There are some days when a rolodex makes sense, but since we have so many ways to keep track of business and friend’s email and phone number, is there a place we can organize all of them?

When I started looking for an online solution for this, Plaxo came up.  An actual online networking platform that helps you organize your friend, family and business contacts.

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Some nicer features of Plaxo are:

• It allows you to upload photos, blogs, reviews and as well as link into other networking platforms like Twitter, MySpace, Digg, and others.

• Easy to navigate! One would assume that you would get lost or overwhelmed trying to organize your contacts and your feeds, but they did a great job with the user interface and made navigating intuitive.

• It syncs up with your Yahoo, Google, or Outlook Calendar as well as your email on those networks. This is a big deal if you have a lot of contacts on your phone. Plaxo can serve as a way to keep a backup of your contacts. We all know how important that is!

Are you using Plaxo now? What’s your favorite feature?

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Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods is a leader in the grains industry, they provide over 400 products, focusing on gluten-free and organic.  Their slogan is “whole grain foods for every meal of the day”.

How does a business share their community  such as gluten-free baking contest and supporting a cyclo-cross team? Bob’s Red Mill uses tools such as Facebook. Here’s are some great ways they did it right on their Fan page

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• they put a photo of “Bob” as part of their profile, having their business come across very warm and friendly.

• on their wall, they post many time during the week with news about the cyclo-cross events, commenting on other companies products and overall, reaching out beyond their products and themselves

• Using the notes section to share info about tools folks can use in cooking and baking, content info, and more.

• they have their facebook badge on their blog, so readers of the blog can easily “become a fan” of Bob’s Red Mill on Facebook.

Do you know of other companies that have “done it right” with their Facebook Fan page?

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Setting up a Facebook Fan page is the best way to advertise your business, but I’ve found a lot of folks baffled about what to do with it.  Here are steps on how to set it up

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1) Feed your blog postings into your Facebook page – this can be done by editing the Notes tab and adding your blog feed. Facebook will confirm with you if it’s done correctly and you simply confirm.

2) Add business apps, there are a ton to choose from here,  but don’t go overboard, pick a few that having meaning to your business.

3) Promoting your page – you can’t just friend someone the way you do from your personal profile. You can encourage folks to be fans of your page by spreading the word.  Find contacts from your profile that are business connections, in the industry, or who could benefit from what your company provides and invite them to become a fan. Send a personal note what your page offers. Also promote your page in other places such as Twitter, email sigs, business card, your website or blog.

4) Build a community around your page – start discussions by asking questions regarding your products or what they suggests should improve. Post on a regular basis, such as you would on a blog. Be patient, it won’t happen overnight, but it change slowly.

Want to take it to the next level? Read this report on developing a Facebook pan to attract a million fans!

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I’ve been learning how getting content out to different sources and wondered exactly what does content pushing do and how do you do it?

There’s a tool I learned about recently called Onlywire. The way it works is you have two options:

1) Pay version — pay for ad free sharing

2) Promote version — use for free with ads

Onlywire is an automated bookmarking service kinda like ping.fm. It focuses on 4 things:

*setting up your social networking sites, view the submission history
* automate content into your CMS
*give your website and blog the ability to share your content
*Auto submit content to your social networking sites (like digg.com)

One nice feature – it help you with your Wordpress plugin and allows you to download and use  immediately. I just added it to my blog today. I was using the “Share This” plugin, but that only allow readers to submit to one social bookmarking site at a time. With the OnlyWire plugin, you can submit to many social bookmarking sites at once, a huge difference!

OnlyWire.com has exponentially increased in the past 6 months and is now the #1 content syndication system on the Internet. OnlyWire is used by over 100,000 publishers and blogging sites. I also read that it’s gone through a large transformation.

It even has features like an addon for Firefox and a plugin for WP! See if it would work for your blog or website.

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In 2006, I began folding cranes for world peace. Learning to fold origami cranes is challenging so I put an ad on LiveJournal. A nice lady offered to teach me in exchange for coffee and a scone and so we spent an hour folding cranes until I got the hang of it. I continued to fold cranes while watching TV or chilling out and found it meditative and was able to fold about 30-40 in about an hour. I getting close to around 500 and wasn’t sure if I continue in my quest, I began feeling burned out. I was telling a friend about my project earlier in February about how I wanted to finish and send 1,000 cranes to the Japanese Hiroshima Peace Park and she said, why not ask for help.

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At the time, I was learning how to use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with friends and colleagues and saw this project as a great way to use social media. I also had a blog that I could use as a vehicle to explain my project and start asking people to send me their address and I would send them 10 origami crane papers to make 10 cranes. I believed if I got 50 folks to make 10 cranes, I could reach my goal.

In addition, I set up a Facebook group, explaining my project, linking it to my blog, and sending it out to my friends, letting me know what I’m doing and that I would have a meet up where I would teach people to make cranes. I was amazed who signed up to my group. In less than a month, I had around 80 folks that were members. Some were really excited and shared their experience at different memorials in Seattle and Japan and how powerful the symbol of the crane can be.

Through Facebook, I set up 2 events where members of the group were given a notification that there was an event where they could come and learn to make cranes. The turn outs were awesome, the first one was 14 people and the 2nd was 15 people. Using Facebook as a tool to bring people together for a great cause is powerful.

In addition to using Facebook and my blog, I also made little announcements on Twitter. I just used my profile that’s mainly for my business, but let everyone know how many cranes there (status updates) as well as let folks know about the meet ups and link the tweets to my blog or to the Facebook group.

Not all of the folks in the group were Facebook friends, at least 1/4 were people that I didn’t know and during the meetups, folks I didn’t know very well came to support it.

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I was able to reach my goal of 1,000 cranes on August 2009 and have sent the package to the Peace Memorial Park. I trully believe that the social media tools we have now really improve our lives and bring us closer together. It’s very moving and powerful. I challenge you to spread a positive message through email, Facebook, your blog, or Twitter over the next week. I bet you’ll be amazed at the results. I sure was!

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