In the last 24 hours Facebook has been rolling out it’s ‘Questions’ functionality – you will see it on the left hand side of your Home Page or at the top of your Profile or Business Page.

the Answers and Questions feature of Linkedin have been a great way to build online visibility and be a source of lead generation for a number of years. This move by Facebook is another example of them looking to have people spend more time in their company and become a source for information and research about questions we have.

One of the most powerful features is that you can post a reply to a Question as the name of your ‘Facebook Page’ – unlike when you comment on a Facebook Profile or Facebook Page.

Here is a quick video review of the Facebook Questions feature which I published today over on my Biz Growth Media Facebook Page.

You can also ‘follow questions’ and edit the answers to the questions that you respond to.

However one potential disadvantage is that when people click on the links to the questions you ask using the ‘Questions’ feature it will take people away from your Facebook Page.

If you are monitoring your online reputation on Facebook it will be important for you to start to listen to the questions being asked and answered.

When you post an answer or a question it will be seen by the whole of the Facebook community irrespective of your Facebook Profile privacy settings – so be careful what and how you ask and answer questions.

More details about Facebook Questions are here on the Facebook blog.

Remember the novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams where the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything was 42 – perhaps Mark Zuckerberg is looking for that book to be re-written – and the answer now being Facebook.

What are your thoughts about Facebook Questions?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Access my FREE Facebook webinars about using Facebook Pages and Facebook Advertising

Access my guide to Facebook Pages best practice guide for colleges and universities

Perhaps Facebook not where your potential clients are networking online? If they are using LinkedIn you might want to access my FREE LinkedIn for business – make sure that you leave a valid email address so that you can access a discount off my forthcoming 4 week programme starting the 9 August 2010 called “LinkedIn for Business Leads and Profits”. The discount is valid until the 31 July 2010.

I had the opportunity to meet Ivan recently at the BNI Ireland conference and we managed to record a short podcast. In the interview we talk about how we originally connected through networking online through my blog and Ivan watching his Google Alerts. We discuss how social networking online helps establish and maintain relationships.

In the conversation he covers tips for effective networking and referrals and how the closing ratio of a referral being one of the most effective ways to grow your business.

Ivan also talks about how he and his team syndicate their content online when using social media for example using tools like HootSuite.com.

Networking Like A Pro is a very accessible book – the chapters are brief and provide easy to implement tips including:

- how to gain the confidence of people in your netowrk

- how to leverage new contacts

- developing a plan to attract more referrals

- how to network at non-networking events

- and tips for getting other people to refer you.

You will also find helpful check lists in the book that you can use in your business to support your networking plan.

If you would like to connect to Ivan on Facebook you will find him HERE and on Twitter you can follow him HERE.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

You will find additional free tutorials about networking like a pro here in an archive of some of my most popular podcasts.

But what if the testimonial you receive is incorrect, or you want it to more accurately reflect what you did and who you worked for?

Or has the company name changed since you worked there due to a merger?

I was asked how to change the information in endorsements by someone in my network today – so here is a quick video about how to request changes to the endorsements that you receive through LinkedIn.

Late last year European Commission established a new initiative to highlight and promote women entrepreneurs as a key to economic growth and job creation

The network was officially launched by An Tánaiste and Enterprise Minister Mary Coughlan TD on the 15 December 2009 at the European Commission, European Union House in Dublin.

She commented: “I hope this initiative will encourage women to consider starting up their own businesses. These extraordinary women are ideal role models for other women to emulate.”

Eddie McVeigh of the European Commission Representation in Ireland explained that though this network the EU “hopes to inspire women of all ages who may want to start a company but may lack the confidence to do so”.

Other speakers included Michael Coyle, CEO, Galway Chamber of Commerce and Carmel Brennan, Deputy President of Galway Chamber of Commerce.

The entrepreneurship ambassadors include Nicola Byrne founder of 11890 and I am also fortunate to be one of the ambassadors. I will of course share the details of forthcoming events and initiatives from this new programme over the forthcoming months.

In the meantime here are some of the speeches from the launch – apologies for the shaky camera – I hadn’t planned to video the event so did not have my tripod with me.

The event will be taking place on Wednesday 3 June at 11am at Dublin City Enterprise Board – this is a small group meeting and you are welcome to attend if you are an entrepreneur or business representative.

Dublin City Enterprise Board are interested in our views on the issues facing enterprise and its development in the short and long term; for example what are the priorities that should be adopted for the development and support of entrepreneurs and enterprise in the Dublin region, and what are the gaps in the available supports? The planned actions of these interested organisations and individuals, will be included in the development of enterprise strategy in Dublin city and the wider Dublin Region.

ere are the details of the event:

Date:                Wednesday 3 June 2009

Time:               11am – 12.30pm

Venue:             Dublin City Enterprise Board, 5th Floor, O’Connell Bridge House, D’Olier Street, Dublin 2

• To book your place please email Eibhlin Curley, ecurley@dceb.ie or email her your comments if you can not attend.

Increasingly, many professionals are now turning to new networks, not just face to face professional associations and Chamber of Commerce events or other face to face networking meetings.

But how do you identify the networks that will be appropriate for you so you don’t spend endless and wasted hours at the computer? How do you get started? And what are the rules of networking online and how are they different to networking face to face?

Next week I am going to be sharing some ideas with the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Enterprise Board  Enterprising Women’s Network about how to use social networking to reconnect and nurture their network to support their business goals. Do share the details with women you know who are interested in exploring social networks from LinkedIn to Facebook for business. The details are as follows:

Date: Tuesday 3 February 2009

Time: 7.00pm Tea/Coffee/registration; 7.30pm -9pm Social Networking For Business Masterclass

Location: Fitzpatricks Castle Killiney

Book your place: Contact Angela Tynan, DLRCEB Network Co-ordinator on angela@dlrceb.ie  or by phone on 087 2235269.

Perhaps you don’t feel confident marketing your business and that’s holding you back from attracting your ideal clients and customers?

If you are in the Wicklow area, why not join me at the forthcoming Wicklow County Enterprise Board Network of Enterprising Women as I’ll be leading a workshop and covering the following:

• The three key marketing strategies that everyone entrepreneur and business owner needs to master
• Why expressing being visible and marketing your business online is critical in the age of the Internet and how to get started even if you don’t have a website
• How we can identify where we are leaving money on the table and what to do about it
• 5 actions that we can implement quickly, easily and at low cost to attract more leads to our businesses.

Date: Wednesday 21st January 2009
Venue: Marriott Druid’s Glen Hotel, Newtownmountkennedy, County Wicklow
Time: 7.30pm – 9.30pm

For more information or to book a Business Pitch or Resource Table at this meeting please contact Sinéad Buckley Quinn at sinead@wicklowceb.ie.

One Tweet that caught my attention was that of Loic Le Meur (@loic), Founder of Seesmic the online video community sent a Tweet out to correct a short code URL of a video message that had been created by Laura Fitton (@pistachio) about a networking event taking place in Boston tonight for people who have been affected with redundancy notices there this week. Here is the video:

Loic’s team must see hundreds of video’s a day – but they took the time to check Laura’s link and then Loic corrected it and notified people in his Twitter network which is how I came to see it.

I also noticed that someone had donated the venue for the event someone was donating food and it inspired me to offer my services.

So here is the deal.

I am donating 6 hours of my time between now and the end of February:

• 3 hours are for people at Laura’s event today – that is one hour for three people
• 3 hours for people here in Ireland – again one hour for three people.

THE GUIDELINES

• The gift of my career coaching/job search support is for people who are impacted with a loss of their role this month or have lost their job since the 1 December 2008 as a result of the change in the economy
• We will connect via Skype or landline for the career coaching
• We can cover anything you want to in terms of the job search – that could be your resume, your networking strategy, your online profile – what ever is the most urgent for you
• For the people at the event this evening in Boston I am leaving it to Laura to determine how those people are selected
• For people in Ireland you need to send me an email with a short paragraph about what your situation is and why you would benefit from this support now. Have your email in to me by Friday evening 16 January 2009 – I will review the emails and confirm to people who I’ll be working with next weekend. Please no time wasters – I want to give my time to people who truly need it and will make real use of it. Email me at careertuneup(at)gmail.com – not my regualar email address.

If your situation is stable, but you know other people who have been advised that they have lost their job recently, please pass this information to them.

If you have vacancies in your organisation, make sure that you spread the news through your network online and offline as some one just one, two or three degrees from you may just be the person who has the right skills and has just been impacted with announcements of job losses in their company.

And for others who are career coaches, executive coaches or have products and services that might be of value to people in a situation of job loss, perhaps you could gift some of your time or, one of your products or services to help someone out in your network.

Our networks online and offline will help us through these troubled times – I am sure of it.

By building relationships in this way you will undoubtedly benefit from being generous in spirit. As they say “one good turn deserves another”.

Building your network online through social networking platforms mirrors the good practice we know offline – yes there are guidance rules for netiquette.

One of the professional networking platforms that I recommend online that you should definitely ensure you have your profile listed at is LinkedIn.

An excellent feature that you don’t see in many online social networks is the opportunity to include LinkedIn endorsements – in other words online testimonials – from people in your network who have worked with you.

Having connected with someone online through LinkedIn, drafting and submitting your endorsement of someones work is a great way to further strengthen a relationship online.

Here are three keys to providing effective endorsements on LinkedIn:

1. Give before you ask – I was reminded of the importance of being generous and providing an endorsement to others before we ask for one ourselves when within the last few days I have received notes from people in my network requesting endorsements.A much more effective way to build rapport online in your social network would be to generously offer a testimonial to someone.That happened for me recently – someone who had met me at an event where I had been a speaker kindly wrote a LinkedIn endorsement for me. Receiving such an endorsement was such a wonderful gift to receive and believe me I now watch out for that person’s connections much more closely.And yes I did react differently to receiving an endorsement versus the requests I received for endorsements. But perhaps I am alone in that?
2. Think before you write- take time to consider what you will write in a LinkedIn endorsement. Take time to write an endorsement that will be meaningful to the people reading it and also that the person you are endorsing will really appreciate.Think about the person you are writing a LinkedIn endorsement for, their skills, capabilities, impact, personal brand and their target audience and see how you can include these in your endorsement.
3. Don’t forget Brand You- many people forget that writing a LinkedIn endorsement is an opportunity to reflect their personal expertise.Remember that the fact that you are writing a LinkedIn endorsement means that you too are on LinkedIn and that people reading the endorsement will be able to find you there online. And who knows what thiat might lead to – more clients, new career opportunities, new friendships?Take the time to craft your endorsement so that it also briefly mentions your area of focus and how that connects to the person you are endorsing. It’s a great way to reinforce your personal brand online.

Taking the time to write LinkedIn endorsements for people in your online social netowrk is definitely worth the investment.

Why not consider who you could write a testimonial or LinkedIn endorsement for in your network and perhaps take time to write one a week – I am sure that your LinkedIn network will reciprocate.

What other ideas do you have for writing effective LinkedIn endorsements?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• Read a recent article about how to choose if LinkedIn or Facebook is the right social networking platform for you
• Read a recent article about how to get the most out of your LinkedIn network
• See how I have created my LinkedIn profile for ideas on how to write your online profile

These have proved excellent events to connect to resources and advice from experts about how to start and grow your business - and of course the opportunity to network with fellow entrepreneurs.

I’m on the panel of speakers and talk about ‘Marketing On A Shoestring Budget’ so that you attract more clients and more profit.

The events are free to attend.

Here are the dates for the next events in the series (venues will be detailed as soon as they have been confirmed).

If you do plan to attend let me know – I look forward to seeing you there:

• Monaghan – Tuesday 13th May 2008 – The Westenra Arms Hotel, Monaghan
• Limerick – Tuesday 20th May 2008 – The Hlton Limerick Hotel, Ennis Road
• Wicklow – Tuesday 27th May 2008