The Virtual Meeting Coach

Still working out the kinks with Blip.tv and embedding the show here in the blog. Sorry for any confusion this last week!

This is episode 2 of 4 conversations I’ll be having with Matt Sweet and Rene Fabre, two wild and crazy guys who work for Ticor Title Company up here in the Pacific NW.

Our conversation this time focuses on the seriously important topic of online reputation management and how we can all help make Google smarter and smarter about us and our businesses so that Google can make it easier and easier for the people who need us to FIND us online. Matt and Rene are helping Realtors make sense of how they can optimize their social media participation so that “search-savvy” home buyers can find them easily when they need them.

You don’t have to be a Realtor to make great use of the tips and tricks these guys are sharing. Any independent business person needs to know how to do these things now. So, listen up!

We had this conversation in a vYew room again and we’re all hoping the graphics help make the things we talking about clearer for you. This is an experimental format for all of us and we’d love to hear your thoughts about how it works.

Take a look/listen and let us know what you think.

For over a year, my friend, Tom Carroll, and I have been playing with free virtual meeting tools. Testing them, pushing them, breaking them, seeing which ones work best for what kinds of meetings.

My fascination with real-time virtual meetings comes from my very real, very non-technical experience as a child growing up in a divided bungalow in Chevy Chase where the upstairs bathroom of our home shared a pretty thin wall with the upstairs bathroom of our neighbor’s home.

When I was a curious little girl, I wanted more than anything to be able to “see” through that wall and “hear” what my neighbor, Don Jackson, was doing over on his side. Don was 10 years older than me and generously tolerated my crush on him by actually encouraging me to memorize Morse Code and tap out little messages back and forth with him on the bathroom wall.

I know. It sounds really silly. And it was. But that experience birthed my fascination with “distance” communication and it survives today in my desire to be able to “see” and “hear” what my neighbors around the globe are doing and thinking – without me actually having to travel around the world all the time to see them face-to-face.

Not that I’ve got anything against traveling! I love traveling more than almost anything. But I can’t live that way. After awhile, everyone wants a place they call home. But I still want to take adventures from home, too. What’s the internet for, anyway, if not adventuring?

So, from my home in Ashland, Oregon and Tom’s home in Austin, Texas, we’ve been taking adventures, using all kinds of web conferencing tools to have live, authentic conversations that incorporate all kinds of media.

Now we’ve started inviting people who have something interesting to share to join us.

About a week ago, Tom made this recording I posted today to Blip.tv. It’s the introduction to a 4-part conversation I’ll be having over the next couple of weeks with Matt Sweet and Rene Fabre.

Matt and Rene work for Ticor Title in the Pacific NW. It’s their job to help REALTORS and title people from Astoria, Washington to Ashland, Oregon, make sense of the ways that online communication has forever changed their businesses.

Matt and Rene are not quite Ren and Stimpy. But almost. They’re a couple of wild and crazy guys who happen to love exploring what makes Google tick. Their passion – and their work – is finding new ways to use social media to help professional business people make friends and influence people to buy from them. Every week they take their people into free, online meeting rooms at vYew.com to have raucous conversations about new ways they need to start  building their reputations and connecting to customers – online.

I’m still experimenting with these kinds of interviews, and Tom’s still testing out ways to record them for me, but I hope you’ll take a look and a listen to this one and let me know what you think about the format.

Over the next 3 sessions, I’m hoping you’ll get to see a little more about how vYew works and, at the same time, learn something about how you can use social media to establish a more visible/audible presence for yourself online.

Please share any thoughts or suggestions you have that will help us improve!