As a Social Media Specialist VA, I have new people following me on Twitter all the time.  It is always my choice as to who I will follow back.  It is very important to stay focused on who your target market is and build your relationships in that community.   Having said that, I always check the profiles of anyone who is newly following me.

There are many people out there who have not yet grasped the concept of just how powerful Twitter can be.    The following is an example of a particular profile I reviewed recently.  The entire Twitter stream was made up of the same kind of ‘conversation’.  There was very little interaction.  I will share 5 tweets here  and give you some ideas as to how these tweets might have been done differently.  This individual is in the eco-friendly industry and their profile implied that they were looking for business contacts.  The following tweets are not business related. Here is how they might have showcased their expertise, and shared value-added information to their target audience.  See how you can use these examples and adapt them to your own environment.  Don’t be afraid to standout.  Be colorful.  Be a Cardinal!

Tweets:

1.  Just removed the lint from the dryer, yuck

As an individual in the eco-friendly industry,  while removing lint from the dryer is admittedly not a stimulating chore, it is one that needs doing. So if I were inclined to talk about this, here is a way that this could have been done differently.

Don’t throw out your dryer lint. Place it on branches of trees. Birds will use it to feather their nests. With Spring around the corner, this can be a timely tweet.  Even better..consider writing a blog post on 5 ways to use your dryer lint along the reduce, reuse, recycle approach and tweet a link to the blog post. You’d be surprised how many uses there are!

2. Just had my second cup of coffee from ******* .  Am finally waking up.

Take this opportunity to remind readers about not contributing to landfill.

Took my thermos for a second coffee fillup this a.m. to ****. Finally waking up. Glad I’m not adding more cups to landfill. Even better, consider investigating some organic coffee growers and write a blog post on the benefits. Share this information with your readers. Again, Tweet a link to the post.

3. Looking forward to dinner – chicken cordon bleu  YUM!

It’s ok to share some personal tweets from time to time.  Try to focus 80% of your tweets on business related information.  However, this doesn’t mean that when you post something personal, that you can’t add value.  This might have been better..

Looking forward to dinner – chicken cordon bleu. Love this dish. Here’s the recipe. Tell me what you think! Add a link to the recipe. Even better, provide a picture using  a product like Flickr. You can attach the pic to your tweet.

4. Good morning from ******. It’s sunny and beautiful here today. Hope it keeps up.

Again, there is an opportunity here to share some environmental news with your readership. Try this.

Good morning from ****. Weather is beautiful here today. Check this Farmers Almanac prediction for 2010. Provide a link to farmersalmanac.com.  Even better, Encourage people to start thinking about planting their own organic vegetable gardens this year.

5. Time to paint the kids’ bedrooms.  **** wants her room painted pink.

You might consider educating readers that there are low VOC (volatile organic compounds) available today.  VOCs are key to the ozone…so consider a tweet like this..

Time to paint the kids rooms. So glad there are paints with low VOCs now and in such great colors too! Even better, consider writing a blog post on 10 ways to decorate a room using eco-friendly products. Again, tweet about it and provide a link to your blog post or your website if you sell some of these products. Add pictures to your blog post to make it more interesting and include one in your tweet.

These alternatives share industry related information to your target market and showcase your expertise/understanding of the issues in the eco-friendly space.  By adding value, your readers are more likely to return, eager for more content.  In this way, you begin to develop relationships and build intimacy and trust.  Twitter is a great tool to drive traffic to your blog or your website.   But as I have said before, stay away from heavy marketing tactics where you are doing nothing more than selling wares.  The social media space is all about adding value and creating relationships.

Take a look at your industry and see how you can begin to adapt your tweets in this way. Let me know how it’s going. I love getting feedback.  As a Social Media Specialist, I am here to help you grow your business.  Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv.  That’s great for all you bloggers out there. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog!  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from all of you.

Happy Tweeting!

Joanne

While physically located in , Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Many businesses struggle with how to use Twitter to grow their business.  In particular, brick and mortars often time struggle to find people in their geographic area to ‘tweet to’.  Understandably, in smaller areas outside major city centres, the population of Twitter users is generally lower, potentially making it more difficult to drive business through your door.  However, with Social Media in general becoming more mainstream, I believe in the not too distant future, this will become less of an issue.

With Twitter usage up dramatically lately,  it would appear that many are beginning to realize its potential to really help drive their business forward.   Check out this interview that Chris Brogan did recently with Restaurateur Joe Sorge who owns AJ Bombers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.   See how Twitter has in his words, ‘built his business’.  Then follow @ajbombers on Twitter to see how Joe puts Twitter to work!  For that matter, follow Chris Brogan too – @chrisbrogan.

Then, to help you build your local twitter following, check out these 3 applications:

1. Twellow.com

Twellow is the Twitter Yellow Pages.  As a brick and mortar, you can not only create a great profile for yourself or your business on Twellow, but if you click on the ‘Twellowhood’ tab at the top of the page, you will be able to create targeted searches within a specific geographic area.  Within Twellow, you can even follow people on Twitter and start to grow your network.

Helpful tip: When creating your own profile, make sure you click on ‘expanded bio’ and include all relevant info for your business and make sure you maximize your exposure in the categories section. You are allowed 10.  Make good use of them!

2. Nearbytweets.com

Nearbytweets allows you to search by location and by keyword. By keying in these two items, Nearbytweets will produce a stream of tweets from that and surrounding area that include that keyword.  This is great not only for finding new prospects, but as a business owner, this is great for reputation management.  You can really keep your ear to the ground and listen for any tweets that have to do with your brand and respond to them quickly.

Helpful tip:  Nearbytweets will allow you to save your locations and keywords to streamline the process. You will find this under the preferences tab.  Nearbytweets also allows you to click on any individual tweet to get more information or review an individual’s profile. You can then follow that person/organization from there.

3. Chirpcity.com

Chirpcity is another app that will do location searches for you. It will bring up the image, username and individual tweets.  If you  click on their image, you will be taken to their page, where you can then review their profile and follow them if you so wish.

Helpful tip: If there is one particular tweet you are interested in, you can press ‘view tweet’.  This will take you to the individual’s profile page where that one tweet will be displayed and you can reply to or retweet that particular tweet right there. That’s a handy option. Saves you sifting through all their tweets.

There are other applications out there however, many have pitfalls.  Tweepsearch for example,  has a great concept in that it will bring up the person/organizations bio, and show you their followers, friends and updates, but they are sorely out of date.   It says my last recorded update was 4 months ago. Actually it was more like 2 hours ago and my friend/follower information is also incorrect.   So you will want to choose apps that are current and give you the most accurate information.

If you are still struggling with Social Media and wonder how you can make it work for your business, it would be best to seek out the assistance of a Social Media Specialist.    As a Social Media Specialist VA, I offer coaching and consulting, assessment and strategy, profile setup – customization and optimization and some ongoing support and maintenance, particularly for my blogging clients.

How about you? What applications do you use to build your twitter base?  I would love to get your feedback.  Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv.  That’s great for all you bloggers out there. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog!  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from all of you.

While physically located in , Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

There is nothing like the Olympic Games to bring the world together.  Over 80 countries have gathered to compete, demonstrate their skills and share their culture and friendship.   I am a huge fan of the Olympic Games.  This year as I watched some of my favorite sports,  I was struck by how many similarities there are between the Games and Social Media. Here are my top 7 ways the Olympics mirror the Social Media landscape.

1. Strategy: Whether you are a curling team vying for a gold medal or a business owner keen to grow their business, a comprehensive, well thought out strategy is key to your success. One wonders what strategy the Norwegian team was using when they chose these pants however LOL!  The good news is, as a business manager, you can opt for something a little less flashy!

2. Coaching: Few athletes will reach the top of the world’s standings without the assistance of a great coach.  So too for marketing your business in the social media realm.  There are so many applications, so many opportunities, that using the services of a skilled Social Media Specialist, is recommended for your success.

3. Focus: Olympians have a very regimented training schedule and they have a razor sharp focus on attaining their dream – that of an Olympic gold medal.  In Social Media, it is easy to get distracted in the myriad of applications out there.  Staying focused on the defined objectives is half the battle.

4. Commitment: Long track speed skaters can have thighs that measure 70 cms (that’s 27.5″) in circumference.  And that’s each thigh!  No one gets that big without rigorous training and commitment to their sport. To say nothing of the fact that they likely need to have their pants custom made!  Businesses wishing to get involved in social media should know that overnight success is doubtful. It requires a commitment to the process and a willingness to stay the course.

5. Adaptiveness: Short track speed skating takes place at a blistering pace.  With competition nipping at their ‘heels’, a skater needs to stay on their ‘toes’ as change happens very quickly.  So too in the Social Media space.  With technology changes and new applications on our doorstep almost daily, it’s important to stay current and be able to adapt quickly to changing trends.

6. Approachability: You see many athletes being great ambassadors of their sport.  Featured here is Canadian Gold and Silver Medalist Jennifer Heil, trying to explain the concept of Mogul skiing to a group of Rwandans. Wonder how that went? Approachability is so important in Social Media.  Becoming known as an expert in your field and an approachable one at that is a key component to your success.

7. Community: As I said in the beginning,the Olympic Games have the unique ability to unite the world.  This year as the torch passed through Canada, 12,000 torchbearers had the honor of carrying the flame through 1037 communities uniting its peoples as its magic burned bright.  Social Media has also become a bright light in the marketing world, going mainstream, extremely viral and carrying with it, the ability to speak to your audience 24/7. Building relationships is what it’s all about!

I would love to get your feedback. What is your favorite Olympic sport? Mine is definitely short track skating. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv.  That’s great for all you bloggers out there. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog!  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from all of you.

Enjoy the rest of the Olympics! Cheer on your favorite athletes and your country.  For me, yup, I’m a proud Canadian – GO CANADA!

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, I have clients asking me to help them clarify between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Business Page.    For many they appear to accomplish the same thing…but do they? Here are 3 major differences between Facebook Business Pages and Facebook Groups.

Before I begin however, let me mention as I have in previous posts, that Facebook frowns upon anyone using their Facebook profile page to do business. If reported, Facebook will shut down your account if they find you abusing their terms of use, so it makes sense for anyone doing business on Facebook to have a Facebook business page regardless of the other factors below.

1. Findability: Facebook Business Pages allow that once you have 25 fans, you may apply for a ‘vanity url’ on Facebook.  Logon to your Facebook profile and visit Facebook.com/username to explore this option.  Until you reach 25 fans, your Facebook busines page url will have a string of what will appear to be ‘garbage’ attached to the end of it.  Google for example, will have no idea what to do with this address and therefore you won’t be ‘findable’ in the search engines.  Once you have your vanity url, there is a good chance that your page will be crawled and searchable.  Facebook Groups are not searchable by the search engines.   In my opinion, that’s Pages 1, Groups 0.
   
2. Purpose: A Facebook Business Page is recommended for anyone wanting to do business on Facebook.  One can generate content on their business page that has no tie to your personal page.  You many have unlimited fans and update them with no limitation.  Business Pages are great for building your brand.  Almost anyone can become a fan of your Facebook Business Page.  However, the only limitation a business page owner can impose on their page with respect to fans is age and location. Facebook Groups of less than 5000 members can send email blasts to their members. A  Facebook group can be a little like a private club and are intended to be more personal and on a smaller scale.  Group administrators can set their groups up whereby the group owner can control membership.  Many people use Facebook Groups to rally people around a cause.  So for example,  if you wanted to create a group to rally support around the crisis in Haiti, a group would be a good choice here.  Groups are tied to your personal profile.     So depending on what you want to accomplish, the score here for me would be Pages 1, Groups 1.
3. Functionality: Facebook Business Pages allow you the much the same functionality as your personal page. In other words, you can upload photos, video, use applications like HTML or Facebook Markup Language (FBML) to create areas on your page to include things like opt-in boxes or link someone to your e-commerce site. There are some applications however that you cannot install on your business page but that is becoming less so and the possibilities are almost endless. Many people are now building exciting landing pages for the business page to really make it shine.  Facebook Groups allow you to use links, upload photos and video and that’s about it. In my opinion, that’s Pages 1, Groups 0.

Overall in my opinion then, it’s Pages 3, Groups 1.   I believe Facebook Business Pages are more functional and effective than groups.  There has also been another issue around groups lately that you should be aware of.  It appears that Facebook had a breech a while back whereby a fringe group  seized control of many Facebook groups that had no administrator assigned and used these groups to push forward their agenda.  Facebook has shut down the ability now to recapture administrator status on a group that is unassigned.  And, without administrator status, there are things you cannot do such as delete your group if you so desire.

Whatever you choose, if you aren’t sure about how to set these profiles up properly, you should consider using the services of a Social Media Specialist to help you through the process.  Customizing and optimizing these sites is key to your success.

I would love to hear about your experiences with Facebook Business Pages and Groups.  Tell me what works for you!

For all you bloggers out there, you’ll love commentluv here on my blog. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog.  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave me your comments! I want to hear from all of you!

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

Well, I did it! My static website has now been incorporated into my WordPress site. It took a little doing to make sure all my links stayed intact but I’m here.

As a Social Media Specialist VA, I coach my clients to use their blog site as their hub so it was time to put my money where my mouth is.    It’s so much easier for me now to maintain everything pertaining to my business here on my WordPress site than on my blog and my static website.  More importantly, it’s easy to communicate with my prospects and client base right here with the comment section so I am looking forward to lots of interaction!  It is already reinforcing the discipline to be in the moment – present and authentic.   A blog site is an ideal place for you to build intimacy, trust and loyalty with your followers.

You’ll notice that a ‘Services’ page has been added here along with a ‘Need Help?’ page so everything you need to know about me and my services is easily accessible.  I have all my links to my Social Media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter so you can communicate with me where-ever you are most comfortable hanging out online.

I still use my LinkedIn profile as my “About Me” page because I keep it up to date with all the current information and that is where my testimonials are housed.   To me, showcasing  testimonials on LinkedIn rather than a traditional website is more ‘authentic’ because they are generated by the recommender themselves.

It can be a bit of a challenge keeping up to date with this rapidly changing Social Media environment, but I am confident that with this transition, I will be able to keep my readers abreast of what’s happening with my business and be able to share fresh, relevant information all in one place.

I am keen to get some feedback!  How many of you have made this transition?

For all you bloggers out there, you’ll love commentluv here on my blog. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog.  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave me your comments! I want to hear from all of you!

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

As a Social Media Specialist, I always install Google Analytics as part of the profile setup on my clients’ blog sites but I also recommend that they have it or some other tracking device installed on their website as well. This is particularly important for clients who have e-commerce on their site/s.

While I keep track of what’s going on on these sites for my clients, we meet once quarterly (or more often if required), to go over these stats and ascertain what is working as a strategy and what isn’t. These are some of the factors to consider when analyzing your or your client’s’ data.

1.  Visitors:

• Benchmarking:    Choose the category that your business fits into and Google will run your stats against other businesses in that category of a similar size.  There is no point in measuring yourself against the whole world.  Compare apples to apples.
• New vs Returning:  It’s great that you have 1000 new visitors!  But how many of these visitors are returning to your site.?  The objective here is to build loyalty.  Your blog,  for an example, is an ideal place to build intimacy and trust with your prospects and clients.    When your returning numbers continue to rise, you are on the right track.
• Map Overlay:  The map overlay tells you where your audience is coming from geographically.  This may be of particular importance depending on your business.  You’ll want to know which locations are driving the most amount of traffic to your site and where you might need to focus more attention.  If your product were for example, woolen underwear, you would want to make sure that places like Alaska and the Territories were a good source of traffic for you.  Of course as a Canadian in the middle of winter, I’d be watching those Canadian numbers too! LOL

2.  Traffic Sources:

• It’s important to take a look at where your traffic is coming from.  If you have invested considerable time in your social media sites, you should find that profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., are great sources of traffic to your blog and to your website.  You might also find, if you are pushing your blog posts out to the social bookmark sites, that places like Digg, Delicious and Stumbleupon for example are also a source of traffic for you. You will be able to see pretty quickly which sites are the ones that are working best for you and it is here that you should devote a little more time and attention.
• It’s also important to keep track of the organic searches from places like Google or Yahoo.  If these organic searches are not sending considerable traffic to your sites, you may need to take a closer look at the keyword/tag choices on your blog or your website.
• For those of you involved in e-commerce, you’ll want to make sure that you have installed the proper Analytics code on the appropriate pages of your website or blog.  Google will provide that code and you or your website support person can install it.  You will be able to ascertain where in the buying cycle, people may be opting out.   You can then focus more attention on that page/s to encourage buyers to complete their purchase.  Of course if you are involved in e-commerce, you’ll want to make sure that you use the ‘Goal’ portion of GA to set some objectives and measure your success.
• If you have embarked on an Adword campaign with Google, you’ll want to carefully track the adwords and how they are working for you.  There are a myriad of ways to find the right kind of keywords to use to drive traffic to your site.  As an Internet Marketing/Social Media Specialist VA, I am able to do the kind of background work necessary to find the right ones.

3.  Content:

• While content isn’t a category on GA, it does directly correlate to your pages/visit and length of time on the site.  The key here is to remember that  CONTENT IS KING.  If you have great content on your blog or your website, then your readers will continue to return and spend more time there.  It doesn’t take rocket science to figure that one out.

The last thing that I’ll talk about here is the Bounce Rate.  Some people get all hung up on bounce rate.  There are many reasons why your bounce rate may be high.  You will want to visit GA and go to the help portion and key in Bounce Rate to find the reasons why your bounce rate might be high.    The goal of course, would be to try and get that bounce rate as low as possible but in some cases (like a brick and mortar business who only does business locally) where your bounce rate may be higher than average.

These are of course, deeper levels of Google Analytics for those who are so inclined. I have outlined the major categories that you should be evaluating on a regular basis.

How about you? Are you using Google Analytics or are you measuring your sites’ performance in some other way?  Tell me what you’re using.  For all you bloggers out there, you’ll love commentluv here on my blog. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog.  But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave me your comments! I look forward to hearing from you.

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

Looking back over the last year, I am pleased and amazed at the growth in my business. Social Media has played a huge role in this success and I am grateful to all those clients who have put their faith in me to help them build their business using these incredible tools.

Here are the top 5 things that I have learned this year about Social Media and the role it plays in building your presence online whether you are doing it for yourself or potentially as a Virtual Assistant like me, doing it for your clients..

1. Search Engine Optimization.   Social Media sites are very heavily indexed by Google. If you want yourself (or if you’re a VA, your clients) on the front page of Google, an investment in the Big Three (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) is a great way to get them there. Before February of this year, I was lucky to have 1 or 2 listings on the first page of Google. Now, if you key in my business name, Virtually Yours, Joanne Burgess,  I basically own the first 3 pages of Google. That’s expensive real estate. If you key in just my name, (and believe me, there are a lot of Joanne Burgesses out there), I still have 5 entries in the top 10 including the first two spots. This never would have happened if not for Social Media!
2. Links are Key. No matter what Social Media sites you are using, you need to have your sites inter-linked. Personally I have almost doubled my Facebook Fan page by having a fan box on my blog site. Making it easy for people to find you and follow you is key.  People don’t have time to search all over the place for you. Time is precious. Make it easy for your prospects and clients to find and connect with you wherever they ‘hang out’!
3. Yes, brick and mortar businesses can make good use of  Social Media tools. I automatically create a local business account listing for my brick and mortar clients.  While this is not considered part of a ‘normal’ social media strategy, I have used the ‘keyword’ component to help drive up their exposure on Google.  Google has recently incorporated Analytics on these profiles.  You can easily see what search strings potential prospects and clients are using to find your client’s business. I then use these findings to help the client build great blog posts and generate great tweets. There are also new apps popping up all the time to help scope out local prospects.
4. Potential to find great resources.  I have met the most amazing people by being involved in Social Media – not  just other VAs (who are amazing), but leaders in the industry  with whom I have shared great ideas and resources.  Social media puts you on a level playing field like never before and grants you incredible access.
5. Consistency is KEY. It’s easy to setup profiles on Social media sites.  It’s something else to commit to the process and stay the course. It’s a struggle many days to find the time to get on the sites and participate in the discussion… but as I tell my clients, a few minutes each day, gets you closer to your goal of being the person people think of when they think of your product or service and more importantly to show that you are an expert in your ‘field’ and an approachable one at that.

In summary, it’s been an amazing year for me. I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had, my amazing clients, the awesome people I have met and for the potential in 2010.

This will be my last blog post of the year.  I will be spending the next couple of weeks practicing what I preach. I tell my clients that a blog site should be your hub, so I will be migrating my website content over to my blog. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I would like to leave you all with my warmest wishes for continued prosperity in the coming year and for a safe, happy holiday season with your loved ones.

I will be spending the holidays close to home this year.  Tell me how you plan to spend your holidays. I love hearing from my readers!

Kindest Regards,

Joanne

Well it looks like LinkedIn and Twitter are making a similar move (following the Twitter/Facebook alignment earlier this year) and will be working together.

Over the course of the next few days,  you will notice something new on LinkedIn. You will be able to tie in your Twitter account to LinkedIn and when you post a status update, you will be able to send that update to Twitter and vice-versa.  And that’s not all.  Click on this link to get a little more detailed information.  According to Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) and Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), the two will work together like peanut butter and chocolate! Yum, I love that combo! Watch this brief video that shows you how this will be done.

Now all we’re missing is the ability to hyperlink from your LinkedIn account to your Facebook account and I’d be happy from an SEO standpoint.

While this is a welcomed union and hopefully one of many ways they find to work together, if I am looking to do a general status update, I still use Ping.fm which updates all my sites – FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all from one place and all at the same time, which for me, generally suits my needs.  And if you look closely at Reid’s Twitter page in the video, you’ll see he’s been using Ping to update his status as well.

As a Social Media Specialist VA, I tell my clients that status updates are an important way to stay high in the search rankings of Google. Google likes fresh content!  So I update my status on each of my profiles daily. It takes a little discipline but there is a big payoff in the end.

How do you do your updates? Give me your feedback. I’d love to hear from you. And here on my blog, I offer comment luv. Anytime you submit feedback, you can link back to your own blog which is another great thing for SEO.

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

A few days ago, I received a DM (Direct Message) from a prospect on Twitter. I had had a couple of communications back and forth with this person about Social Media.  Their DM said that I was in a video that they had posted.  Well, curiosity kicked in and I wondered what they possibly could have said about me in this video so I clicked on it only to be taken to another site.  I gave this person the benefit of the doubt and didn’t want to embarrass them by telling them they had given a bad link, so I just let it go.  BIG MISTAKE!  This person’s Twitter account had obviously been hacked and in turn these scoundrels sent out DMs to her followers with their own propaganda, which in turn, I allowed to affect me.

By a stroke of luck, I had been doing some other things online at that time creating links for myself with some Twitter applications and when I was done, I went about doing some cleanup.  In the cleanup process I noticed a link that I didn’t think I had given permission to, so I ‘unapproved’ it which diminished this hacker’s effectiveness but obviously not in enough time for everyone.  Not long after that, I started receiving my own DMs.  It became apparent that I was now proliferating messages to my following, (by DM), to say that I was making many thousands of dollars a day online.

Thankfully, most of the people who sent me the DM said that they realized it must be spam and just alerted me to the fact that I too had been hacked, others said they clicked on the link and it didn’t go anywhere and another wanted to know why, if I was making that kind of money, would I be doing VA work?

Needless to say, this kind of hacking makes me furious. I have spent a lot of time developing serious relationships with  my followers.  Most know that I wouldn’t send out that kind of message and certainly not in a DM- it’s definitely not my style but for others who are just getting to know me better, I wonder how this might have affected a blossoming relationship. How many out there got the message and didn’t tell me?  It’s not cool when this happens to a Social Media Specialist VA, now is it?! But I guess it shows that we can all be vulnerable to this kind of crap!  So I’m human, go figure!

If you suspect that your account has been hacked, here’s what you should do.

1. Go to your Twitter account and be safe – change your password.

2. Go to ‘Settings’ on your Twitter account and on the top bar, click on the tab that says ‘Connections’.  On this page, check the permissions to applications/sites that you have given access to your Twitter account.  If there is something there that you don’t recognize, ‘un-authorize’ it.  This will disable access.

3. If someone tells you that you have been sending out SPAM, check it out. Don’t ignore it.

4. Tell someone if you suspect they have been hacked and if you have done as I did and clicked on the link, there’s a chance your own account has been affected so alert your own following.

I have since told that person that they had been hacked and they thanked me for letting them know. This is a pretty novice user in the Social Media realm.  What a welcome!  I have also sent out a global message to my following to apologize for the disruption and if in fact they did click on the link, to check their own Twitter accounts.  I hate hackers! How about you?

Feel free to let me know what you think about this.  How do we as a Social Media community deal with this?  Here on my site, I offer comment luv!…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Social Media sounds great but where’s the Return On Investment, right? So many clients and prospects ask me how to measure your ROI.  As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, the first question I always ask my clients is: What tool do you use to evaluate your ROI in general? Often times, I am surprised when they tell me they don’t use anything at all! There are many clients out there who have had a ’static’ website for some time and no tracking tool whatsoever. Sometimes they have a tracking tool and don’t know it’s there or don’t know how to use it. The interesting thing is, that not only can you track traditional ROI for social media, there is a second ROI that is specific to Social Media, and that is a “Return on Influence”.

The tool I usually recommend for tracking the more traditional ROI is Google Analytics. This is a free offering and gives you great information with respect to the traffic that is flowing to your site, etc.  You can break this information down and find the sources of this traffic which includes your social media sites.  Once you know where the decent traffic is coming from, you can begin to fine tune your strategies.  The same is true for your Blog if you have one.  Make sure you have WordPress stats or Google Analytics installed on your WordPress site  too so you can see how your blog is being received and where the traffic is coming from.  You can get some very valuable information from this data.  Please note however, that Google Analytics is only available as a plugin on Wordpress.org (Wordpress’ self hosted option) not Wordpress.com

The second ROI is Return On Influence. This is something that is easily visible from your interactions with your friends, fans and followers on Social Media and while this is a more subtle indication of your success in the SM realm, it is a valuable one nonetheless.. Here’s how it works.

The whole purpose of getting involved in Social Media in the first place is to build relationships. By building that trust and intimacy with your prospects and clients, you are further cementing your relationship with them which opens the door to doing business.  In building your presence in that environment, you should be looking to showcase your expertise and try to become known as the person people think of when they think of your product or service.  By becoming that ‘go to’ person, you begin to establish an influence in the marketplace, hence this ROI.

Once you begin to establish your presence on the social media sites (and this does take some time), you can begin to evaluate your ROInfluence.  Look at things like the number of strategic contacts you are building into your SM community.  Take a look too, at the number of fans that you are gaining on sites like Facebook.  Is the fan base growing? What about Twitter? Is the number of followers in your target market growing?   How about the conversation level.  Are you engaging people and are they interacting with you? If the answer is yes to these questions, then you are beginning to take your place in your community and helping pave the way to doing business.  People do business with people they trust.

Everything counts.  In the big picture everything you do contributes to your success so it’s important to evaluate all these indicators!  What about you? Have you measured your success this way?  I’d love to hear your comments. And here on my site, I offer comment luv!…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….