From the Desk of Janet Barclay

My friend Alex Fayle, who writes the Someday Syndrome blog, tagged me with the following challenge:

1. Write a six-word memoir.
2. Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links.
5. Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

Alex said that he tagged me because I’m "so efficient" that I could easily achieve the six-word limit, but I suspect that he knows I can’t resist this type of challenge!

So here goes…

Her mother’s daughter; her own woman.

I’m tagging:

• Kathy Stinson, because she’s a writer, so she can do this if anyone can
• Tony at PinkQuack, so he knows I haven’t forgotten about him
• Jacki Hollywood Brown of Adventures in Organizing, because she’s usually up for a challenge too – and she can do it in both official languages
• Erika Martlew at Northern Connections and Crystal Stango at The Filing Cabinet, just because

If anyone else would like to play along, please leave a comment so we can see what you’ve written.

You might even want to submit your six-word memoir to SMITH Magazine to be considered for publication in an upcoming book. (Their first volume, Not Quite What I was Planning: Six Word Memoirs from Writers Famous and Obscure came out earlier this year.)

In June, this blog was mainly devoted to sharing the interesting results of my recent online marketing and networking survey. If you operate an online business or use the Internet to promote your products or services, be sure to check them out!

Last month I also became a monthly contributor to the new Canadian Virtual Assistant Blog where I posted one of my "oldies but goodies" on Working Remotely.

Elsewhere, I’ve blogged about the following topics:

OnlineOrganizing.com - Technology as an Organizing Tool:

• Logging Your Mileage
• "Upcoming" Events
• Another Tool for Finding and Promoting Events Online
• Summertime, and the living is easy…

Introvert Retreat:

• Social Networking: Introversion vs. Extraversion
• Marketing Tips for the Introvert
• Interesting Facts About Introverts

I’ve also posted a new article, Market Your Own Business, and a book review of Time Management for Unmanageable People at OrganizedArticles.com.

Happy Reading!

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.