Disclaimer:  There are as many definitions of what a group is as there are twitter users!  I think my definition of a group is pretty clear here.  I’m not talking about people attending a conference who might want to meet up for the first time and have drinks.  I’m talking about people who already have some type of a relationship or connection developed and need to communicate about a common topic amongst themselves.  That being said, roll with me…

I’m in a group of Virtual Assistants who met and found common ground in the desire to build our business by reading Get Clients Now.  While working through the book we utilized Skype to talk real time and Twitter to send out reminders or mini-celebrations when we hit daily goals.

Skype worked great!

Twitter, not so much.

With a group of 6 any message I sent through Tweetdeck to all the members ate up 83 characters of my message.  I thought it was hard to express my extroverted self in 140 characters.  Fifty-seven characters was horrible!  We switched to a hash tag but not everyone was using Tweetdeck and not all of us ran a column for it consistently.  Messages were getting missed and some of the luster was fading.

Then I discovered how to set up groups on Twitter.  If you open an account, lock the updates, follow all the members and they reciprocate, you have a group.  The system seemed pretty slick initially.

To send a confirmation for the next call a member sends a direct message to the group account.  The original message is reworked into a message from the sender and flows into the main Twitter stream to be viewed by only members of the group (since the updates are private).

Here is an example of the message I’d send from Tweetdeck: 

d GCN0509 Can we move the call later by 1/2 hour tonight?

Private message appearing in the Twitter stream:

Sundi_MOZ: Can we move the call later by 1/2 hour tonight?

It works pretty sweet!  In theory.

With about a thousand folks in my Twitter stream the probability that I’ll see any one message is pretty small – even if the message was intended for me.  Almost like an @ message where the sender left off the intended recipient after the @.  After a couple of weeks the members stopped using the group account entirely because the response rate was so low.

What we really need is for Twitter to fix the group thing!  All over the net you’ll find conversations about what people think Twitter groups should be.  Represented opinions are as diverse as the colors in the rainbow.   People want geography built in.  People want levels of privacy.  People want no levels of privacy and for Twitter to “learn” what groups apply when.  Seriously?  Won’t this almost kill the reason why MOST people love Twitter?  Here I thought simple was the rule and if you wanted to make it complicated, or even hyper-complicated, there was a Twitter app out there to help you do that.

How can Twitter fix groups as they are currently known?  The most simple way possible!

When I send a message to my group I want to know that everyone is going to get an equal opportunity to see it and respond.  That means the message needs to go out from the group account as an @ or a DM to every member.  Simple.

Do you have a suggestion for how Twitter can fix groups?

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Feel free to assume I’m still on my mini-vacation.

No, I didn’t take this picture.  I do have a new camera I can’t wait to try out this year for the fireworks though.

That is the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.  It is a pretty cool place if you are war history buff.

I’ll be back on Tuesday so have a great 4th!

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Feel free to assume I’m on a mini-vacation.  Enjoy some humor in my absence.

The Fourth of July weekend was approaching, and Miss Pelham, the nursery school teacher, took the opportunity to tell her class about patriotism.  “We live in a great country,” she announced. “One of the things we should be happy about is that, in this country, we are all free.”

Trevor, who was a little boy in her class, came walking up to her from the back of the room.  He stood with his hands on his hips and said loudly, “I’m not free. I’m four.”

Happy fireworks for you!

Nibbling away -

Sundi

If you like this Twitter bird you can get it at Nyi Nyi Myanmar.

How do you choose who to follow on Twitter?
Do you auto-follow people?
Do you follow people with the generic avatar?

Answers to questions like these fascinate me.  I love it when a person goes into a deep involved explanation about their follow theories.  Our theories may be deep and complicated to explain but when faced with a new profile we apply them immediately – followers be damned!

We spent a lot of time talking about tools developed around and general rules of Twitter at Chicks Who Click – but not so much about what rules we use to decide to follow.  Sometimes I think the tools make the decision easier – sometimes just a lot harder.

Here is a rundown of my “follow back” qualifications:

1) If you are new, you can’t be following more people than you have updates!  Like following 500+ with 2 updates.

2) I’m less likely to follow back if you have over 2K+ followers.

3) I’ll definitely follow you back if you:

(a) are in my niche, duh, isn’t that what Twitter is all about!
(b) are a fellow Virtual Assistant, because we’re down like that.
(c) are a member of a group I’m in, like the Powerful Women’s Networking Group in KC.
(d) are from my geographical area, exact city or metro area.
(e) attended an event with me, even if we didn’t actually meet.
(f) talk about chocolate, soccer or cats.  (All work and no play…)

4) I couldn’t think of a fourth one but one of my 7-year-olds likes even numbers.  Ok, the real reason is transparency.  I like to be able to see people’s moods, sudden tiny details of their lives or just plain “give me some personality people!”

I don’t think any of these qualifications seem too difficult and some are down right quirky, I know.  I bet your list has some quirks in it too, right?

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Today I’m attending Chicks Who Click in Kansas City.  For more information about Chicks Who Click please visit their website.

I can’t wait to share with you information about some of the hottest topics in social media!

Here’s to a great day!

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Although I’ve hit the three month mark for my blog I haven’t been motivated to write the usual “What is a Virtual Assistant?” post.  There are many out there so it seemed a little redundant!

Why reinvent the wheel when there are many great ones already out there on the road?  Oh, I meant there are many great blog posts out there explaining what a Virtual Assistant is so why should I rearrange the words?

Instead I found some wonderful folks involved in the Virtual Assistant industry and I’m going to let them spin it for me – in a very fantastic and articulate way!  These peers go way beyond a simple definition…

Liz of E-Works Office Services wrote 5 Reasons Why Your VA Should Be Contracted On A Retainer.

Amy of Virtual Services 4U blogged about the VA title in Virtual Assistant? Virtual Problem Solver – VPS?.

Kimberly from JK Virtual Services shares her social media spin through Virtual Assistant to the Rescue.

Susan at Having A Virtual Advantage discusses Successful Delegation.

Diana of Virtual Word Publishing says Wake Up and Partner with a VA.

If you still feel the need for the definition of a Virtual Assistant then check it out at Wikipedia.

I haven’t done the whole “get to know me post” either.  If you are looking for info about me then check this out!  Should that not quench your thirst then fill out the swank contact form at bottom of that page and I’ll answer anything you want to know!

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Taking a tour of Hell

The devil smiled.  He was happily leading a guided tour through the Halls of Hades.  He led the group into an area and pointed out a fire-and-brimstone exhibit.  Next he took them into a room where billions of clocks hung on the walls.  The devil cleared his throat and explained to the group in an important tone of voice that every person on Earth was represented by one of the clocks.  “Each time a person does something nasty, their clock ticks backward by one minute,” he explained.

One of the tour participants raised his hand and said, “I happen to know an IRS agent whose name is Max Tax. Do you have his clock?”

The devil grinned widely at the question and said, “Oh, his is in the back room. We use it as a fan.”

This is a four part series running through the month of March.  You might want to check out part 2 and part 1!

Who knew there were so many Tuesdays in March?  Even after today we still have one more to go!

If you haven’t taken the quiz yet then you might not know, or maybe you failed like I did and still don’t know…Who was the first woman doctor in the United States?

Elizabeth Blackwell was her name!  She graduated from medical school on January 11, 1849.  Obviously this was many years before it was popular for women to be allowed in institutions of higher education so the story behind her admittance is bound to be comical.  In fact a vote regarding Elizabeth’s admittance was put out to the students and, being the student body thought the ballot a joke, she won the majority!

Although she graduated first in her class the profession was nowhere near ready for a female doctor.  After finally finding a forever-career-home (they actually had those back then) the stint was cut short when she contracted an eye infection from a patient.  Now, I’m not sure about the popularity of glass eyes back then but it would seem that Elizabeth did quite well.  With one fully functioning eye and I would assume another very pretty glass one, she decided to open up her own quick clinic, itty biz, employer…New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.

During the Revolutionary War Elizabeth trained many women in nursing and sent them off to serve with the Union troops.  She established The Women’s Medical College in her Infirmary.  After establishing the college state-side Elizabeth joined forces with Florence Nightingale to open The Women’s Medical College in England, where again she become the first female physician and doctor on the UK Medical Register.

Who gets tired of posts started with definitions?  I was going to start this one like that and then I got mad.  I looked high and low for a decent definition of small business.  To be perfectly blunt they all sucked.  So I’ll tell you what it means to me!  (My blog post, I get more than 140 characters!)

Small Business [smawl biz-nis] - noun.  Exists in the heart of a single person who could nourish and grow a concept until the perfect day when it will become a passion which, almost child-like, requires necessary care and feeding.  Provided the necessary elements, the passion will become an indepedent entity shaped by the love and care provided by the progenitor.

My definition doesn’t contain one word about employees.

My definition doesn’t contain one word about income.

My definition doesn’t contain one word about geographic location

My definition doesn’t contain one word about brick-n-mortar.

Surely she’s going somewhere with this

You bet I am!  You see, I was over at Mad Hatter yesterday and, well, Brianna got me on a roll.  See, Brianna gets it.  She took this thing and she loved it.  What more could a little biz ask for?

Look all around you while you surf the web.  There are small businesses everywhere.  If you’ve recently developed a victim mentality then stop it!  Stop it right now!  Direct all that extra energy to doing something about it…to making life, YOUR life, better!

If you simply can’t locate one single drop of hope somewhere on the internet (please don’t look at the news sites!) then let me give you a little guidance, ok?

Visit these people … Corey, Kelly, Steph … and see some examples of passion.  Do these individuals all have small businesses based on the definitions from the B2C, SBA, B2B and IRS folks?  (Or what ever other acronym you want to stir in there.)  Maybe.  Maybe not.  If you don’t think change is still ‘a comin’ then you got another thing coming!  Please note the most important word in my definition – that is COULD.  What you decide to do and what you can do are two very different things.

 If you don’t get this yet then I’ll just have to say I can’t break it down any farther.  So, here are some words from some one else.  Charlie can do it much better than me so here you go, print it off and hang it on your motivation board!

Charlie says Do Epic Shit.

Nibbling Away -

Sundi