Anne Scarlett, President of Scarlett Consulting, announced the launch of their new website and blog.
“With this change, we bring you the same clean aesthetic, but with far more functionality”
Scarlett Consulting provides marketing advisory services – including training and coaching – to architects, engineers, and construction professionals to help them grow their businesses.
Unfortunatly, I was not the person to coin the term, but I came across a great article by Beth Kanter on Beth’s Blog. She refrences a post by Howard Rheingold titled Twitter Literacy (I refuse to Make Up a Twittery Name for It).
Both articles talk about the value of Twitter, discuss the ongoing relationship benefit it provides, and how/why it will become one of the must-knows in the [very] near future.
One of my favorite quotes in Kantor’s article”
I avoid over tweeting about myself. I tend to ask questions, share links both what I discover from my RSS Reader or retweeting links shared by others in my network, and a few personality items (funny, witty, or something that shows I’m a human.)
It’s great advice, and one everybody should take. If you are simply on Twitter to sell, boost your ego, market, or talk about yourself only – people notice and it’s a quick way to see your number-of-followers go to the tank.
If you don’t add value, why would somebody follow you? Compare it to face-to0face networking and it is not much different. If you show up to an event and not add value to the people you meet, eventually nobody will want to talk to you.
Case and point: I asked around the office here (to the Twitter users) about the value of their followers. I was surprised at how many others perform similar “network maintenance” to mine. If I notice the only tweets I see from an individual are too self-serving, I simply unfollow.
Mel Lester wrote a post on his blog, E-Quip Blog, titled Getting Your Phone Calls Returned. Lester suggests the following (with reasons and suggestions included):
As an architecture, engineering, and construction recruiter my day is completely filled with calls. Cold, warm, hot, and a few call backs thrown in. Is it difficult to reach me during certain hours in the day? Absolutely. Here are some of my “additional” tips:
In addition to offering the best time to reach you, add to your voicemail asking the caller to leave some good times to reach them. We all want to return a call as soon as possible, but have you considered this person is going down his/her message list and quite possibly is calling somebody else? Then what happens is phone tag. Most of my messages now say to call in the morning, the 30 minutes before lunch, etc and I have a much better chance of connecting.
If you play phone-tag, stop after you leave the second message, and mention you will follow up with an email to set up a good time for them. This cuts down on the other sides frustration of having to return messages only to receive your voicemail.
Click here to read the full article.
Click here to read the full article.
Disclaimer: I know Adam and the 42nd Estate. I met Adam last time I was in Boston for Networking For A Cause – actually, we met at a tweet-up we held last minute the day before, but regardless. He’s a good guy, brilliant, and somebody you would want to know.
So why the title and the post? Well, The 42nd Estate is supporting one of their readers, Lee, for the completion of his first full year of his blog (My Blog 2 Day).
How? Well, by offering their services as one of the grand prizes: Three hours of blog and social media consulting.
If you are an architecture, consulting engineering, environmental engineering, construction, real estate, or any other industry, this is a great chance to get your social media efforts jump-started and sit down with a few experts!
It’s a common question I hear in the design and building industry. Many are [finally] taking the leap into social media and have decided to check out twitter.
I came across the following article, through twitter, written by Adam Pieniazek. If you are not familiar with Pieniazek, or 42nd Estate, check out their website here.
Pieniazek suggests the following first 5 steps
Seth Godin had a great article on his blog the other day, Sixty to Zero. Godin talks about why we should look at when to go fast, yet when to hit the brakes and change direction.
One of my favorite prediction Godin makes:
Prediction: 90% of your sales will come from word of mouth or digital promotion by 2011. How do you change what you’re doing today to be ready for that?
I could not agree more. Here is the challenge for A/E/C firms: when do you put on the brakes and when do you accelerate? As an avid network-er, you need to go out and start building these relationships now. It will take a couple of years to build the rapport necessary.
Fringe benefit? The business you receive in 2011 by word of mouth will be a lot easier to close and retain.
I loved this article; the title jumped at me: Six Ways You Should Be Using Twitter (that Don’t Involve Breakfast).
As an avid social media participant, Twitter is of course in my daily list of duties. When people ask why I use it, and doesn’t everybody simply talk about their life, my response becomes too long to post today. However, the short of it: do not think of the twitter line of “what are you doing” too literally. Use it to talk about articles you are reading, advice to others who are asking, a way to find out how to get involved in something, etc.
The 6 ways shared in the article:
Make sure you click here to read the advice on each tip!
If you are on Twitter…..come say hello: @justingroy
