This is the first of a series of interviews with other small businesses like yourself! The best way to learn is by listening how other folks accomplish and succeed. I always love talking to small businesses and finding out what their passion is behind the business.

My first business is Mercedes Rose, a talented voice-actress, as well as film actress, model, and teacher.

Please describe your business and why you are passionate about it?

For the last 13+ years I have been a full time actress and voice over artist. These industries combine all that I love- creativity, self motivation, variety…

It also helps that I am incredibly good at my job. And since i have no other marketable skills, that is a very good thing!

Do you use different social media tools to promote your business?

I use social media on an almost daily basis to promote my own business but also to stay in touch with trends and cycles within the acting community. Almost all films, advertising agencies, production companies, performers and crew have their own sites now. Sites like Facebook are a great way to spread the word about what you are working on.

What tools have worked for you? What hasn’t?

I successfully use Facebook, You Tube, and Twitter and a variety of industry specific Ning sites.  Many actors and filmakers swear by MySpace and while I do have a page I find it too 2008…

What goals to you want to achieve with social media tools in the next 6 months?

I would love to get to the point where I can have a personal assistant to help with all the updates and postings. It can be time consuming to post blogs, photos  and videos. But the time is definitly worth it.

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Wefollow.com is an online Twitter directory that makes it easier to search for famous folks and celebrities. My first impression was, why would I follow celebs?

If you are new to Twitter, find a few folks you respect, for example, journalist from NPR or an author you respect. The power of Twitter is that by following them, it allows you to have a very unique dialogue with these folks. If you reply or direct message them, it’s much more powerful than emailing or phone calls. You can also get insight into what they are into or what’s going on in their lives. It’s also fun to see who else is watching them, you might find some other great people you want to follow.

Wefollow also ranks tweeters and let’s you know whose getting more followers, whose moving up in the ranking and whose moving down.  You can type in keywords to find specific people, for example, if you type in “seattle”, Pearl Jam are the top tweeters!

This is a great tool is you want to start following Though Leaders on subjects such as small business, marketing, coaching, it just goes on and on. Overall, it’s fun tool that keeps it simple.

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I attended WebVisions, a web designer conference held in Portland last week. I’ve been checking out WebVisions the past couple of years and really enjoy learning about what’s coming up on the radar and what’s new in the Web Design world.

This year the focus was the future and I’m happy to say my impression of the future is pretty positive. The two things that everyone seem to keep repeating were:

1)  Open-ID – having one username and password to login your Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts

2) Open Source – having the source code of software available to the public to design, develop, distribute, and share. For example – most of Microsoft’s software is the opposite of open-source.

Hearing those two themes mentioned over and over again was such a relief! I develop and host websites in a mostly open-source environment and I feel that it’s a solid foundation to work off of.

What do you want to see change in the future for the online world? What would make your life easier/better online?

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We want to help you learn to use the right tools to help promote and communicate with your customers! We’re excited to cover topics related to blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and much more. It’s an exciting time in the communications world, but it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

In addition to blog posts, will be also be sending out the top 2-3 posts each month through our email newsletter.  Please feel free to leave comment or email us, we need to hear from you!

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