Tweeting to professional success?

Where does Twitter live for you in the professional networking world? What role does it serve? Quick personal daily updates, provocative thoughts, stream of consciousness, developing a fan club, sharing interesting items, self promotion? Is Twitter about putting ideas out there with the goal of creating interaction and dialogue and positoining yourself in the world of the web, or is it about voyerism and narcisism? Which leads me to wonder, in what professional network is it deemed truly acceptable to promote yourself in a direct, shameless way. Is there a channel for this? Where will this ultimately aggregate?

Yes, people have made connections through Twitter that have led them to find a job. Yes, people have developed contacts through Twitter that have helped them build their business. But it all feels a little random still in terms of where this channel lives in the networking ecosystem online. If Facebook is for personal use and LinkedIN is for professional networking and updates then Twitter is still a relative novelty in its model alone I think. People are addicted to the public, 'levelled' access to all Twitter enthusiasts-- celebrity and anybody. You can find them all there.

We need to give some concentrated thought to our online profile in its aggregate and the overall message we are sending out to the world about who we are, how we think and what we do. And, in some instances... why they should care. If we leave it up to the collective digital thumbprint we may find out that people are getting the wrong impression. We need to do the work to stage, protect and control (to a certain extent) our professional profile and then manage it diligently.

Women entrepreneurs, market yourself with the Profit W100

OK smart women entrepreneur followers, it's time to yell from the hilltops about how successful you are! Yes, I said yell!! Shameless self promotion and a W100 application is what it takes to get that much deserved attention for all of your hard work. In fact, why not add a http://www.videobio.com/ to your application?

The 11th annual ranking of the PROFIT W100: Canada’s Top Women Entrepreneurs is now open for applicatins and nominations.

This year, changes to the ranking criteria this year open up the program to smaller firms and companies across a wider range of industries.

And, they're launching a new ranking of up-and-coming women entrepreneurs who deserve recognition for their early successes.

What won’t change are the benefits of ranking, including coverage in the November issue of PROFIT, which can attract new staff, customers, business partners and the interest of other local and national media. You can also count on business-building marketing and PR support from PROFIT. Perhaps best of all, you’ll be invited to the PROFIT W100 Idea Exchange, an exclusive conference geared to helping you strengthen your company and management skills in collaboration with other female entrepreneurs.

You can request a nomination package by calling 1-800-713-GROW or completing the online ballot at www.PROFITguide.com/w100ballot

Application deadline is July 17, 2009.