes, many of them are, of course, but not ALL of them).

Like Hansel and Gretel, everywhere we go we leave breadcrumbs about ourselves in the form of profiles, bios, information and data.

There’s the website and the blog that we all have. And we’re familiar with our profile page on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and other similar sites. There are other sites that can gather info on you and your business crawling the web for links. ZoomInfo.com and Jigsaw are that I’m most familiar with but we’ve all heard of Hoovers and InfoUSA and there are others.

Every article we publish online has a bio which is a breadcrumb. Every link we message we leave in a forum is a breadcrumb. Every tweet we post is a breadcrumb.

When we add all of these together, will people find you? And what will they think?

Our online identities, when done well, speak as one voice that clearly summarize us to others, no matter where they find the breadcrumb. But when not done well, they display just a fuzzy picture that doesn’t help our business at all.

So, how can we manage our online identities?

Start by creating a short bio about yourself and using that as your one and only bio around the web. Wherever possible, change your bio to reflect this new one.

Use a site like DandyID to gather together all of your social identities into one place. And use PeoplePond to as a verifiable place to identify who you are and as a single website to give out to others.

Want to read more about managing your identity? There are great resources and articles out there already to help you. Here are some of our favorite:

• Pew Internet did a study on online identity management with some interesting findings. People are becoming more aware of it… but not nearly enough yet (in my opinion): http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Digital-Footprints.aspx?r=1

• Forbes takes a slightly different approach (less about coherence and veracity and more about its usefulness in your life): http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/01/manage-online-reputation-technology-identity.html

• Mashable has a great list: 25+ Ways to Manage Your Online Identity (http://mashable.com/2007/09/10/online-identity/). This list is more like a list of website tools you can use to manage your identity.

• ClaimID (http://claimid.com/) has a list of best practices to manage your online identity. It’s a great article, actually, with plenty of useful tips that people should do from time to time.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Here’s a scenario that is all-too-familiar on the web: You’ve engaged an audience (in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), you’ve got them visiting your website and blog, downloading information and perhaps signing up for a newsletter.

But when you contact them to sell, they’re just not ready. Maybe it feels like you just aren’t yet speaking the language that resonates with them. Maybe they don’t feel that you’re the one who can help them just yet. Whatever the case may be, they need one more engagement. One great way to create an interactive engagement that can help them, AND you, is with Google Forms.

You’re likely familiar with GoogleDocs – the collaborative online word processing program offered at http://docs.google.com. It’s a great service that rivals the ubiquitous Microsoft Word. Well, this same program offers something else: A publishable form that users can fill out which will automatically input their data into a spreadsheet for you. Here’s how it works.

Go to http://docs.google.com and sign in. (We’re assuming here that you have a Google account, so if you don’t have one, you’ll need to do that first.

At the main page (which contains your folders and recent docs), click the "Create New" button to see a list. See the "Forms" link? Click it. Voila, you’re half way there. Now it’s time to create your form.

You can create a long page of many questions and Google gives you a number of data-types to choose from: text, checkbox, multiple choice, scale, etc. Simple create some main text, supporting text, and choose the data type. Oh, and you can also indicate whether or not this is to be a required question or not.

Repeat the process for every question you want to ask. When you’re done, click "Save" and Google will give you a link where the form will be publicly available. You can link to it or embed it in your own website.

So, what do you do with it? There are a number of things but in your marketing efforts you can use it as a way to get a little more information out of prospects and show them that you are thinking about their situation.

For example, give them 5 questions to answer about the situation they’re facing or the problem they have. Make them easy questions with scales and checkboxes and just one text box. Offer them something for filling out the form. They’ll spend a few minutes answering the questions and, when they’ve finished and pressed send, you’ll have engaged them for a few moments.

That engagement is invaluable because it is a few minutes of their time in which you’re highlighting the problem and connecting yourself in their mind with a solution. And, they’re investing a little bit of time into helping you understand the problem so, subconsciously, they are investing some time into you. Even if you don’t get a lot of information out of them right away (and you won’t want to ask for too much) you will still have established a fair amount of credibility which you can later use to offer them a truly unique solution.

Of course, there are other ways to use Google Forms, too, but this is a great way to engage your audience.

Contemporary VA

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This post has been a long time coming. The reason is: I sometimes need to take a taste of my own medicine!

I’ve seen lots of numbers (big numbers) and I don’t know which ones are authoritative so I’ll say this: The internet is expanding. Quickly. And as one trend gives way to the next, new opportunities make themselves available. A few years ago, "social media" was an unheard-of term. Today, everyone is signing up for social media marketing and marketing consultants are extending their brand to include social media coaching.

Recently, I found a site that promised to help me manage my social media identities in one convenient place. I liked the idea so I signed up. They presented me with a huge list of potential social media sites – over 200 – that they would help me manage. I thought I was doing well with the accounts I had but this list was amazingly long… and although I spend my entire day working on web-related activities, I hadn’t heard of a number of these sites. So I started clicking through them to compare them.

Some seemed helpful and compelling. Others did not. Worse yet, there was a bunch of sites that claimed to be social media sites but lacked any of the characteristics that actually make a social media site (suggesting to me that they’re trying to cash in). Look, I don’t want to point any fingers at specific sites, lest they disagree with my accusation, but I will say this: The best ones… are the ones you’ve heard of and probably already have an account with.

Here is a funny YouTube video that shows a hilarious parody of the excess of social media.
 

Now, I don’t want to come across like I’m harshing on everything out there. But I want to give some advice to you (and to me).

Find a couple of good social media sites and stick with them. Integrate them with each other and become active on them. Don’t try to sign up with every single social media site out there because there are just too many and there seems to be more everyday. Instead, find a couple that work for you and excel at using them. For example, out of the handful of business-focused social media sites like LinkedIn, Xing, and Ecademy, I’ve chosen just one and am focusing on it. The others might be good (in fact, I like a couple of the features of the others that aren’t present in the one I’m using) but doing this will help you manage your time. I’d rather do 1 thing well than 3 things shoddily.

Contemporary VA

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While many social media sites like Facebook and Twitter offer both business and personal users the ability to connect and share their lives, some social media sites remain strictly dedicated to business. Is there value in this? If most people are Twittering or Facebooking and blurring the boundary between business and personal life, do business networking sites still have value?

We believe they do. Sites like LinkedIn.com, Xing.com, and Ecademy.com are social networking sites specifically designed around business users. They are important, not only for the Gen-Xers who need to keep that wall between business and personal life but they offer opportunities that Facebook and Twitter may not. However, they also come with their own challenges.

Social networking sites (and I’m using the term to temporarily exclude business networking sites) are a great way to connect with prospects and customers "in" their lives. You friend them, you Tweet to them, and in that way your brand is exposed to them from time to time. However, there is also the risk that these people are not interested at this time to do business with you. (They might in the future, of course, but marketing needs to be done tastefully and carefully to make sure that it doesn’t overwhelm and annoy).

Business networking sites are sites where people expect to do business. In some ways they may be farther down the line of the sales process than someone on Twitter or Facebook.

Additionally, if you are a business whose end users are consumers (B2C), you are more likely to find customers on Twitter and Facebook. If you are a business whose end users are businesses (B2B), you are more likely to find customers on business networking sites. With the growing popularity of Twitter, this might change, but it’s a decent rule of thumb for right now.

Those are the opportunities. There is a challenge: You won’t find yourself on business networking sites as often as the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter because business networks are far less "sticky" – you’re not playing Bejeweled or chatting with that long lost cousin.

Here are the three most popular business networking sites out there right now:

LinkedIn.com
This site is the best known of the three and easily the most popular. They were around before social media was a word and they took their time to get caught up when it became an important option. Their Q&A function is really quite powerful and the ability to connect (or ask for introductions) is an underutilized mechanism.

Xing.com
This site suffers from a "same as" mentality and it’s a little rough around the edges. However, it has really made some advancements and its strategic partnership with ZoomInfo make it a potential contender.

Ecademy.com
This site came late to the party and has some work to do. It needs to find a number of ways to really separate itself from the pack if it wants to capture attention and generate users.

What do we recommend? Add these sites into your web presence. Since your time is precious and you can’t be visiting social media sites all day long (heck, you have to earn money at some point), create accounts in all 3 to protect your name but make one of them your primary site and work it intensely. If you are a B2B business, consider putting more focus into these sites and less into Facebook (but stay active on Twitter because more and more businesses are signing up).

Business networking sites have a lot of work to do to attract the attention and keep the affections of users, but they can play an important – but targeted – role in your business.

Contemporary VA

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

As a child, I lived in an older home that my parents were restoring. One of the features of the home that my father created was a huge fireplace that he made out of fieldstone. He went out to an old gravel pit in the country, he dug up a big pile of stones, and brought them back to our house.

To look at that big pile of useless stones, you wouldn’t think it was much except a big pile of useless stones. But my dad turned those rocks into a beautiful work of art that became the stunning focal point of our living room. (Insert nostalgic pause here). As my father worked, I discovered that the secret to turning a big pile of stones into a beautiful fireplace was in carefully placing the stones and then working on the spaces in between.

The web is like that, too. Websites and blogs and wikis are like the big pile of rocks. They are out there for people to visit but they sometimes lack context. They’re in a conceptual pile and don’t always fit comfortably together. In a way, that’s what web 1.0 was all about: "Digging up a pile of stones" by creating websites.

But now we have this pile of stones, what next? How do we lay them out so that they become a manageable and useable group of sites?

This is what web 2.0 is all about: bringing meaning and coherence to those individual sites by bringing them together… in a way, it’s about creating the spaces in between.

Sites like Plaxo allows users to gather and manage online identities in one place. So if you have a blog and a website and a wiki and a half dozen other sites, you can gather them together and keep the content in a nice, neat, publishable stream.

Squidoo is another site that has been created to fit nicely "in betweens" sites to bring meaning to the big pile of stones. Rather than hoping that our website and our blog will be understandable to consumers, we can create a Squidoo "lens" to help people find our information and understand it. Along the way we can add content, additional links, opinions, polls, and other interactivity.

These sites are huge for opportunities for business. They may not be something you’d use on their own (although there are some who do so quite successfully) but instead, they act as the space between to help us bring context and meaning to our web presence; and tie things together.

If you have a number of sites or blogs or wikis (or some combination thereof), and they all link back and forth, that’s great. That’s step one. But there’s an important step 2 that you shouldn’t ignore: The mortar.

Start with a Squidoo Lens. They are free and incredibly easy to create. You’ll be able to link to and from all of your other sites and provide a new way for people to find you, but a way that will also help them to understand what you’re all about before they visit.

Visit the IAC Virtual Assistant Squidoo Lens to see an example of a great lens in action.  You’ll notice that because IAC Professionals offers much more than Virtual Assistants (and probably more than the first things you think of when you think "VA"), the lens expands on their many offerings across the web.

Contemporary VA

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I love the web. I’ve been doing business on it for as long as there has been an internet! (Well, maybe not exactly, but close enough. Purists tell me that the web has been around since the late 70s so maybe not). In some ways I’m an early adopter: I get excited about new technology or new marketing channels or new opportunities to show my stuff online. But take note, I said: "In some ways I’m an early adopter". I admit that I’m not always.

In working with other entrepreneurs, I always hear the buzz for the latest and greatest trend. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that I heard the blog buzz. "Oh, you HAVE to have a blog". Everyone had a blog. Businesses had blogs. People were writing about blogs. It was all about blogs.

Recently, it was all about Facebook. "You HAVE to have a Facebook page". Everyone was figuring out how they could incorporate Facebook into their business. People were writing about Facebook. It was all about Facebook.

Today, it’s Twitter. "You HAVE to be on Twitter". etc.

Well, I agree. To a point. Blogs are good, and can be helpful for business, as can a Facebook page and Twitter. I’m an early adopter and I get excited about these new opportunities as they appear. But I’m only an early adopter to the point where I believe it will benefit my business.

I got a blog early because its value to my business was clear. I took a little longer to get onto Facebook — it was much farther along in its ascension in the public’s eye — because I needed to first identify the value to my business. Only then did I get excited about it and fully on board.

These are exciting opportunities but they can also suck so much time from our lives. If I signed up to every social media site that I was invited to, I’d never get any work done. So instead, here is what I advise people to do:

First, find the sites that are right for your business. For example, consider the business-specific social networking sites of LinkedIn, Xing, and Plaxo. They all have their benefits and drawbacks. Figure out which of them are right for your business and pursue one. (Or, if you only sell B2B, consider doing all three but ignoring the Facebooks and Myspaces and Bebos of the world which could be more appropriate for a B2C business).

Second, determine your intended outcome from that site. Some sites might be appropriate to position you as an expert. Others might be a great way to build up a community of people who are all talking about your topic. Other sites might drive traffic to your site. Or they might offer combinations of these outcomes. You need to figure out what outcomes you desire from each site you’re on.

Third, figure out what you need to do to achieve those outcomes. Then act.

A great example to use is LinkedIn. It’s a good site for a couple of different purposes. One person might want to position themselves as an authority on a topic so they will use the LinkedIn Questions feature and aggressively answer questions posed by the LinkedIn users. Another person might want to use LinkedIn to generate leads, so they would ignore the questions feature and instead work through their list of connections to find who could be a potential client.

This thought process needs to take place for every site you participate in. And as popular as they might be, it is the right decision to drop any site that is not right for your business and comes with a measurable outcome that you can work towards.

Like all marketing, web marketing needs to be approached with plenty of thought and then intentional action. Just because it’s a free medium (unlike television or radio marketing, for example) doesn’t mean that every new opportunity is the right one to choose.

Sorry, ecademy.com, I won’t be signing up.

Contemporary VA

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

Have you ever had an experience in life where four or five or ten completely different people (or situations or television shows or website or songs or whatever) are all weirdly congruent and seemingly trying to tell you something? It’s as if everyone and everything else in your life has gathered together when you weren’t there and conspired to send you a message. Maybe it’s me, but I hope it’s not.

Anyway, this is exactly what is going on in my life right now. I’m being reminded of one of those many truths of business that I know but have not been as intentionally practicing: the art of building a community of people.

A friend of mine recently read Keith Ferrazzi’s book "Never Eat Alone" (which I’ve read and it’s sitting on my shelf). I had, but had forgotten about it. Then someone else leant me a copy of Jeffrey Gitomer’s "Little Black Book of Connections". I read it twice and made copious notes. It’s all stuff I know but don’t think about or practice… and really should be.

I have a Facebook page and have connected with some good friends there. But that’s it. And I have a LinkedIn page but haven’t tapped into the large community of people I know there.

Just yesterday I had a project for a customer that required me to research various social media channels and summarize them.

Recently, I’ve been trying to extend a particular service into a particular market. Out of the blue I got a call from someone last week who knows what I do and who offered me a way to connect with that market. I didn’t ask for it and I wouldn’t have got it without knowing this person.

And there’s more: I was on two phone calls today. In the first call, which is sort of a weekly business goals call I have with a colleague, we talked about the importance of community in creating and building a brand. I hung up from him, dialed into another meeting, and had a conversation with someone else that matched almost word-for-word the first conversation. It wasn’t the purpose of my second call but that’s where the conversation went.

And then here is what gave me pause and made me think about all these "coincidences" in my life. On that second call I was expressing to my colleague that I was trying to track down someone who could do help me with a business challenge I have been facing for a few months. After that call she emailed me with an introduction to someone who could exactly solve that problem.

It seems like all of these people and situations in my life have conspired to tell me to put into practice to a greater extent the truth that I’ve already known:

Build a community. Help people selflessly. Share your thoughts and challenges and successes with your contacts. This is one of the advantages that social media and web 2.0 offers us at a broad level that previous iterations of business tried to do on a limited basis.

Okay universe, I’m listening.

Contemporary VA

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

Internet marketing and Social Media can feel a bit overwhelming. There is so much information out there, plenty of it garbage, that you don’t even know who to listen to, where to start, or what to do. I know, I’ve been there.

When I started out, all I wanted to know was ‘what to do’. I read a gazillion articles, another gazillion blogs and another gazillion ebooks that promised me the world. Nobody delivered. It’s not that easy, it’s not an overnight venture for 99.999% of us. Not to mention there are so many bits and pieces spread around all over the place that it makes everything much less comprehensive.

But it’s not hard either. And if you have a plan, it’s that much easier. With so many sites out there, what’s the plan? Good question!

If you’re looking to get into, or expand, your social marketing game (link building and organic exposure), I HIGHLY recommend Social Media Daily.

It’s literally a step-by-step blueprint of what you need to do and where you need to do it at. I use it every single time I’m marketing something. I rarely print things out off of the net, but this is one thing I do have printed out and it’s always in arm’s reach of my computer.

it’s not filled with a bunch of garbage, it’s basically a to-the-point checklist of what you need to do and where you need to do it at. And it’s FREE…my favorite word! You do have to sign up to the list but you can always opt-out later, however, I don’t recommend doing so because this lady is the real deal. She’ll never spam you and pretty much everything you get from her will be of great value.

I haven’t ever seen a plan like this and I certainly haven’t ever seen a paid resource that holds a candle to this one when it comes to leveraging the social media market.

Enjoy!
Karen J. for Online-Marketing-Wizards.com

Twitter tools are useful in facilitating your online presence. Many people were, and still are, skeptical about Twitter and its life span but it has many faithful users and plenty more are jumping on board every day. Twitter tools open up so many possibilities. Some of them make it possible for you to easily update from your blog, phone or URL bar. Others allow you to find other Twitterers talking about specific topics; schedule your Tweets; add tags to your twitter posts, and more. We’ve put together a list of ten+ cool Twitter tools that can simplify your Twitter life and help you maintain your Twitter presence…and they’re fun!

Search.Twitter.com (formerly Summize) allows you to do a search within Twitter and "see what’s happening…right now". Hashtags allows you to add tags to your Tweets. Twitturly tracks what URLs people are talking about on Twitter. Their system is similar to a voting system – the more people who talk about a URL, the higher up it moves. It only shows the 100 most popular URLs in the last 24 hours. Twitter Tools (plugin) integrates your Twitter account with your Wordpress blog. Twitbin is a Firefox addon that allows you to send and receive Tweets via a sidebar. Twitterbar allows you to post via your URL bar. Pretty neat little tool that I’ve been using for a long time. It makes it really easy to share links. MobyPicture lets you post to Twitter (and other social services) via your mobile phone. Twhirl is a desktop chat client of sorts. It also works with Friendfeed and lets you post to Jaiku and and Pownce (simultaneously if you choose). I’ve been using this client for sometime too. Twitteroo is another popular desktop client but I haven’t tried this one myself yet. Twibler is a must if you’re an eBayer. It automatically posts your new eBay listings to your Twitter account. Tweetlater allows you to schedule your posts. This can be a useful little tool! Twitsay lets you record an audio message that can be heard from your Twitter page. Twitter Digest is kind of like a feed reader. It allows you to read updates made in the last day by specific Twitterers. This is pretty handy if there are Twitterers whose updates you find useful and really don’t want to miss! Twitterfeed automatically posts your blog posts to Twitter. Twitter for Wordpress displays your latest Tweets in your blog. Twittip-ID is a WP plugin that adds a Twitter field to your comment form so that commenters can enter their Twitter ID. Wordpress Twitter Widget is a sidebar widget for your Twitter feeds. Pretty cool.

Whether you use Twitter for personal use, networking, or your business, being Tweetified adds a lot of flexibility. But beware of what you post! Heather, the CEO of the Virtual Assistant firm Contemporary VA, sent me a link to a post that I just couldn’t help but to find hilarious about a PR account exec by the name of James Andrews from Ketchum and how social media, Twitter to be more specific, bit him in the behind FAST! The irony behind it! His unfortunate experience certainly delivers a lesson for us online social media folks! What are your favorite Twitter tools and how do you utilize Twitter and/or your fav Twitter sidekicks? Karen J. for OnlineMarketingWizards.com