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Social networking for VAs

The world of networking is forever being redefined, reshaped and reborn online.  And it’s easy to form opinions about one particular group or another and then change your mind later down the track.

That’s what’s happening for me.  Originally I saw Facebook as a tool for family and friends but not for business, however that is changing a great deal now. There are people like Mari Smith with WhyFacebook? and Jason Alba with I’m on Facebook, now what?, along with many articles about using Facebook for business.  Some of them are:

  • Seven Steps to graphing your Facebook strategy,
  • How to use Facebook to promote your business and blog,
  • and How to use Facebook to grow small business.

Once again, it was at a client’s prompting that I started to look further into this because of coaching she is receiving.  Her coach uses Facebook for connecting all her coaching clients and I believe has a closed ‘forum’ at Facebook.  My client needed me to help her get set up and connected at Facebook.

One of the great things about having a VA is that you can get them to research things for you and set up accounts and profiles for you at the various networks.  Just for the benefit of my readers – I just do the set up and tweaking – my clients do their own networking but I can give them guidance on ways to do that. Which is why it’s important I have some idea of how the networks work in the first place!

I’d originally kept my Facebook profile for family and friends and rarely connected to anyone in business but after about a year of ignoring it I’m now going back to re-explore and have set up a new profile specifically for business. And I’ve discovered you can set up a page – which is different to a profile and there are heaps of applications you can add such as RSS feeds, Twitter feeds and other things.  Yes, you can do this in your profile too but there are apparently different ways of doing things and there appears to be no limitation on the number of ‘fans’ you can have compared to the number of ‘friends’ you can connect to or send invitations to.

If you read my blog at SOHO-Life you’ll notice that I’ve written a lot about Linkedin.com and have recently begun focussing on Yahoogroups.com.    I plan to explore a few networks there as I often get asked about the various ones I participate in.

So, for my business Facebook it’s early days yet and I’m still learning – not everything shows up on my page where I told it to so I have to keep exploring.  I’d love to hear from you if you’re using Facebook for business and how you’ve found it to work for you.  And perhaps any hints or tips you might have for the readers here.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoogroups, social networks, virtual assistants, networking for business

Kathie Thomas

Kathie is the former owner of VA Directory and is former past President of the Australian VA Association. She founded the Virtual Assistant industry in Australia in the mid 90s, having already been operating a home-based secretarial service. Today the VA industry covers a multitude of office-based services for clients worldwide.

Comments

  1. Bruce says

    4 September 2008 at 10:33 am

    Great posting, Kathie.

    I just stumbled upon a brand new web service, http://www.tabup.com via Mashable. It’s a fascinating, easy to use website designed for exactly the same purpose you were looking for. They have what they call “tabs” that are basically your groups and it’s geared towards collaboration and sharing in a very secure environment. I am sure there is much more but go and check it out.

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  2. Kathie Thomas says

    4 September 2008 at 10:48 am

    Thanks Bruce, don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Appreciate you dropping by and telling us about another service. Seems there’s a new one almost every day – or at least every week! 🙂

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  3. Janet Barclay says

    6 September 2008 at 10:13 pm

    Facebook is great for promoting events. Usually I pick and choose which friends to invite, but last week I invited ALL my friends (a bunch at a time – have to be careful or they can shut down your account) to an upcoming teleclass on Organizing Your Computer, and one of the people I probably wouldn’t have sent it to signed up. Also, at least one of my friends invited other people, so it’s a great form of viral marketing. In addition, the events can be found by anyone on the site (unless you choose otherwise)

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  4. Jason Alba says

    18 September 2008 at 8:41 am

    Kathie, thanks for the shout-out about my book. I would love to follow your journey as you explore Facebook for your clients and prospects, and am excited that you are jumping in!

    Jason Alba
    CEO – JibberJobber.com
    Author – ImOnLinkedInNowWhat.com
    Coauthor – ImOnFacebookNowWhat.com

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Trackbacks

  1. Virtual Assistant - THE Blog About Our Industry » Update on my Facebook activity says:
    10 November 2008 at 9:37 am

    […] experimenting with Facebook and have set up a business page, separate to a personal profile.  I wrote about this previously in September and have also been sharing about it on another […]

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