I have kind of experimented somewhat with Twitter these past few months when I opened a second profile.

When I started @timeontaskva I built my following one by one, picking people I wanted to be connected with and following them back if I made the choice.  Nothing automated about it.

With @mytwitrva I started it off with some followers and then sent it on its merry way with some automated systems for following.

The results are most interesting…

The profile I built by hand has more followers that have value to me, ones I enjoy connecting with. The more automated profile is building up contacts that seem to have tweets/updates that don’t do much for me.  Oh, there are contacts there that I do value, but the majority seem to publish updates such as: Make Money online guaranteed or Quickly grow your Twitter following go here …

The scary part is a few of these (not these two above) I recognized from having helped clients fix up some spamming and hacking issues with their twitter accounts. Each time, my clients had signed up and entered their twitter username and password to the systems promising lots of followers. Soon after, some funky stuff started happening with their accounts – spam posts/updates were published from their twitter accounts. In one case the account was suspended. Not good.

I keep cleaning out the second account so that it will give me connections I would prefer, but that takes more time and eventually I will have to spend even more time and energy to make the contacts I wanted in the first place.

Lesson learned from this is an age old one: Quality vs Quantity.

You can certainly build up quantity and have quality; but only if you seek out quality while doing so. Many of these promises and guarantees may not bring you the value you are looking for, not that I am saying they are all bad .

A little something to keep in mind as you go about “Building your Tribe”.

Technorati Tags: contacts, quality, Twitter, virtual assistant

I have been getting many inquiries lately and thought maybe it would help to tell people how I learned to use Twitter and Facebook and more…

How did I start? Well, I read… a lot!  If you check the Resource Page on this site, you’ll find several great places to kickstart you.  There will be more added as well, so feel free to re-visit this page to see the updates. (more…)

Technorati Tags: Facebook, online training, social media training, social networking, Twitter, virtual assistant

Recently, there was a grand example from Nova Scotia (my home province) that makes it clear to businesses and consumers exactly how social media has changed the way these parties interact.

Dave Carroll , a musician from Halifax, Nova Scotia, had his guitar broken in the spring of 2008 when his band was on a United Airlines flight.  United refused to acknowledge responsibility or pay for the damages even though there were witnesses who saw the ‘luggage” being thrown around during unloading.

After many months of trying to get United to accept responsibility for the damage (it cost $1200 to have his guitar fixed) Dave finally decided to take his frustration out the best way he knew how… via his music. (more…)

Technorati Tags: business, Social Media, social networking, Twitter

As I was setting up a new fanpage for a client today I noticed that the username section in facebook now seems to have an option to allow you to change it.  Something they said would not be available when they announced usernames in June.

When the usernames launched last month some people chose a name not necessarily related to their actual name and one they later regretted.

If you were in this group, you can fix it now.  Simply go to your settings tab and under   account settings you can go in and change your username.

My advice… choose wisely, especially if you have a business presence attached to your facebook profile.

Technorati Tags: branding, Facebook, Social Media

Twitter. It’s been in the news a lot lately. The growth of Twitter, a micro-blogging social networking site, is amazing. Some reports suggest more than 10 million users are now signed on to Twitter and the majority of them are 35 years and over.

Many ask, how can something like Twitter help my business? If used properly, and this means by providing a good mix of posts and updates, Twitter can help a business accomplish the following: (more…)

Technorati Tags: small business, social marketing, Social Media, social networking, Twitter

Social Media work has been taking off for my Virtual Assistant business, Time on Task VA Services, lately.  Clients are contacting us from all over to get help setting a plan in place that along with custom profiles can help establish an effective online presence and be a support for their marketing plan as well.

That said, I wanted to create a new look that would stand out and say to the world “We love working with social media and helping our clients bring their social networking efforts to a new level.”
(more…)

Technorati Tags: social marketing, Social Media, social networking, virtual assistant