Time – that illusive thing we all wish we had more of. Unfortunately, we can’t make more time, but what we can do is make better use of the time that we do have. So, next time you have 10 minutes to dedicate to something that can help you to build your business, try one of these:

• Send a personal thank you note to a recent client
• Write some notes on a new blog post
• Check on the conversations on twitter
• Ask a question on your business facebook page
• Review the copy on your site, make sure it’s up to date
• Organize your office so you can find things easier
• Share a link to an interesting article with your followers
• Make sure all important emails have been responded to

What else can you do in 10 minutes to change the flow of your day and improve your business?

I love twitter with a passion – it is a great tool that a business can use to listen, share, converse and build a stronger brand. It is also a lot of fun and it allows you to meet tons of interesting people. But, twitter has its share of jerks, and if you don’t want to be considered one of them, I’d recommend following these 10 simple rules:

1. Don’t argue on twitter. It’s okay to share your opinions, but if the tweets start getting out of hand – stop. Move to email, phone or dm. The world doesn’t need to see the battle.
2. Don’t send auto dm’s. They are obnoxious and pointless. Send a personal dm if you want to say hello privately.
3. Don’t just spit out link after link. It’s boring, and obnoxious.
4. Don’t use every other tweet to sell me stuff. No one cares about your business as much as you do. Have conversations!
5. Stop sharing other peoples quotes. One or two a month are fine, but when every other tweet is something someone else said it looks like you have no original ideas.
6. Don’t send the same tweet to 50 different people. We can see your stream, it isn’t conversation if you’re just sending the same tweet.
7. Don’t forget to personalize your bio, page and picture. We want to know who you are, not what the stock twitter bird looks like.
8. Don’t complain about twitter on twitter. Sometimes it goes down, get over it. It’s a free service. Stop complaining.
9. Don’t tweet your every waking thought. There is such thing as too much tweeting, and too personal to share.
10. Don’t think you know everything. There is always time to learn something new about twitter!

What other tips can you share to help people avoid being a twitter jerk?

A blog is not a magical cure all. Neither is twitter, facebook or youtube. Social media tools were created in order to make conversation easier and more effective with a larger network of people – not to sell stuff. While they can be used to help your business grow, understanding the right way to use these tools is the only way to make that happen. Just like traditional marketing, it takes time and a lot of touches before you will turn someone from a watcher to a listener and then into a buyer. You can’t push someone too quickly or they will just push back. Social media allows messages to send faster, but that doesn’t mean we need to be faster with our pitches. Let’s take the magic and mystery out of the equation, and start thinking about them as tools. To use social media properly you must:

1. Share content – not sales pitches.
2. Be involved in the conversation.
3. Create quality not quantity.
4. Offer help and advice without expecting it in return.
5. Look for the right people to follow based on your industry.
6. Do not send spam messages.
7. Ask for help in sharing, but don’t be overbearing.
8. Give people credit – never steal someones ideas.
9. Be consistent in your message.
10. Write and share often, but don’t be a blowhard.
11. Use your instincts – branding is the same everywhere.
12. Don’t say something you’ll regret.
13. Learn to respond with your brand in mind.
14. Ask questions, it encourages conversation.
15. Take time every week to re-evaluate what works and what doesn’t
16. Not give up. It takes time for people to listen
17. Be honest. People can tell when you are just slinging fluff.
18. Create a consistent profile. Being the same brand throughout all media makes you easier to understand.

What other tips can you share that take the mystery and magic out of social media?

Create 3 lists.

List #1: Your local list, the people who live within 30-40 miles of you, those whom you can meet in person. This is a great list for local business owners to have, but also for those who want to attend networking events and get to know people offline.

List #2: Your top tweeters. These are the people that you enjoy hearing from, reading about and never want to miss their tweets. I recommend keeping this list to under 150 so that you can easily manage it and follow the conversations.

List #3: A conversationalist list. This list is created through conversationlist.com. It is a dynamically created list each day of the people whom you talk to and whom talk about you. This is a great list to help you determine who is important in your day. This is a great place to find new people to add to your top tweeters list.

What other lists do you have on twitter?

Last week, we ran a poll to see which social media tool would be the hardest to give up. And I was actually surprised by the results! I assumed that most people would say their blogs and then twitter, with facebook coming up third. And then we had the one “other” entry for their mouth (from @TopBrokerOC). Which happens to be a really brilliant response, and am surprised that I didn’t think of it (I know, modest right?). Check out the full results:

I know for me, giving up my blog would be impossible. It gives me space to share as much or as little as I want, is completely customizable and provides an outlet for my thoughts. The benefit of social media tools is not the fact that you can talk to a lot of people – it is that you can share good content with a lot of people. A blog is the basis for the content. Without a blog (or other peoples blogs) I wouldn’t have much content to share on twitter or facebook. In fact, without blogs, life would be pretty dull! Think about all the blogs you read on a daily basis…what if they all just disappeared? I am pretty sure sites like twitter and facebook would cease to have the same appeal because then all people would have to share is what they are actually doing, as opposed to sharing articles and insights.
If you voted (or even if you didn’t), I want to know which tool you chose and why?

After about 2 months on foursquare, I am finding that I am really starting to enjoy it and am learning a lot more about how the tool works for the consumer. What I am not seeing (yet) is more businesses really capitalize on the tool themselves. There are a couple that are really doing it well, but only the large companies, and even then, it is few and far between. I understand that it is still a new tool – and it still is growing – but the businesses that can capitalize on it quickly will definitely see the benefits. If I were a consumer facing, brick and mortar business like a restaurant or retail store, these are the 5 things I would to today on foursquare:

1. Make sure my account was set up properly. There are so many locations on there that do not even have their addresses entered into their listing. If people can’t check in the right way, they won’t check in at all.
2. Give every single person who checks in a message. Welcome them to the store/restaurant and give EVERY one a small gift. Tell them to show their server their foursquare message for a free well drink or show it at check out from your store for 5% off their purchase. These two things would cost the store/restaurant almost nothing, and would seriously make the visitor want to come back again and again.
3. Really rewards mayors. A couple bucks off is nothing…give your mayor a reason to want to really hold onto that mayorship. How about a free appetizer or dessert? Or 15% off one item in the store? Now THAT is a reason for the mayors to be fighting over your location.
4. Make sure everyone in your location understands foursquare. If you are going to make it work, your entire staff needs to understand it and support it. Make sure that your employees know what to do when someone comes in that is the mayor or how to handle a check in.
5. Set up a “special nearby” notification. If people check into stores nearby, you want them to know you have special offers, so make sure to set it up for all your locations and capture that traffic!

What other ways can you see businesses using foursquare (as it is now) more effectively?

Everyone does twitter differently

• some use it for personal, some for business, some for a combination of both.
• some tweet with a logo from their company, others with random crazy pictures and some with a good photo of themselves.
• some follow anyone interesting, others follow almost no one and others still auto follow everyone.
• some direct message people, others choose to only tweet or reply, and some do neither and simply share links.
• some use twitter as a large rss feed, others use it for conversation and some are just lost.
• some have protected tweets, some tweet about everything and others should have protected tweets.

No matter which person you are, you are using twitter your way, which is perfectly fine. Unless you want to use it as an add on to your marketing strategy, in that case, you need a method to your madness, and a method that your potential clients and audience will like.

So what do we suggest?

• Be a combination of business and personal. No one wants an onslaught of sales tactics…talk and share real life content in combination with business tweets.
• Be human – tweet as a real person, representing the brand. Unless you are a mega brand, people aren’t going to want to follow a logo and a company. They want a person with whom they can talk and connect. If you must use a company logo, make sure to use your real name and a bit about yourself in the bio.
• Follow people who fit your brand and marketing. Don’t follow everyone back, but don’t not follow people either. Finding a balance of the right audience will make tweeting easier.
• Use twitter to the full extent. Direct message, reply and retweet. Share and be shared. The more you participate and get involved, the more success you will see with twitter.
• Converse and share links. Twitter is about the discussion, not the end result. Just sharing links will annoy your audience and endless chatter isn’t worth a hill of beans. Make sure to blend your messages.
• Don’t protect your tweets. You want people to be able to easily access you and your conversation – adding protection on your tweets will drive the audience away.

How do you use twitter? What have you found to be successful for you?

Many people and companies fear joining social media sites for the same reason they waited to get an email address, delayed on building websites, and avoided online marketing: Online is a scary world. Every night on the news, we hear stories of things happening online – or things caused by what is happening online. Emails get hacked, people get spammed, identities get stolen, and it all happens a lot faster than it did 10 years ago.

But the reality is, those who click on spam, get hacked and regret joining the online world are usually those unwilling to learn how to be comfortable online and use it safely. Comfort with anything is built through use – the first time you used a computer it was probably really scary and you felt like you were going to break something. The internet is the same way – where can you go? Who is safe? What sites are reliable. Luckily, just like with computers, the online world is full of great trainers and strategists who can help you to learn how to be online effectively. The first step to building comfort online is choosing the tools you want to use. The tops tools we recommend online, other than your website, are: a blog, twitter, facebook and linkedin. Once you have mastered these tools, integrating things like foursquare and youtube will be much easier.

Once you have chosen your tools, you need to pick the comfort level you have with information. This means thinking about the type of details you are willing to share as well as whom you are willing to share with. Many people choose to keep their facebook purely personal and leave business out entirely. While this is fine for personal usage, this is not good if you want to build an online business community. We recommend bridging the gap with a business fan page or a group page which will allow you to connect your business. For twitter, you need to decide how personal you want to be. While there are those who tweet about everything under the sun, we recommend choosing your tweets and conversations more carefully. It is perfectly fine to talk about a fun trip, share links to stories that are not about your business, and build relationships. But remember, you are using it for business so make sure to mix in some quality business links as well as the other content. Finally, linkedin is the most corporate of the group and should be treated as such – it should be more of an online resume than anything else. This is a great place to share your corporate knowledge and answer questions in your industry.

Once you have your tools and have determined what to share where, you are ready to start connecting and building your networks. Start with the people you know personally, search through your address books and find those who will be willing to connect from a personal level. This gives you an easier entry point before you have to start talking to strangers and building a new network. Trust me though, when you start, it will be hard to stop!

What worries do you have about connecting online?

If you were a parent and your young child came to you and said “I don’t have many friends”, what would you do? You would probably suggest that they become friends with their friends friends, join a sport, find friends who have similar interests, go to their favorite places and find others who are there too, or to say hello to a random person that’s in their class or another class.

Twitter is much the same as being in school – when you start, you know almost no one. You have a few people that you know because they are in your immediate circle or you email address book and you can add them right away as followers. But then where do you go? How do you find other people who would be interesting to follow? Here are just a few great suggestions from my twitter friends and followers:

Sn0wSurF3r:  I looked for triathlon groups and followed people who followed them. Then it snowballed. I found more runners somehow.

brksndunngirl: usually with follow friday #FF the ppl u follow now recommend others

roogie:  I used location based twitter clients like Twinkle on iPhone, then read tweets to see if they were worth following

nickbrennan:  << searched 4 biz’s & products Im a fan of & use

elysiabrooker: My fave way is to go to people I love on Twitter, & follow people they are. Makes for relevant, like-minded twitterers

The key to finding friends anywhere in life, whether it is in school or on the web is connecting with others who are similar to you and then expanding your reach. Use the things that you like to do, read, see, and experience to find you new and interesting people to connect to. While twitter can be (and I think should be) used for business, you can’t build business from scratch…you need a foundation of trust and communication from building friendships first. Oh, and of course, you can start by following me @kirstenwright

What other ways do you have to find new friends on twitter?