Work Better, Not Harder

My friend and colleague Jane Veldhoven posted a blog today about the time management challenges attached to social media. From that perspective, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc. are definitely the culprits in stealing our time. It’s where the line between work and play overlap. We can spend hours online and enjoy it, but leave feeling like we’ve wasted time. Being a small business owner, that line is already easily blurred. I try to get past the guilt by thinking to myself that I just had a nice, well-deserved break, and then get on with my day. Like Jane, I like Linked In because it's all about business – so it’s easier to stay focused! Click to Tweet this Article

Put your most recent blog posts on your Linked In profile using either of these applications: They will display the title and first paragraph of your most recent blog post on your Linked In profile.  Find these apps:  from the Linked In main menu choose 'More...', then 'Application Directory'.   Click to Tweet this Article

Stay front of mind by updating your status on Linked In frequently.  Updates are the first thing that pops up on the Linked In home page for all of your contacts.  If your contacts are also clients and prospects, it's an easy way to remind them about you. Update your status with information that may be of interest to your contacts, such as website updates, new blog posts, new products, events you are attending, good books you've read, sales and promotions... you get the idea.  It takes less than a minute to update your status!   Click to Tweet this Article

I should be able to find anyone online these days.  I often search for specific people or company names to get product or contact information.  Sometimes it's fast and sometimes it's very frustrating.  Three times in the past week I failed to find websites (that I knew existed) for local companies.  What business owner doesn't want to be found? If you search my name on Google , the second entry is my Linked In profile . This leads people to a wealth of information about me and my company, including my phone number, website and blog - even if they aren't on Linked In themselves. Take advantage of this prime search ranking!  Complete your Linked In profile.  The more complete and compelling your profile is, the more people will take it seriously and visit links you have posted. Click to Tweet this Article

One problem with the current social media soup is the high noise to relevant signal ratio. The most effective way to deal with this problem is to find accepted and popular experts in your field of interest and subscribe to their feeds. This will lead you to relevant online communities from which you can find and share pertinent advice and draw new customers. This approach will work much better than broad monitoring of many social media services because it will greatly reduce the noise you will need browse and therefore, the time you need to spend building your online reputation. Click to Tweet the Article

Some of you may be blogging to drive readers to a target post of the day but for those of you blogging to have your readers browse your blog much like a magazine, you will want to make sure you are making full use of tags or labels. Tag and label tools are used to put your blog posts in category buckets that are easy to search and browse by the reader. You may want to consider adding a search tool on your front page that searches only your blog posts or a menu list already categorized with links to specific posts. The easier you make it for your reader to browse, the higher the possibility they will linger. Click to Tweet this Article

How long should a blog post be? It's a common question that has no definitive answer. Some experts recommend keeping your posts under 800 words and others, under 500. One thing we all seem to agree on is that you have a brief moment to capture the attention of your reader. They have a lot to read. We recommend keeping most of your posts under 500 words and all of them under 800. You will find you can say a lot in 800 words. (This post has only 90 words.) Click to Tweet this Article