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It’s that time of year
For me, it’s the “beginning” of a new semester (I know the semester started a while back — but the first class I’m teaching is on October 14).
I teach the same subjects – but they change ALL THE TIME
But — they don’t change at all.
The technology changes, the “how-tos,” which buttons you push change. The size of images changes frequently, but there are some basics that stay the same.
So — what are the basics? I’ll list 5 things you should be considering when you’re planning your social media activities.
- Begin with the end in mind. Whether you’re thinking about a long term strategy or thinking about a 3-minute video, know what action you want your readers/viewers to take after your post. You do not need to do this for every post everywhere – but you should have an idea where you’re leading your readers. (pssst stay tuned I’ll show a great example later.)
- Know WHO you are talking to. Figure out who your ideal client is and make sure you are directing your information to that person. Knowing your ideal client not only helps with your messaging, but it also helps you determine where your message needs to be (for instance, if you’re product is an anti-aging cream you’re not needing to spend time and effort on Tik Tok)
- Be YOU. There are “experts” out there that want to train people to do social media the “one right way.” But the great thing about people is that we’re a mixed-up bag of different personalities and styles and ideas. Let YOU shine through — people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Be yourself and your people will find you. (Okay – they won’t find you if you’re locked in a house and not posting or commenting or networking — but you get the idea).
- Stay focussed. Getting clients and referral partners on social media is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’ve done a Facebook Live once a week for a month — don’t give up if you don’t have thousands of followers. Be persistent (but if you need to, you can always check with someone you trust to see if you need to make adjustments).
- Know your limits. Make sure you are actively engaged with others on your chosen platform. If you are a business owner and you actually have, like work to do, you can’t be on every platform. So make sure you follow #2 above – find your platform – and engage with the people you want to attract.
Oh – and remember what I said above about knowing the actions you want people to take. WELL!!!!!!!!!! I will be teaching classes in October and November so if you need to know more about social media, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, Mailchimp, or Instagram, check out the following link. I’m doing 5 classes and each is $39
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ENTREPRENEUR TRAINING AT JOLIET JUNIOR COLLEGE
My classroom will not look like this — but the information will still be great.
Outsourcing: A Worthy Investment
During the past two posts I might have convinced you to think about looking for some help. You might call people, get some quotes for some assistance, and then have sticker shock (especially if you have not had contractors working for you).
A few things to keep in mind. (more…)
3 Ways to Handle LinkedIn Connections
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a solopreneur that finds a great deal of value in LinkedIn.
Today, however, we’re going to focus on connections.
The first way to add connections is to go to your LinkedIn profile and click on “Connections”
If you then go down to “add connections,” you can connect your address book to LinkedIn.
You can then add everybody in your address book. If you have an address book that is strictly for business, then you will only get business connections. But, if you use the same email for both (or have Gmail and it just grabs all of your contacts), then you will get a listing of
*E*V*E*R*Y*B*O*D*Y*
…your son’s soccer coach from when he was 6, your daughter’s third grade teacher, the health tech from the middle school.
You get the idea. There might be some people in there that might not really be considered business contacts.
So it might be time to step back and see who you WANT to actually add to your connections.
From what I can gather from what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, there seems to be three schools of thought.
- Grab for ALL the connections you possibly can. This is where you would add your son’s soccer coach and the ex-boyfriend of your second cousin once removed.
- Be purposeful and specific in the people you do or do not add.
Change with your whim week by week.
As you can see, I’ve put a strikethrough through #3. This plan doesn’t have any logic.
#1 has some benefits, and there are advantages to having a large number of LinkedIn connections. This is spelled out in the first article below (9 Reasons Why LinkedIn Friendship is the Mightiest of Magics). This was written by someone that does Online advertising so increasing the size of a market is a significant part of their business. (As a complete aside, as the mother of a “brony”, I have got to admire someone that manages to write a blog post outlining their professional services while using lessons from My Little Pony – props to Larry).
The second option is the one that I’ve personally chosen. I want to have the ability to speak to the business acumen or character of my connections.
As I was working on this blog post, a call came in from another member of the Virtual Assistant community looking for graphic artists. I sent her information about 3 graphic artists that I know and their LinkedIn profiles. This way she can see their experience and recommendations right off the bat.
Related articles
- 9 Reasons Why LinkedIn Friendship Is the Mightiest of Magics. Larry Kim (wordstream.com)
- When to Refuse LinkedIn Connection Requests. Quentin Fottrell (marketwatch.com)
- Attention! You’re More Transparent Than Ever. Colleen McKenna (business2community.com)
- 6 Ways to Grow Your LinkedIn Connections. Melonie Dodaro (socialmediaexaminer.com)
What will you “give up”?
Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler
As I’m writing this it’s Mardi Gras, and in some parts of the world, people from some Christian traditions are discussing what they are “giving up” for Lent.
So, inspired by that and also by a post from Michelle Combs at Huffington Post, I’m going to state what I’m “giving up” for the next 40 (or more) days.
- PERFECTION
Have you ever started something but couldn’t get it finished because it wasn’t “perfect?” This can happen with blog posts, artwork, graphic design, or insert your own challenge here. I am here to assure you that you can do more “skating by” in life at an 80% or 90% efficiency than you can by sitting quietly in your room WAITING for things to be 100%. - WORKING BACKWARDS
This is one of my challenges. Sometimes you have plans, goals, or projects that you have an outline for and something happens and you fall behind and you realize that you will NEVER catch up to where you were SUPPOSED to be. I’ll give an example. I have a pedometer and I have challenged myself to do 10,000 steps a day. I’ll be quite honest and say that I don’t always make it. The real problem comes if I decide that I’m going to do 70,000 steps a week. Let’s say Sunday comes and I get busy and I only make it to 7,500 steps. So that means MONDAY I have to do 10,000 steps + the 2,500 steps I’m behind from Sunday. So let’s say there’s an emergency and I have to pick up a child from school and take them to the doctor and I only make 6,000 steps. So that would mean on TUESDAY I’d have to do the 12,500 steps I was supposed to do MONDAY and then the extra 4,000 steps and … I completely throw in the towel because now I’m so far behind I’ll never catch up. I suppose there are some people out there that can work backwards and manage to make up the steps (or the time or the ….), but it’s really okay to look FORWARD and say, “Well, I fell behind and instead of trying to catch up, I’ll just move forward from here and do …”
Additionally, there is one thing I am not giving up (with an exception for emergencies).
- SLEEP
In theory, middle-aged adults are supposed to spend 7-9 hours a night resting. I find if I don’t do that, everything else suffers. I have less focus, less energy, less patience, and I’m less healthy. At the beginning of 2015, many people I know were setting intentions with a “word of the year” and I realized I didn’t have a major insight into that. And then one day it came to me.
REST
Because the 1/3 of my life I’m schedule to spend rejuvenating my body and my mind is really the most important part of the day.
Is there anything you can “give up” that will improve your life?
Related articles:
Thursday Tea Time Tip
People who know me, especially those who know me well, know that I’m rather a coffeeaholic*. I don’t function in the morning without my java. Usually the coffee is made (in the programmable coffeemaker) the evening before, and I’m greeted in the morning with that lovely smell of the bean. Some days it’s the only thing that gets me moving.
In order to improve both my sleep and energy levels, I need to be caffeine-free in the afternoon. Some afternoons though, I either run into a wall or get frustrated or get overwhelmed and can’t figure out what my next step should be. Often when that happens I find that my best next step is
DOING NOTHING!
More specifically, doing nothing while making myself a nice, hot cuppa.
Because sometimes (whether it’s a Thursday or a Monday or a Saturday), you can find yourself about to spin out of control; you need to just stop and get re-centered.
*Really dictionary? Coffeeaholic isn’t a word. I have to talk to the Merriam Webster people about that.
The Best Laid Plans
The Best Laid Plans (or Drop Back Ten Yards and Punt)
“Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.” Rene Descartes
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” Herm Albright
Many business owners have plans. You can have a business plan, you can have action steps, and you can have detailed descriptions for every aspect of your business. Sometimes, of course, things don’t go as planned. I have two examples from different business owners I know that had “glitches” in the past week and how they overcame these.
I’m in a Mastermind group run by Michelle Smith at Z and B Consulting. We meet once a month for this group, and we were scheduled to meet on February 2, 2015. A few days before our scheduled meeting Michelle looked at the weather forecast and, well, the forecast didn’t look real pretty. As you can see from the attached photo (or from the photos many of my friends took out of their window over the weekend), it does look REAL PRETTY – but not very travel friendly.
Michelle, using the information she had available, decided that our monthly “meeting” would be held “virtually” using Fuze. I look forward to seeing and working with this fabulous group of people every month.
Meanwhile, in a completely different corner of the country (where snow is never an issue), another friend was preparing for a client call. This woman works with many of her clients virtually so often all she needs is a quiet place (like her home office) and a good Internet connection.
Of course, if she decides to upgrade her service (to BETTER help her fabulous clients) and there’s a “glitch” with the upgrade, this leaves no Internet connection for her client call (which she records as part of her best practices).
After discovering that the issue was with the upgrade, she managed to negotiate a free cellular Hotspot connection until the upgrade was completed on Tuesday.
We’re all going to run into glitches; let’s hope we all handle them as well as these two business women.
Photo courtesy of Amanda Wu at Amanda Wu, Photography, Copyright 2015
RELATED ARTICLE
Yesterday I met a new person at a coaching event, and glanced at her blog. One of her articles:
Mistakes … Or Are They? Tashony Nalyse at tashonyalyse.com
I guess sometimes we all need a lesson.
Thursday Tip – The Why and How of LinkedIn Recommendations
If you’ve done business with a person and are extremely satisfied, you may want to tell the world. There are a number of ways to do this:
- You can pick up a megaphone (which will only tell a few neighbors).
- You can pick up a phonebook (that might take a while – heck in 2015 it might take a while to FIND a phonebook).
- You can post on their Facebook page (which will soon disappear further down on the timeline).
- You can post a recommendation on their LinkedIn Page. This will be permanently on their LinkedIn Profile page and easy to find for anyone wanting to use their services.
Click here to go to a page (on LinkedIn) that gives details on how to give a recommendation.
Let’s say you’ve given a colleague a recommendation but there’s something you want to change. Perhaps you’ve done more work with a person and you want to change some details, or maybe you were looking at their profile and noticed that you made a typographical error.
Click here to go to a page (on LinkedIn) that gives details on how to EDIT or REMOVE a recommendation.
NOTE: O
n the above link step 1 reads “go to your profile” and step 2 reads “scroll to the recommendations section.” This is missing step 1.5 which is “enter edit your profile mode.” If you go straight to your recommendations without entering “edit” mode you will not be able to edit.
Whether you want to give your colleague some “stars” or a “thumbs up,” LinkedIn is the place to go.
How to Add a Video on LinkedIn
Nederlands: Linked In icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In order to give potential clients (or employers) an idea of the type of work you do LinkedIn allows you to show media samples on your profile.
One of the notes from the LinkedIn help center states:
“You must use a compatible file type or content provider for best results.”
Or – to quote William Shakespeare, “ay, there’s the rub.”
The (amazingly simple) trick to this is to know what content providers work well with LinkedIn. Two that I’ve found work for all purposes that I need are slideshare.net and YouTube.com
So, first step is to upload a slide show to slideshare or upload a video to YouTube. (If anyone needs tips on that let me know, I’m always looking for more blog posts).
Now it’s 5 easy steps:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile page.
(It’s the second tab on the top) - Now, hover over where it says “Profile” and click on “Edit Profile.” This will put you in edit mode.
- Go to the section you’d like to add the video or slideshow to (I often use the “Summary” section.)
- Click on the icon that looks like a box with a “+” sign.
- Now, add the link.
After you’ve added the link it will give you a chance to change the title and the description.
Thanks to Beth Tomas of BTomasDesign for the question.
Related articles
Starting Over
Recently I was reading about how President George H.W. Bush (41st President of the United States) celebrated his 90th birthday by skydiving.* You can watch the video at this link. While I’m p
retty sure that I would never actually jump out of a perfectly fine airplane, I have to give kudos to President Bush for following his passion.
For the fourth in my small business series, I’d like to introduce you to Felicity. Sometimes it might be hard to pinpoint your passions. You might have so many that it’s hard to narrow down (and not all of us have the means that someone in the Texas oil business has to chase all our dreams). But for those of you rethinking your future goals and desires, or for those looking toward a promotion or career change, you can contact Felicity Solomon at Savvy Services.
Whether you’re thinking of a new career opportunity or trying to realize your dreams, a life coach would be a great person to have on your team. (After all, our 41st President couldn’t have jumped out of a plane without an entire team to help him).
Related articles
- George H.W. Bush’s 90th birthday treat: Skydiving (cbsnews.com)
*He announced the jump on his Twitter feed. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year old age group.
How to Prepare your Business for your Vacation
Guest Post (with minor edits) courtesy of Evie Burke at One Insight Closer. 
Whether it’s spring break or summer vacation or winter holidays, we all need a few days off, or even a vacation (!) to have some time to relax.
Sounds wonderful right? But then you start to think about all those things that you want to or should be doing for your business right now – and suddenly taking any time away from your home office sounds less wonderful and more stressful.
On some level though, you know you need the time away – a time to rest and not think about your business. You just don’t know if that’s possible.
Let’s take a step back and remember having a JOB (play with me here). Remember going on vacation then? If your job was anything like mine, going on vacation meant that you had to set aside some extra time before you left to tie up any loose ends, to let clients and/or co-workers know you’re going to be gone and to update anyone who was going to be handling some of your responsibilities while you were gone (and maybe letting them know how to reach you in an emergency).
You know that that process was? A system, even if you didn’t call it that or think of it that way, it was the system that you, or the business you worked for, setup to make sure that things ran relatively smoothly while you were gone.
Let’s step back to today. What is your system for taking time off in your business?
Okay, I hear some of you laughing (or sighing) that you are your business and if you’re not there things don’t run. Nothing happens when you’re not in the office – or worse, if you’re not in the office things start to fall apart. Well, that might currently be true, but there are probably a few things that you can do before you leave or set up to happen while you’re gone to make sure nothing falls apart and that things run smoothly when you return.
- Let your clients know you’ll be out of the office
Just give them a heads up. This could be a quick phone call and a follow-up email so they have the dates and other information at their fingertips. And let them know how to contact you if you’re in a business where emergencies happen and they might need you now. Let them know how to handle that. - Tie up loose ends
If you have any projects or communications that have under 15 minutes left on them, finish those up. These things will take longer to do if you wait until you return, because they won’t be fresh in your mind. - Decide what can wait until after you get back
If you’re anything like me you’ve suddenly decided that those two bigger projects that you put on the back burner should really be DONE before you leave. Because you don’t want to think about it when you return. You want to have time available for those great new ideas that will pop up when you return from vacation.This is where I remind us both (you and me) that some things will have to wait until after vacation. Trying to cram too much in before you leave will result in frustration and the temptation to take work with you on vacation (don’t do it!). Instead, decide ahead of time what can wait. Make a list if you need to and then you can schedule those things when you return. - Out of Office email reply
Most email programs have this. Set it up for the dates that you’ll be gone and let them know when they can expect a reply back from you. - Update your voice mail message
Again, let people know you’re out and when you’ll get back to them. - Set time aside for replies and phone calls when you return
Set aside a couple hours on your first day back in the office for returning emails and phone calls (and cleaning out your inbox). - Plan the first couple days you’re back in the office
This one is really important for me. Last year I didn’t do this when I went on a two week vacation. Actually, I “planned” on planning my first week back on the airplane ride home. Yeah, so on the airplane ride home I think I slept, talked with my husband and maybe read a couple of chapters of a fiction book. So, my first week back “in the office” I did catch up on email and send my newsletter, but that was about it…I realized that first week back would have been a lot smoother, and more productive, if I would have planned a few tasks to be completed that week. I could have gotten back into the swing of things a lot faster. - Write and schedule your newsletter in advance
If you send a newsletter, you can write it in advance and schedule it to go out while you’re gone. And if you have a VA you can write everything in advance and pass it along to her early. - Enjoy your time off!
Allow yourself to mentally unplug from your business and enjoy your time off!
You deserve some time off! Put it on your schedule and start planning for it!
In the comments below share what else you do to prepare for vacation or even a day away from your business.
(Additional note on #8, if you don’t have time to write a weekly blog post, remember to ask if someone wants to do a guest blog — Mary).
Photo by Mary Wu, on a previous vacation.