Have you been wondering how you might engage in social networks for your business?Very often I am asked but how might social networks be relevant to a specific audience.

When I talk through social media platforms, I cover what I call focused or targeted social networks - where the social network is specifically relevant to a specific audience, just as you might think about joining an offline network or group for your professional association or hobby e.g. The Institute of Management Consultants and Advisors or Network Ireland for women in business in Ireland.

Let’s take a look at a few specific online networks that have been established recently:

• Saga Zone has been established by Saga the organisation who supports people in the UK over 50 with products from vacations to financial services has created their own social network. They offer their members the opportunity to create your own personal profile page and share your interests in our online forums; write your own web diary, or blog. They also plan to offer members the opportunity to create their own photo gallery and engage in live instant chats
• Club Penguin is an online community for children aged 6-14 brought to us by the Disney Corporation. Club Penguin is a virtual world where children can play games and connect with each other. There is a free and a paid membership option - the site comments that instead of financing their operations Club Penguin relies solely on paid memberships. The copy on the site says “By remaining ad-free, we can provide our users a safe haven from marketing.”
• Caboodle is a social networking community about Budapest and Hungary, including general interest news and original feature stories, comprehensive event listings - it’s aimed at foreign nationals living and working in Hungary and is written in the English Language
• SkiSpace is a new social networking and information site just for skiers, snowboarders and winter sports hounds. It’s co-founder is world champion skier Bode Miller. Members can share photos and videos, help you plan your snow adventures, find the best travel deals in fact everything it provides just about everything for the Ski enthusiast. Lanuched in December 2007, it had 10,000 members in the first month according to a review in Business Week.

In fact the Telegraph reported this week that the BBC is now planning to set up a social networking site for the 6-13 year old age group. The BBC site, which is costing £200,000 to develop, will launch in April piloted among 1,000 children. The BBC state that the site is designed to encourage discussion of the Corporation’s shows and will help raise awareness among youngsters about the risks of using the internet.

So what does this mean for you in terms of connecting to your clients and potential clients or customers through social networking?

Well even if you have no plan to develop your own social networking site or plan to advertise online through social netowrking sites is the fact that it’s important to keep tabs on where your potential clients are congregating online. Even by “listening to the conversation”, you could learn alot about what their current challenges are and what they are concerned about which can help you in fine turning your product, service or marketing copy.

What I can tell you with certainty is that increasingly your competition is investigating and learning more about social media marketing - I know that for a fact from the number of enquiries I have had already in the last month about running educational programmes and mentoring programmes in the field of social media marketing in Ireland.

So how can you start to build awareness and your knowledge in the field of social networking? Well here are some terrific resources and many of them are available at no cost:

• Don’t forget to join me on Monday 28 January 2008 when I will be in conversation with Jason Alba, author of “I’m on LinkedIn now what???” which you can register to attend here for just the cost of your phone call
• Join me for the preview session for the forthcoming Social Media Telesummit on the 6 February 2008 at 1pm ET/6pm Dublin and London where host of the summit, Leesa Barnes, will be in conversation with some of the worlds experts in the field of social media marketing including Paul Colligan, Darren Bearfoot and Sherman Hu. Again it’s free to register for - you will see a registration box half way down the page - all you need is a phone line to join us.

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I was planning out the schedule of the Biz Growth Live calls yesterday (we have some tremendous speakers lined up - but more of that in future posts).
What I was reminded of was the fact that Daylight Savings Time changed last year in the US.

So I did some research to check the dates of Daylight Savings Time for 2008 and beyond so that we could ensure that the speakers all had the correct time for the calls and I could update my calendar.

If you have clients across the globe you may therefore find the following of assistance:

Daylight Savings Time in the US

Beginning in 2007, most of the United States begans Daylight Saving Time at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and reverts to standard time on the first Sunday in November.
Daylight Savings Time in EU

In the European Union, Summer Time begins and ends at 1:00 a.m. Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It begins the last Sunday in March and ends the last Sunday in October.

Specific Dates That Daylight Savings Time Changes 

US DST dates                                  Europe DST dates

2008    March 9      November 2         March 30     October 26

2009    March 8      November 1         March 29     October 25

2010    March 14    November 7         March 28     October 31

2011    March 13    November 6         March 27     October 30

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Source for details about Daylight Savings Time

Details of Daylight Savings Time in other locations - scroll down the page past the map for the details

World Time Server - my favourite resource for checking times across the globe

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I often get asked questions about how I manage the fact people who you don’t always know may want to connect to you on LinkedIn and then may want to be connected to your own personal network.

For quite sometime I did look at my LinkedIn network as one that was effectively a group of people who were my closest business contacts and therefore I took the approach that:

1. I never asked someone to join me on LinkedIn if I were not prepared to endorse their work so I would always be happy to refer them

2. I never responded to a request to join someones LinkedIn network unless I knew them.

However with the increase in social networking and more people inviting me to connect to their network on LinkedIn, I realised that perhaps I was being too strict in my self imposed guidelines.

But how could I ensure that the quality of the connections stayed high and that I could ensure that I referred people to others in my network only if relevant?

Well here are a few things to remember in any social networking community:

1. you are always in control of who you invite to join your network

2. you can always decline an invitation to join someones network

3. you are rarely inundated with invitations to join someones online network, so screening  invitations takes little time.

I took things a step further and have now updated my LinkedIn profile with specific guidance on how best to connect with me on LinkedIn after listening to an interview with LinkedIn expert Shally Steckerl - this is how it reads:

GUIDANCE FOR CONNECTING TO MY LINKEDIN NETWORK

Please read the following so that we can ensure that our connecting will be of benefit to you:

1. I love connecting people to great resources and other people that can assist them in achieving their professional goals, so yes please feel free to connect - I always try to respond to emails within 48 hours

2. I will always accept invitations from friends, business acquaintances and clients to join my network on LinkedIn

3. If we haven’t met, I am open to connecting but please send an introductory note providing a little information about your background and how we would both benefit from connecting - a standard LinkedIn request to connect won’t be responded to

4. As I consider connecting people in my network to others as a recommendation and therefore want to ensure a quality connection for all concerned I will not usually forward requests to connect you to members of my LinkedIn network if I do not know you and your work

5. Please ensure that you spend a little time writing a thoughtful and detailed requests as to the benefit to the person in my network and why they would benefit in connecting to you. In return I promise to only send you relevant, well written requests.

So if you have been hesitating about joining LinkedIn, I do hope that these tips might help you overcome your fear of joining a great business networking community, helping you build your personal brand online.

And if you have any tips on how you get the most out of LinkedIn or guidance on how to ensure that you manage your online network effectively, perhaps you’ll share them here with our Biz Growth Community.

Additional Resources:

• Read a recent article about how to choose if LinkedIn or Facebook is the right social networking platform for you

• See how I have created my LinkedIn profile for ideas on how to write your online profile
• Join me on the 14 January 2008 at 6pm (1pm ET) for a free teleseminar where I will be discussing how to build a compelling online personal profile expressing your personal brand
• Join me on the 28 January 2008 at 6pm (1pm ET) for a free teleseminar where I will be sharing tips on how to get the most out of LinkedIn
• If you want to read more about LinkedIn and how it can help you in supporting your business and professional goals this year, then why not read my good friend Jason Alba’s book I’m on LinkedIn - Now What ???

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The following resource is especially valuable for people based in Europe - but scroll to the bottom of the article for 4 further great resources.
I am always on the look out for great online services to help my clients generate more leads at less cost. Teleseminars are one of the strategies I encourage them to implement and they have generated really significant revenues and helped me attract more clients over the last few years.

I was therefore delighted to hear of a low cost conference call provider in the UK called Conference Genie.

Their free service allows you to have 12 people on the call at one time and for their premium service which costs a one time fee of £10 plus VAT you can host 120 people on the call.

I have come across other conference call providers but none at the low price of 3p per minute for calls in the UK to a UK bridge number that Conference Genie offers so it is definately worth checking out their service.

There are also a limited number of numbers you can use for calling the Conference Genie  bridge line from other European countries - you will need to check the cost per minute.

They also offer a recording service at a fixed price per month.

So if you are a coach, business consultant or leader in a professional services firm based in Europe who is looking to attract more leads and more profits in the year ahead with less effort, then I do encourage you to take a look at Conference Genie.

ADDITONAL RESOURCES:

Listen to a recent podcast I recorded about how to use teleseminars to attract more clients and increase your profits

Listen to a recent podcast I recorded about how to host your own online events

Access 4 hours of superb teleseminar training for only US$20 - delivered by one of my marketing mentors, Alex Mandossian - and if you don’t think the training was worth the US$20, send me your receipt and I will refund your US$20 to you - guaranteed.

Access a trial of the teleseminar and webcast service I use for only 1US$ for a 21 day trial

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How confident are you about your online reputation?

Have you ego surfed your personal brand online recently?

Recently published research indicated that nearly one-half of US adult Internet users surveyed have used a search engine to look for information about themselves.

That is more than twice the 22% of users who did so in 2002 according to the December 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project’s “Digital Footprints” report.

The report states that Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint with 47% having searched for information about themselves online.

However, not many people monitor their online presence regularly with just 3% of the respondents reporting that they regularly check their online profile in the search engines and 74% of respondents having checked their profile only once or twice.

From my own research, the results in Ireland and the UK are far less than 47% of people having checked their digital footprint - typically when I ask this question of a group between just 5-10% of people have actually admitted to “Self Googling”.

The report also identified that more than half of US adult Internet users had looked up information about someone else (not including celebrities).  This number is a significant increase of the number of people who were thought to surf the internet looking up other peoples profiles as reported by Business Week in 2006 where they reported that 35% of people check the search engines for other peoples profiles.

So as the year comes to a close, why not invest a little time to ensure that your personal brand online represents what you stand for. Enter your name into the search engines.

• What shows up?

• Are you suprised?

• What actions can you take to ensure that you do not leave to chance your online reputation and personal brand?

And if you are looking for some assistance in building your personal brand online, don’t forget you can contact me for a private consultation where we will develop your strategy and action plan for building a compelling digital footprint that showcases your expertise and does not leave your online reputation to chance.
Source: Pew Internet

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