The Final Touch

What if the orig­i­nal Christ­mas events hap­pened today in the dig­i­tal age? How would we learn about it and tell oth­ers about it? Makes you think. Merry Christ­mas, everyone!

Remem­ber the tra­di­tional way of doing pro­fes­sional net­work­ing? Spend a few hours in the car or plane to meet up with oth­ers in your field or related fields. Make con­tact with a few folks, maybe exchang­ing busi­ness cards — many of which would end up at the bot­tom of a purse or pocket, or in a pile on the desk at home. Hope­fully you’d chance to meet up with a few peo­ple who could really be an asset to you and for whom you could rec­i­p­ro­cate; you would leave sev­eral well-intended offers of “Let’s keep in touch” behind and, once back at your home office, maybe you fol­lowed up — or they did — and… maybe not. Either way, a lot of time and energy (and prob­a­bly money) had been spent for min­i­mal return on your investment.

I would encour­age you to try out LinkedIn, espe­cially if you have need for pro­fes­sional con­nec­tions. A quick way to get to the site is to fol­low this link to my pro­file and surf around from there:  http://​www​.linkedin​.com/​i​n​/​f​i​n​a​l​t​o​u​c​h​p​r​o​o​f​r​e​a​d​i​n​g​e​d​i​ting.

Yes­ter­day I took advan­tage of a webi­nar on Social Net­work­ing offered by Sab­rina Gib­son. She’s the Social Net­work­ing leader I’ve been learn­ing from in online train­ing since Decem­ber. Here’s what another mem­ber of the class had to say about her:

Linda Rus­sell on Sab­rina Gib­son — Social Net­work­ing (YouTube​.com)

Although this was an “intro” webi­nar, I decided to lis­ten in. I fig­ured either it would be good to have what I already knew reit­er­ated and rein­forced or she’d have some new infor­ma­tion to share, or both. Well, it turned out to be “both”!

I pro­moted this to some of you through my email list (If you are inter­ested in know­ing about resources like this, please fill in the brief form at the right of my home­page; I will NOT bom­bard your mail­box, and you can always un-subscribe if you change your mind), but I know some of you had sched­ule con­flicts yes­ter­day. So I am thrilled that Sab­rina has now made the record­ing of her webi­nar available!

Fol­low this link to check out what the webi­nar offers: http://​www​.Social​Max​i​miz​ing​.com/​V​i​deo3. And as a teaser, here are a few excerpts from the info page:

So many net­works, so lit­tle time! Have you put off Social Net­work­ing as just another “waste of time”?
Are you using Social Net­work­ing and not really find­ing any results? Are you con­fused as to what to do, when to do it or how to do it?…

If you are like most busi­ness own­ers you:

• Are smart with where you spend your time and money
• Rec­og­nize mar­ket­ing is a MUST to suc­ceed (espe­cially in this “new economy”)…
• Desire to grow your business
• May not under­stand tech­nol­ogy but rec­og­nize it is vital for success…

What I would like to share with you is a sim­ple step by step strat­egy so you don’t waste your time “tin­ker­ing around” with Social Net­works.  If you are not seri­ous about grow­ing your busi­ness, you can just stop read­ing now!  If you plan to “sur­vive” and even thrive in this new econ­omy, you need to do things differently…

Sab­rina has stated that the link to the webi­nar will only be avail­able for two weeks, so I strongly encour­age you to take advan­tage of it right away! (And while the info page says it’s a 1-hour event, it was actu­ally between 1–1/2 and 2! Can’t beat that for FREE!) Enjoy!

Oh, and please stop back here and leave a com­ment about what you thought of the webi­nar after you’ve viewed it. I’d love to hear!

Sorry for the short notice on this first one, but if you can fit it in, you won’t regret it!

For six months now, I’ve been tak­ing an online course called “Social Net­work­ing with Sab­rina Gib­son.” Sab­rina has over 15 years’ expe­ri­ence in the inter­net field and is widely con­sid­ered an expert in up-t0-the-minute infor­ma­tion and strate­gies to help business-people use social media (Twit­ter, Face­book, LinkedIn, blog­ging, etc.) to get the word out about what they have to offer to others.

Today (June 9) from 12:30–2:00 p.m. (PDT), Sab­rina is offer­ing a FREE webi­nar on get­ting the most out of a Face­book Page for the sake of your busi­ness. You can still reg­is­ter this morn­ing at: How to Use Face­book for Your Busi­ness.

If you can’t make this event, I strongly urge you to try to work the fol­low­ing two into your schedule:

• June 30, 9:00–10:30 a.m. (PDT) How to Use LinkedIn for Your Busi­ness and
• July 28, 9:00–10:30 a.m. (PDT) How to Blog for Busi­ness.

Sab­rina is dynamic and fun, and has a TON of infor­ma­tion to share! I’ve had a blast learn­ing from her, and I’m cer­tain you will too! (Even if you don’t have a busi­ness to mar­ket, you might still want to check these out for fun. Face­book Pages can be used for non-business pur­poses as well; LinkedIn is intended for pro­fes­sion­als of any sort, whether you work for some­one else or for your­self; and blog­ging… well, blog­ging is just plain fun!)

I’ve been using LinkedIn for sev­eral months now, and I have to say, it is eas­ily my favorite social net­work for pro­fes­sional pur­poses — largely because that is pri­mar­ily what it’s designed for. While Face­book and Twit­ter can also be use­ful for mak­ing busi­ness con­tacts, pass­ing on help­ful resources, and even offer­ing your ser­vices to oth­ers, they are also — as you likely know — widely used for keep­ing in touch on a per­sonal level and, in the case of Face­book, for fun and games. Noth­ing wrong with fun and games, but when I want to learn about someone’s pro­fes­sional cre­den­tials, dis­cuss a busi­ness topic with an online group, and offer glow­ing rec­om­men­da­tions about peo­ple I know oth­ers will love as much as I do… LinkedIn is just the thing!

It’s no coin­ci­dence then that on LinkedIn, in the Writ­ing and Edit­ing Pro­fes­sion­als group, I dis­cov­ered a link to a great arti­cle about Social Media, which in turn led me to a great piece about har­ness­ing LinkedIn for pro­fes­sional use.

Here are a cou­ple of my favorite tips from the article:

• Be unique: Don’t just list your job title beneath your name; instead, describe in brief how peo­ple will ben­e­fit by con­nect­ing with you and your busi­ness. For instance, the line below my name reads: “Glad to help you put the FINAL TOUCH on your writ­ing to make it the best it can be!”
• Link your LinkedIn pro­file to your blog. If you look down my pro­file, for exam­ple, you’ll see the head­ing for this very blog post! Read­ers can find my LinkedIn pro­file through my blog, and they can also find my blog through my LinkedIn profile.

Check out the arti­cle for more LinkedIn ideas!

This is amaz­ing!! A reminder that when we fall down, we need to try and try and try again until we find the strength to get back up. God will give us that strength. Do not lose hope! If Nick Vuji­cic can live in hope, so can you!

Thanks to my friend and social net­work­ing coach Sab­rina Gib­son for pass­ing along a sim­i­lar video about this inspir­ing gentleman!

What a moti­va­tion he is for us all!

Nick Vuji­cic on YouTube