I provide my clients with systems for organizing their office and home spaces and managing work-life balance. A lot of the advice I provide comes from the inspiration and ideas I’ve gotten from successful people I’ve met here in BC and around the world. This issue of Chu On This… kicks off a new segment called Productivity Pointers from Top Business People, where I will share the organizing tips and advice many experts in various fields have used to achieve success.

Our first expert for this Q & A segment is sixty4media co-founder, Rebecca Bollwitt. Rebecca has been named one of the Top Ten Women in Vancouver Technology to Watch and one of Canada’s Top Ten Most Influential Individuals in Social Media.
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More and more, social networking is being used to stay in touch with family, friends and colleagues and to boost business. But I barely have time to live my own life, much less to read what everyone else is up to. How do you manage your time and use social networking in an organized way? To answer these kinds of questions, I talked with WRITEIMAGE founder Jonathon Narvey, who helps organizations get their message out through social media.

Q. How is social media good for business when people are Tweeting, Facebooking and updating their status about what they just had for lunch? A. Filtering the information is the key to making it useful. You select the RSS streams, Twitter profiles and Facebook friends that you want to follow. If someone is always Tweeting about their lunch, the solution is simple – you would never follow that person in the first place. It’s the same idea as when you watch TV, in that you choose the channel you want to watch – except that you can probably get far more targeted information from scanning relevant status updates online for 10 minutes than from any TV show.

Q. Which tools do you use?

A. I manage several blogs to establish a presence in my chosen fields and build connections with others. I also guest blog on other websites. I use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. These are the big sites. All of my social networks include both personal and professional connections. Often, there’s overlap, as colleagues become friends.

Q. But which tools are better for business?

A. All of them can be used for business. For instance, anyone can have a Facebook fan page for their business. LinkedIn is handy for building professional connections and finding professional associations. And Twitter is a convenient tool for finding influencers, connecting with them and broadcasting your message.

Q. Maintaining all those networks must be a lot of work. How do you manage your time?

A. Especially for those using social networks for business, the amount of time you use them will depend largely on how you want to use them. For passive connection-list building, a few minutes a day is probably all you need. If you’re using social networks for marketing campaigns, keep a strict schedule.

Social networks often include tools that automate functions, reducing the amount of time you need to spend maintaining them. For instance, you can set up your blog RSS feed (a summary of your most recent posts) to auto-Tweet whenever you publish, and then use Ping.fm to update all of your social networks at once.

Q. How do I de-clutter my social networking profiles?

A. Facebook and LinkedIn both let you customize the look of your profiles. You can select the applications you want and get rid of the rest. For instance, I organize my Facebook profile to show very minimal contact information, some links to my business and articles I’ve written. I keep it minimal to make an easier scanning experience for myself and others.

Social networking, just like email, can get out of control and consume what little time you have. Set your priorities and make social networking a part of your marketing plan, just as you would a face to face meeting or networking event.

We’ve got a problem these days that past generations would have loved to have: too much information. Now, organizing the information takes on paramount importance. It’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Emails demand to be read. Refrigerator doors and bulletin boards become graveyards for lost and forgotten sticky notes. And that million-dollar idea you had during the morning commute? Forgotten in the hectic drama of the first fifteen minutes at the office.
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Happy New Year! With a new start come new resolutions. Forget about those extra pounds, what better way to feel good then to get organized? Web Developer, Christine Rondeau offers us tips on how to use the web to keep our files and ideas organized.

Have you ever gone to a friend’s house or a meeting and thought, I have this great picture I should send you, or I saw this great link last week, it’s in my favorites on my home computer. Remind me to send it to you. Of course you go home, forget the whole thing and never send the email. Wouldn’t it better if you could always get to your stuff online? Here are three FREE tools which I use all the time and allow me to stay focus and organized.
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We often keep things because of the value they represent in our lives, despite the space it consumes. Letting something go is easy to some, but for most, the ‘what a waste’ thought comes to mind as one imagines their precious goods lying in the landfill.

Our city recycling programs have come a long way in making it easier for us to recycle paper and plastics, but there are may items that do not go into the Blue Box.

If recycling or donating eases your conscience and allows you to let go of items cluttering your home and work spaces easer, you may want to consider the following alternatives.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about organizing your emails. This article had valuable tips, but they were specifically for Microsoft users. Here’s a great article for Mac Users.

Relentless, yes. Unmanageable, possibly…Unless, you consider some of these tips.

How many times does something come to mind that prompts you to not forget to send a message to someone tomorrow, or the next week about…?

With the use of the Message Options from your Outlook email, you can create an email message as it occurs to you and remove that nagging flag you have in your mind (a mental to-do list you do not need to start).

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Imagine your mail being delivered to your door and you come home, glance at the envelopes to see who sent them, and then leave them at the door in a pile. Then you continue to do this every day, and the days stretch into weeks and months — perhaps even years.

How would you feel coming home to this mounting pile at your door every day? A bit overwhelming, isn’t it? Where would you begin to organize?
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Simon Parsons of TT Technical Services shares with us his top 5 Tips on using your computer.
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