My social media mix

BLOG

I started the Business Owners Success Club blog in 2006 to support the offline group I had.  We met during the first week of the month to work through a workbook I prepared.  By the end of the session, we would have several tasks we had each chosen to help us implement the topic in our businesses.  We met again several weeks later to check in.

We were a small, yet determined group.

The blog started on WordPress. I moved it to Blogspot because Blogspot supports business blogs more. At that time there was talk about WordPress booting you if you were too commercial.  That’s an oversimplification and unclear remembering.

I moved back to WordPress just over a year ago.  I missed some of the functionality such as pages.  The migrations were smooth.

Sidenote: While speaking with Mitch Joel he suggested people should post a forwarding final post after moving.  I finally did it yesterday.  It should be a given so you don’t leave orphan blogs hanging.

I like the blog for the ability to keep making changes and for the ability to have lots of content.

TWITTER

I love twitter.  It’s fast and fun.  It’s all about who you follow.  If you follow people who talk about breakfast, that’s what you will get.  I follow people who talk about business, Nova Scotia, wines and foods. You must treat twitter like a stream that you dip into when you want to and the rest of the time let it flow by unseen.

I had my twitter feed going to Facebook, but that stopped with the recent changes.  I may re instate it, although, maybe not.  I’d prefer to be able to direct tweets to my pages and even choose which pages.  It’s still going to LinkdIn.

I use Tweetdeck with a column each for the Twitter Feed, Facebook News Feed and Twitter mentions.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is how I stay in touch these days and follow what my friends are up to.  I like how it has made life into a long never-ending conversation.  Hitting the like button is the same as smiling at a friend when she tells you something.

I have 3 pages.  One for the Business Owners Success Club where I post bits of relevant articles, videos etc about our current topics.  I have a page for a company I started with some friends.  We stalled with it, but I still want to explore the viability of the idea.  I’m working on that.  I just started a page for Crystal Clear Bookkeeping Ltd.  Crystal Clear has a real website, and I would like to have the ability to post on the fly – especially local business events.

I have been posting local events on this blog, but I’m thinking I want to tie them to my bookkeeping business and keep this as a cyber space located club.

SKYPE

I’m one of those people who just don’t like using the telephone, but I love Skype.  It is synchronous and (sortof) asynchronous; it is written, spoken and visual.  It is my communications tool of choice.  It is what has made our online, international book club with invited authors possible.  It’s the only way I communicate with my brother in Bulgaria. It’s how I joined Linchpins in Japan and Pakistan on Linchpin day.

NING

My first experience with Ning was with Triiibes, Seth Godins online community.  We started at 3000 and have grown to, I think we’re up to 16,000.  We’re a group of like-minded people from all over the world.  We’ve met in New York (twice, I made it to the second one in Jan’10).  We’re meeting in Slovenia in May’11 (please let me make it happen).  It’s a safe place to explore ideas and share ourselves.

The platform is not perfect, the search feature isn’t, really.  But someone always seems to be able to find the relevant bits when we need them.  It’s a great way for people to communicate in a closed password-protected environment.

I started another Ning with my Mastermind group, but it didn’t really go anywhere and we let it slide when they started charging.

LINKEDIN

I’m on LinkedIn, but I’m not sure I get this yet.  I have found it helpful in finding people and getting in touch with them.  I feel like I’m not sure how to go about this one, yet.

SQUIDOO

Seth Godin started this a while ago.  I have a couple of lenses on there: One about Business Books and one about Financial SMARTS.  The idea is that you create a space that aggregates info about a specific topic.  There are some pretty cool features about the way you can make it work.

EVENTBRITE

I have used Eventbrite for events.  I also use the event feature of Facebook and I send emails.  What that means is that often there are a few people responding in each place and it looks like there aren’t that many people coming.

Eventbrite is a great tool for registrations for events.

DOLPHIN PULSE

This is a new sharing site being created by a friend in Triiibes.  Looks like it will be great for managing teams and projects.  Given that my words for this year are Collaborate and Venture, this should be great!  More to follow as Mark roll sit out.

WHAT’S NEXT?

My current frustration is that I am gathering all sorts of resources for our monthly topics here and I don’t have a searchable place to put them to make them available and easy to find.  I’d also like to gather resources from you.  I’d like us to be able to respond and vote about them so the best find their way to the top.  Any suggestions?

I’d like our Club of Business Owners who want Success to discuss more.  Discussion helps to make ideas relevant and actionable in your business.   What do you think?  I’d start us a Ning if I thought you wanted it and you would get value from it.

As you can see, this is still a work in progress.  I’m not afraid to just get in there and try things.  I make adjustments as I go.

What have you found that works well?  What could I do here that would help you the most?  What would you like to try next?

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