From the Desk of Janet Barclay

I received a comment this week from Isabelle Mori of Change Therapy who has enjoyed reading the results of my recent Online Marketing and Networking Survey, and is wondering about the demographics and online behaviours of the participants.

The survey results have been described in the following blog posts:

• The Status of Ezines
• Who Is Blogging?
• Reading Blogs
• Keeping Track of All Those Blogs
• The Wonderful World of Social Networks

This is really all the information I’ve gathered about the participants’ online behaviours, but I did ask the participants, Do you operate a home-based business? The responses were as follows:

I also asked, If you answered "Yes" to the above question, what type of business is it? and received the following replies:

The bolded categories were suggested answers; all others were supplied by the participants who chose "Other" and there is clearly some overlap there. The majority of my clients and regular contacts belong to the suggested professions, so it’s really not surprising that over 70% of the participants with home-based businesses fit into those categories.

This concludes this series of blog posts – I do hope you found it interesting and possibly even helpful as you develop your own online marketing and networking strategy.

I was sad to hear about the recent passing of George Carlin. Of course, I didn’t know him personally, but I have thoroughly enjoyed his comedy for decades. I have even quoted him in some of my organizing seminars!

That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why?

No room for your stuff any more.

If you’re not familiar with that routine, take a few minutes to watch this video!

"Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused."

Author Unknown

You don’t have to know me very well to realize that I’m a big fan of Facebook and use it extensively for both business and personal reasons. However, one of my pet peeves is total strangers who send me friend requests with no explanation as to why it is to either of our benefits to connect. To me this type of activity has about as much value as attending a large networking event and running around and exchanging business cards with as many people as possible, hoping that sometime, somewhere, something may come of it.

I was therefore delighted to see Andrea J. Stenberg of The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur address this very subject in her recent blog post, How to Grow A Useful Facebook Network. In her post she explains how to build a targeted network of Facebook friends, how to approach strangers you wish to connect with, and how to build relationships with them once you have connected. In my opinion, this is a must read for anyone who uses Facebook for business networking. I may even send a link to it to people who send me UFOs (unidentified friend offers) in the future, instead of just clicking "Ignore". After all, just because they didn’t think to add a note doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be a good contact to have!

I’m going to steal a line from Andrea’s post and conclude by saying If you send me an invitation to become Friends on Facebook and mention you’re a reader of my blog, I promise to accept your invitation.

About a year ago, I purchased a Dell Inspiron 9400 Notebook to use as my primary computer. I love its portability, its clear, wide-screen display, and many other things about it, but if you read my blogs regularly (or if you’ve been around me when I was using it), you’ll know that I have been much less impressed with its speed. There have been more than a few occasions when I have threatened to toss it out the window!

Last December, I uninstalled Business Contact Manager and that seemed to make a big difference – for a while at least. More recently, I re-established the habit of running the Disk Defragmenter on a regular basis. That helped too, but I still felt the computer was much too slow, considering that it has a Core 2 Duo processor and cost me in the neighbourhood of $2000 with all the upgrades I’d chosen.

Last week, when I was surfing for yet another explanation as to why my computer was so slow, I came across something about Media Direct, a Dell product that allows you to instantly access your calendar, contacts, PowerPoint presentations and multimedia files, without starting up your operating system. I knew it was on my system but after nearly a year, it hasn’t even crossed my mind to give it a try. I decided to uninstall it and that seems to have solved my problem! (she says, crossing her fingers…)

When I first ordered the computer, my son, who is a government IT professional, said that the first thing I should do after receiving it was to format it, because of all the "junk" that is typically pre-installed on new computers. I was horrified at the thought, and assured him that the only free trial included on this computer was a Norton product which I intended to use. I guess I should have listened to him!

Once upon a time there was Ryze. Then there was LinkedIn. Then Facebook. Now it seems that every time you turn around, someone is inviting you to join a new social networking site. Deciding which ones to join and how much time to devote to this type of activity can be a real challenge, so in my recent Online Marketing and Networking Survey, I asked participants how often they visit the sites I’ve heard the most about, and whether they regularly use any others. Here’s what I found out.

The numbers total more than 100%, because many people use more than one site.

It is not surprising that Facebook showed the highest number of users, considering that it was one of the main vehicles I used to get the word out about the survey. It‘s interesting to note that LinkedIn is the only other one to even come close to that number of users. What is also interesting, is the reported frequency of usage:

Facebook and LinkedIn are the only two that showed a relatively high number of weekly users, yet even there, Facebook is showing twice as many weekly visitors. Is it because people use Facebook for both business and personal reasons, or are there other factors at play?

Participants who answered "Other" were asked to specify which other sites they use, and the following answers were submitted:

Some of these sites don’t really fall under the same category as those listed in the survey, but I have included the information here to show how different people interpreted the question.

For some more interesting statistics about social networking, check out James Burchill’s recent blog post on Social Media and the Interactive Marketing Conference.

*This post was featured in the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival #7 and the LinkedIn Bloggers Carnival: July Edition.