Reflections of a Square Peg

26 Experts on How to Make Money Not Cold Calling

I don't know many people who like to cold call, I know it has never been that successful for me. Not only is it so impersonal and intrusive, but it just doesn't work, how many times do you put the phone down or screen the telesales call at home? For every 50 cold calls you make, only 2 will result in an appointment.

My friend, Leesa Barnes, hates cold calling. She relied on cold calling to get clients for her web development business in 1997. Two years later and heavily in debt, Leesa gave up on self employment and got herself a full time job.

When she was laid off in 2004, Leesa decided to try self employment again. But this time, she did things a little differently. Leesa decided to use social media to find new clients and make money.

Four years later, Leesa has published a book, is a recognized expert in podcasting and has tripled her income in just 12 months - all without cold calling.

If you think Facebook, MySpace, blogs and podcasts are only used by teenagers, you're missing out on one of the easiest ways to find new clients.

If you want to learn how to use social media as a business tool and do it right the first time, I invite you to check out a virtual event taking place this month that's hosted by Leesa.

It's called the Social Media Telesummit and it features 26 amazing speakers who will teach you
how to use social media for business.

There's no fluff at this event. Each speaker will teach you a specific tip based on their practical, in the trenches experiences.

So, if you want to say goodbye to cold calling and use a fun and profitable way to find new
clients, click on the following link to read more about how this event will help you:

Social Media Telesummit

How are recruiters using the web to hire?

As a job seeker or just someone who is interested to see how social computing is starting to be used and is being recommended to be used by companies and recruiters check out Zoominfo's latest FREE on demand webinar.

"Recruiting is a Competitive Advantage - How social computing keeps your recruiting department one step ahead of the competition" - Presented by Zach Thomas, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research.

You have to register, but its FREE. Also if you are not building your on-line personal brand using resources such as Zoominfo you should be - so take the time to start doing that too.

Corporate Guide to Blogging

Edelman the global PR company has just produced a very interesting report on blogging - including some great demographic data in terms of who is reading blogs and how often.

If you are thinking of adding a blog as part of building your personal brand you would do well to take a look at this first. Download it here.

Blogging is not the answer for everyone when thinking of building a web presence - if your target audience is Americans over 65 you might want to have a second think!

Big Companies Are Blogging

According to an Edelman study of the top Fortune 500 companies - 32% are blogging in some way or another - download the report here.

If you are planning to utilise blogging as part of raising your personal brand and have some target companies in mind that you might be interested in working for - check out who is blogging and who is not.

Internal Networking Using Technology

The next phase of the social networking advance is now upon us - Enterprise 2.0 - as reported in this recent Globe & Mail article talks about how we will be seeing the use of various social networking technology, such as forums, blogs etc, inside companies.

Forward thinking companies are already taking the notion of personal branding and applying it to employees internally to improve,  amongst other things, communication - the availability of a suite of tools aiding this communication is a natural extension and I think something you wil lstart to see more of as companies look to engage employees and share knowledge more rapidly and globaly for competitive advantage.

How To Get The Career (and life) You Want

Meet Amber MacArthur (or her blog name Amber Mac), she was the lunchtime keynote at the TECH 2006 conference yesterday.

She was a perfect second speaker for the event, young, confident, dynamic and extremely passionate about technology and her career in IT. She is the example of where careers are heading in the 21st century having already had a number of different experiences in a variety of roles - all linked and related in someway - but very much following or going with the flow of opportunity and excitment of the project versus and more conservative planned career approach.

Not to say that her career is not progressing having just recently started as the New Media Specialist for CITY TV and CP24 in Toronto.

Her list of five - how to get the career and life you want - was simple, clear and bang on for the audience.

1. Be Brave - don't feed the bears or your fears
2. Know yourslef - don't live other peoples dreams, live your own.
3. Stay connected - relationships are the key to success
4. Be creative - make things happen
5. Do what you love - don't settle, find what makes you happy and do it.

Great advice.

To Blog or Not to Blog - That Is The Question

Catherine an English bilingual secretary working in France thought that blogging about some of the funny going's on at work and what happened to her were pretty harmless - especially as she kept herself and her employers anonymous. - Catherine's Blog

Not the case, she has just been fired from her job and is claiming unfair dismisal in a test case in France.

This is not such an unusual situation here in North America where there is even a term for being fired because of your blog content - getting 'dooced' named after Heather Armstrong who was fired after writing about her work colleagues - Heather's Blog

Many people may be writing blogs in the hope that their writing talents may get noticed and they can sign that $1 million advance for their first novel.

What many seem to be forgetting is once its out there its for all to see, so its not just the current employer who is feeling uncomfortable with the content enough to not want to employ you anymore, but its the next potential employer who takes a pass after a Google search because there is too much risk and exposure.

So the word is not just to not be dooced but also Think Before you Blog.

Flickr.com photo credit nico

When 'The donald, GM & McDonalds are Blogging - You Know it is Getting Mainstream

Canadian businesses are not so quick to be rushing to the blogesphere - but US corporations are certainly jumping on the Blog Wagon in earnest.

Vice Chairman Bob Lutx of GM is blogging - mostly product based rather than personal , but he's there, Donald Trump has a blog linked to Trump University and even McDonald's senior director of corporate responsibility has been blogging - defending the company's use of polystyrene cups for coffeee versus paper.

The thought is that business blogs are a way of building a sense of community around a company and its brand(s) - and a personal blog can be used in the same way to either promote yourself as an expert in an area to be possibly hired elsewhere or as a specialist for someone to hire you or your services as a self employed consultant etc.

Either way blogging should be another tool that you are considering as part of building your personal brand.

Happy blogging!

Missed me, missed me, now you're gonna kiss me!

After 9 days without blogging I have to admist a sense of guilt and withdrawl - is that good or sad?

With two conferences to attend almost back to back and playing e-mail and client catch up in between it became a case of dropping something.

When I was at the Career Masters Institute conference a good friend and colleague Kirsten Dixson of Brandego was presenting on leveraging technology and spoke about the need to be posting 2-3 times a week on a blog to raise online rankings and profile - so back at it!

100 and counting.......

So is this a milestone?

This is my 100th blog posting, so it means something (apart form the fact that I have not been blogging as much as I want to or maybe even should be doing).

I have come across several blogs of people I know recently and they have been prolific in their postings so as I make this transistion more to blogging and providing content, resources and advice via my blog more and use my e-zines for producing more quality articles that can be expanded and used elsewhere and more regular database contact it will be interesting to see if there is a shift of reader focus and feedback.

If you have somethoughts on this I would welcome and encourage you to click on Comments nad post your thoughts - remember its also good for your on line profile and raises your Google rankings.