It’s one of the biggest problems you face every day at work – your emails aren’t getting returned. You write them, meticulously at times, and people just don’t respond. Could it be that perhaps you’re not putting the action item up front? Are you rambling on and on until you get to the point in the last sentence? Solve this problem immediately and put your action item directly in the subject line.

We’re taking the advice of one of our favorite productivity experts, Jason Womack, and making our email more productive by making our subject lines actionable. Check out Jason’s advice here:

Make your subject line actionable
Have you ever gotten an email from someone with the subject line: “Opportunity”?

Think about what you have to do with this email. If it’s long, you have to read through the whole thing, looking carefully for said opportunity. How to remedy this?

Here’s a trick I’ve been using for a long time. I write the subject lines of my emails last, starting out with a verb that describes what needs to be done and a noun encapsulating what the email message is about directly. Over the past few years, I’ve realized I consistently make requests via email asking recipients to call, schedule, view, print, sign, scan, return or confirm receipt of a document.

It’s only fair to let the recipient know exactly what I need them to do when they see the email show up in their inbox so they can get to it more quickly. At my company, we’ve standardized the verbs used in email subjects so that everyone on our team is on the same page. For example, if I need one of my staff to take an action, I type in the subject line: “Call Susan B. today to confirm start time for Tuesday’s workshop: 415-555-xxxx.’ This makes it very clear what I need done and provides all relevant information as succinctly as possible.

Read the rest of Jason’s email productivity article at Entrepreneur.com by clicking here.

The post Email: Your Subject Line Is An Action Item appeared first on Career Girl Network.

Digital communication has become so common with emails, texts, and instant messaging that sometimes the lines can be blurred between them. The problem is when this blurring happens in a professional communication. Sometimes I receive an email where I wonder if the sender bothered to reread it or if they did and just didn’t realize how unprofessional it sounds because of how comfortable they are with digital communication.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when sending a professional email.

1. Use a Formal Address

If you start your email with an enthusiastic “Hi Lisa!” I’m already forming an impression about you. Do we know each other? I’m not big on formalities but if I don’t know you and you’re reaching out for professional advice, using my first name in such an informal manner isn’t the best way to start our relationship.

Start off your emails with a formal address, such as “Dear Mr./Ms.” This sets the professional tone of your email right away and I know you’re interested in talking business and not about hanging out on the weekend. For many this may be the only time you have to use the formality to start off an email. If you get a response and the person signs the email with their first name then you’re safe to address them with it at the start of your next email. However when first developing your connection it’s best to be formal.

2. Avoid Abbreviations or Slang

Email is not the place to use abbreviations or slang that may be common in text and instant messaging. When someone uses an abbreviation in an email, I start to wonder if they’re serious about discussing their future in the profession. It again crosses the line into friend zone instead of professionalism.

3. Format Properly

I once received an email with no spaces between the opening, paragraphs, or ending. Make sure your email looks as professional as it reads. While your email doesn’t have to be formatted like a cover letter with your address and information up top, the body of a cover letter is a good format to follow when sending a professional email. Imagine you’re writing a letter and format your email in the same way.

4. Proofread More Than Once

It’s easy to get caught rereading an email thousands of times because you’re nervous to hit the send button. While you want to avoid being caught in that loop, it does help to reread your email more than once. After one read through, step away from the email for a little while and do something else. Then go back to it to reread again just in case you missed something the first time. Two or three rereads is probably enough. You just want to make sure you’ve caught any spelling or formatting errors. If I receive an email full of mistakes, I wonder how serious you are about a career in communications since your email won’t communicate very well!

When emailing a professional, for the first or twenty-first time, you want to approach it like you would a letter from start to finish. You want to make the best impression so that the individual will respond to your email knowing you’re serious about discussing business.

The post 4 Tips for Sending a Professional Email appeared first on Career Girl Network.

Admit it, you’ve tried every social media site out there, even the ones that didn’t last. Did you ever have a profile on MySpace? What about Friendster? Are you asking yourself right now, “Does MySpace even exist anymore?” It does! And chances are, if you just stopped using the site, your profile is still there. Even if a website crumbles and goes away (much like Google Reader is about to), have you asked yourself what information of yours is still floating out there on their site?

I was intrigued when CNN writer Heather Kelly posted an article titled “What to do when your favorite site closes.” I was incredibly annoyed with my precious Google Reader lately when they decided to pull the service from Google all together. Fortunately, I’ve found a new love in Feedly (but that’s another story). Heather’s article, though, forced me to think about any other dead or near-dead sites I might  have used in the past. Are you protecting yourself from them?

Here’s what Heather advises you to do when a site you use shuts down:

Delete your profile

Once you’ve extracted all the content you need from a dying site, consider hitting the self destruct button on your profile. Any information left on the service can linger on the Internet for years, and personal information might even be sold off to other companies.

When people abandoned MySpace for Facebook’s greener pastures, many left behind old profiles adorned with what seemed like hysterical photos at the time. Now those people are older, perhaps trying to get jobs or dates, and old MySpace pages still haunt their search results. Unless you remember your password, getting rid of old profile pages can be difficult.

Read the rest of Heather’s advice on how to move on and find alternatives by clicking here.

The post What To Do When Your Favorite Website Crumbles appeared first on Career Girl Network.

They say “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” With at least 70% of available jobs never listed, using your network is more important than ever. Your professional network can be anyone from your cousin to your former employer, to an acquaintance on Facebook. Nurturing professional relationships is just as important as personal ones; it’s easy to drop off someone’s radar when you’re not in regular contact with them. Make great connections now to help benefit your career in the future.

6 Degrees of Separation

If you have a specific goal in mind, determine which people are in a position to help you reach that goal. Even if none of your immediate friends or coworkers has that awesome contact, try social media site LinkedIn. Often you can find hiring managers and other people who can help you through your connections on websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Ask your contact to do a brief introduction, or make the connection yourself. Dropping an email saying you went to college with so-and-so is sometimes enough to warrant a response.

Maintain the Relationship

Once you’ve established a professional relationship with someone, foster it with attention and care. Don’t overwhelm their inbox, but reach out occasionally after reaching personal milestones (just scored a great new gig)! Often times in business relationships we think to take, take, take. Try giving; offer to help them in a way that’s unique and mutually beneficial. Favors are much easier to come by when you’ve given out some yourself. Be sure to complement and explain to them why you think they’re such a fabulous connection.

Take Action

Remember: its quality over quantity when it comes to professional relationships, and once you’ve developed one you need to tell them what you want. Be specific; successful individuals are busy and don’t have time for guesswork. Whatever you can do to make the request easier for them to fulfill, do it. Want them to forward your Resume to a hot-shot exec? Include it in the email so they don’t have to ask. Trying to get some top-notch work advice over coffee? Give them a few dates and times and let them pick.

A good professional relationship is like a personal relationship, they both involve give and take. Sometimes, professional relationships can develop into a mentor-peer relationship, and that’s great too. Don’t be afraid to be assertive, but always maintain a professional attitude.

Source: NPR

The post Networking: Building Professional Relationships appeared first on Career Girl Network.

Check it out:

The post LinkedIn and Your Brand: What the Experts Are Saying appeared first on Career Girl Network.

These are questions I’ve heard many people ask when trying to figure out their online networking strategy. Ultimately it depends on your comfort level with social networking and the platform you want to use to connect.

When to add a professional connection on LinkedIn is very different from when to friend a person on Facebook. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when considering adding a connection on social media.

LinkedIn: Possibly the best website for online professional networking, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with someone before or after you meet them. Numerous professionals use LinkedIn to form connections in their industry so it’s a pretty safe place to try and connect with someone at any point in your networking relationship. If you want to connect with someone before you’ve met, check on the right-hand side bar to see if you have any mutual connections. If you do, you can use the “Get Introduced” feature and have that mutual connection put you in touch.

After you meet with someone I’d recommend connecting with the individual the same week as your meeting if you got along well. This will not only get your name in front of the person again, it will also remind them of your experience as they look at your profile. Personally I believe it’s never too early to start connecting with people and forming your network on LinkedIn.

Facebook: I’d advise more caution when connecting with your professional network on Facebook. If you “friend” a professional before meeting them, it may put off your connection. Facebook is still used by many for personal contacts, so if your connection does not have a public page for you to follow you’ll want to get to know them before sending them a friend request.

If you’ve met the person and they are open to connecting via Facebook then do so, but keep in mind that they will then see what you post on your profile page unless you restrict what they view. If you are just starting to connect with professionals on Facebook, look through your post history and photos. It’s important to make sure that you don’t mind your coworkers and other professionals seeing everything on your profile. If your profile has been mostly friends and you’ve been pretty open with what you post, it might be worth keeping it that way and not connecting professionally unless you are willing to change your settings to make sure only certain people can see certain things. It’s up to you to make sure to keep your personal and professional lives from clashing.

Twitter: Twitter is certainly a more casual network than LinkedIn but I’d say it has similar rules for connecting before or after meeting a professional. If your connection has a public profile, then they probably use Twitter professionally or at least are open to new followers and forming connections on the social media site. It’s perfectly ok to follow a person on Twitter and start a conversation with them there before meeting. I’d say it’s perfectly fine to follow them right after you meet as well. You can thank them for meeting with you and keep the conversation going by commenting on links they share and sharing links with them as well.

If someone has their profile protected then they may use it for mostly personal tweeting and you might want to hold off asking to follow them until you get to know them better. I’d suggest waiting until you’ve met with them a few times or at least exchanged a few emails and discussions online elsewhere before asking them to let you see their protected tweets. On the other hand if they ask to follow you or follow you publicly then it might be safe doing the same in return. Feel out your connection and use your judgment.

In the end only you can decide when you’re comfortable connecting with a fellow professional online. Over time and with increased use of these websites you’ll get a feel for when it’s best to connect. Hopefully these tips will help you navigate the waters when it comes to these three websites.

The post When to Connect With Professionals on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook appeared first on Career Girl Network.

Whether you are looking for new business, a new job, the love of your life (or maybe just a date for Friday night!), networking is an unavoidable fact of life.  Most of us don’t love to do it and could use a little help.  The truth is that no matter what the purpose of your networking, the key to its effectiveness lies in your ability to connect.  That common ground, that spark, that “oh yeah, this person gets me” is what takes you from a business card or profile amongst many, to a person we all want to get to know better…someone we want to buy from, work with, or date – or maybe all three!

I think this Connect With Anyone Creed sums it up perfectly!

Your turn – what are your best tips for connecting with people?  Can you give an example when doing so really elevated the relationship beyond basic networking?

Infographic compliments of Live Your Legend, (a blog devoted to finding and doing work you love).

The post How to Connect with Anyone appeared first on Career Girl Network.

Email is arguably the most amazing invention of the internet, but at the same time can inhibit productivity like nothing else in your professional career. Sure, you can communicate across an ocean in the snap of a finger, but you can also blow a full day doing very little except bowing down to the email gods.

Women 2.0, though, is giving you the most amazing pieces of software and insider tricks to make your email….magic! Try these tips and get out of your email rut:

Boomerang allows you to schedule sending emails at a later time, removes messages from your inbox until you need them, and reminds you to follow up without your having to keep track. (Boomerang works with Gmail and Google Apps. There’s also a version for Outlook.)

Similarly, Follow-up.cc will remind you when to follow up with people, letting you archive emails which will reappear in your inbox at the time you specify. Not having to juggle reminders in your calendar works particularly well for sales and networking. (Follow-up.cc integrates with Salesforce, and works with any email interface.)

Gmail’s Canned Responses feature is perfect for anyone who needs template-based responses. Instead of typing out yet another formulaic email, or dealing with the mess of cutting and pasting, you can insert a canned response with a click and go from there. You can also set up an auto-response to messages for which you’ve set up a filter. (This feature is available in Gmail Labs. Outlook users also can set up a similar process.)

The post Work Your Email to Make it Magical: Here’s How appeared first on Career Girl Network.

Social media is powerful, there’s no doubt about it. It gives you a powerful platform to connect with other people, whether they be current, past, or potential colleagues, recruiters, managers, friends, and much more. But can it also give you an opportunity to connect with a company in hopes of landing a job? There are countless articles about how to connect with recruiters and hiring managers (and what not to do) individually, but few that explain proactive ways you can interact with a company via social media in order to get ahead or land a position.

Today, we’re giving you a few great ideas for connecting with the company, not the individual. Let’s break these down by industry:

Corporate

• First and foremost, if you want to work for a corporation, you’d better be following them on every social media channel they have. Take the time to read the posts they put out there every day, and know what their big initiatives are. If you land an interview, that knowledge will bode well for you.
• Corporate companies are absolutely the most difficult to connect with on social media. While they’re the easiest to follow (note above), a company’s social media channels can often be run by low level employees combined with outside contractors and marketing firms. Trying to Tweet directly to the company or send a Facebook message to get a response about a job is not going to be a good tactic here.
• Corporations are notoriously guarded about giving out phone numbers and email addresses for staff members. Social media, though, can be a powerful way to find this contact information. Perhaps a manager or executive has personally liked the page or commented on a blog post. Take the opportunity on these pages to interact with these executives whenever possible.

Firm Life – Consulting, Law, Finance, Etc.

• Firms (no matter the kind) often do not list job openings on their websites or submit them to large job search engines. Don’t be afraid to reach out through social media channels and professionally say, “I’m interested in learning more about career opportunities at your company. What’s the best way to submit my resume or inquiry?”
• Especially if you’re interested in a small firm, you’re much more likely to reach an actual person instead of a PR team on a Facebook or Twitter page. Take the time there to ask good questions, engage in the questions the firm is asking on social media, and retweet/share relevant links. This kind of engagement could come back into play during an interview process later.
• Comment on blogs. Most firm shave blogs written by everyone from young marketing professionals to CEO’s. Everyone loves a complimentary comment on a blog, and trust me, they remember it! Comment away, share your perspective, and position yourself as a leader in your field. Don’t be afraid to reference these kinds of interactions in interviews later on.

Nonprofit

• Watch for volunteer opportunities and raise your hand when one is available. Nonprofits often hire from their volunteer pool, so getting involved even before you apply for a job will help you get an interview.
• Get to know the CEO through the company’s posts. Nonprofits often post about or with the executive in their organization. That individual, especially in small nonprofit organizations, can often be the final yes or no answer to who gets hired. Watch videos of that person speaking when the organization posts them, go to events when the organization promotes them, etc.
• Interact with other nonprofits like the one you’re targeting, even in different cities. Nonprofit organizations don’t just want to see your passion for their organization, they want to see your passion for a cause across the board. If you’re hoping to land a job with a nonprofit specializing in breast cancer awareness, follow and comment on many different breast cancer awareness organizations.

Ultimately, interacting with a company will never give you the same direct connection you can get by targeting an individual on social media, but it can speak volumes about your level of both interest and commitment, and it’s worth taking the time to strategically plan these kinds of interactions.

The post Interacting with Potential Employers on Social Media appeared first on Career Girl Network.

By now, you all know I’m addicted to Apps. I’ve told you about apps that will save you time, apps that will increase your security, and apps that make your phone just a happier and better place. I consider it my duty to inform Career Girls of the world of the new downloads you simply must have. That’s why I was excited when Mashable, the end all be all of app recommenders, gave us “The Next Generation of iPhone Productivity Apps is Here.“

My new favorite? Any.DO:

Any.DO launched its sleek to-do list app on iPhone in mid-2012, but it was an update to the app this week that really caught my attention. After tracking how its user base — now in the millions — engaged with the app, the Any.DO team realized that user engagement drops off if they create a giant to-do list because it becomes too much to tackle. With that in mind, Any.DO released Moment, a daily reminder that prompts the user to take a moment to schedule the tasks on their list for that day.

“One of the things we learned is that in order for people to be really productive, they need to change task management into a habit,” Omer Perchik, founder and CEO of Any.DO, told Mashable in a previous interview. “We have a lot of users who create this everlasting list of all the things they need to do and once they get to a number of tasks that is just to much, they never look back. A long list is not very actionable and kind of frustrating.”

At first, I thought this kind of daily notification might feel like an accusation: here are all the things you keep saying you’ll get done, but don’t. However, Any.DO designed the feature with friendly colors and a friendly greeting (“Good day, Seth. Take a moment to plan your day.”) After using this for a few days, I’ve found that the Any.DO Moment is like a moment of Zen. I start out my day with a plan and feel that much more in control of what’s coming up.

No word yet if this baby will replace my beloved Clear, but I’m loving the “Today” “Tomorrow” “Upcoming” and “Someday” options to tag your to-do’s. Pretty awesome.

Check out the rest of Mashable’s new app generations by clicking here.

The post Apps You Should Download to Make Your Life Easier This Week appeared first on Career Girl Network.