Whether you’re blanking on your date’s name, missed connecting with someone you’ve been trying to meet for a year, or getting zero response from the three emails to potentially huge client (despite her being a college roommate of your friend’s wife), the root of the problem is the same: poor introductions.

In a famous Seinfeld episode, Jerry is dating a woman whose name he can’t remember. All he knows is it rhymes with a female genital part. So he asks his friend, George Costanza, to introduce himself so he can catch the woman’s name. George pops in and says, “Hi, I’m George.” Mystery Woman says, “Nice to meet you.” George then turns to Jerry, shrugs his shoulders, and mutters on his way out, “Hey, I tried.”

That’s trying?

It’s too bad George, Jerry, and Jerry’s date didn’t all read this post on introductions first.

How to make introductions in person
I am a staunch feminist and believe women and men are equally intelligent. But in general, women are awful at introductions. And the bar is low because men aren’t so great either.

If you are introducing just yourself:

1. Smile, get eye contact, and hold it for a beat. Do not be scanning the room, looking at your reflection, or anything else.

2. I can’t believe this needs to be said. But it does. Hold out your hand and give a firm handshake. Ladies, stop with the passive, limp, holding-out-your-hand-as-if-you’re-getting-a-manicure handshake. Give a good couple of pumps.

3. Clearly say your name and supply a blip of information. “Hello, I’m George, I designed Jerry’s house.” or “Hi, I’m Elaine, the bride’s sister.”

4. Don’t be a low talker. Speak up.

5. The other person may only reply, “Nice to meet you.” In that case, you’ll have to say, “And your name is?”

6. When the other person says their name, do not be multitasking in your mind what witty thing you are going to say next. Your only task is to listen to the name.

7. Repeat the name back to the person and, if possible, ask something about the name. “Is that Sara with an ‘H’ ?” If you’re up for it, add, “Because Sarahs with an ‘H’ were always the smart ones in class.”

8. If you exchange cards, really look at the card and the name. Pick up on one element or item to continue the conversation. And while discussing, carefully tuck it away in a place you have committed to memory to be your collection point.

If you’re introducing two people:
Take a bit of time. Do not just say, “Jim, this is Bob. Bob, Jim.” Instead, “Jim, you know that app we’re always using to find the best bathroom in the city? Bob Benes here designed it. Bob, this is Jim Brown, our company CTO.”

Social media offers more ways to make both good and bad introductions
Because of email, LinkedIn, and social networking, there are many more ways to do half-assed introductions. Here are some tips to avoid that.

1. Help the introducer help you. Sometimes bad introductions happen because the person doing the introducing isn’t sure what to say. What are the main things you want them to say about you? Give them three bullet points so you’ve done 95% of the work.

2. Ask for help. If the requester for an introduction didn’t read the above tip, ask them to supply you with some key points they want to get across.

3. Think about what’s in it for the other person. I get messages that sometimes say, “You should talk to so-and-so.” I appreciate your thinking of me but give me a good story as to why we both would find this beneficial so I can make an informed introduction.

4. Give feedback to the introducer. If they are going out of their way to help you, the least you can do is tell them what happened after the introduction even if it’s just, “we met for coffee but our business needs are too different.”

Don’t be promiscuous with introductions
Before that second glass of wine, commit that you will not gush to people you’ve just met, “I’m going to introduce you to Ms. Big Wig,” unless you know Big Wig well and have a good feeling she will want to meet your new friend. Otherwise, you’re wasting everyone’s time and making yourself out to be a flake.

Mojo Moves

• Think of three people you would love someone in your network to introduce you to. Figure out how you would like to be introduced to them using your elevator speech as a starting point
• What two people do you know that would benefit from meeting each other? Make the introduction that you wish people would do for you
• Make a lasting impression by not being socially invisible

Photo courtesy of hypervocal.com

Got some other tips for introductions? Tell us in comments.

Source: Mojo40

Whether you’re happy in your job or are itching for new opportunities, signing up to LinkedIn and exploring its features can open up many opportunities for your career down the track.

LinkedIn was launched as a professional networking site 2003 and has become an essential networking tool, with 875,000 users in Australia, more than 50 million worldwide and many employers using the site to recruit staff.

So it’s time to stop ignoring all those invitations, and get linked in now.

1. Starting out: promote yourself
Admit it – do you Google yourself? Well, prospective employers will be sure to check out your online baggage too. Interestingly, an effectively built LinkedIn profile will appear above your Facebook page in search results, which gives a better first professional impression.

Once you sign up, change your profile to public in the ‘edit profile’ options. You can also customise your URL to make it more user friendly, featuring your first and last name. You can now include that URL on your resume and on your personal business cards.

2. Reconnect with old contacts
Finally, here’s a way to reconnect with old colleagues and people you meet at networking events. Better that industry contacts see your amazing work history rather than those embarrassing Facebook pics of you on a pub crawl.

Any less than 30 connections can look a little lonely but don’t go crazy adding every Tom, Dick and Harry – limit your connections to those people you truly want to stay in touch with.

And if any undesirables request you as a contact, you can simply archive their request to avoid awkwardness.

You also have the opportunity to view the connections of your connections (or, ‘second-degree connections’). If you would get in touch with one of them you can simply ask your contact for an introduction.

3. Connect your websites
LinkedIn provides a central hub to connect all the various websites displaying your ideas and skills – including Twitter, blogs, your portfolio and company websites.

4. Include a photo
While the jury’s still out on adding a photo to a traditional resume, including your headshot in your LinkedIn profile is a good way to add your personality to your profile. Make sure it’s a professional-looking shot – it’s not the place to show off your latest designer bikini.

5. Get headhunted – use keywords
LinkedIn recently revealed that over 1000 companies in Australia use LinkedIn Talent Advantage to hire. Companies advertise jobs on the site and search users to find people with the exact skills they need. Promoting your skills effectively could the difference between being noticed and missing out.

People can search the database using keywords. Search results are displayed by keyword relevance, with the most important words being those included in a user’s headline and summary. Keyword density is also a factor, so try to repeat your main keywords a few times throughout your profile.

6. Create a strong headline
LinkedIn will make your current job title your headline by default, but you can change this to something more impressive or eye-catching. For example, if you are a freelance proofreader, you could make your headline ‘Independent Editorial and Proofreading Professional’.

7. Write a good, meaty summary
Your summary expands on your headline and gives a brief overview of your professional background. You can limit this to a succinct couple of sentences or go into greater detail if you wish.

Specialties are a feature under summary. Enter areas of expertise here (for example, tax auditing, business development, MYOB), and don’t be afraid to overlap keywords in both sections.

8. Include achievements for each job
LinkedIn can act as your online resume. Include all details about your education and work history that are relevant to your current industry. Most importantly, include measurable achievements for each role.

Here are some example achievements:

• Produced a 55 per cent improvement in on-time, accurate shipment of stock to customers.
• Raised $6000 over two years by securing sponsorships from two local businesses.
• Increased brand recognition and product placement in the Asia Pacific that helped to achieve 45 per cent profit growth.
• Secured a national retail promotion with Starstruck Video stores to the value of $1 million.

9. Ask for recommendations
Add authority to your profile by getting recommendations from past bosses, colleagues or business associates. Sending a recommendation request through the site may be considered less obtrusive than emailing them out of the blue.

10. Join groups and associations
You can also connect with people with similar interests through LinkedIn Groups. This is a great way to add colour and pizzaz to your profile, showing which areas you’re passionate about.

11. Ask or answer questions
LinkedIn Answers is a new function that allows members to submit questions about any topic. Other members can then choose to submit answers. Asking or answering is another way to interact with people on the site and show your enthusiasm and/or expertise. The questions you ask or answer will appear on your profile so make sure your answers are intelligent so they present you in the best possible light.

12. Be honest
This is not the place to bend the truth. Due to the interconnected nature of the site, it’s very easy to contact people who worked with you to verify your claims.

13. Research companies and people
Find out more about companies by browsing the profiles of people who have worked there – how long did they stay at the organisation and what types of tasks did they perform?

And if you’ve got an interview coming up, check out the page of the person who will be interviewing you to find out a little about their history.

14. Keep active
Once you have built a strong LinkedIn profile, keep it updated and check back regularly for new connections to add. Interact with your connections to keep your relationships fresh, help them out with recommendations or introductions when you can and ask them for help when you need it.

Source: Career FAQ’s

An office party is a key professional opportunity to mingle casually with your work colleagues, impress bosses and get to know people who you don’t see every day in the office.

Unfortunately, if proper etiquette isn’t followed, it can also ruin your professional reputation.

One of the first things to remember is to never consider not going unless you have a justifiable conflict.  It will not be taken too kindly by your managers if you decide to miss an event without a valid reason.

Do remember these are events to reward employees and raise morale, and they remain strictly business events. Treat this as work too. Let your supervisor know when a personal commitment preludes your attendance.

Before the party: Do some homework before coming to the party. Adhere to the rules at all times. Check if the invitation allows you to bring a guest or a spouse. If it doesn’t say a guest, it is not acceptable to assume that a guest can come. If you take a guest along, make sure you get someone who you know will behave at such events. Brief them about the party, who to talk to, maybe an idea of topics that they could touch upon and a list of topics to avoid. Find out who else has been invited. Knowing who from the company will be there will give more idea on what to talk about at the party.

Dress appropriately: If the event is immediately after work, dress in appropriate office attire. If the party is later in the evening or on a weekend, the attire will vary depending upon the type of the event. Make sure what you wear reflects well on you professionally.

Stay long enough to be able to speak with everyone. Invitations have a start time and an end time. Don’t be more than 15 minutes later into the party; later than that may seem rude. Make it a point to meet most of the people and stay a minimum of an hour – that said, also don’t be the last one to leave.

Dining and Drinks: Limit your drinks. Over doing it can be the single most reason why a manager or colleague can lose all respect for you.  You also don’t want to become the subject of ridicule by having no control over your words or actions.  Keep one hand free at all times to shake hands, I suggest holding the drink in your left hand so that you are not offering a cold and wet handshake to everyone you meet.

Conversations: Don’t spend all evening talking business. It’s a time to enjoy! Also, make sure you avoid controversial topics. Do keep all conversations upbeat and positive. Be gracious to your subordinates and thank them for their work and how much their contribution means to the company. Don’t spend the time complaining, bragging, correcting, ridiculing etc. Don’t monopolise conversations either. Do not ever gossip about others.
These are opportunities to commit career suicide; so avoid them and treat others with dignity and respect. If you conduct yourself with charm, your rise up the corporate ladder can gain momentum.

At last count, Facebook had over 350 million users, and this number is continuing to grow. It overtook MySpace as the Number One social networking website on the planet last year and is just behind Google when it comes to online traffic. Put your hand up if you aren’t using Facebook as part of your marketing strategy. Hopefully there aren’t too many hands.

In today’s world of social media you can’t afford not to have a business Facebook page. With the statistics I’ve just given you there really is no excuse. However, what I often hear people asking are how do I use it and what do I do?

Well one of the most important things to remember with any social media tool is they aren’t there for making blatant sales pitches. They are there to be used as a way to build relationships. That’s not to say you can’t sell your business via these mediums, but you need to be subtle in the way you go about it and there are a few different methods you can use:

1. Interact with your followers. Chat with them. Offer solutions to their problems.
2. Engage them by asking leading questions and getting them to enter discussions with you on topics related to your industry.
3. Post links to interesting blogs or websites that could be useful or helpful to them.

The aim is to be helpful and genuine and build up a reputation as being an expert in your field. A full on sales pitch will turn people off and they may even give you bad reports elsewhere, so be careful when directly promoting your products and services. Try offering teasers to products or some free information – everyone loves to think they are getting something for free.

So what is a Facebook page and how do you use it? On its website Facebook describes Pages as “a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.” The best feature of a Page is that users can become a Fan of your page when visiting. The advantage of this, of course, is that it updates their wall with the fact that they have become a fan, which in turn notifies all their friends on Facebook. The benefit of this to you is that this then becomes free marketing. On many occasions people will click on the links of things their friends have become fans of purely out of interest. What a great way to generate traffic to your page without costing you a cent.  Remember though that you need to engage them in the first place. Give them a reason to become a fan.

Another great feature is the Event tab. If you’re offering a service of some description and you want to give people a ‘Try Before You Buy’ experience you could create an event on Facebook such as a webinar. This is an online meeting or presentation that anyone can join. Distance is no object and your attendees could be based anywhere in the world. Market this as a ‘Free to Attend Event’ and before you know it the event becomes viral and you’ve got yourself in front of a market you never even knew existed. Just make sure you advertise the World Time Zone you are located in beforehand.

Last but not least there is the option of Facebook advertising which works in a similar way to Google Adwords. You can choose to do PPC (pay per click) or CPM (by page impressions). The beauty of this is that you can be very targeted with where your advert appears. For our American Academy of Wedding and Event Planning Facebook Page we chose to advertise to females in the US. The criteria we chose were:

• Graduated from college
• Interested in weddings
• Looking to start their own business

This limits the number of clicks you have and targets your traffic accordingly. On top of this you can also set your own daily expenditure limit in the same way as you can with your Google Adwords campaign.

My final advice on using social media of any kind is to be strict with the amount of time you spend on it. Set yourself a specific time of the day when you will work on your Blog, Twitter or Facebook and stick to it. Otherwise you will find yourself whiling away hours of doing nothing, as all these mediums are very addictive.

(Image laikolosse)

To all those Gen X and Y-ers who say they don’t enjoy Facebook, disapprove of it and feel it is a terrible reflection on society, I have this to say: I don’t believe you.

Either you have managed (admirably) to avoid the lure of the ‘Book completely, and therefore do not understand its appeal, or you secretly go there and browse the walls, photos and updates of your “friends”. There is no way, surely, one cannot become addicted to this site after those first few tentative visits?

I am a hopeless case. I resisted for a while, and it was my friend Bridee who hooked me in.

Now I am a daily Facebooker – if not to update my personal profile or to update fans of my groups, then certainly to “stalk” my online friends. I have also discovered you can stalk friends of friends, allowing me to see and be judgemental about photos of people you might not like – is there any more guilty pleasure than that?

Besides Face-Stalking, I really think it is a great tool.

Connecting with old school friends is a given – it is wonderful to see people and connect with those I spent my childhood with. It is a way of staying in touch with distant relatives, old school friends and keeping up with their news.

Granted, it may be lazy and nothing can really compare with receiving a lovely handwritten letter or card, but if the alternative is losing touch completely, surely Facebook, with its merry wall-writing, poking and “liking”, is a preferable option? My friend Caro who lives in Gladstone and I have a need to poke each other every day, just to say hello – this lets each other know that we are thinking of each other and we often crack up laughing about the urge “to poke”

For businesses, too, it offers opportunities never before seen.

As well as savvy advertisers being able to appear on the walls of those people who have shown an interest in their area, there is the chance for friends and family to become “fans” of your business, offer comments, ideas and discussions, and spread the word.

I have seen the benefits in my own brand new home business, simply by popping my website on my page and seeing what happened.

Facebook – is here to stay, I think. And for those who have resisted so far – go on, log on and give me a poke. You know you want to.

Twitter, though, I can’t get my head round, though not for want of trying.  I will be sure to keep you posted…

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter…where to start, if you dare?

There are two types of online user – the Dabbler – where you rarely log on and then forget your password, and then there’s the Sinker – as in hooked, line and…

The line between social and professional online networking is now more of a smudge. It’s okay to have a family picture on your LinkedIn profile, just as its okay to have a corporate facebook profile. But it’s good to have clear strategies for each.

I am a huge fan of LinkedIn and regularly post polls, start discussions and answer career related questions.  Not only do I do this to research and support myambition.com’s content but also because I love the fact you can interact with a huge audience and get pretty much immediate feedback. Okay … I am nosey!

Facebook – for me that’s my personal networking tool.  I only use it to keep in touch with family and friends.  Some people do choose to have their profile freely ‘searchable’ which has caused a few hiccups with employers checking out potential employees as a pre-screen.  Naughty?  Well if you put updates on there you’ve got to be able to accept what comes of it.

Twitter – it was confusing to me at first but now I realise this is simply a short blog, amongst a group of people that you find interesting and in turn find you interesting.  Not quite friends (Facebook) and not quite networking (LinkedIn).  I do find it a challenge keeping this up to date.  If it were not on my iPhone I would have forgotten the password.

Tips to get familiar with the world of online networking.:

1. Set yourself at least an hour (time flies) where you can freely browse, snoop, and research whether it is for you.
2. Create your profile – even if this is a minimal profile.
3. When reading other people’s blogs etc connect to their online networking profiles.
4. If you are not sure how to use any of the networking sites just type into Google “how to use XX”; you will be amazed at what comes up.
5. Finally  -  know when to stop…it can get quite addictive!

See you virtually in cyberspace! (Find me on Twitter here and LinkedIn here)

What’s a bandwagon if not for jumping on? So it is that I’ve found myself quite regularly tweeting, retweeting and even twooshing over the last few weeks. So it is that I find myself joining nearly every magazine and newspaper in the Western world and writing about the newest kid on the internet block: Twitter.

What’s the twhype all about?

Twitter is so simple that it almost defies description. It is a website on which you can publish short public messages of no more than 140 characters. Ostensibly the idea is to post updates – ‘tweets’ – about what you’re doing. Other users can follow the progress of your updates and you can follow theirs.

It’s trumpeted as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family without the need to write at length and without expectation of a reply. So, for instance, the travelling business person might send updates over a day like: “plane arrived on time – remarkable!”; “meeting went on and on but we got what we wanted”, and “why are Melbourne taxi drivers always lost?”.

While all this drama is unfolding, this person’s friends and family – ‘followers’, in tweetspeak – can visit the Twitter website at any time and check on their loved one’s progress.

Twitter is a bit of a cross between text messaging, instant messaging and blogging, while not really being any of those. The jargon is ‘micro-blogging’.

Just another source of information to add to our already info-crowded lives? Possibly. Yet, provided tweetcrastination and tweetaholism can be avoided, Twitter has intriguing potential as a communication tool.

Like so many internet ideas, including the web itself, Twitter has quickly outgrown its developers’ original intentions. Innovative users, mobile friendliness and a free programming interface have propagated a cornucopia of new applications for Twitter.

Twitter has become a networking tool, a customer service tool and a word-of-mouth tool. Twitter users are breaking the news before the media hears about it. Twitter can help you find a job or fill a job. Twitter can help you sell your products or your politics. Twitter can help you stick to your diet or quit smoking. The list continues to grow…

Yet it is still early days. Twitter may be no more than another bubble floating over the internet landscape, ready to burst at any moment. Like many, I was suspicious at first. But Twitter is different. Its simplicity, its brevity and its inherent informality (there isn’t much room for spin in 140 characters) all work to support an interesting new way of communicating.

It might work for you or it might not. The only way to find out is to get out there amongst the tweeple and give it a twy!

(Image Noel Zialee)