Where's Juli?
Upcoming Events
Netmasters Training Group
Cancelled for this month because of the holidays.
Join us when we start up again in January. The topic will be creating an effective networking marketing plan for 2010.
Have an awesome holiday season!
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I'm Blogging Now!Stop by my blog and check out more news and tips about networking. Feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear what you think. |
Juli Monroe
1 to 1 Discovery
571-220-1891
juli@1to1Discovery.com
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Who is Juli?
At a recent networking event, I won an hour free consultation on my email newsletter.She had some excellent suggestions. One was adding a shameless self-promotion section. (No, that's not what she called it.) So here it is. Who am, and what do I do? I'm a networking coach. I help small business owners build their business through referrals and word of mouth marketing. I also work with clients who want to integrate their face to face networking and social media efforts. Know anyone who needs me? Please pass on this newsletter. Thanks! Who was the consultant who gave me the advice? Jeanne Jennings. Check her out! |
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Greetings!
Apologies to Bilbo Baggins. He had it good. All he had to worry
about was answering a few riddles to avoid being eaten. We have to keep
up with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, Bing and Blog. (Is it just
me, or could those last three be dwarves?)
Seriously, though, social media, like the Internet and email, can
expand to fill all available time and space. So how do you use the
tools and still get work done?
Read on to find out.
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Taking Back Your Time With Social Media
The first step in managing your social media is having a clear goal
for engaging it. And no, "Because the media (or my coach) told me I had
to" is not an appropriate goal.
Let me illustrate the process using myself as an example. I started
in social media with the goal of learning about it and how it worked.
Clients were asking me questions, and "I haven't got a clue" was
wearing thin as an answer.
As I researched, I developed a new goal. As
some of you know, I have been writing a book on networking, and when it
is published, I'll need to market it. Social media will give me a much
wider reach than face to face networking alone.
So, two goals: Learn the media. Build a following for when my book is published.
Then I needed to explore tools. I was already on Facebook and
LinkedIn, so those were easy. I decided to add Twitter and a blog.
Twitter was generating the most questions from clients, and a blog
allowed me to get my voice on-line. I could add value and generate
interest in me as a writer. Besides, Twitter and a blog dovetail nicely.
Goal and tools. Now for strategy. Give back, add value, build a fan
base and followers. Why those? Social media is just like face to face
networking in that you have to start by planting seeds before you need
them. How do you plant seeds in face to face networking? Give back, add
value, meet new people and have a good message. So I figured the same
strategy would work in social media, and so far I've been proven right.
That's the basic process you need to work through before you
engage in social media. Now how does it affect how you spend your time?
Again, I'll use myself as an example.
I skim a lot of the content that streams by. I'm looking for a few
things: interesting topics to pass on or retweet, cool people to follow
and stuff I'm interested in.
Things that jump out at me? Networking,
iPhone, social media, netbooks, economic news, small biz advice and
funny stuff. Posts on these topics are most
likely to meet my strategic needs of finding interesting people or
content to pass on.
I also look for the names or avatars of people I know often post good stuff. My eye will slow down when I scan past them.
Do I miss stuff by scanning? Sure, but I can't take the time to read
in detail everything that goes by. I'm pretty ruthless to stick to the
topics or people who will advance my goals. Everyone else goes by at
top speed.
That probably raises the question of how do I decide who to follow?
I follow people who are likely to advance my goals. And if someone I
start following doesn't post things of interest to me, I drop them.
That puts me firmly in the camp of someone who does not auto-follow
everyone who follows me. It's a choice I made, and others make a
different choice, but I made it to be true to my goals and strategy.
If you follow me, you probably notice that I tweet in bursts. That's
because I find blocks of time to engage. I deliberately plan to get to
meetings 15-20 minutes early. Then I pull up Twitterrific
on my iPhone and scan my stream. I abuse the "favorite" function to
mark things to review later on the computer. Scanning is easy on the
phone. I can burn through 100-150 tweets in 15 minutes. Actually
reading content is much faster on the computer, and that's part of how
I manage my time.
I turned off the "notify by email" function when I am followed or
direct messaged. Until I did that, I was wasting a ton of time reading
and deleting those emails. No more!
I only check who is following me a couple of days a week. In the
early days, I checked several times a day and scanned for who to follow
back. Now I've learned that the great majority of people who follow me
are bots who will unfollow me in 24 hours or less. Fine, I didn't want
to waste my time with them anyway. Waiting for them to unfollow me
saves time. Oddly enough, my rate of actual follower accumulation has
increased, not decreased since I started that.
And I review regularly who I am following. If someone is wasting my
time, I unfollow. My time is precious. No need to waste any of it.
That's how I do it. I'd love to hear how you do it, so don't hesitate to email me with your best social media time management tips. If I get some good ones, I'll feature them in an upcoming blog post!
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 What to Say?
A good elevator speech is crucial to effective networking. And its not just useful in networking groups. It's always good to be comfortable with speaking about yourself.
My holiday gift this year is a special deal on elevator speeches. My usual price for developing a speech is $200. During November and December, I'll discount that to $150. Interested? Contact me!
Please forward this newsletter to anyone who might need the information, or my services.
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