It’s been quite a while since we had a chat with our community member Allen Mireles, who enlightened us about the social media site LinkedIn.

Before our chat LinkedIn was definitely not my favorite place to be online – in my mind I saw it as a place to keep my resume updated and formally ask for favors or introductions.

Of course, as a business owner, I’m much more likely to be looking to hire people than look for a new position – and most people I’d be comfortable asking for favors or intros from phones. So aside from the Answers section, and a few isolated incidents of assistance, it didn’t click for me why I needed to be there on an on-going basis besides basic presence.

However, through Allen’s tutelege and helpful tips from community members in the audience, I gleaned several helpful insights from the discussion, as did many others in the audience. The discussion was invaluable in helping me form a sound strategy for LinkedIn.

We had 48 participants in December as well – as you look at the summary, feel free to connect with some of the other people in the Women Grow Business community.

You can click links to their tweets to discover their Twitter profiles, where you’ll find their links. And on their sites, you can learn more about them, subscribe to their blogs, and find them on other social media properties, if Twitter just isn’t your thing.

You can view and download a summary of the December Twitter chat with Allen Mireles here: [3 mb PDF]. The report is a bit different this time – there are two issues. First, the data cuts off at question 5. We’re looking to get it restored if possible.

Secondly, the format is different – this is generated from my backup source for hashtag reporting, which is a RowFeeder export, produced in Excel. The advantage is that it’s sortable by time, so this report is in chronological order, rather than the reverse order that the TweetReach report I normally use comes in.

However, the photos/avatars don’t show up, and the presentation of the report is missing all our normal bells and whistles. But alas, since the TweetReach report wasn’t generated in time, it’s this or nothing. And I like switching to RowFeeder every now and again, as it’s refreshing to see the tweets in the order that they appeared.

Please join us at our next chat on February 13th, from noon to 1 pm, where you can learn about How to Be An Effective Digital Storyteller, with Marketer and Author Extraordinare, Stephanie Diamond.

There might be another book giveaway. You never know…

Our Twitter chat with Maddie Grant was enormously successful, and may have set a record for us at Women Grow Business. Please be sure to click though to Maddie’s profile in the report and thank her if you benefitted from the chat or the summary.

Maddie Rocked It!

One of my favorite comments that she made was part of her answer to the question “What things do organizations miss about social media? Specifically things that companies just “get”"

One of the things she said was:

So true. You can see more tweets like this, and links to her website and to where you can pick up her book on Amazon, in the downloadable report. Be careful though – the link to follow is to a PDF that’s 33 pages long!

Meet Your Fellow Community Members too.

We had 127 participants this time as well – as you look at the summary, also connect with some of the other people in the Women Grow Business community.

You can click any of their names to discover their Twitter profiles, where you’ll find their links. And on their sites, you can learn more about them, subscribe to their blogs, and find them on other social media properties, if Twitter just isn’t your thing.

You’re also welcome to participate in our next chat as well. There are instructions in the link to the next chat, which you’ll see at the end of this post. When you do, remember to arrive early and tell us what you do, or how the community can help you reach your goals.

You can view and download a summary of the January Twitter chat with Maddie Grant here. If you have any problems with the link, please comment so I can alert you to the direct download link when I update this post tomorrow.

(I’m having technical problems with the October and December chats, but the best verson I can make of those will be up soon as well.)

Please join us at our next chat on February 13th, from noon to 1 pm, where you can learn about How to Be An Effective Digital Storyteller, with Marketer and Author Extraordinare, Stephanie Diamond. We may have a book giveaway, you never know. Keep up with our Women Grow Business posts to find out. The subscribe link is in the upper right hand corner of the site.

Our monthly Women Grow Business Twitter chat is coming up again in about two weeks, on Monday, February 13th. As often as possible we like to have a featured guest expert come by and talk to the Women Grow Business community. And this time we have somehow managed to get marketing great and four time author Stephanie Diamond to fit us into her busy schedule.

About Stephanie Diamond

Many people can claim to be marketing mavens but Stephanie Diamond can back it up with both real world experience and hands-on knowledge. Founder of Digital Works Inc., she was also once the Marketing Director at America Online (AOL).

The most referenced citation of her marketing knowledge that I came across was this: when she joined AOL, they had 1 miillion subscribers, and by the time she left they had 36 million. Of course, she’s also the author of four books – three of them are part of the famous “For Dummies” series. The fourth book is about Web Marketing for Small Business.

After asking Stephanie to come talk to us, we were conflicted about what her topic would be. I was led to ask her to be a guest expert when some community members asked me about her.

Curiousity centered around the back story of how she came to author Dragon Naturally Speaking for Dummies, and Prezi for Dummies, as well as co-author Social Media Marketing for Dummies. She also wrote Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps to Explosive Growth. Naturally, many of the aspiring business authors in our community wanted to pick her brain a little.

My professional connection to her, however, is through her expertise in web marketing – after all, this IS what she’s known for, and no discussion with her would be complete without its mention.

In order to hit on both points of interest, Stephanie came up with a brilliant idea that touches on the intersection of these two worlds. Our discussion will be about How to Be an Effective Digital Storyteller. That way we can touch on her journey as a successful author, and still have a conversation about one of the elements of marketing that she believes is central to success.

We’ll talk about how you can connect with Stephanie Diamond in a moment. Let’s make sure you know how to participate in our Twitter chats first.

How do you follow The #WgBiz Twitter chats?

1. Log into Twitter, Tweetchat, Tweetgrid, Tweetdeck, or any other Twitter tool that lets you isolate a hashtag.
2. Follow our Twitter hashtag #wgbiz. (In Twitter you can use the search at the top of the screen, in Tweetchat or Tweetgrid, once you’re logged in, you’ll see an area for you to enter the hashtag at the top of the screen.)
3. Arrive as early as 11:45 a.m. to introduce yourself, send us a link to your site, and share what your company does, as well as to meet the other chatters.
4. Make sure you’re following the host, in this case me (@wbgiz is the official channel, @Tinu is my personal handle), and featured guest(s) if any, in this case Stephanie Diamond(@DiamondSF), so you can send questions or follow up with them later.
5. Have yourself a ball. Twitter chats are meant to be educational, sure, but also lighter than a teleconference or webinar.

Where to Read More About Stephanie

Stephanie’s home on the web is Marketing Message Mindset, where you can find an instant webinar to help you hit the ground running in your marketing mission. You can follow her posts at the Marketing Message Blog as well. And then there’s the Stephanie Diamond Amazon author page. Social Marketing for Dummies isn’t available yet, but you can pre-order it.

See you at the chat!

Excerpt is from “Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps for Explosive Business Growth”.

​

It’s my honor and pleasure to have been included as a member of the media covering the 2012 What’s Next DC Conference.

I’d been covering it the morning of Monday’s conference using Storify, but unfortunately had problems using the drag and drop interface to include tweets, pictures and videos on an iPad.

Initially, a travel conflict was preventing me from attending, but after Vanessa French contacted me personally, it was just too good to pass up.

What was so great about this conference that I changed cross-country travel plans?

Well, What’s Next DC is striving to be a conference that you get actionable, engaging content from, looking more toward future trends and ideas you can start using right away, rather than re-hashing ideas you’ve already learned.

Started in 2011,  Tod Plotkin of the Green Buzz Agency explained that his idea was for this to be an event that wasn’t all pitch-fests or just another gathering where smart people talk in monotones over boring slides. I’m paraphrasing – there’s a more eloquent quote on the event site.

My snapshot analysis is that in comparison to the first one, (which wasn’t bad), What’s Next DC is significantly closer to hitting this mark. It isn’t quite there yet, but the amount of progress they’ve made in just one year is nothing short of remarkable. (Insert elbow poke for people who attended in 2011.)

There’s more detail in my What’s Next DC 2012 Storify synopsis, below, but do note that it’s not complete.

It will take me a few days to get all the pictures and video up, as well as tweets from the stream, as there was a lot of great information being shared – be sure you’re following Women’s Grow Business on Facebook, Email, or Twitter to get the final update. (If I include your tweet in the collection you’ll get an @ response in the next few days from my @Tinu handle.)

So in the meantime, be sure to

• have a look at the What’s Next DC Twitter hashtag stream,
• see What’s Next DC photo highlights on Facebook,
• get updates from What’s Next DC on Twitter,
• view Lisa Bryne’s wrap-up,
• peruse Melanie Spring’s Storify link as well, and,
• don’t forget to tell the What’s Next team your ideas for making the event better next time around.

Overall it was a great way to spend a Monday. And sidenote? After parties at the British Embassy are ten times better than you’d expect them to be.

Vet turned corporate turned entrepreneur – with change comes opportunity.

Susan Joyce is the force, literally and figuratively, behind the mega-job-resource board  known as Job Hunt.

Today’s interview focuses on what she has learned which may offer you ideas for your own career transitions and choices. Because, yes, most of us have multiple transitions.

“I started my web development company in 1994, after I was laid off from Digital Equipment (DEC). DEC was the second largest computer company in the world at the time – with over 100,000 employees – and a Fortune 50 company, but completely gone by 1998.”

“The web was new and very few businesses had websites.” My company, Netability, helped companies get onto the web. I ran it as a solopreneur and developed a cadre of sub-contractors to support my clients’ needs.”

In 1998, she bought Job-Hunt. “It was a large, popular site receiving more traffic than any of my clients; so whenever it ran into problems, what I learned could help my clients avoid them.”

In 2008, Susan sold off her web development work with other clients to focus on Job-Hunt. This was a difficult decision. She had been running it in her ‘spare time’ – read that as nights and every weekend for years!

But she realized she really had her ‘heart’ there. “The DEC layoffs made a big impression on me — that’s really why I do what I do now. The impact on the people and economy were incredible. A few people, when they were laid off, left the office with their personal items in a box, went home, and ended their lives. The suicides continued for years.”

So I do what I do – running Job-Hunt.org – to try to help people see they have options when career changes occur.

“I run a uniquely 21st Century business. We provide people with the best advice and resources to help with current job search techniques and career management needs. My most important clients are the job seekers, but they do not pay for the service. My revenue comes from the site’s sponsors, visible on each page. My ‘customers’; however, also include search engine spiders, which tell the world about Job-Hunt. So I am always balancing three ‘customers’ needs and wants.”

It is a pretty simple business model. Focus on the visitors – what do they need and want? Understand the search engines – what do they need to understand and appropriately digest our content?

“No visitors; no advertisers. No advertisers; no revenue.”

During the past three years Job-Hunt has been ‘my only business, my only product.’

“When Google made a major shift in 2011 (aka Panda), I realized that was not smart.” External forces could change the whole landscape without notice or recourse. “I knew that vulnerability existed but had not believed it was critical. I assumed good content would always be rewarded.”

So what is ahead for Job-Hunt?

“Moving more to embrace mobile technologies; expanding social media activities; looking at conference sponsorships and marketing for added visibility.”

What can you learn from Susan’s experiences?

• “Most important mistake was ignoring the ‘big picture’ of the business and planning. I got too bogged down in daily actions and my ‘to-do’ list.”
• “I really need a current business plan and I need to use it, to review and update it regularly. Technology changes, market changes – these come fast.”
• “Marketing is very helpful, not an after-thought or for others. I know – DUH.”
• “That I cannot learn everything from the Internet. Just not true now!”

What’s in the future?

• Job-Hunt will continue and grow. “That is a personal passion based on my own experiences.”
• “I am writing a book and working with a co-author to expand my realm.”
• “A second website acquisition is pending.”
• “Attending professional conferences to enhance my network and my knowledge.”

“These activities will provide greater stability than having everything in Job-Hunt.org. They also mean its back to hiring and managing again.”

Susan and I attended VWISE Baltimore in September – a great program for entrepreneurial women veterans. I have recommended Job-Hunt.org to job seekers for years, so it was terrific to connect with its owner and discover some common bonds. And, full disclosure, now I write a column for her too.

For further reading

• Job-Hunt
• Entrepreneur programs for vets and families
• The value of professional development

Patricia A. Frame is an experienced management consultant, speaker, and executive with expertise in human capital, and founder of Strategies for Human Resources. She helps small to mid-size organizations achieve their goals through more effective human capital strategy and management.

She can be reached through her website SHRinsight.com, where archives for her ongoing management series can be found.

Time to mark your calendar again!

Women Grow Business is absolutely delighted to be joining Live Your Talk to co-host an elegant evening of celebrating women entrepreneurship, stimulating conversation, and of course, wine!

Come mingle with DC’s best and brightest entrepreneurial minds, be in featured in our photos by Nakeva Photography, and maybe even win a Kindle!

We’ll be converging on the 5th & K St location of Busboys and Poets at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

Go by our Eventbrite page to add it to your calendar now – if you won’t be in DC to attend, please share the link with your crowd.

There are NO tickets available at the door, and we’re only allowed to admit a certain number of people to our cozy loft space. Something about fire hazards…

Anyway, men are welcome to mingle with us, as always. So bring all your friends, and come celebrate Social Media Week with us in style!

Special thanks to our premium sponsor, The Matrix Group. And the utmost gratitude to Compass Point Associates and Live Your Talk who are also sponsoring the event.

Register today – this event will fill up fast (as will your two free glasses of wine)!

Image courtesy of Jawcey.