Business Opportunity Time

With the end of the year, there are some people that take the opportunity to make some changes on their professional profiles. As I have told before, LinkedIn has become a social media that allows to keep in touch with a lot of people to improve the professional activities. If you learn how this social media behaves, you can take advantage of your contacts and the information they share.

The following post will provide some ideas for you to improve your profile and become a favorite of your contacts in a fast way.

1.- Create a charming profile: Upload a professional executive picture, always remember that LinkedIn is not Facebook, so use an adequate image that remembers your professional activity. Do not use your last party picture, use the one that demonstrates the work that you do. Also write about your professional activities, or if you have little experience, write about your studies. Your contacts will read about it and identify the type of business you may do together.

2.- Participate or create groups: Make contact with the alumni associations, the news releases, professional groups, among different ones, even if you are a shy individual, this groups will allow you to make relations with more people and keep in movement your profile.

3.- Make each of your contacts counts: If you have a special interest in belonging to a group, or do some type of services you must be approachable, so contact the people that are related to your activities. The last week I received the message of one of my contacts, regarding a law initiative that he is promoting. I was interested by the information he sent and about the initiative, I hope he could reach his purpose.

4.- Become a networker: Another option to keep awareness in LinkedIn, is to introduce people that may have inter-related activities. Review their posts and if you find it adequate, do the contact of people looking for business opportunities, job search, or offering products or services.

5.- Keep in touch: With some frequency, post information, share interesting articles, use the information media to publish news in your LinkedIn wall. This will keep in movement your profile and stay in the radar of your contacts for longer time. 

Seize the season opportunities and tell us about your outcomes...

Social Networking and Productivity

Today's post came from Luis Yerenas's inspiration, he's a friend of mine since our college years. So here are his thoughts:

One of the tools more used for networking actually are the social networks. Every day we have more options in accessibility due to the technologic revolution, and also influenced by the growing amount of people that are looking for a network subscription, nevertheless, this situation, may generate a "saturation" that sure attempts our productivity.

Each social network has an objective, at least, a mission for which it was created, so it's important that you identify in which ones you want to participate and what for. The social networks started as a mean for making friends and be in contact with acquaintances, actually the focus of some of them is for improving business and this could be seized in a very effective way, in another post we can deepen further in this idea. So for today's post we can review the productivity perspective.

Recently I heard that a Mexican gets into its social networks at an average of 150 times a day (Dinero en Imagen) and of course this amount has to do with the quantity of social networks at which we participate. I really think the theme is not the amount of social networks but the time we dedicate to each one.

In my personal experience, the amount of social networks and the time we dedicate its inversely proportional to the productivity. It may not be your case, but to avoid this situation, review your network and the time you spend each day, but above all, the moment you do it. Is it affecting your productivity? Review specially the networks you subscribe with professional objectives. Are your objectives been accomplished? Take special care of not being a slave of a particular social network, or your Smart phone in general, it may cause you job problems and even family ones.

Luis Yerenas Domínguez

Aceleración de PYMES

Consultor de Empresas Familiares

Coach Certificado en Protocolo Familiar

www.empresasfamiliares.com.mx

Oficina: +52(33)3110-6351
Móvil: 33-1241-5281

@YERDconsulting

Facebook: Yerenas Consultor Luis

Skype: yerenasluis

Foodworking

Sometimes I have told you that networking is related with food and eating, and it is good to know that there are several ways you may have interactions, so in this post I give you some advice to do it with food as your main ingredient:

If you want to know about the calories a specific food have, its properties or if you want to evaluate some different ways of cooking you may want to review what the academic environments: There are many universities that create investigation groups among food, from scratch to the last consumption. This institutions have specific programs related to the investigation:

Duke University, Food Working Group

Indiana University, Working Group

University of Chicago, Environment, Agriculture and Food

Among different Internet sites, you may find Blogs, here you will find specific features to the different meals, deserts, entrances, so get into this communities and you will find networking spaces. There are a lot of food blogs, and the diversity of them is really big. I don't want to be too much specific so I can tell you that there is an annual prize that shares the best related food blogs on several categories. If you visit this blog you can have an idea on how many people wants to share their recipes by this mean and the huge amount of followers this sites get:.

Saveur.com: http://www.saveur.com/content/best-food-blog-awards-2014-winners

Also you may find specialized sites where discussion forums are created for you to interact with some peers. Meals in Social Media, for those people that don't want a blog compromise, but like to share their general ideas, some of the following sites on social media can give you a space to share you love for food: BakeSpace ; Foodbuzz ; FoodCandy ; Foodie ; Nibbledish

Some other strategies: If you are one of those that don't like the cooking but love to eat and do some type of networking, I share the following links where you could organize both things, great eating and meeting new people: Never Eat Alone Network ; Eatwith. Both sites organize meetings among strangers where the food is usually pretty good, I suggest you to visit this pages and so you learn about what the Internet community is proposing.

As you may see your options are many, it depends on you making contact one way or another. If you decide to have some fun and do one of this activities, tell me about your experience.

Petworking

Have you made some type of networking related to your pets? Its really interesting what things you can share with some other pet enthusiasts.

Before anything I just want to clarify that even though I have pets I can't consider my self a pet enthusiast, I just like them but I admire the people that love that much the animals. You can feel the love and tender some owners give to their pets!

Whatever, if you are a Dog, Cat, Fish, Bird or as my friend Alfredo, happen to have a Zoo, I share with you some social media that allow you to do petworking related to your animal hobbies.

Some general sites that bring out information on different pets are:

Care.com: https://www.care.com/pet-care-articles

PetPop.com: http://www.petpop.com/

ZooToo: http://www.zootoo.com/

This sites gave some feedback on different pets, care, tips and open different forums for different type of animals, like reptiles or some other pets that need special assistance.

The dogs and cats have a lot more followers, so if your pet is a dog, I recommend that you visit this Internet sites:

Dogster.com: http://www.dogster.com/

UnitedDogs.com: http://uniteddogs.com/en/welcome

There are some other dog communities at facebook, but some of them are dedicated to urban dog wear, like: urbandogwear o hotel, spa and special care services like: Urbanhounds

For Cat lovers are some different sites too:

Catster.com: http://www.catster.com/

UnitedCats.com: http://unitedcats.com/en/welcome

UrbanCat Relief: http://www.ucrcats.com/contact/

UrbanCat League: http://www.urbancatleague.org/

Now, not every thing are dogs and cats, if your pet is inside an aquarium you can review this different communities, depending on your reptile or fish love:

Aquaria: http://www.bit-blot.com/aquaria/

Turtles and Tortoises: http://www.tortoise.com/

If you prefer the open spaces, you can find some information on birds on the following site:

BirdBoard: http://birdboards.com/forum/index.php

Now if you are just like me, just an animal follower, visit a Zoo and learn something about different animals that live among us in this planet:

https://www.facebook.com/zooreynosa

Personal Branding Network

How you get some personal publicity? If you are a public figure, if you are a consultant, if you have a job where you are supposed to have a lot of contact with people. I share some tips that could be helpful for you to create your own personal branding.

Some time ago, my editor told me that he challenged his students to create their own digital history in the web. This means that if someone looks for you, on the www you should be found by your different digital activities, and not because you live yourself at the social media.

1.-  Who are you? Studies, work, skills and interests. Have clear which of this you want to share and which you want to maintain private. Take care on what you share on social media belongs to your personal objectives.

2.- Perception? Personal and professional relations, web reputation. What does your followers say about you, on a personal and a professional level. Also you want to know what about the social networks.

3.- What you want to achieve? Sector, market, style. You should have clear who you are targeting, who your market should be and what style you want to be known as. 

4.- How your brand should be? Slogans, images, storytelling. Remember you want to share some type of emotion, your name should be easy to remember, your colors matching your messages, share some of your personal experiences. 

5.- Where you get your inspiration? Networking. Relate on who are your influencers, the groups or communities you are following, what kind of events you attend. 

6.- What is your message? Create original content. You may write a Blog, produce a video, take some photographs, create some info graphics. Share it in social networks, make a commitment with your personal brand. 

7.- How do you know its working? Get involved, share, review tendencies, learn how to deal with criticism, look at your analytics. Participate in open forums or on line communities to leave your personal print.

So when someone google your name, the results bring out information you have planted, and not a random graduation picture. I invite you to start creating your personal brand, tell me how do you feel?