Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

URL Shorteners

Monday, August 17th, 2009
bitlylogo

The verdict is in!
Bit.ly is my favorite
URL Shortener.

What is a URL Shortener?

The best way to describe it is to use an example.

Gotta long URL?

Here’s one: http://www.virtualitassistants.com/inbound-marketing-university/

Now if I wanted to tweet and share this URL in twitter, the address would take up 64 of the 140 characters allowed for my message! That doesn’t leave much room to tell you what the link is about.

What if you could type in: http://bit.ly/IMUinfo and get to the same place? Well that is why so many people use url shorteners. (Beware though, as you could imagine, this can also be a bad thing because someone mischievous could hide unsafe links. Be careful of what you click on!)

All I have to do is go to bit.ly to shorten and share, type in the address I needed shortening. I also chose “show options” and gave it a custom name. Hit “shorten” and voilà! A shorter, and easier to remember URL.

closeup

Thanks to bit.ly, the URL is now: http://bit.ly/IMUinfo.

Note: The thing to remember when choosing a custom name for a website is that it is case sensitive. So, if you go to http://bit.ly/imuinfo it won’t work. But this is a good thing! if someone already had: http://bit.ly/IMUinfo , then I could use http://bit.ly/IMUINFO.

Now, the reason why bit.ly wins my vote: I can log in and see the traffic for each my shortened links. I use twitterfeed to automatically change my blog post URLs to bit.ly addresses for twitter updates (because of the 140 character rule). When I log into bit.ly I can see how much traffic my blog posts are getting from twitter!

 

history

Make sure you sign in to bit.ly before you shorten any links you want to actually track.


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FaceBook Fan Pages

Friday, August 7th, 2009

If you are planning on building your own business page then you should go to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and see if it’s something you might be able to setup. It’s free to setup and I HIGHLY recommend it for any type of businesses.

If it looks a little over your head, or you want fast results without having to figure it all out, then contact Virtual IT Assistants to set it up for you! facebooklogo fan pages are a totally HOT new way to let businesses stay in touch with their customers/clients. And it allows your happy customers to share the love with their friends!

Business2.0 on Facebook – is my fan page for Virtual IT Assistants. (Mostly, I use it as a hub to keep other professionals informed on what’s new with fanpages and apps.)

I hope this helps. :) Make sure you become a fan of my pages and keep me posted if you setup a new page! We are always interested in what kind of things businesses are using their fan pages for.

Work at Home Parents
Work at Home Parents
Promote Your Page Too

Join Work at Home Parents on Facebook

1. Become a fan.

2. Post your small business webpage on the front wall.

3. Suggest us to your friends

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Social Network

Sunday, July 12th, 2009


VA Business profiles:
Squidoo.com lens: Click Here
Virtual Assistant Forum profile: Click here
My NetVibes Click here
Blogspot bloggerClick here
Technorati technoratiClick here
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Why Social Networking?

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Do you need an online social network
for your business?

Business Professionals, Politicians, Artists, Musicians, Celebrities, College Grads, Teachers and basically everyone else who want to get connected to their family, peers, colleagues and clients then now is the time to create your own web presence through social networking sites.

With Social Network Profiles:

1.  Get in Touch

Anyone, anywhere in the world who has access to the internet has access to connect to you and your products and services. So give the world a lasting first impression – one that is clear, confident and complete. Get instant gratification with instant online messaging.

  • no phone tag
  • no awkward silences
  • no long distance charges
  • no annoyed hang ups

When it comes down to it, most career focused individuals come up with a sort of “mental script” for their conversations regarding business plans, strategies, opinions and what not. And lets face it, because there are times when we are more energetic or perhaps more distracted sometimes our message is sent less than effectively.

2. Stay in Touch

The importance of your web presence, whether it is a website or blog, is not to be denied. But the newer capabilities of online social networks can be an invaluable extensions of a business or professional’s online portfolio.

The continuing results of most online network sites are online rolodexes, increased effectiveness of communication. No more wondering if you remembered to give all the pertinent details to that potential business partner. If you put yourself out there, and follow the rules of “netiquette” this can be a resource for business growth until you are ready for retirement!

For information regarding my Virtual Assistance for building your online web presence, visit:  Virtual IT Assistants Web Design .

 
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Free Web Presence

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Websites and Blog Sites

The best way to get free web presence is to start one of these blogs : WordPress, WebNode, Blogger, LiveJournal, or Squidoo. Squidoo calls their sub sites “lenses”. Use your business name for example mine is darkbluesun So I have a website with blogger: http://darkbluesun.blogspot.com (I know it says blogspot instead of blogger, I don’t know why they did that but it is, in fact, blogger.) And I have a Squidoo lens: http://www.squidoo.com/darkbluesun/ see? I found a name that was unique that I could use on most of my online profiles. But if I’d recommend any of them to start out with, it’d have to be Blogger it ties in to Google, if you’ve signed up for your Google account and they allow adding Google Ads where WordPress.com sub sites don’t.

When you setup your business site, if you use more than one word like I did: dark, blue, sun. You can capitalize them in a way that will separate them from each other in on your website address.

E.G.  Which is easier to read?

http://yourwebsiteaddress.blogspot.com/

or

http://YourWebsiteAddress.blogspot.com/

List of other Blog Options:

WordPress http://wordpresssamplesite.wordpress.com/
Blog http://darkbluesun.blog.com
Blogger http://BloggerSampleSite.blogspot.com/
Live Journal http://darkbluesun.livejournal.com/
Social Go
WebNode
BlogLines
ScrapBlog – this would be great for an online catalog.
Google Sites

Misc Resources:
When you get a website setup, check out the “MyBlogLog” service.

Then when you are an established Online Business, you can hire a professional to build this and get even MORE business!

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Facebook Username

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

If You Have A Niche, Go

Claim Your FaceBook User ID Right Now.

(before all the good one’s are gone!)

http://www.facebook.com/username 

I got mine! ( darkbluesun of course : )

add me on facebook

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twitter tools

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Reach & keep followers on twitter with these tools!

FYI- due to some twitter updates lately I have had a little trouble with some of the auto apps. You might want to monitor it over the next few days to make sure your tweets get sent.

  1. Friend or Follow – There are some peeps who go and mass follow a bunch of ppl then, mass unfollow after they nab the followback. SO CHEATING! Find out if people unfollowed you (then unfollow those twits!) :)

  2. Top Twitter Followers – Follow them, they’ll follow u!

  3. Mr.Tweet – build a network of peeps w/ similar interests.

  4. TweetLater – Send your new followers a “Thanx 4 the Follow” msg

  5. Twuffer – queue up your tweets! Don’t have time to stop by twitter and tweet an important msg to your peeps?

  6. TwitBacks – Get a Twitter BackGround because there is only so much the profile allows you to share about your business < word to the wise, never share too much ’bout yourself !!! >

  7. TwitterFeed - feed your blog posts to twitter automatically with this awesome little app.

  8. Twitter Search! – search for anything peeps are tweeting.

  9. tweeteradder - Boasts “400 followers in a day!” I don’t know about that, but I have gotten about 50 and I just signed up for it! If you get 15 of your friends & followers to signup, you get free VIP status (only for one day though.) It gives you an ID (as you see mine on the link) and when you log back in, you can see if  any of your friends signed up for you!

Follow me, I'll follow you.

**BTW, try to keep your ratio of followers and following kinda even. If people see that you follow like 500 people, and you only have 50 folloing you, then there must be something wrong with you and they shouldn’t follow you. **

______________________________________________________________
Need more twitter tools, tips and “tricks”?

Click here to see this guy’s Tweet Tool Collection!
______________________________________________________________


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Setup a FaceBook Fan Page

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

1. Be logged in as page admin – could be yourself or your client requesting the page

2. Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

3. Complete all of the questions for your page. (Business name, web address, what type of business, etc.)

☆ Note ACCURACY for what you should choose under “what type of business” for your fan page is important. Some things available to share about your fan page under the “Info” on your page depends on what you chose here!

4. Customize Facebook Fan Page, add a profile picture etc.
5. WAIT until your fan page is as complete as possible before you Publish or invite friends.

Facebook Apps to Always Try and Use

Events app can be used to announce seminars, training, any time of business event
Notes can be used to pull an RSS feed into your site and update the wall for you.
Photo app for the portfolio
Video app to show recorded seminars
The discussion board can be geared to encourage on-going conversations, but
The WALL is where you really want to encourage conversations.

Go to your page, click on settings (just under the “What’s on your mind?” box)
Set your default view to “Posts by Page and Fans” – this lets people see who you are conversing with.

Static FBML – this is an app to create a Welcome Tabs for pages that you can use HTML to edit.
Welcome pages are helpful for people to see who are not yet fans and direct newcomers to “fan” your page. (That is, become a fan.)
Under “Edit Page” Set the Wall as your fans’ landing page and fans-to-be can have a nice informative & exciting welcome page! (I love FBML.)

RSS Graffiti is nice if you need to pull multiple RSS feeds into your fan page.

Or hire a Virtual IT Assistant to professionally design and setup a facebook fan page!

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