Music sure does soothe the soul as does seeing so many dear and wonderful people.

Ontario Philharmonic who’s sold out “Let’s Tango” performance was absolutely magical and enchanting at The Regent Theatre last night — especially Leslie Newman on flute.

Thanks to Clarington Center for the Arts for the beautiful hand made wine charm – a nice keepsake for the event, and Chuck Buyers for the wine talk, and of course all the wineries for the yummy wine! What a wonderful evening!

Attendees urged to give generously to new “Art of Transition Culture Fund”…

by Durham Community Foundation.   All financial gifts will be invested, and the returns  granted to charitable arts and culture organizations — the first being The Ontario Philharmonic who will receive the first grant — 50% from the proceeds of the launch party. The other 50% of proceeds from the launch party go to the fund, and as the principal stays invested, it creates a lasting legacy for arts in Durham Region.  For more information call Janet @ 905-430-6507

My social media challenge?

I would challenge the 800 in attendance, and anyone else who cares about art and culture in Durham Region to share this with their friends using social media and urge them to give. Since the average person has 126 people on Facebook — we would challenge 100,800 people together, and if 4% of those people to donate $25 each and we’d reach the goal of $1,000,000 which would yield grants of $80,000 per year.  Hmmm…

Will YOU take the challenge?

People can help us build the Art of Transition Culture Fund at:
http://www.durhamcommunityfoundation.ca

A Welsh politician has become the first U.K. citizen to lose a twibel libel case based on something posted on social media site Twitter.

Read the whole article via PCWorld.

January 24th, 2011 — LinkedIn introduced InMaps, an interactive visual representation of your professional universe that allows you to understand the relationships between you and your entire set of LinkedIn connections and therefor better leverage your professional network to help pass along job opportunities, seek professional advice, gather insights, and more. To access your InMap, you must have 50 connections and 75 percent of your profile completed, and go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com. Read more about LinkedIn InMaps via…
The LinkedIn Blog » Visualize your LinkedIn network with InMaps «.

Just read Harvard Business Review Analytics Services Studies Social Media and was not surprised to hear that…

“Most organizations are in discovery mode when it comes to social media,”

or that…

“the significant participation in the survey of more than 2,000 senior executives demonstrates how important the topic is—and it’s one they are working hard to figure out.”

I was however VERY surprised to read these statistics:

• Three-quarters (75%) of the companies did not know where their most valuable customers were talking about them.
• Nearly one-third (31%) aren’t measuring the effectiveness of social media on the business.
• Less than one-quarter (23%) are using social media analytic tools.
• A small number (7%) of participating companies are able to integrate social media into their marketing activities.

Especially that 75% of companies polled were not monitoring their reputation in this day and age and economy.   Don’t they realize that there are over 500 million active users on Facebook alone – over 1/2 of which participate once a day — even if they choose not to???

If you’re reading this blog and are not managing your online profile and need help getting started, give me a call. I’d love to show you how to protect the reputation you’ve worked hard to get.   We call it profile management and in our books it’s a must do, that is if you want to stay in business!

1. BRAND - Decide on a brand and use it consistently on the web and in your social media spaces so it’s easy for you and your target audience to remember.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA EMAIL ADDRESS – so when you go on holidays manning the social media storefront can be delegated, and so you can filter it into a special email folder, so you can look only once per day. Perhaps a gmail account as you’ll need one to
3. BLOGS / RSS NEWS FEEDS — so social media spaces can automatically syndicate it.
4. SCHEDULE TIME IN YOUR SCHEDULE – get it done
5. PROFILE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE – to watch your pages, those you manage and your competitors
6. COMMUNICATIONS PLAN — what do your customers want? what will they share?
7. RESOURCES – what do you have now, what is available for free on the net
8. ALLIANCES – who do you know, win/wins?
9. EDUCATE YOURSELF – fast track your success and avoid fatal errors.
10. GOOGLE ALERTS & ANALYTICS — on your website so you can identify what works and repeat it, as well as what does not, so you can eliminate it and focus on true success

Savvy marketers and business owners have flocked to Foursquareto take advantage of their 4.5 million members for one simple reason: Foursquare requires action. Conversations on Twitter and fan engagement on a brand’s Facebook Page can be valuable pieces to a successful social media marketing campaign, but user activity at the point of sale is the ultimate objective for us marketers and business owners. We ultimately want action, and geolocation networks like Foursquare deliver the goods.

via 6 Ways to Market on Foursquare Without a Location.

One of the categories SMBs ask for the most help with is social media. You need to quickly and easily keep an eye on what people are saying about you; more importantly, you need to participate in the social media conversation yourself, without drowning hours upon endless hours bouncing around various websites.

There are three great tools we’d recommend for pushing out updates to a variety of sites at once. All three have free, web-based services, and they’re great for working with teams, too. Depending on your specific needs and tastes, you could try out Hootsuite, Seesmic and TweetDeck.

If you want to see what people are saying about your company, your product, your location or your vertical in real time, try searching for relevant terms on Collecta or SocialMention.

You also have options for network-specific monitoring tools. To see how your tweets are performing, tryCrowdBooster. And remember, Twitter’s official analytics product is coming soon, too. For Facebook, use that social network’s Insights dashboard for your business’s Facebook Page.

via 23 Free, Web-Based Tools SMBs Are Asking for Now.

Just read an really interesting post by Recruiterpoet called “Networking Needs Compassion” and loved the way he summed up the Rules of Networking…

Some approaches can be successful but one must always remember a few key principles of networking.

1.) It takes time. Networking is like a fine red wine. It takes time to age but when you finally open it, the rewards are bountiful.

2.) Networking needs compassion, trust, and respect. We will get into this further on in this article, but the bottom line is don’t be a selfish networker. You know who you are. You only reach out to people when you need something. You play the sales role well by shaking hands, taking cards and buying a drink or two but never follow up unless you need something. Bad, bad, bad networker.

3.) Diversify your network. Now I sound like Jim Cramer. Use a variety of means of networking including face to face, social media and internal corporate channels. Do not limit yourself, but also do not over extend yourself.

4.) Continue to evolve and grow. As your professional, personal, volunteer, publications, events, and other aspects of your life add to your life summary, update that information and ensure that all the individuals in your network are aware of how well you are developing and diversifying.

5.) Be cautious of hitchhikers. There is nothing wrong with aligning yourself with open networkers but be careful of their message and what they are trying to gain. Aligning yourself with the wrong individuals could have an adverse affect on your reputation.

6.) Be generous but be aware. Be generous with how your share your time and connections but do not over use your power. Your closest networking counterparts put a tremendous amount of trust in you and if you use them too much that is an abuse of the trust and it could damage a relationship.

Please follow this link to read the whole post…
Networking Needs Compassion « Recruiterpoet’s Blog.

Do you fancy yourself a good networking?  Please click comment and add your tips below!

On December 20, 2010, LinkedIn launched Open Groups to facilitate a forum for open professional conversations with the wider web. These new powerful, flexible moderation tools allow group managers to maintain quality conversations (by controlling who and how people contribute), and share it with non-members. Think about the potential! Find out more about LinkedIn’s new Open Groups via…
Open Groups makes it easier to find and share professional conversations