Daily Archives: August 6, 2009

Social media can be an effective tool for promoting your business or brand. But without a plan for how you’ll use it, you could lose valuable time trying to keep up with an ever-evolving landscape of new information and tools.

An upcoming workshop, Social Media Jumpstart for Women Business Owners and Entrepreneurs, is catering to time-strapped business women who want to better understand and maximize their use of social media. Hosted by Public Square Communications, the event will be held on Thursday, August 13, 2009 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Haworth, Inc., located at 575 7th Street, NW in Washington, D.C.

“Women business owners face unique challenges. In addition to running businesses, many are also managing households and parental responsibilities,” said Judy Lubin, president of Public Square Communications.

Women-owned businesses also tend to have fewer financial and human resources, which makes social media especially attractive to women looking for cost-effective ways to promote their businesses.

Studies show women already outpace men on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.

“As more women use social media for both personal and business purposes, there is growing concern about work-life balance and whether time spent on social media sites can really help them meet business objectives,” added Lubin.

Her firm specializes in tracking and analyzing social, health and economic trends affecting women. With this data, Lubin has developed both online and offline communications and outreach strategies for national nonprofit organizations, government agencies and businesses.

An author and speaker on women’s empowerment and work-life balance, Lubin started her first blog in 2004. Now she’s using the insights gained from working with clients and personal experience to shorten the learning curve for business women.

The workshop will help participants develop a social media strategy for improving brand visibility, networking and engaging current and prospective clients. A strong focus of this session will also be on time-management, work-life balance and avoiding social media overload.

Topics to be covered include:

– Trends – Understand the driving forces behind social media so you start off on the right foot

– Branding – How to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools for branding and building credibility and trust

– Networking – How to connect and build relationships with industry leaders, key influencers and current and prospective clients or customers

– Tracking – Tools to track and evaluate social media efforts and return on engagement (ROE)

– Time Management – How to best manage time on social media to get the results you desire

– Strategy – Work on a social media action plan during the workshop and leave with concrete steps for action

For more information or to register, visit www.publicsquarecom.com/speakingtraining/smjumpstart/

The new social network Wooxie is now making use of another great feature. You can now comment or “SPEAK” as they call it directly under a users post. You can speak on your own posts too.

Founder and CEO Jeff Knize of Wooxie®, mentions “The speak function is a way to communicate directly to a users post without having to Reply. This new function is important for a few reasons. 1) It unclutters recent posts on the home page. 2) It keeps posts around longer as user accounts grow with more fans. Thus, users don’t miss valuable posts. The feature is user friendly and opens and closes shut (unlike other networks). If users have an issue with a particular comment, they can delete it. Users will know when others are speaking on their posts too. I think it is an efficient way for communication”.

Wooxie’s speak feature is now functioning and being used under posts. The feature is for quick replies. Therefore, the chararacters per “Speak” are maxed at 75. Users can speak back and delete if needed. Speak alerts are being added to Wooxie’s sidebar.

Wooxie is accepting new members and is a free service
http://www.Wooxie.com/register

First there was Facebook, then Twitter, & now Wooxie. Wooxie is unique by allowing you to choose your categories upon sign-up & only allow posts from those categories (up to 155 characters). Wooxie allows you to add your photo, website url, your info. on your profile page, customize your backround and colors, add a photo gallery with a unique title, speak feature under posts and soon SEO/link backs to users blogs and websites.

BluMail (http://www.blumail.org) – the leading online portal that helps people in developing nations find information and resources for improving their lives – now offers three, unique, social media Web sites that enable users to forge stronger, more meaningful connections compared with alternative sites.

Accessible via BluMail’s homepage, Read/Share a Story, What Do You Think? and The Remembering Site enable anyone with Internet access to share his or her life experiences – whether a single, important incident or a complete memoir or something in between. Users can read each other’s postings and then easily connect with those facing similar circumstances, issues and/or challenges. BluMail’s three, complementary formats for sharing something about oneself allow users to get to know each other in a deeper way than is possible on today’s other popular social media sites.

This “trifecta” of social networking Web sites supports BluMail’s broader mission of promoting meaningful connections, cultural understanding and networking among people everywhere throughout the world, regardless of geographic and other barriers.

“We developed these BluMail sub-sites so people could truly benefit from what anyone has learned through both common and extraordinary life experiences,” said Sarah McCue, Founder and Chair of BluMail and its parent organization, BluWorld. “You can’t get that value from most of today’s other popular social media sites where, for example, you only get snippets of often trivial information about things like your friend’s excitement that he got upgraded to first class on his latest business trip, two-sentence review of a new movie or nostalgia for the five toys that remind him of his childhood.”

Read/Share a Story (http://blumail.org/shareastory) is a shorter format option for people who want to share their insights, advice and/or wisdom about a memorable event. This BluMail sub-site is an active repository for the diverse stories of people everywhere of all ages and from all walks of life – sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, artists, entrepreneurs, educators, office workers, political activists, scientists, students, taxi drivers, waitresses and more. Anyone can post his or her own story, along with a photograph, and also see those posted by others. Whether funny, poignant, triumphant, indignant or nostalgic, these stories are invariably powerful and everyone is bound to find some that resonate.

Using a double-blind, secure email system that prevents users from seeing each other’s email addresses, anyone can easily connect via email with people who have posted stories that inspire them. Eventually, BluMail plans to publish a book of the most inspiring memoirs to make these stories even more widely available.

What Do You Think? (http://blumail.org/whatdoyouthink) is geared for the person who is not interested in writing about his or her experiences or memories – who doesn’t want to share a story – but would like to quickly create a snapshot of his or her personality, values and motivations. Based on the renowned Proust Questionnaire, it is a more structured format of 35 thought-provoking questions that the respondent answers in one sentence each. The questionnaire has its origins in a 19th century parlor game popularized (although not created) by the celebrated French writer, Marcel Proust, who believed that an individual’s answers to these questions revealed his or her true nature. Questionnaire respondents can opt to allow others to privately comment on their answers through BluMail’s double-blind, secure email system.

Featured on Senator Bill Bradley’s radio show, “American Voices,” The Remembering Site (www.therememberingsite.org) makes it simple and fun for anyone to write, share, archive, continually update and publish his or her life story. Although not everyone is able to leave money, jewelry or land as an inheritance for his or her children and grand kids, everyone can leave the most precious thing of all – an account of the family history and legacy. Non-relatives, too, will find The Remembering Site valuable because it is an Internet-based anthology of personal histories chronicling life experiences and lessons.

Because most people are likely to be overwhelmed at the prospect of writing their own memoirs and may not even know where to start, The Remembering Site makes it easy by asking users to answer 1,000-plus, evocative questions that elicit key details and memories from their lives. Also, professional writers are available (for a fee) to interview users and help complete their biographies. Upon completion, a user can make his/her autobiography available for others to read on this site or print and distribute quality paperback or hardback copies.

To date, people from all over the world have used The Remembering Site to write their life stories – people from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Cuba, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Philippines, Sudan, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

About BluMail

BluMail is an online community for anyone, anywhere, especially youth in developing countries, to find information and resources for improving their lives, local communities and countries. BluMail offers free email accounts as well as “make-a-difference” content and a networking and activism portal for the millions of people gaining access to the Internet in coming years as well as for those who are socially responsible in any country. BluMail partners with U.N. groups, other NGOs, nonprofits and technology companies to provide support and Web site content to raise global awareness of their missions. For more information and to register for a BluMail email account, please visit http://www.blumail.org.