ThePodcastSisters

Twitter Hall Of Fame

As you know, you'll find Anna and I on Twitter.

I've seen a steady increase of entrepreneurs, media companies and corporates start to join the Twitter community over the recent months.

Twitter has become a place to research, build friendships and even promote your business. But I don't recommend jumping in to the Twitterverse without doing a little research first.

Yes you can microblog and each microblog post is only 140 characters maximum. But remember that each Tweet that you make is indexed in Google and will come up in Google searches and Google Alerts- so be careful what you Tweet.

As part of your research, why not take a look at this article from InsideCRM called the 'Twitter Hall of Shame' which shares 50 notable Tweets covering information from business to political Tweets, and from marriage proposals to wine tasting parties on Twitter.

And if you are on Twitter, don't be shy about connecting to Anna and I.

What stories do you have to share about the difference Twitter and microblogging has made to you?

Attribution: Thanks to Fiona King of InsideCRM for sharing the 'Twitter Hall of Shame' article with me.

Ego Surf To Check The Health Of Your Personal Brand Online

One of the strategies I advise my clients is to ensure that they "ego surf" - in other words check what others will find when and if someone looks for them in the search engines.

I recommend that you check this each month and make sure that you check your name and your company name both with and without the "" around your name.

A great reason fo doing so is you just never know what you might find when checking the visibility of your personal brand online.

Today I checked against my name and to my suprise there was a wonderful testimonial posted by someone about the assistance I had given them about branding, blogging and social media.

Many times people may link back to you if you have a business blog and it's easy to check incoming links especially if you are blogging using Wordpress.org as the links are clearly there for you to check in the Wordpress dashboard.

In this particular case the person had linked to my profile on LinkedIn a social netowrking site used by professionals. I'd never have known that they had written such a great testimonial which has in fact led to another business opportunity if I had not checked my search results in Google.

So if you are worried that Googling yourself is vanity, get over it! You just may be suprised with the wonderful testimonials about you online. Go go one "Google Yourself" today - it may give you a great boost and is far better than a chocolate Easter Egg - and will have much longer lasting results!

Three common errors business bloggers make

Whether your business blog hosts resources and articles for your clients or it hosts your corporate podcast, how can you ensure that you achieve the results you deserve from investing time in authoring your business blog?

Here are three of the most common errors I see people making when authoring a business blog:

1. Not branding your business blog – by branding I recommend you look at the following three areas
(a) Ensuring that the name of your business blog connects to your business and the services you offer
(b) Making sure that the design of your business blog follows through from your corporate identity. There are many low cost and no cost blogging tools available which one of the reasons why business blogging has become so popular. That is fantastic – but please do not scrimp on investing in the design of your business blog to reflect your corporate identity and also making it easy to navigate for the readers of your business blog.
(c) Creating content that meets the needs of your target market and niche – consider your blog as a way to represent your unique expertise in your field.

2. Not connecting your business blog to your corporate website – if you have a corporate website make sure that you have a link from your website to your business blog. I do recommend that this link is not just a hyperlink to your blog which is authored on a separate platform. To ensure that you benefit from traffic to your business blog, I recommend that you use a blogging platform such as Wordpress.org where you can host your business blog alongside your website.

3. Not adding an about page – you might not realise it but your about page on your business blog or website is the second most likely page that people will click through to. It is important to have details about you and the team authoring your business blog as people want to check out who you are – they are genuinely interested in the authors of your business blog and they are also interested in assessing your professional credibility in the areas you are writing about.

Why not audit your business blog today and make sure that you have a plan in place to rectify these common mistakes.

And if you would like to read about four more common mistakes you can do so here.

Build your personal brand online for career distinction

I often get books to review from guests of my "Biz Growth Live" programme so it especially exciting to get a new book to read from a colleagues and friend as happened to me last weekend.

William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson, colleagues and friends who I have known and worked with for a couple of years are now officially authors with their launch this week of their book "Career Distinction".

"Career Distinction" is now on my list of recommended reading if you are an individual in an organisation looking to progress your career.

Personal branding is definitely the hot topic of the moment with everyone from coaches to image consultants, from web designers to bloggers talking about how to build your personal brand. Personal branding is one of the key areas I write, speak and teach - I recently covered how to build your personal leadership brand on of my recent podcasts at "Todays Women in Business".

Having spent almost 20 years in executive positions across the globe, what I was particularly struck by was one very important message in the book.

I have appointed many business leaders over my time in my corporate career, but few recognised the key message in "Career Distinction". Progressing in your career is not a start and stop approach - many people update their resume/CV and start networking when they are looking for a new job.

Instead, Arruda talks about considering your career management plan as something you work on continuously.

Co-author Kirsten Dixson brings to the table her experience of helping people build their personal brand online and I was delighted to see the subject of business blogging versus static web profiles to build your personal brand online being covered. However if you do want to build your personal brand online with a business blog or personal blog I would recommend that you also read books such as "Go Blog Wild" by Andy Wibbels which will provide specific guidance on blogging.

In summary, "Career Distinction" is a distinctive book about personal branding if you are looking to progress your career. I would recommend it for people in early career or middle management - there are some other elements I would want to see covered before recommending it to executives.

It would also make a great college graduation gift to help young graduates discover how to nurture their career right from the start.

If you would like to disover three key reasons why I recommend "Career Distinction" you can read my full review on "Todays Women In Business".

What blogging blunders do you make?

Today we recorded our next podcast for the Podcast Sisters - Anna was at home, Heather was in a Starbucks and I was in the office - but we made this possible through using Skype.

We could have talked for hours as the podcast is all about business blogging - and the fact that we all use different blogging platforms and have our personal favourites made the conversation particularly interesting.

I am afraid you will need to wait until next Monday to hear the podcast - you see that's going to be our regular podcast publishing day.

But if you are already a blogger, I just have to recommend that you head on over to a new series of short online video's from my good friend Andy Wibbels and the author of "Go Blog Wild".

Andy has just put together a series of 5 blogging blunders - really great tips to review your business blog performance by. and watch out as he wears less and less clothes as he progresses through the video's!

You can find the 5 blogging blunders online here. Enjoy!

Oh and by the way - my biggest challenge is blogging blunder number 4. What's yours?