Like many people, I find it extremely difficult to ask for help. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I can’t. Correction, that should read “couldn’t”. You see a few years ago, I did manage to ask Jeremy Nicholas, a good friend in the Professional Speaking Association, to find that, not only was it forthcoming, but that it was so with some joy that it was done. It was a first for me. Since then, although I still don’t find it easy, I make the effort and it is usually reciprocated. After all, as Alan Stevens, another fellow speaker once pointed out to me, “If you don’t ask, the answer is always “No””.

As a result, a few of us, in line with others in the profession, formed ourselves into a small Mastermind Group at which we would discuss problems we were experiencing in order to be able to support and advise one another. We meet every month, usually for the whole day. And it works.

Recently the topic of concern was the use of social media, specifically Linked In, to help us to publicise what we each do. It was an area in which we all felt that we weren’t using well enough, mainly due to lack of expertise in regard to the technology. At which point, we made use of a video by one of the PSA’s Linked In go to experts, Philip Calvert. It took three sessions to cover the subject and relate it back to our individual needs. Now what was interesting was how Linked In uses algorithms to consider any blogs that you upload to the site. I thought that it would be straightforward. After all, if you press the button that lets you upload to LinkedIn, you’d think that that was what would happen, wouldn’t you? Well, it seems not as I thought it would. Well, among Phil’s little gems was to show us how to get around the algorithms so that we could upload and publish what we’d written so that it would be seen.

So, I spent a couple of hours yesterday with the lovely Mike Blissett, one of my Mastermind buddies, and he helped me to reformat my Linked In pages. In the process, I delved into my archives and reposted an old blog using this, to me, newly discovered method. Well, not only did it work but this morning, when I went to my Linked In page to rewrite my profile (a work still in progress), there were my old blogs. Going back some years.

Job done and all I had to do was ask. Thanks, guys (and gals).