Organized Assistant » social media

Are Your Tweets Timely?

Janet — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:51:09 +0000

Twitter is a great tool for busy professionals whose schedules often keep them from attending live networking events. You can take part in conversations at whatever time best suits you, even if the other parties aren’t online at the same time as you. Although convenient, this is not without its drawbacks. The most obvious is that you can’t answer time-sensitive questions. If someone is looking for a restaurant in Pittsburgh that’s open at 11:00 PM on Sunday night, they aren’t likely to welcome your suggestion on Monday morning, even if you know where they can get the Best Cheesecake Ever. A second problem arises if your followers aren’t online when you post your best content. Of course, it will still be there when they log in, but they might not go back far enough in their feed to see your posts, especially if they’re following a large number of people and don’t use Formulists or another way of organizing the people they follow. The situation is compounded if you like to post a lot of retweets and/or links to other content. I’m very sorry, but if I go into my Twitter account and see 10 or more tweets in a row from you, chances are I’m not going to look at any of them, unless I am a rabid fan. There might be some really good stuff there, but I’ll probably miss it, just because you’ve flooded my newsfeed. Fortunately, none of these challenges are insurmountable. In the case of the time-sensitive question, don’t assume it’s too late for you to answer. You can always ask if they found what they were looking for. Even if they did, or if they no longer need it, they’ll probably appreciate your asking, and you never know where a conversation might lead. Much to my delight, I’ve recently discovered a solution for the second problem as well. Timely is an online tool that analyzes your last 199 tweets, determines when you tend to get the most engagement, and suggests the best times for you to tweet based on those results. If you use a service like HootSuite or TweetDeck, you can use those results to schedule your tweets to be posted at that those times, even if by then you’ll be busy with your client or tucked in for the night. You can even take things a step further, and create a Timely account. Choose how many posts you want to make per day (1, 2, 5 or 9) and whether or not you wish to schedule tweets on weekends. Then, instead of typing your tweet into the Twitter site or your usual app, enter it in Timely, and it will be scheduled for publication at the time when it’s likely to have the most impact. There’s even a bookmarklet available, so when you’re reading a great blog post that you want to share with your followers, you just click on the bookmarklet and it will "create a Timely" with the title and URL for the page you’re on. Simply edit it to incorporate your own words and any hashtags you want to include, and add it to your queue. For every tweet you post using Timely, you can see how many people clicked on your link, who retweeted it, and the potential reach as a result. You can even add multiple Twitter accounts and multiple users! I think it’s pretty amazing for a free service, but there’s a pro version available for $9.99 more if you’d like priority email support. I still use TweetDeck for sending replies, but am beginning to use Timely more and more for my regular tweets. My followers benefit, because they’re more likely to see the valuable content I share, and they’re not getting it all at one time, and I benefit from the increased engagement and exposure. It seems to be a win-win situation! For more tips on using Twitter to grow your business, check out my Basic Guide to Networking on Twitter.

3 Ways to Attract Readers to Your Blog

Janet — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:52:39 +0000

When we asked our readers to identify their biggest blogging challenge, the number one answer was “attracting readers.” It can be very discouraging to spend valuable time researching a topic and writing what you think is an amazing post, then to get no comments, retweets, or other indications that anyone even read it. Sometimes it’s enough to make you wonder why you’re blogging at all! Before you throw in the towel, ask yourself the following questions. 1. Do you blog strategically? Is your blog about you and your interests, or do you consider the type of information that your target market is looking for? When you answer your ideal client’s most pressing questions, using terminology they can relate to, you stand a much better chance of them finding your blog and sticking around to read it. 2. Do you read and comment on other blogs? Do you know what blogs are popular with your target audience? If not, find out! If you do, make a point of reading them as well. Leave comments that demonstrate your subject knowledge, without giving a sales pitch. Most blogs allow you to include a link back to your own blog, and people who see value in your comments will often click through to explore what you have written. 3. Do you take advantage of social media? After you’ve spent time and effort to write a new blog post, don’t just put it up there and hope someone notices! Promote your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media sites that are popular with your target audience. Even if you only use Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family, it’s a great way to make sure they’re aware of what it is that you do and how you can help the people they know. Make it easy for others to promote your content by taking advantage of one or more of the many social sharing tools that are available. I’ll be expanding on these strategies and more in my session on Blogging: Beyond the Basics at the POC 2011 National Conference in Toronto this November, and I hope to see you there! In the meantime, please let me know how I can help you with your blogging strategy. What is YOUR biggest blogging challenge?

How Much Time Should I Spend on Marketing?

Janet — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:27:35 +0000

After engaging Organized Assistant to help her implement her blogging and social media strategy, a professional organizer asked me how much time she should plan to devote to these activities. This is such an important question that I decided to answer it here on my blog. To begin with, let's look at marketing as a whole. Regardless of whether you've just become a professional organizer or you've been at it for years, and whether your organizing business is your full-time career or a part-time venture while you work at another job, attend school, or care for your young children, marketing is an essential activity that needs to be scheduled on an ongoing basis. When you're in the start-up phase of your business, you should be spending nearly all of your working hours on marketing activities. If your greatest priority is working with clients, and your available time slots aren't filled, then you need to put forth every effort to filling them! As your business grows, you will obviously need to cut back the time you spend on marketing so you can serve your clients, but never make the mistake of thinking you're too busy for marketing. If you fail to keep promoting your business during busy periods, once things settle down, you may find yourself with no clients lined up, and back at square one again! My recommendation is that you devote a minimum of 20% of your working hours to marketing your organizing business. By that, I don't mean you should be spending 8 or more hours a week on social media alone. Websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be valuable marketing tools, but should not be your only resource. People are much more likely to do business with you after they've had the opportunity to know, like, and trust you. Although this can be accomplished online, if your primary service is providing in-person organizing services in homes or businesses, or live training in the form of presentations, seminars, or workshops, you need to spend a good portion of your marketing time attending local networking events. Social media sites can then become a tool for staying in touch with the people you've met in person and for connecting with other people in your area that you can then invite to events you're attending. You might find it easiest if you set aside one day or two half-days for marketing every week. To make the most of this time, plan your activities in advance. On different occasions they may include attending business networking events, writing blog posts, posting to your social media profiles, engaging with others on social networks, updating your website, and designing flyers or other materials. As your business grows, it might become challenging to fit all of these activities into your calendar. When that happens, it may be time to think about delegating some of them to Organized Assistant so that you can focus on what you do best! How much time do YOU spend on marketing?

What Do You Do When Someone Retweets You?

Janet — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:37:22 +0000

When you're getting started on Twitter, your first goal is to attract followers. After all, what's the good of saying brilliant things if no one is listening? What's just as exciting as getting your first few followers is the first time someone likes one of your tweets enough to pass it on to their followers in the form of a retweet. Being retweeted is a great ego boost, but there are much greater benefits than that. For one thing, a retweet confirms that what you've said is interesting or valuable to someone else and gives you an indication of the type of tweets you should continue to post. Even better, when your message is retweeted, your audience is no longer restricted to your own followers, but opens up to include the followers of the person who posted the retweet. With each person who reads your retweeted message, there's the possibility that they'll decide to follow you as well, to click through to your website, or to subscribe to your blog. Any of these actions may ultimately lead to product sales or other business opportunities. Some of those people may decide to retweet the message as well, expanding your reach even farther - an excellent example of viral marketing at work. If you have good manners, and I'm sure you do, you'll want to thank your retweeters for sharing your message with their network. There are many different opinions about the best way to do that. I recently read a post by Shea Bennett, Co-editor of AllTwitter: The Unofficial Twitter Resource on this very topic. In response to the question, Should You Thank For Retweets?, he says

No. Almost never, in fact. With a few exceptions, I don’t believe there’s any need to thank for retweets at all. It might seem polite, or good etiquette, but all it really does is add a lot of unwanted noise to the stream.

I'd never thought of it in those terms before, but it made a lot of sense. We already expend a fair bit of time and effort filtering through clutter on Twitter. Does anyone really benefit from reading our "thanks for the retweet" messages, other than the recipient? I decided to retweet his post, in which he suggests that thanks should be sent privately by direct message, if at all. In response, I received an interesting email from one of my clients, who told me she's received nasty messages from more than one person to whom she'd sent a private thank-you. They seemed to believe that by thanking them privately, she was depriving them of valuable exposure they'd have received if she'd thanked them publicly. I was astounded. If someone complained that they didn't like the way I thanked them, I probably wouldn't thank them at all next time – and they probably wouldn't notice, because who keeps track of whether or not they've been thanked for retweeting something? It sure doesn't sound like anyone I want in my network! And seriously – do they really think that "@apersonontwitter Thanks for the retweet" is going to make even one person say "Hey, I want to follow @apersonontwitter"? With Twitter, there are no hard and fast rules about anything – each user develops strategies that work best for them, including whether or not they acknowledge retweets and the way they do it. And fortunately, there are lots more ways to express your appreciation than merely saying thanks, whether in the public stream or by direct message. Angie Schottmuller wrote an excellent post where she outlines 7 Ways to Thank Someone for a Retweet that really opened my eyes to the possibilities and has begun to shape the way I approach this important part of online networking. Yes, it takes more time to be creative than it does to simply post "@personontwitter Thanks for the retweet" but like most things in business (and in life), the more you put into something, the more you'll get out of it. If you're new on Twitter, or you haven't signed up because you're not sure what to do, you need my Basic Guide to Networking on Twitter. It’s packed with tips and action steps to help you leverage the power of Twitter to grow your professional network and market your organizing business.

Basic Guide to Networking on Twitter

Janet — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:01:40 +0000

Due to popular demand, I'm thrilled to announce that I've put together a Basic Guide to Networking on Twitter! It's packed with tips to help you leverage the power of Twitter to grow your professional network and market your organizing business. When I signed up for Twitter in 2008 on the advice of a colleague, I had no idea how it worked or how to use it. Since then, I've spent a fair bit of time reading, attending seminars, and simply observing what other people are doing on Twitter in order to learn what works – and what doesn't. I've shared many of the strategies I've learned in presentations for POC Chapters and local business groups in Southern Ontario, at POC's National Conference in 2010, and here on Your Organizing Business, but now for the first time, I've organized all that information into a concise, easy-to-read e-book. My Basic Guide to Networking on Twitter walks you through each of these key processes:

Step 1: Create Your Account

Step 2: Set Up Your Profile

Step 3: Decide What to Tweet About

Step 4: Follow People

Step 5: Attract Followers

Step 6: Plan Your Twitter Schedule

Each section includes how-to's, my personal recommendations, and action steps for you to carry out so you can learn to effectively use Twitter as a marketing tool. The Guide will be most helpful for readers who would like to use Twitter but aren't sure how to get started, as well as those who are already on Twitter but are feeling lost or overwhelmed. Even experienced Twitter users will benefit from the helpful tips and recommended resources!

That's not all! You can make money by promoting the Basic Guide to Networking on Twitter on your own blog or website (or anywhere else)! Join our new Affiliate Program today and earn 35% commission on any product currently offered by Organized Assistant, including Organizing Your Life, Your Way.

Ask or Answer Questions and Grow Your Network

Janet — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:01:42 +0000

The four most popular social media sites today are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You're probably already using at least one of these sites to promote your organizing business, but there are literally hundreds of social networks, and there may be others that would be a good place for you to reach a new audience. I've recently discovered Quora, and I think it would be worthwhile for you to check it out too. As described on their website,

Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.

It's very easy to get started. You can sign up by using your existing Twitter or Facebook account (one less user name and password to remember – woo hoo!) or set up an account using your email address and a password of your choosing. Once you're logged in, you can easily find out which of your Facebook friends or people you follow on Twitter are also on Quora, and to follow them there as well. When you follow someone on Quora, you will see the questions and answers they post, questions they follow, and answers they vote for. In addition to following individual users, you can follow topics. That way, when someone posts a question in your area of expertise, such as Home Organization, you'll be able to share your answer right away. You can even have those questions show up in your Twitter feed, so if you're already using Twitter frequently, you don't have to log into Quora to find out if there are new questions for you to answer. You can also follow specific questions, which is especially valuable if there's a topic you want to learn more about. When you read the various answers posted on a question, you can "vote up" the good answers and "vote down" the bad ones. These votes will affect which answers come up first in the list. Unlike LinkedIn Answers, which is completely segregated from other activity on the site, Quora is all about the questions. Each users' profile shows the questions they've asked, answered, followed, and voted for, as well as the number of votes their answers have received. If you'd like to ask or answer a question, but for some reason don't want it linked to your profile, you have the option of doing so anonymously. Quora is also much more social than other Q&A sites. If you see a question you think one of your contacts can answer, you can simply click to share it on Twitter or Facebook, or send it directly to another Quora user. There's even a tool for posting a question and its answers on your blog, if you use WordPress.com or Tumblr. The best way to get noticed is to post good answers to questions relevant to your business. You can find those questions by typing keywords and phrases into the search box at the top of the screen. It's the type of site you could get lost in for hours, and I find there are fewer distractions when I use the Social Questions iPhone app. I'm not yet very active on the site, but if you decide to sign up, please feel free to follow me! Photo: Pete Jelliffe

Social Media Is Not a Race

Janet — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:44:10 +0000

As much as I love to blog, I'm thrilled to take a break today and let Kerry Rego take over. One of the many wonderful people I've met through Twitter, Kerry runs her own consulting business, through which she offers social media and technology training as well as home and office organization services. She's got some great advice here for all of us! I taught a session at the NAPO-SFBA Regional conference in the fall of 2010. I spoke to a fellow organizer about a problem she was having with social media. She had recently started her business and had created a website she really liked. Her problem was she'd signed up for every social media tool she'd ever heard of and then placed the link or widget on her main site. Yet, she didn't have any content when people clicked through because she was so new. This is what I told her: Keep all those accounts but remove the widgets and their obvious presence from public view. Then pick just one tool. Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, YouTube, whatever you want to start with. Hang out there. Learn the culture, the lingo, get a feel for it. Observe what others do and how you respond as a viewer/consumer. When you feel like you have a good grasp of the way it functions and the purpose that it serves, evaluate whether or not it's the right tool for whom you want to reach. Then do it again with a tool that you think serves an audience, or function, that you aren't already achieving. When deciding which channels are right for you and your brand, don't forget to ask "Who is my audience? Who is my client?" Age, sex, profession, income level, secondary interests, geography, climate. There are many ways you can market your services based on these few categories. Each platform is different in demographics and usage. Learn about them before signing up to use them. If you pick a tool just because YOU like it, it might not be the right one to help you achieve your goals. After awhile you've added a few new social media channels to your arsenal. You've been writing on your blog, you've set up (and are using!) your Facebook page, and have a YouTube channel with some videos uploaded. As you work and learn each avenue, you are adding content over time. Social media is about your brand and message, expressing your professional opinion, building trusting relationships through communication, and is the new source for customer service. I always say it's like getting a six pack. You can't expect to have ripped abs in a week or six weeks of going to the gym. In six months you should be nicely toned. This is not a sprint to the finish line. Master walking before you start running. I'd like to thank Kerry for taking the time to share these tips with us. To learn more, read her blog at Kerry Rego Consulting. If you'd like to be a guest blogger for Your Organizing Business, please drop me a line!

Speak Up and Succeed with Twitter

Janet — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:41:29 +0000

Giving presentations is an important skill for professional organizers, whether you're sharing ideas with your local chapter, offering tips to a group or the general public as a way of marketing your organizing business, or getting paid to speak about your area of expertise. It's no secret that more and more people have mobile devices that allow them to be connected to their online networks nearly all the time. What does this have to do with giving presentations? Maybe a lot! One of these days, you may be speaking at a conference or other event and discover that the audience is tweeting about your presentation. Participants enjoy tweeting about what they're listening to for a number of reasons. For one thing, it allows them to share the highlights of what they're learning with followers who aren't at the event. It also lets them share comments with other people attending who may not be sitting close by. They can even converse with people who are close by without worrying about distracting others by speaking out loud. It might be a bit unnerving to see people typing on their laptops, iPads, or smart phones while you speak, but it doesn't mean they aren't paying attention! Consider that some people actually use Twitter to record information they might have written on paper in the past. This gives them notes to refer back to afterwards, and share those notes with others at the same time. To my knowledge, there hasn't been live tweeting during any of my presentations so far, but I realize that it will likely happen someday so I need to be prepared – and so do you. Fortunately, I discovered a free e-book by Olivia Mitchell that's full of great advice on surviving the experience, responding to the audience's needs, and getting involved in the conversation. If you give presentations, or plan to in the future, please feel free to download your own copy of How to Present with Twitter. I've been at both live and online events where it was taking place, and it's quite an interesting phenomena! Please tell us about your experiences with live tweeting, either as a speaker or a member of the audience. Do you think it enhances or detracts from the experience?

Meet Me in Montreal

Janet — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:51:16 +0000

Time sure is funny sometimes. It seems like POC just announced their 10th Annual Conference was being held in Montreal from November 5 to 7, 2010, but in reality, it was several months ago, and the Conference is now only six weeks away! This year's theme is Communication, and there will be two inspiring keynote speakers as well as a wide selection of breakout sessions for professional organizers at all levels. At 3:30 PM on Friday, November 5, I'll be conducting a workshop on Social Media Strategies for Professional Organizers, which I'm very excited about. It's a huge topic to cover in only 75 minutes, so I've prepared some great worksheets you'll be able to take away and work on after the Conference. If you go to Montreal early, you can also take the Professional Organizers.com Comprehensive Training Program, attend some POC Trained Professional Organizer Credit Courses, and write your POC Trained Professional Organizer or NSGCD Exams - not to mention a chance to explore one of Canada's most exciting cities! I'm really looking forward to the Gala Dinner on Saturday night for networking, a great meal, comedian Franco Taddeo, and finding out who will receive this year's Harold Taylor Award. If you haven't already, be sure to check out all the details on the POC website, where you can also download a complete Conference Program. Members of NAPO and NSGCD get to pay the same reduced rate as POC members, and early bird registration rates are in effect until October 3. That's just around the corner, so don't wait too long! I can't wait to meet some of my readers for the first time, and to reconnect with people I haven't seen since I last attended a POC Conference in 2006. If you're going, please leave me a comment below or contact me personally so we don't miss each other in the crowd!

Professional Organizers Blog Carnival for September 2010: Technology

Janet — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:20:05 +0000

Welcome to the Technology issue of the Professional Organizers Blog Carnival! You'll find lots of great tips here for using technology to organize today's busy lives and for organizing your (or your clients') technology. Be sure to read the posts and leave some comments – it's a fun way to network with your organizing colleagues! Five Productive Jobs for Evernote by Margaret Lukens

Over time, Evernote has proven its usefulness again and again. The more I use it to deal with those information bits on the desk and in the brain, the more I love it.

How to Manage and Organize your Social Web by Elaine Shannon Site-Saving Bookmarklets: Keeping Up With Online Reading While Reducing Paper Clutter by Julie Bestry

If you're a voracious web reader, it sometimes seems like you have only two alternatives: paper (printout) clutter or an endlessly scrolling tower of bookmarks. These nifty bookmarklets offers the chance to keep up with your reading without cluttering up your home, office or computer.

3 Firefox Add-Ons That Increase Your Productivity by Deb Lee Getting Organized in the Google Era by Jeri Dansky

This book, which was published earlier this year, talks about ways to use technology effectively. Do you organize information - or just search for it when you need it?

Technology and You! by Ellen Delap Ergonomics in the Office - Using your computer safely by Clare Kumar

Technology brings many benefits, but using it safely is critical. Set up a comfortable workstation and enjoy maximum productivity.

Cozy Up To Cozi by Janice Russell TeuxDeux (To Do - an online list maker) by Margarita Ibbott

Are you a chronic list maker? Do you feel a sense of accomplishment when you cross that item off your list? How about writing a list out electronically that you can access from any computer? Find out about a simple and easy to use on-line list maker from TeuxDeux.

Before wrapping up this month's Carnival, I'd like to welcome two new Professional Organizers Blog Carnival Star Bloggers, who have each contributed to 10 Blog Carnivals to date: In her post, Clutter-free gifts: Technology, Lelah Baker-Rabe tells us how to

Help the tech-savvy people in your life stay clutter-free with some thoughtful gifts of technology that won't add to their box of random cords and cables.

Digital photographers are sure to appreciate Geralin Thomas' Four Steps to Organizing Your Photos. Congratulations, Lelah and Geralin, and thank you to everyone who took part in this month's Carnival. Next month, our theme will be Bathroom Organizing – please submit your posts by noon EDT on October 12, 2010. In November, we'll celebrate Food, Glorious Food! so get ready to submit your posts about organizing refrigerators, pantries, recipes, or another related topic. Photo: joiseyshowaa