In each of us, absent of pay and all other things when it comes to deciding who and where we want to work, if you allow yourself to think about  one company you would like to work for one day, you probably have a name of one company in mind. For me, and for a long time, I always imagined that it must be fun to work or Google. Being in the real estate industry, I figured they must have a real estate search division or department.

What I picture when I think about Google is the open or Laissez-fair  atmosphere that allows people to be creative. I think about how they are said to allow their employees to:  

• study foreign languages
• do laundry between meetings
• exercise
• ride a scooter on the Googleplex grounds
• come to work late and stay late if they want too all the while expecting for their employees to meet deadlines
• collaborating in a big group
• being part of something that will change the world for ever
• being able to pitch an off the wall idea

It doesn’t matter if any of the above is true. What matters is that it’s what I imagine to be true and the neat thing about LinkedIn is that you can target and attempt to get to know the people who work for your dream company.

Everyone knows that if you are looking for employment, you should join LinkedIn and promote yourself. Your LinkedIn profile is your on-line resume; it could even be the same one that you have saved on your desktop, except your LinkedIn profile is public to your network or public to everyone, depending on your settings. It’ a very easy way to say, “I’m open for business!”

More importantly, you can ask your superiors or colleagues to provide recommendations or references for your work in real time and accept or deny their feedback; you can state your preferences for why you are on LinkedIn and what you are loofing for; you can search job listings with advance features and apply immediately. You can do so much more, but only if you try.

In fact, what I like about LinkedIn and it is a back door strategy to seeking employment, is the ability to target a company or the people who work for a specific company by joining groups that the company or members of the company sponsors or hosts. This will affords you the opportunity to network with your dream company’s employees in real time.

LinkedIn limits the number of cold contacts you can connect with for free account holders. However, members of LinkedIn sometimes show what groups they are apart of by displaying their group badges or logos on their profile. You can use this information to target people you’d like to get to know!  

You’d be surpised how open minded people are when it comes to networking on LinkedIn. Given your circumstances, reaching out to the people who work for your dream company and showing your interests in their company or simply keeping up with the company’s buzz or trend, can be a deciding factor on who gets the first or second interview when a job opening comes up.

In some case, jobs will be posted in groups, and if you have your daily group’s digest set to send you an one email a day of the group’s activities, you’ll be ahead of the curve.

If you are aware of more ways to leverage your LinkedIn profile, please share them with us in the comment section below.

Until next time, happy networking!

I was speaking at a local MeetUp last week and I found that one of the major difference between Facebook and LinkedIn is a gallery versus a apps like slideshare, which is as close to a having the ability to upload media files as you can get on LinkedIn. 

I am making good use of my slideshare app by featuring the properties that are for sale. I simply uploading PDF files of individual property flyers, which affords me the opportunity to post links to my slideshare on my other sites thereby redirecting traffic to my listings. This  strategy, along with 15 other web or on-line marketing strategies that I am proficient in, generally makes my clients (sellers) happy.

I use SlideShare to promote my properties with my sphere of influence or centers of influence, and the real question is how can you use this app to promote yourself or your biz in a polite, not so pushy way? Or if you are going for pushy, that’s ok too assuming your target audience expects it.

One of the thoughts I had and you can steal it if you like is to take your hand-written testimonials, scan each one as PDF files and upload them for all to see.

As a Weichert, Realtors agent, my company sends out customer satisfaction surveys after each closing and based on my client’s comments, I get that warm and fuzzy feeling knowing I did a good job, a job good enough to share with my biz contacts.

Don’t be shy to toot your own horn. LinkedIn is the place to showcase or brag about yourself, right? 

On LinkedIn, You SHOULD show your expertise, work history and awards with customers, past or present clients, furture partners or colleague buddies.  

Lots to do On LinkedIn. Slideshare in one app that makes self-promotion a snap.  

FYI: Here’s a list of the Filetypes that are supported with SlideShare.

• Presentations: ppt, pptx, pps, ppsx, pdf, odp, potx, key (Keynote 09 only).
• Apple Keynote (05,06,08)-upload as zip or pdf
• Documents & Spreadsheets: doc, docx, rtf, xls, odt, ods & pdf.
• Keynote and Office 2007 users save as pdf or ppt/doc.

So what are you waiting for? Upload those written testimonials today and share with your network.

LinkedIn Know How: Top 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your LinkedIn Account for Intermediate and Advance Users

So you’re on LinkedIn like 43 million other users and you set up your profile; You’ve connected with some friends or co-workers; You’ve been recommended and given recommendations, and you might be wondering to yourself. . . What am I suppose to do next or as Jason Alba puts it: Now What?  

The following are 5 ways to get the most out of your LinkedIn account for intermediate and advance users.

1.       Profile Must Haves:  

A.      Set your profile settings to public and attached as many email addresses as you can to your account, including inactive email addresses. One of the main reasons to be on LinkedIn is to be found. If you worked at Barnes and Noble in college and your email address then was aperez@bn.com, yet you on longer work there, you want others who might be searching for you based on your old BN account to find you even if it is an inactive account. 

B.    Customized URL: When you first set up your LinkedIn profile, your profile contains unique characters and numbers to help to indentify your profile. In this case, a unique profile URL is easier to remember and searchable on major search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. http://www.linkedin.com/in/angieperez

C.    Be Personal Yet Professional: People buy People before they buy products and services. Your profile should have a professional photo of you and it should give a little insight into your likes so that other people have an easier time connecting with you.

Example: If you have a blog, instead of using the common label My Blog, rename it to something specific as My Blog about Spiders. The same is true for your website. Instead of using the common label, My Website, choose other and give it a unit title maybe even the business name or functions of business.

D.    Keywords and Phrases: It is important to populate your profile with the words or phrases in which people might search for you or your business on-line so that they can find you on the first page of major search engines. For a monthly fee, LinkedIn will promote your profile.

E.    Detailed Contact Settings: Add a business number to your profile along with acceptable times to call in case people want to connect with you immediately. Also, choose as many contact options as apply. Contact setting should be updated periodically. If you have a job that you dislike and you are looking for employment, you should only select career opportunities when you are ready to make that information public. But, if you have a job that you love, don’t select it. It could send mixed messages about your true intentions regarding your LinkedIn membership.

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch

2.       Use Introductions to get to know other people and ask your first tier or 1^st degree connections to make introductions for you with a specific reason in mind. You can also send your connection’s profiles to other people on LinkedIn as a way to reciprocate the networking experience.

1^st Degree connections are people who know your email address and name.

2^nd Degree connections are friends of friends.

3^rd Degree connections are friends of friends of friends. 

3.       Use LinkedIn to search for employment and collaboration opportunities, but use your level of degrees to get to know the hiring manager i.e. ask for an introduction or several introductions to get to the decision maker .

4.       Groups, Answers and Events: Social networking must haves.

Look for groups with lots of prospects.

Ex: Realtors might join groups with buyer and seller leads: Homeowners Associations, Realtor Referral Groups, Investing Clubs, Mortgage Services, local networking groups. If you are a member of a group ask the admin to become a manager and lead a subgroup that meets in person. Participate in discussions, posts news articles and links of interests within the group get to know members within your group.  

Answers: Post questions and give feedback on topics that demonstrate your expertise. Set up RSS feeds for Answers/questions that interest you. Average turnaround time for responses is 24 hours or one business day.

Events: Post and invite contacts to various events to get more exposure for you or your biz. Or attend events that might interests you.

5.       LinkedIn is a long term networking strategy. It is supplemental to your networking habits and should not replace face to face networking. In fact, LinkedIn should enhance your ability to connect or reconnect with new and old contacts. But, with all things in life, you have to give or share in order to receive. Be willing to share your expertise and offer advice and help where applicable and within reason so that you can build trust and fruitful business relationships.

If you are a member of Facebook and a small business owner, which you might be since you are reading this blog about social media marketing and networking, you know full well that there are 200 million users of Facebook and still growing. That’s what I call a captive audience and a great place to advertise your business locally. Sounds good in theory, but the reality might surprise you.

Yesterday, I was updating my FB page, minding my own business, and I actually saw an ad that looked interesting enough to click on. It said,

“Weichert Agents, if you are unhappy with your income, click here and find out how much more you can make with RE/Max.” 

Hmm, I am a Weichert agent and more money in a struggling economy sounds good, so I clicked. Long story short, the page that I saw next was of a broker in Maryland offering free lunch to agents that were thinking about jumping ship, which as a New Jersey resident, I’m not going to be selling houses in MD anytime soon. Wasted Money, Maybe? Or Maybe, not.  

As a Small Business Owner and a Social Media Mentor/Internet Marketer, I contacted the broker and I wanted him to know his ads where not targeting the “right” audience.

He’s reply:  

“Hi Angie,

Thanks for the feedback on our ad. I’m more than a little frustrated with the Facebook ad. I actually targeted the ad to Weichert agents within 10 miles of my city, Gaithersburg, MD. Unfortunately, Facebook seems to have displayed the ad to folks as far away as Kansas. I will contact them to see what I can do about that.”

And as a good sales person, the broker that contacted me offered to connect me with a broker, a Re/Max broker in New Jersey. (Not buying at this time. I love Weichert! Weichert has been good to me all these years-no need for a change of pace).

In any case, Facebook sells a good story and tells unsuspecting SBOs that they can target the “right” audience, and even have setting features to give the impression that your ads will be targeted, but in actuality, your ads could be fallen on the wrong eyes. Would it be fair to say that Facebook Ads Suck when you specify a specific radius?

I am a commuter. I drive 45 minutes to and from work on the Garden State Parkway, Turnpike among other NJ highways and I see amazing things almost daily, especially on the road.

Just this last week, as I was running late to meet a client, I got stuck in traffic, which is an natural occurance in New Jersey. If you live in Jersey, you can come to expect that traffic will be apart of  your daily life.

What was interesting to me is not so much the traffic itself that I experienced the other day, but what was cause of the traffic. 

As you may have guess it: an accident of some sort and what amazes me day in and day out is that people no matter how big or small of an accident is it, people will slow down to take notice. If it’s something really amazing, they take it one step further and talk about it at home or to friends or just about anyone because it’s top of them for them and they need to talk about it NOW. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to have that kind of amazing happening for your business? Is it possible to generate your own kind of amazing? Hmm, yeah. Ever heard of Twitter? Most people just don’t get Twitter and it’s ok. You don’t know why you slow down to look at an accident either, yet you do it because it’s amazing. Twitter is something amazing. They took 140 characters and they showed people how they can keep up with each other’s lives with short, sometimes frequent updates which bascially answer the one question you’ve probably heard before: What are you doing?

One question and 7 million users a year and a half later, you have what you have now: A frenzy.

What can I use twitter for? Should I be Twittering? What’s the big deal about Twitter? 

The answers to the above questions lay in what you make of what you share; how much you share and how often you share it. Share what makes you amazing today in one tweet or two and reach out to someone new and you too will be Amazing!

Last week I discovered that too many updates on facebook or twitter could get you blacklisted.

I never knew how annoying I might be until I accepted a friend request on Facebook of someone I met on Twitter. I can’t use real names, but I follow all types of people: Small business owners, MLMers, Realtors, internet marketing guru’s, business coaches, NJ residents, news. . .all types. I became friends with someone that I befriended on facebook. Well, it turns out that his twitter and facebook account are synced. Each time he updates twitter, he’s update changes on Facebook. He was tweeting what felt like 24 hours a day.

I was essentially getting too many of his updates on my facebook page, which meant that his updates were clogging or taking the place of my other friend’s updates. I was more or less unsure of what to do. 

I have the same set up (my twitter and facebook account are syncd) and since I tweet a alot, I can only imagine how annoying I might be.

I did not approach my twitter friend since he might be tweeting to an audience that respects the amount of information he shares. I, on the other hand, did the next best thing. I blacklisted him. I simply removed his updates from my feeds using the Hide, then the REMOVED button that appear next to each facebook update.

This got me thinking: Are my updates reaching the right audience? How many updates per day is healthy before my friends get turned off? Have I been removed from someone’s update stream?

Since I am the type that likes to respond to other people’s blogs, I wholeheartedly believe that blogging is a form of networking. As a small business owner, real estate agent/independent contractor, I am always looking for ways to generate new client leads. One of the ways that I meet people is that I blog about networking, marketing, business sales, salesmanship, real estate and my life experiences.

Unfortunately though, I sell a product that requires people to have a down-payment, good credit, and a commitment to owning a home for a period of time, which is often 30 years, but you and I know that 30 is not really 30 years; most people own a home maybe 7-10 years if that in some cases. In any case, I sell something that I did not make. I sell an experience and my ability to research and match people with their wants and needs. 

The fruits of networking for me, sometimes takes long to sprout. So, I look at blogging as a way to increase my credibility and service my existing clientele as much as it can be a way to capture new clients. Oftentimes, potential clients will want to buy or sell a home, but they are not ready to do so at that minute or within weeks or months or years for that matter. As I blog and my prospects continue to visit or revisit my blogsite, I end up building a relationship that already has trusts established, which allows me to forgo the initial building rapport period, the getting to know you conversation that I often have with new clients because I already had so much interaction with the said prospect on my blog or other forms communications (text, email, greeting cards, etc).

So, even for someone like me that has a product that when bought or sold, the opportunity to resell something to same client doesn’t take place for a number of years after the initial sale, I can use blogging as a way to build a relationship with readers.

Yes, I read all of my comments. I visit other people’s urls when it’s connected to their name’s or comments on my blog. It’s not a lot of hard work at this time since I am new to blogging and my readership/comments are not many. And yes, I have to weed through some of the spam that I get like escort services, Viagra, how to make money doing blank, blank, blank. I use one or two wordpress plug-ins to minimize some of the SPAM and I respond back to the comments that seem genuine to engage my readers.

Then, I often ask my prospects for other contact information when I feel like the time is right. I add their contact info to my contact management or marketing systems; On twitter, I will follow them.  Tweets, re-tweets or DM them; On Facebooka nd Linkedin, I connect with them. On constant contact, I add them to a specific contact list. I try to send me one or two pieces of mail once a year; I call them to touch bases during calls sessions or face to face appointments when appropriate, I build my list and categorized people according to buying types.

Blogging is one way to build your list, but in order to see real results, you have to be committed to blogging on a regular basis i.e. 1 a day, 3 times a week, or even weekly. People are creatures of habit and if you want to develop a readership habit, you have to write new content often enough to get the type of results that leads to relationships and then sales.

Don’t take my word for it. Try it and let me know your results.

Until Next Time!

We are working on our list and will update it accordingly. Feel free to suggest an app or tool to add to our list. Contact us @referralteams on Twiter if you’d like to develop a tool or app for tweetpoints.com or tweetcussion.com. We’re itching to do something cool based on the latter domain names.

1. http://www.grouptweet.com  Allows you to post private message to a group of Twitter friends.
2. http://www.tweetdeck.com Allows you to manage your @replies, Direct Messages, and searches in columns among other things like shortening urls, it comes with spell check and allows you to shorten tweet updates. It’s a dashboard that even allows you to see your facebook updates. 
3. http://www.tweetchat.com  With this tool you are able to create rooms in Twitter to ‘chat’ about a particular topic.
4. http://www.tweetcube.com:  Allows you to share files on Twitter. Simple as that. Blast out your images, videos, music and more with just a couple of clicks, and your files are automatically posted on Twitter.
5. http://www.Twitpic.com: Share pictures on Twitter using Twitpic.
6. http://www.whoshouldifollow.com : Find interesting people to follow on Twitter using this tool.
7. http://happytweets.com : Allows you to find out how happy your Tweets are.
8. http://twitterless.com: This tool enables you to be informed when people stop following you, available in graph form as well.
9. http://twictionary.pbworks.com : a dictoinary for words associated with twitter.
10. Http://www.tweetlater.com : Productivity tools for busy tweeple.
11. http://www.postlater.com/ Goes beyond Twitter updates, but offers a Twitter userability.
12. MrTweet.net: You can explain who you recommend and why in 140 characters to less. It shows your appreciation when you recommend people and adds to your reputation when others recommend you.
13. TweetEffect.com Find out which one of your twitter updates made people follow or leave you.
14. Twitteranalyzer.com Before choosing to follow someone, find out how big is there reach, what do they tweet about most offten or even how often do they tweet, plus much more. You can also use tool to learn more about you or what others see when they analyze you.
15. TwitterforBusyPeople.com Catch a one tweet glance of all the people you follow. If you’re a busy bee, this is one sure fire way for get at your followees quick. . .And prevent the tweethogs from pushing down the less active tweeples. 
16. Twellow.com – the easiest method for finding other Twitter users in your local community. Simply search for your city and state and it will display everyone who has that city and state as their ‘Location.’
17. Tweetie  from the app store is an app like tweetdeck. If you are using tweetie from your iphone or itouch, you can locate tweeple near you, maintain more than one account, and easyto manage when you are tweeting from your mp3 player or phone.
18. What’s your Tweet Worth Allows you to get a feel what your twitter account is worth. It comes with badges you can post on your other sites.
19. Twittad is an app where advertisers can purchase your Twitter background!
20. Twitter Search  the most useful thing about Twitter is knowing what people are saying about a particular topic or your business. Last week, I tweeted about how Comcast’s customer service sucks and in minutes I got an @ reply with an appology and a promise to improve their customer service. It was from a Comcast Customer Service Rep. I was impressed. I didn’t realize they were listening and monitoring Twitter tweets.
21. Bit.ly is similar but better than tinyurl.com. Bit.ly shortens long URL’s so you can fit links into your tweets. However, this service also tracks the clicks from those links so you can see the results of your tweets.
22. TwInbox is a add-in for Microsoft Outlook. It seamlessly integrates Twitter into Outlook. Send and receive tweeter messages (tweets), archive, manage, define searches based on user or keywords, post photos to TwitPic, send email attachments and more.  

 

 

A Definitive Guide to Marketing on Twitter: Exploit The Power Of The Most Popular Social Network Online..

So I attend formal and informal networking events purposefully to grow my sphere of influence. I collect business cards from the individuals I meet at most events and pass out cards as well. Most networking events are 3-4 hours.

Some Events follow this track:
30 minutes to 1 hour of pre-networking
30 second around the room introductions
1 hour presentation based on group theme or some biz topic
Then, more networking.

All the while, you are looking for potential clients, partnerships, referral sources; you’re looking for the opportunities. You are looking to build relationships with people you may have never met before in 3-4 hours or less.

I read so many articles online about what to do at these events and how to remember some-one’s name; how to create and deliver your elevator pitch, how to build rapport in 30 seconds or less, which are all important topics, but I believe wholeheartedly that your ability to follow-up is just as important as how you introduce yourself and what you say and do at the event.

Follow-Up is in some cases is the most important aspect of networking. Why? Well, the average person on any given day is exposed to more than 100 ads from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. And we are not counting what people read and see in emails, tweets or facebook updates or simply surfing online. The same though is true for when people attend networking advents. As much as you like to think and say to yourself that you are not advertising your services; you are there to make meaning connections… you ARE still a walking and talking billboard for your product or services.

The real question is how often do people have to be exposed to you or your business before they buy into you? How do you get them to buy into you? How do you follow-up smart so that you get into their mind first?

But there are so many different ways to follow-up smart that you have to develop a track i.e. a system that you can follow.

I personally follow the following track to follow-up smart with various clients:

1. Whenever I meet someone, I immediately give them a label: Referral partner, future client, vendor of blank, etc.

2. I take the 30 or so people that I’ve meet and I add their contact information to several CRM or contact management systems that I maintain. Yes, I use more than one because I take information and send it from different sources.

3. I choose 3-6 people to follow-up with immediately. I couldn’t possible target more than 3 personally because of my schedule. Your schedule might allow it.

4. I call my 3-6 contacts several days if not hours after the networking event to meet up and discuss more business or get to know one another. I try to get face to face as often as I can as soon as I can so that I can determine if and how we might be able to mutually benefit each other.

5. If we can’t meet in person, I set up a phone conversation. You might be tempted to have that phone conversation at the time of your initial contact and it can be done this way, but it is better to have a full 10-15 minute conversation with your questions thought out and your notebook or journal out in front of you. Yes, I keep notes of who I speak to; when I speak to them; what did I say and I make notations on when to follow up next because I can forget very easily what comes next or what I intended to do after that meet up or phone conversation. I’m busy and need to keep track of these things so that I am more productive.

6. If appropriate, I add my contact to my email marketing campaign. I send emails on the same day and time periodically so that my contact gets exposed to me with some predictability.

7. I call again. I text if appropriate.

8. I send out a hand written notes or something personal just to distinguish myself.

9. I call and email. I call and ask how can I be of service to them?

10. I attend another networking event where that person is going to be.

11. I call again, more notes, more emails.

12. All of the while, I might add them to my facebook contacts or follow them on twitter or subscribe to their youtube channel, visit or post feedback on their blogs. . .I look for ways to get connect with them through social media, which is cost effective and fast.

I keep at it until I’ve created a contact for life and a list of names to market to later. I keep at it: Calls, emails, notes, gifts, social media, connect, connect, connect.

But, you have to have a system and even though the above track works for me, you have to find one that matches what you do and what you know how to do best.

How many ads are you expose to daily: http://www.aaaa.org/eweb/upload/FAQs/adexposures.pdf

You too can make money Blogging! Find Out More Here.

My words of wisdom are limited to one liners from movies. I am a movie watcher. I can watch the same movie over and over again and see something different each time. I remember the words and phrases that are uttered by the characters that keep me sane in an insane world. You can’t wake up with inspiration and motivation everyday, but once you turn on something inspirational and motivational, your mood and deameanor can change in a blink of an eye.

•  “Live long and prosper”
• “What you do in this lifetime, echoes in eternity”  
•  “The force is always with you
•  “Take only what you need to survive”
•   Mama always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.’”
•  “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
•  “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
• “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
•  “Say hello to my little friend!”
•  “No one puts Baby in a corner!” NOOBODDY!
• “You had me at “hello.”
• “Get busy living, or get busy dying”