Posted By Amanda Collins on November 29, 2010

While many business professionals, companies, and job seekers are on Twitter, I really wonder how many of them have a method to their madness. While Twitter can certainly be a way to keep up on the conversation of colleagues and friends, there’s so much more that can happen if the power is harnessed!

Google Alerts
Want to know what’s new in your industry? Google Alerts are a free notification system of the latest and greatest on the Internet. Search on keywords such as your name, company name, job titles, or more broad topics related to your industry. You’ll get daily or up-to-the-minute emails on news and blogs relevant to your keywords. Then, you can not only comment on the blogs, but you can also post links to your Twitter page so you look like you’re the first to know what’s new. It’s a great way to grab some RT love online.

Hashtags
If you’re new to Twitter, you may be wondering what that pound symbol (#) is all about. It’s a way that Tweeters have to denote keywords. As a user, you can go to Twitter Search and look up hashtags to see what’s happening now or in the recent past. One commonly used hashtag is #FF, which stands for “Follow Friday” and allows the Twitter community to share some worthy peers with their followers.

Twitter Keyword Searches
I don’t know anyone who uses Twitter through the Web these days. For me, Tweetdeck works great, although some like Hootsuite and some lesser-known applications. Tweetdeck allows you to run keyword searches in real time. If a search term isn’t pulled out with a hashtag, this is a great way to still find it. You can run your search to mirror that of your Google Alerts.

The Strategy
Once you are up on what’s happening within the Twitterverse and online through Google, what are you going to do with that information? The key is to not sell (or, for job seekers, blatantly ask for a job); instead, offer assistance and create conversations. That’s the key of social media: it needs to be social! If I see someone mention that she’s getting her résumé ready for a job search, I will offer to take a look at it for her (free, of course). If someone is preparing for an interview, I offer words of encouragement. You’ll engage and entertain folks, and you will likely see that your follow rate increases.

This isn’t a one-stop strategy, though. Once you start talking to these new people, you’ll increase your followers and may even learn their email addresses. That’s when you can work them into your drip-marketing campaign (you have one of those, right?). Although you may not get results within 20 minutes, by creating a community who sees you as the expert you are, you’ll build those results over time.

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Posted By Amanda Collins on November 22, 2010

Whether you’re a business professional, job seeker, or entrepreneur, you’re going to be asked, “What do you do?” If ever you’ve networked or been given the opportunity to share your worth in a “commercial,” you know that getting across a clear and concise message can be the difference between being asked for your card or being left in the cold.

It’s nearly impossible for me to share with everyone THE commercial that’s best for each industry or individual, but there are some general rules that you should consider when formulating your 30-second summary.

Lead with a Bang
Five seconds. That’s how long you have to capture a listener’s attention. If you’re starting with your name, you may have already lost them. Likewise if you speak too quickly or slowly. Instead, try a question or a statistic. “Did you know?” is a great lead-in to a commercial because it gets the brain engaged and wondering what will come next. When I give a commercial, I sometimes say, “95% of the people you meet while networking will never follow up with you.” If nothing else, I’ve made the audience think – and thinking is good to keep those ears listening to what comes next.

Choose One Focus Point
Too many times during commercials, people feel the need to share a laundry list of the ways in which they can help listeners. But, if you stop for a minute and think about it, the list is more about you and not about your audience. The whole idea of a commercial is to tell listeners how you can help them. A list of what you do doesn’t say that. Instead, choose one aspect of what you do. For instance, although I write and edit content for websites, blogs, articles, newsletters, résumés, cover letters, and bios, I just focus on one thing in my commercial. You can talk about your litany of services when you’re approached later.

End with a Memory Hook
“I’m loving it.” “You’re now free to move about the country.” “How do you spell relief?” Taglines are the way we remember big-name brands, so why not use one to differentiate yourself? Some networkers include their name or business name in their taglines, but make it short and memorable and you’ll have some stickiness. For some businesses in my local networking area, I can’t remember the name of the person but I can remember the tagline.

Keep It Simple, Stupid
Remember that acronym KISS? It completely applies when you have limited time to make a big impact. Even though you have 30 seconds, if you can share your value and have people asking more, go for it! Grab attention, stay on task, and wait for people to flock to you asking for your business card or résumé!

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Posted By Amanda Collins on November 17, 2010

Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of misused words—on websites, emails, and social-media status updates. Writers have been using premiere (the first) in place of premier (the best) or then (a time) in place of than (comparison), just to name two misused words. Simple mistakes that could have been avoided had the writers only proofread their materials.

So that got me thinking…. We’re all writers to some extent, yet how many of us don’t take the time to either proofread our projects ourselves or have an editor take a second look? I’m the first to admit I’m not infallible, and often my brain moves more quickly than my fingers can type out the words. We all make mistakes. In most businesses, though, those mistakes may cost us opportunities.

Of course, if you actually hire a proofreader to look at every document you write, you might rack up quite a bill, not to mention pushing back your delivery date by a day or more. It is certainly one option, though, and you may consider it if you have a team. Perhaps one member of the team can be the designated proofreader.

Another (free) option is to proofread your materials yourself. It’s not quite as easy as giving everything a second read right after it’s written. Our eyes tend to see what our brain tells them is there, so they may miss something if you reread the project immediately after completing it. Instead, work into your schedule an additional day to step away from the project. Here’s how it works:

If you finish writing a proposal or other important document on Monday, put it away. On Tuesday, open it again and read it with fresh eyes. It’s a good idea to read it aloud—slowly—so you’ll hear any errors. Look at things you might normally miss, such as punctuation and capitalization. Some proofreaders read from the end to the beginning because misspellings tend to be more apparent then.

Although it may add a little more time to your schedule, putting in some quality assurance will pay off dividends for you and your clients. Remember, YOU are the expert and should catch any errors before your clients see them. They will thank you for it.

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