In my Network Marketing Workshops, I tell everybody to participate in forums.  When someone hears a statement like this they might think of discussion groups. Some better known discussion groups groups.yahoo.com groups.google.com groups.live.com They might say, this seems like a lot of trouble or do I really have to join a discussion group just to participate in a forum? If you are a member of LinkedIn, then the Answers are literally in front of your nose.  You’re already a member of a 40 million member network of people.  All you have to do is click on the Answers tab and...

A few short months ago, I created my personal blog called  Wes Johnson – MrWes Words of Wisdom.  The blog theme has been based on my life experiences and wisdom gained along the way.  In the spirit of the nature of this blog, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on where it’s been. My original goals: To generate networking opportunities To market myself as an excellent communicator To share my knowledge and wisdom with my readers What I received: knowledge – I learned the terminology and how to do many new blogging related activities experience – I have...

I spent this past weekend at the Wente Scout Reservation.  The reservation is located in Mendocino County.  Just outside of Willits, California.  Over 250 Scouts from the Venturing program came together from several different counties for a Venturing Rendezvous.  A Venturing Rendezvous is an annual gathering of Venture Crews  and Sea Scouts during the last weekend in September for the purpose of having fun with other Venture Scouts doing Venturing activities.  There were Sea Scouts present and Venture Crews that came from all parts of the Bay area including the Central...

When you develop your Personal Brand, the Name you use is one of your most important assets.  Many people have unique names and have little competition for the use of their name.  Wes Johnson is my name.  Both names, I have discovered, are pretty popular. If you’ve ever done a Google search on the name you’ll find there are a lot of Wes Johnsons.  In fact there are several notable public figures that share the name Wes Johnson.  Since they are in the news, have personal blogs, participate in forums, or have blogs written about them, it has been quite a challenge to be...

I learned something new while I was teaching my Personal Marketing Workshop yesterday.  I learned that Short URLs, while being convenient, aren’t always a good thing. Problem - As part of the prerequisites for the workshop, I have the students do some job research.  Many of the links I reference are very long.  In fact because they’re so long there are lots of opportunities to mistype the URLs.  So, I thought it would be nice if I shrank the URLs down to something short.  I used one of the popular web based URL shrinking applications.  It works in theory until you discover...