It’s hard to believe that the Summit is over. It was starting to feel like part of my regular routine, to pack up work early and start listing to great speakers for a while!

There were 18 sessions in total, and I told you a bit about the first seven in my previous posts Kicking off Social Media Success Summit 2010 with Guy Kawasaki and Social Media Success Summit continues… Rather than providing an overview of the remaining 11, I’ve decided to share the nine things I learned that I found most interesting or valuable, and that I’ll be most likely to use. Some of these were new concepts to me, and others important reminders of things I knew but may not be doing as well as I should.

1. Not only does the Tweetmeme button make it easy for people to share your blog posts on Twitter, because of its prominence it also encourages them to do so. It also provides you with metrics, because it displays the number of tweets that link to your post, not just those tweeted via the button. (@GuyKawasaki)
2. It’s better to use the Networked Blogs application rather than Notes to import your blog feed to Facebook. For one thing, it brings in your posts more quickly, so people get to read them when they’re fresh. Secondly, when your friends or fans click on the link, they are taken to your actual blog, which is of course good for traffic, but it also means that any comments will be left on your blog, instead of having some on your blog, some on your personal Notes, and some on your business Notes. (@MariSmith)
3. You can easily export your LinkedIn contacts to be imported into your email application. (@LewisHowes)
4. If you think of your website or blog as your home base, your various social media profiles are your outposts to direct people back to your home base. You should choose the outposts that are used by the people in your target market. (@JayBaer)
5. 25 to 50% of users access social media via mobile phone, so many of us are using mobile marketing and don’t even know it, so this market should not be ignored! (@KimDushinski)
6. Automation is important, however, rather than substituting for active participation, it should be used to give you more time to engage with your audience. Overdoing it may cause people to hide your feed or stop following you. (stressed by nearly everyone!)
7. Titles of blog posts are very important! People are much more likely to click through to a post with a compelling title, and titles with numbers in them generate three to four times as many clicks! In addition, using appropriate keywords in your title will help with search engine positioning. (@DeniseWakeman)
8. There is an Editorial Calendar plug-in for WordPress which is ideal if you decide to post specific types of posts on certain days. (@ChrisGarrett)
9. To be effective on social media, you can’t just show up – you need to have specific goals, a plan to achieve those goals, and a way to measure your results. (message carried throughout the Summit)

I hope these tips are helpful to you!

I’ll be sharing further details of these strategies and much more in my upcoming Social Media Strategies for Small Business Workshop in Hamilton. Hope to see you there!

Photo Credit: Mark Smiciklas, Intersection Consulting

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Top 9 Things I Learned at Social Media Success Summit 2010.

Have you noticed lately that conversations at business networking events often seem to gravitate towards the topic of social media? When that happens, do you jump in with your success stories, or do you quietly listen and wonder what the fuss is all about? Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore!

By popular request, I am going to be holding a live workshop on Social Media Strategies for Small Business to answer your most pressing questions, such as:

What are the most important social networks for me to join?

How am I supposed to find the time for online networking?

Can my business really benefit from social media?

The workshop will be offered on Thursday, June 10, and again on Wednesday, June 16, so you can choose the session that best suits your schedule. Both workshops will take place at 2-45 Frid Street, Hamilton, Ontario, and will run from 6:30 to 9:30 pm.

Every participant will have access to a computer, making it ideal for hands-on learners. (But if you’d rather just sit back and take notes, that’s okay too!)

The cost to register for this long-awaited event is only $40.00 + GST, and members of People in Connection and the Golden Horseshoe Virtual Assistants Group pay only $25.00 + GST!

Be sure to sign up soon, as seats are limited.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Social Media Strategies for Small Business Workshop in Hamilton.

With 18 sessions over a three-week period, I’m finding it a challenge to fit them all into my schedule, so if you were hoping that I’d blog about each one, you may be disappointed. I will, however, do my best to let you know what you’ve missed by not signing up, with the help of some of the other participants.

Since my last post, six more sessions have taken place:

Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Page for Profits with Mari Smith

This was fantastic, and I actually did cover this one over on my other blog, Your Organizing Business, because it tied right in with a presentation I made earlier this week.

5 Ways to Measure Social Media Marketing Success with Jason Falls

Another great session! Jason began by pointing out that to measure your ROI on social media, like anything else, you first need to have specific, measurable goals and objectives, then develop strategies to help you achieve those goals, and make a to-do list based on those strategies. Your goals will depend on the reasons you’re using social media; some of the most common ones are:

• Branding and awareness
• Community building
• Customer service
• Research and development
• Direct sales

He gave excellent examples of businesses who are successfully using social media in each of the above areas, and suggested some free and low cost monitoring tools, including www.socialmention.com and www.trackur.com.

How a Chicago Pizza Franchise Used Social Media to Create Raving Customers (A Case Study) with Ramon De Leon

Knowing that I couldn’t fit all the sessions into my schedule, I decided to skip this one, thinking that the strategies used by a pizza franchise would not be relevant to my business or those of my clients, most of whom also run small home-based businesses. When I read Nelson Wee’s write-up, I realized that I was mistaken, so I’m glad I’ll have the chance to listen to the recording later on.

All three of the above sessions were also covered in Randy Duermyer’s Day 2 Wrapup: Social Media Success Summit 2010 (#SMSS10).

Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn: The Business Social Network with Lewis Howes

It’s hard to say whether which was more valuable: this one or Mari Smith’s session on Facebook. Both were jam-packed with information that I can’t wait to put to use.

Lewis Howes confirmed my suspicion that most of us just aren’t using LinkedIn to its full potential. He said that it may not be the largest social network, but it is the strongest, and that one of its most powerful features is the ability to export your connections to Outlook and other email applications – something I had not realized. He also stressed the importance of optimizing our profiles by using appropriate keywords in our headlines, current and past work experience, summary, and specialties.

Unfortunately, because there were so many people trying to access LinkedIn during the session, we knocked it offline.

How Big Businesses Are Leveraging the Power of Social Media – A Panel Discussion with John Bernier from Best Buy, Marla Erwin from Whole Foods, and Sarah Molinari from Home Depot

I passed on this one, for the same reason that I missed Ramon De Leon’s, but I may listen to the recording at some later date.

3 Reasons You Need a YouTube Marketing Strategy (and Tips to Help You Generate Results) with Greg Jarboe

I’m not a huge fan of online video myself, because I’m a fast reader and I don’t have the patience to sit and watch a video when I could read the information more quickly, but I’m seeing it used more and more, so I was quite eager to learn more about YouTube. For some reason, this particular session was much shorter than the others so it wasn’t very in-depth, but I did learn some important tips about optimizing a video for YouTube search, which is quite different than optimizing for Google.

For those wanting to learn more, Greg recommended YouTube’s Creator’s Corner blog or his own book, YouTube and Video Marketing an Hour a Day.

Randy Duermyer also covered these three sessions in his Day 3 Wrapup: Social Media Success Summit 2010 (#SMSS10).

I’ve learned so much already that it’s hard to believe that we’re less than halfway in! I’ll be back next week with some more highlights.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Social Media Success Summit continues….

The Social Media Success Summit opened last night with a keynote address from Guy Kawasaki. Although I don’t follow him on Twitter or elsewhere, he is well known in the industry, and I was looking forward to learning from him. This was my first time using Twitter while participating in an event, and it was equally interesting to see other people’s reactions to the things Guy was saying.

His presentation was well organized, first going through a list of the different ways people are using Twitter, complete with examples, and then describing several ways to gain new followers.

One strategy that was new to many participants, including myself, was the use of the Advanced Search feature. For example, let’s say you want to connect with blues fans in your community. You can simply search on “the blues” to get a quick list of recent tweets about the blues, but to go through the tweeters to see if any are in your area would be extremely time-consuming and tedious. With Advanced Search you can enter not only your search word or phrase, but the name of a place (or a zip code) and how close to that place you want the tweets in your search results to be. There are many other search options, so be sure to check it out!

Of particular interest were the many tools that Guy recommends for automating his tweets. Some people were excited to realize that they can be on Twitter without investing a lot of time into it, while those at the other end of the spectrum felt that this was inauthentic. I think there’s a place for automation, but I also think it’s essential to log into your account and interact with other people. Automation should be used so that you can spend your time forming quality connections, not so you can just put Twitter on autopilot and forget about it. Sure, people want information, but they also want to build relationships.

Furthermore, I don’t agree that tweets should be repeated every few hours as Guy recommends. His rationale is that CNN repeats their news stories throughout the day, so it makes sense for us to repeat our tweets. I already have a few people in my feed who do that, and I find it quite tedious. If you’re promoting an event or a new product, obviously you don’t want to just send out one tweet and hope it gets noticed, but instead of just repeating the same tweet over and over, you can be creative and present the information in a different way (yes, you can still be creative in under 140 characters!).

You can see the outline of the session at http://holykaw.alltop.com/twitter-as-a-weapon-demo-script, and read the discussions on Twitter by entering #SMSS10.

In one of the side conversations, Scott Schumpert asked, “Is Twitter for Marketing or Social Networking?” which I thought was a great question. After giving it some thought, I came up with this:

Social networking is one aspect of marketing, and vice versa.

What is your answer to this question?

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Kicking off Social Media Success Summit 2010 with Guy Kawasaki.

Since my last post, I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on my new blog theme. I hope you like it!

Now that I’m up and running again, I’d like to share some of the highlights of last weekend’s WordCamp, as promised. A few people I spoke to before the event said they weren’t going because they weren’t heavy-duty WordPress users, but there was something there for everyone, from techie types to people wanting to learn how to get involved in blogging and social networking. In addition to the nine formal sessions, there were two blogging success stories as well as demos of two new WordPress plug-ins.

In my opinion, the best three presenters (in order of appearance) were:

• Jeremy Wright, on Blogging and Social Media
• Mark Evans, on Writing for Multiple Blogs
• Brad Gosse, on SEO

Jeremy’s lively presentation was an excellent kickoff to the conference. He didn’t speak so much about blogging as about social media and the many ways it fails, such as spam and focus on numbers instead of interaction. His advice is to not let these issues keep us from participating in social media, but rather to make sure we’re not adding to the problem and to avoid those who do. In summary – to remember that it’s SOCIAL media, not social MEDIA. You can view Jeremy’s presentation here:

I especially enjoyed Mark’s presentation, since I write for multiple blogs. He suggested many strategies for capturing and organizing ideas, including the cleverly named Packrati.us, which automatically adds any URLs from your tweets to your Delicious bookmarks. (I have recently started using Delicious myself, and there’s a link to my bookmarks under “Stay Connected” on the left. Any new bookmarks that I save will also show up in my Lifestream.) You can view Mark’s presentation here:

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on WordCamp Toronto 2010: My Top 3+1.

This past weekend, I had the exciting experience of attending WordCamp Toronto. In the past, I’ve attended conferences for career consultants, for professional organizers, and for virtual assistants, but this is the first time I’ve ever attended a major event where the participants worked in a variety of industries. Of course, there were lots of other website designers there, but there were also professional and hobby bloggers as well as lots of people exploring the possibilities of WordPress.

I heard that there were about 200 people there, but since I’m not exactly a social butterfly, I only met a small percentage of them. Today I’d like to tell you about a few of the interesting folks I met.

Kathryn Presner of Zoonini Web Services and I have known each other for several years, but this was the first time we’ve met face-to-face. We worked together closely from 2005 to 2006, when I led the Website Redevelopment Committee for Professional Organizers in Canada and she had the daunting task of bringing our vision to life. I was on the fence about signing up for WordCamp until I learned that Kathryn was going to be one of the speakers, and I’m so glad I took advantage of the chance to meet her and hear her presentation.

I also met Ruth Maude of Dandelion Web Design. Ruth and I actually have met in person, many years ago. She beat me to blogging about our story, so if you’d like to know how we are connected, I’ll let you read her write-up of WordCamp Toronto Day 1.

A couple of the people I met have very specific niche markets, which I always find very interesting. Alex Frakking of Visible Optometry designs WordPress sites exclusively for optometrists, and Martha Chan is VP of Marketing for Divorce Marketing Group who serve only divorce professionals.

Of course, there’s no way I can squeeze all the details of a day and a half of networking and learning into one blog entry, but I came away with lots of great ideas and information which I’ll share with you in future posts.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on People I Met at WordCamp.

When I read Elaine Shannon’s recent post, Who are the People in your Neighborhood?, I was so inspired that I decided to answer her question in my own blog. Following Elaine’s example, I’d like to introduce you to some of the Very Important People in my world.

One of my VIPs is Jacki Hollywood Brown. I met Jacki through Professional Organizers of Canada, and have always been impressed with her initiative and her dedication to the association, particularly her work in bringing value to French-speaking members. She now serves as POC’s Vice-President, in addition to being a busy mom and military wife, and running her organizing business, J-organize. She is also the only professional organizer I know who specializes in equestrian organizing!

I met Marie Mushing of People in Connection shortly after starting my business. After seeing my profile on a Yahoo group for local businesses, she invited me to attend one of her network events. Although neither of us could have known it at the time, that was the start of a great business and personal relationship. We have referred clients and subcontracted work to one another, and frequently get together to share business ideas. She has recently launched a free membership site called PICFIT where we, along with other members, can stay in regular contact and encourage each other to meet our goals to lead healthier lives. Marie actually lives fairly close to me, so I guess she really is in my neighbourhood. J

My third VIP is someone I’ve never met in person, although we have connected on Skype several times. Neil Matthews is a WordPress genius from “over the Pond” that I met on Twitter, and I’ve tapped into his expertise on numerous occasions. He has recently re-launched his WordPress Owners Club, offering support and training to WordPress blog owners who want to learn how to maintain and develop their site like a pro.

Again following Elaine’s example, I will close by asking you: Who are the cool, funny, out of the box, brilliant, expert People in your Neighborhood? If you decide to answer on your own blog, please leave a link in the Comments section!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on The People in My “Neighbourhood”.

Small business owners face many challenges when it comes to networking. Some of the most common include deciding which events to attend and which groups to join, creating a powerful self-introduction, learning to deliver that introduction confidently, and initiating conversation with strangers.

I’ve struggled with all of these at different times, but I have another problem: I have a terrible memory when it comes to faces. As a result, until I get to know someone well, when I speak to them, I often can’t remember whether or not we’ve met before. (I will, however, recognize a business card I’ve seen before.)

I was therefore intrigued to learn that the BBC has a Face Memory test on their website. The test consists of three parts: you’re shown 12 photos in the first part, and another 12 photos in the second part. In the third part, you’re shown 48 photos and you have to identify whether you saw them in the first part, the second part, or not at all.

I scored 75% on Recognition, meaning that of the 24 photos I was shown in Parts 1 and 2, I recognized 18 of them. That sounded pretty good until I learned that the average score is 92%.

My temporal memory score was only 55%, meaning that of the 18 photos I recognized, I only remembered where I’d seen 10 of them. The average score is 68%.

It was no surprise to me that my scores were below average, but I was a little disappointed that there was no information to help me make improvements in this area. Apparently the purpose of the test is to see whether you’re getting enough sleep. I don’t really see the connection, but then again, I’m no scientist!

If you’d like to take the Face Memory Test, be sure to allow 15 to 20 minutes.

In the meantime, please let me know if you know any strategies for remembering faces!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Are You Good at Remembering Faces?.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a few people I’ve connected through various social networking sites, and today, in response to a post in Valeria Maltoni’s Conversation Agent blog, I will tell one of my own social media success stories.

This story started when I noticed that one of my Twitter friends, Sue, was a trained Organizer Coach. Since I wasn’t familiar with that particular training program, I asked her about it, and we had a brief conversation about the possibility of her writing a guest post about it in the future for Your Organizing Business. One of us had to leave before the conversation was finished, so it was left on the back burner for the time being.

A couple of weeks later, I received a telephone call from a prospective new client, Shelly. She explained that she is also an Organizer Coach, and that she’d received my name from Sue. We hit it off right away and began working together almost immediately. Shelly is exactly the type of client I enjoy working with, and I know she’s pleased with me as well. She can give me a general idea, and I’m able to come up with something that’s exactly what she had in mind. That’s what most people hope for when working with a virtual assistant, but the synergy isn’t always there.

In addition, we’re both focused on helping professional organizers achieve success, Shelly through her coaching services, and me through providing online marketing support, so we can see lots of potential for mutual benefits in this relationship over the long term.

In the meantime, Sue has agreed to write something about the Organizer Coach Certification Program, which will provide me with some interesting content for my blog while giving her an opportunity to promote her coaching services.

This is just one example of the type of valuable connections I’ve made since I started actively using Twitter a few months ago. I’ve also been offered speaking engagements, books to review, link exchanges with sites of interest to the same target audience, answers to technical problems, and so much more.

In some ways, I think the fact that Twitter restricts messages to 140 characters makes it easier to approach people, because instead of sending a formal email, you can just get right to the point. Of course I would never recommend sending someone a tweet trying to sell your services, but to suggest any type of joint venture, it’s perfect. People get so many messages that are self-promotional, or even outright spam, that they are genuinely delighted to receive a message that shows you’re sincerely interested in getting to know them, and especially if you’re offering them a chance to do something to get their own message out there.

To generate ideas, go beyond the tweets and take the time to read people’s profiles, and even click through to their websites when your schedule allows it. Using Twitter is like any other form of networking – use it to build relationships, and you’ll be remembered. Use it to try and get sales, and you’ll be avoided like the plague.

If you’re interested in connecting with the people in this story, feel free to follow us on Twitter.

Sue West – http://twitter.com/Space4U

Shelly Anderson – http://twitter.com/shellylifecoach

Janet Barclay – http://twitter.com/JanetBarclay

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on My Connection Story.

I hate to say it, but the end of summer is not very far away. I’m not talking about the official end of summer on September 21, but the start-up of fall activities. In fact, in some places, they’ve already gone back to school!

Even when the school year had no bearing on my own schedule, I’ve seen September as the ideal time to establish new routines, even better than New Years Day. After all, New Years is so tied up with the holiday season that it’s hard to really focus on making positive changes, but in September, many of us are getting back into a regular routine after vacation or a more relaxed schedule. So why not start off on the right foot?

I know that one area where many of us could benefit is using social networking sites more effectively. Social networking can be lots of fun, and because of that, it’s easy to lose track of why you’re doing it and to spend time on activities that don’t benefit your business. It’s fine to use these sites to stay in touch with friends and family, and to get to know business contacts better, but if your reason for joining a social media site in the first place is to get more clients, it’s important not to lose sight of that goal.

On Friday, August 14, Biana Babinsky, who is a social networking and marketing expert, is presenting a free teleseminar on How To Get Clients With Social Networking. In this class Biana will teach you how to get more results from your social networking, while actually spending less time on it. For access to this free call, simply enter your email address on the How To Get Clients With Social Networking registration page. If you’d like to establish a productive social networking strategy, this call could be just what you need!

Don’t wait to think about changes you’d like to make until it’s time to put them into practice! Whether it’s marketing or some other aspect of your business, a little time spent planning can pay huge dividends.

Graphic Courtesy of Mark Smiciklas, Intersection Consulting

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Using Social Networking to Grow Your Business.