SEO Yourself By Filling Out Your GooglePlus Profile

Your G+ profile page is a web-wide cheat sheet for you & everyone else.

And when it’s time to update your avatar, your bio, your tagline, or whenever you’ve got fresh content to share, it'll help you remember where you are online too.

By hot linking all the places you need to update you’ll make your task so much easier. Since your G+ profile is prioritized by the Google search engine, when someone searches for you, they’ll also find all the other places you exist online too.

That's from my latest guest post for Jan Gordon's Curatti: Editors of Chaos.

I've been writing a weekly series about online community building at this social business and marketing site. My posts so far have incorporated aspects of curation, storytelling, branding, content strategy, conversation, cocreation, collaboration, discoverability, persuasion, fascination and engagement -- as well as highlighting best practices and work of industry figures I see leading the way.

Some of my Curatti guest posts:

• Who You Follow is Important and Here’s Why
• How to Use Twitter Chats to Build Dynamic Online Communities
• Who Should You Follow Back and Why?
• Here’s How to Use Social Media To Build Powerful Networks
• The Great Big Social Networking Experiment
• How To Find And Share Content That Makes You Distinct
• Go Public With Your Process To Attract Like-Minded People

Old School, Part 1: Phone Between 9 and 5 To Confirm Your Listing In Our Directory

You heard that right. It's a directory you're not going to find me in even if I AM a flabbergasted member of the community. Or, if I'm still listed in that "printed book with CD" due to some quirky associations of my past life, my listing is going to be way-outdated.

As you can imagine, I didn't I order a copy either. I don't keep paper books anymore.

I get that we're all at different points on the communications spectrum.

This is especially true of groups with vast differences in age, education level, financial resources and geography, like extended families. Some people *only* can confirm their listing in a network directory by phone. (The East Coast office hours is a touch myopic, given that this particular network is global.)

However, in the age of the web, why should we all have to operate at the low end of the communication scale? Where's the integration of old and new that we ALL need to get and stay connected?

That same organization has been hobbled by a legacy online community system that was surpassed by Facebook (or even Ning) years ago. Instead of scrapping the broken solution -- or even better, suing for breach of contract since the provider failed to deliver a system that connected us -- and instituting something that actually worked (and heck, is free!) this global community has missed the rise of social networking on the web.

Bottom line:

Senseless loyalty to old-school practices and old-school vendors is a seriously bad leadership decision that cuts us off from our valued networks.

How Do You Support The People In Your Network?

That was a question posted by small business marketing coach Stephanie Ward, at the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group. She suggested 5 ways. Here's my answer:

I like to share job leads and pass on assignments I'm offered but can't personally pursue.

Also, when people approach me to collaborate somehow and I'm unable to I usually suggest an alternative for them -- whether it's access to my audience, or an intro to someone else I know who might jump at their offer. It feels like flow -- things come to me, they're right for someone else, I try to make that connection.

Stephanie also asked how we introduce ourselves to a group. (Here are mistakes she notes.)

My response:

It depends on what group you're introducing yourself to: Emphasis may be different, type of info required may differ. You may use jargon if it's an industry event, or simplify how you describe your work if you're at a more general networking affair -- or make an analogy. One intro does not fit all.

Stephanie says, " It's always smart to tailor your introduction to the crowd and event."

Stephanie also asked what we do to follow up after a networking event. "Networking is about building relationships over time."

My reply:

After a networking event, I find the people I met on multiple social media platforms, and toss their business card. If we talked about stuff in particular I send them leads and links, and introductions. Then we keep in touch *ambiently* ....

Stephanie says, "It's smart to reach out across platforms."