Do You Play An Open, Generous Game When Networking?
For the past couple of months, I have had about eight games of Words With Friends (electronic Scrabble ®) on the go at any one time on my iPhone. Thinking about playing Words With Friends (WWF) has led me to thinking about networking, because networking needs strategic planning, as does this game. You need to network with people with whom you are comfortable; can trust and with whom you can work to each other’s mutual benefit.
When you request an “ad hoc” opponent with whom to play WWF, it will probably be a stranger and may well be someone quite experienced in the strategies of the game. As you play with different opponents, you begin to see individuals have their own ways of approaching the game of word building.
One strategy is to make lots of very small, very tight moves; words of only two or three letters at a time which make it [Read more...]
Is Social Media Helping Or Hindering Your Productivity?
The major complaint about “Social Media” is that it either wastes your time or it is not effective for business. Like all activities within your business, the use of Social Media needs to be structured and focussed. You would not spend thousands of dollars on advertising without carefully deciding on your target market; the actions you want them to take and the words you use to attract their attention. Using Social Media for business is exactly the same, but with much less cost.
We have a wide range of Social Media resources for business at our fingertips – and these are my favourites (although [Read more...]
#FacebookTip – Announcing Winners!
Announcing Your Facebook Competition Winners.
One of the things that is very important to understand about choosing to promote your business on Facebook with quizzes, competitions and even applications like FAN OF THE WEEK is that Facebook Terms Of Service specifically exclude using your Facebook page to announce the winners!
If you are not familiar with them, you can review the Terms Of Service on Facebook through this link: Facebook Promotion Guidelines
In particular, we are looking at these items:
1. Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or an app on a Page Tab. (we are using Fan Of The Week – Facebook App), and
6. You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages.
To ensure that we comply, we will be making announcing our Fan Of The Week through our website – as we have done with this first new post. Fan Of The Week – Jan 10, 2012
Our apologies to early Fans Of The Week – whose winning announcements have been subsequently overwritten, as happens every week when using the application.
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Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips and she is the principal author at Stories My Nana Tells Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved. (c) Lesley Dewar 2012
Walking and Talking With WIBWA
Networking is an excellent way to meet and get to know new people with whom you can share ideas, offer suggestions and get feedback on your business. It’s always great when you can do some networking in a new and interesting way and hats off to Jennifer Rose Bryant of Women In Business WA for her inspirational group of women – with whom I walked and talked this morning. My TShirt was given to me by The Upbeat Dad (Rodrick Walters) when he and his family took me to my first game of US Baseball in Miami!
Walking And Talking With WIBWA
This is not my first time walking and talking with Jennifer’s group – I managed to complete the 6km walk on my first outing on September 19 last year. The ladies in this group are very inspirational, high achievers and big supporters of each other. One key member is Janette Philp who led a group last year to trek the Kokoda Trail and they raised over $125,000 for Breast Cancer Care WA . It took them ten months to train for the arduous terrain in Papua New Guinea and their book about the trek and the personal stories of the women who participated is both heart warming and challenging at the same time. I urge you to get a copy from Janette’s website and read it. You will look differently at these “ordinary” Perth business women you can meet at breakfast or on a walk.
Fitness – Not Fashion
On my first walk, I wore a pair of Klouds slip-ons – very comfortable and fully supportive of my arches, etc – but the ladies (all fully rigged with ergonomically designed runners) were not convinced, even when I did 6km on my first effort. So, off I went to the Athlete’s Foot, got measured and tested and kitted out with a pair of runners that cost me over $200. Yes, they are very comfortable and probably are doing a better job than the slip-ons. I wore them today for the third time, walking and talking. I am hoping I don’t pull up sore, this time, though.
Now, I know it’s a long time from September until January – but there is a good reason why my runners have had so few outings. They were packed for the trip to Melbourne at the end of September, when I set off to see the King Tut exhibition – something I have wanted to see ever since my friend from Cleveland, Susie Sharp told me about it and shared some of her own photos with me on Facebook. The trip was planned as a triangle – going via Darwin, where I would catch up with Bronwyn Clee who came down from Darwin for the Global Women’s Summit we held in Perth in July after my return from the US. With her help, I arranged to read some of my stories to kids in schools, booked a coffee and cake morning to meet local Mums and then go on to Melbourne. As it happened, the three legged trip had much cheaper airfares, too. The only disappointment was that Bronwyn had to fly out to LA the morning I arrived and I was supported by her network in Darwin.
Dropped Like a Stone, in Darwin
While I was in Darwin a previously unknown and undiagnosed ovarian cyst saw me off to hospital in an ambulance for emergency surgery and a few days stay in the Royal Darwin Hospital. It was the size of two thirds of a box of tissues; I was too ill to risk being flown back to Perth and the admin and medical staff were just fabulous. They got the hotel in which I was staying to pack up my room and deliver my belongings to the Hospital and this large, red crocodile suitcase followed me around from station to station until we knew what was wrong with me and how long I would be staying.
I remember when the technician was doing the ultrasound while we were trying to source the site of my incredible pain and I looked at the screen and said “is that dark patch the mesh from my hernia operation, last year?” He looked at me, slightly askance and said “no, that is your cyst,” to which I replied “cyst, what cyst????” My mind began connecting the dots: ovary, ovarian cyst, ovarian cancer, usually too late when they find it – and I did a mental internal scan and decided NO, I do not have ovarian cancer. The technician was not so sure but I knew it to be the case and subsequent tests showed there were no pre-cancerous cells nor existing cancer.
The fun came when we had to arrange my flight with Qantas back to Perth from Darwin and I needed my credit card. My mobile phone had been with me all this time (three days) and there had been lots of fun on Facebook and Twitter – it saved my sanity, I think. When we retrieved my suitcase and personal belongings, the little brown envelope in which my security receipt was stored gave us lots of fun and the opportunity for many mad comments on Facebook.
Of course, that was the end of my trip to see King Tut and the next eight weeks were spent recovering from a sizable incision down the length of my tummy. If you follow Stories My Nana Tells (Facebook) on Facebook, you will know that during those eight weeks, I spent some time house and cat sitting for Lisa and Warren; did some #ScienceAtWork with a dead, cooked chook and then hatched two little chickens, posted as #DayOldChick.
Back On Track
My brand new, virginal runners were taken out for the final WomenInBusinessWA Walking and Talking event in December, 2011 – but I was only able to walk about 500 meters, before I had to turn around and go back. Since then, especially in the New Year, I have started swimming and walking in water for 30 minutes a day three or four times a week and doing a stint on the treadmill a couple of times a week as well. Building up my core strength and improving my fitness proved itself today: with a 6km walk under my belt with no trouble at all.
While we two may not have been as fast as the other ladies who do this and other walking, I had a great time walking and talking with Ruth Jenkins of Ruth Jenkins (Sina Solutions) . We got on very well, networked like there is no tomorrow and found many interests in common. She absolutely needs to be introduced to my friend Nicole Ashby of Nicole Ashby (FIFO Families)
If you are a business woman in Perth, I strongly recommend not just Walking and Talking, but networking regularly with an extraordinary group of very down to earth women at Women In Business WA By the way – they are having a breakfast next Wednesday January 18. Will we see you there?
How To Get 6,500 Facebook Fans For Free!
Do You Know A Simple Way To Get 6,500 Facebook Fans?
Would you like to get 6,500 Facebook Fans to share your Facebook page with their friends? What do you think that might cost? How about being able to do that for FREE?
Your Facebook Fan page is intended to open a window to your business and make it easy for potential new customers to buy from you.
- Research shows most people need five or six contacts before they feel comfortable enough to buy online.
- Do YOU have the time to keep bringing people back to your Facebook Fan page – to see your latest offer?
- Are you spending a lot of time on Facebook, liking other pages; leaving links to your own page and hoping that you will get return visits from fans.
If you want your Facebook page to be a successful window to your business, you must have a strategic plan to get new fans and return visitors to both your website and your Facebook page
What is the simple strategy?
Here is a very simple strategy to help you and five other businesses on Facebook to build their Facebook fans and Website visitors, every week.
On Your Facebook Page, select FIVE other pages as your Featured Likes for a week.
- agree with each of those page owners to have their page listed as a featured like
- agree you will each share at least two of each other’s links during the week
- help them build their fan base through your Facebook page.
Six Facebook pages (yours and five others) will be getting their posts shared to a widening base of fans and everyone will see their fan base on Facebook grow very quickly.
Who should you choose?
Choose Facebook page businesses that are supportive of your niche market but not in direct competition with you.
For example, Stories My Nana Tells has a niche market for children aged 7 – 12 yo and especially with parents who work either away from home (#FIFO) or long hours that keep them away from home and their growing children.
While it is great to support other business pages from a social point of view – remember you are running a Facebook business page to build YOUR business and direct traffic to YOUR website. Do you think that sounds harsh; too tough?
How do you do it?
Every week during the year, edit your Facebook page to select FIVE Fans as Featured Likes on your page. Do this 52 times during the year – once every week. The key to doing more business through your Facebook page is getting more FIRST time visitors to your Facebook page and to your Website in such a way that they are reminded regularly of your business and what you do. How do you do that? By building good, ongoing interactions with the owners of your Featured Pages. If only 25 fans of 260 Featured pages respond to your post about them, you will have 6,500 new fans in a year.
Don’t forget that the five Facebook pages Featured as Likes on your Facebook page will want your posts sharing their links to help them get more fans and do more business, too. The more links that are shared, the higher their pages will rank in the Facebook news feed and more fans will see their posts. What works for them will work for you, too.
Your Facebook Page
Your Facebook landing page should ensure that new visitors “Like” the page when they first arrive – and then get directed to your Website. Take them to a specific page dedicated to Facebook visitors, with a quick exit link back to your Facebook Fan Page. It is important that they know your website is where you do business!
To quote Mike Haydon of SEO Perth “Always remember, though, that the purpose of social media is to build a relationship with people, then continue the conversation on your Base of Operations (aka your website). The last thing you want is to spend years building up a vibrant community on a site, only for it to go the way of Myspace, leaving you scrambling to hold onto them. No-one thought Myspace would fail. Facebook could well go that way if or when something better comes along.”
It takes a degree of commitment, planning and trust to implement this strategy – it offers great rewards for those who are prepared to think of their Facebook page as an integral page of their own website. Stories My Nana Tells would love you to become a Facebook fan at Stories My Nana Tells Facebook Page
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Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips and she is the principal author at Stories My Nana Tells Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved. (c) Lesley Dewar 2012
Efficiency = Productivity + Profit
With the second of my three star words for 2012 being Plan, a key part of my planning for 2012 is to make my working life much more efficient. Each day now, I look at something in my working life that is not being done efficiently and deciding how it can be improved.
I have been in the workforce since before EDP was first introduced and when IBM computer cards with their lovely little holes punched in them were the order of the day. After nearly thirty years as a financial planner, during which time we were promised the “paperless office”, I am convinced that there are several key factors that cripple our productivity and prevent us from creating the profits we deserve.
- Lack of organization
- Lack of discipline
- Lack of understanding
The first two – lack of organization and discipline are the left and right hands of loss of productivity. They are the parents of your poverty!
One of the primary culprits for those who work online a lot is the ease with which we sign up to newsletters, new accounts and attractive websites – under the stress of FIMO.
The need to be quick, to create ANOTHER password for the new internet account or blog or newsletter access that we just must have – and not taking the extra 79 secs to WRITE IT DOWN on a card in a master file is one of the most common and regular steps along the road to frustration and time wasting. The greater guilty party is the LACK OF DISCIPINE.
For some obscure reason, we seem to think that being disciplined enough to do something the same way every time restricts our creativity and inhibits our freedom of expression – which in fact nothing could be further from the truth. With good routine discipline, we just do what is necessary to record the essentials for future reference and then let our creative minds have free rein.
As outlined in the excellent book Paper Flow Project one key element in managing your time and paper flow is to document your Internet access information:
- UserName,
- Email address,
- Password
- URL of the site
These are key details that you need to record for efficiency and profitability. A small card box (4”x6” indexed cards with an A-Z setup is all you need).
It is important for many reasons – not the least of which is the need to be able to share your access codes with your trusted advisers and co-workers. My IT support guy (aka Mike Haydon of SEO Perth ) has on more than one occasion had to email me to check for a changed password or indeed one for an account that is new to him. A reply email which says “ah, try xxxxx and let me know if that doesn’t work” is not an efficient way for him to work with me, nor does it respect his professional expertise, of which I avail myself very often.
Lack of understanding is not a case of not knowing how to do this: it is a case of not knowing how important it is to do this. It is a failure to comprehend and value the amount of work time and mental energy wasted; the loss of opportunity to do something worthwhile instead of being frustrated by not being able to remember your password or user name or the email address used to sign up on a site you do not use very often.
If you never have to search for a password or remember the email address you use for every account you access – Congratulations! Your organization and discipline commend you and undoubtedly your bank manager loves you! For the rest of us, this is a great project to set for yourself for the first couple of weeks of January 2012.
The worst that can happen is you will be save yourself much frustration later in the year. The best that can happen is you will free up two or three hours a week (yes, that much time) and you will see your work will be much more productive with the resultant increased profitability in the very near future.
FIMO… I hear you say? The Fear Of Missing Out. We will talk about FIMO another day. For today – it’s enough to get your access information cards set up and watch your profits rise in line with your new efficiency and productivity.
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Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips
Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved. (c) Lesley Dewar 2012
Plan, Commit, Trust – for 2012
While it may only be January 1st, 2012 – already I know this will be a very good year. Because most of the time, what we get is what we expect. If we have great expectations, it is highly likely that we will get better results and rewards for our efforts than if we choose to expect little.
Why is this so? If we genuinely expect to do well, we approach our lives with a much happier outlook. We see things, not through rose coloured glasses that give a false picture, but with an exuberance and flair that shows our positive outlook.
Rather than set a whole list of New Year Resolutions, I have decided to follow the three word “guiding star” approach – but this year, I will revisit them on a regular basis and keep track of whether I have wandered off the path to my goals.
My three words for 2012 are these:
COMMIT
PLAN
TRUST
Commit: To commit to a path of action means you must do it. There is no place for procrastination – nor can there be any prevarication when confronting oneself over decisions made but not carried out. It means that I will have to think carefully before promising to do something for someone else, because this year I am committed to building Stories My Nana Tells into a world class business. Other people have made commitments to me to help me do this and I must honour their pledges in return.
Plan: To have a plan means you have given thought to a wide range of matters: What it is you want to achieve; by when; how many; how much; by what means; with what resources. It must be in writing and written in positive language that brooks no failure. Potential problems will be examined and solved. Methods will be documented. Timelines will be stated and a series of checklists will keep the plan on target and on time as strategic actions are implemented.
Trust: Trust is far more than a belief that “things will be OK – it will be alright”. Trust must be earned and trust must be honoured. Trust is earned by meeting your commitments and showing yourself to have high standards and good ethics. Trust is honoured by accepting the commitment of others and allowing them to fulfil their pledges to you, without unnecessary enquiry as to how it will be done. Trust is more easily engendered when you have a plan, because your intent is clear to see. If you honour your commitments and plan how to fulfil them, you will have great results and greater rewards. Trust is the acceptance of all good things as your right – because you will have earned them.
During the next few weeks, I will revisit these three words and discuss how they are being applied to building our business at Stories My Nana Tells. That’s my commitment to you. I trust you will take the time, now and again, to keep in touch and see how our plan is being implemented and the results we achieve.
About sharing this post:
Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips
Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved. (c) Lesley Dewar 2012