Cross-Cultural Twitter Interviews

If you are interested in international business and network on Twitter then you probably follow a number of people with international profiles. Some international people on Twitter share some great insights in their Twitter feed. I ask the cross-cultural people on my Twitter interviews to share the international people they like to follow on Twitter. Here are some of their replies.

21 International People to Follow on Twitter

1. @CCTheLowdown it’s a publishing company that Tweets all sorts of interesting things – sometimes international - @deborahswallow
2. @PennOlson I like those guys take on marketing but there are many others! – @ohh_la_la
3. Try @AmiExpat for her blog – @HoeferleConsult
4. I follow and read people like @RichardBranson interesting perspectives on business and the universal great thinker @SethGodin – @dkiernan
5. Christina Geyer @AmiExpat an American, expatriate, half-Asian living in Germany, and tweeting about cross-cultural differences & German cuisine – @transdomo
6. I’d say @StephenFry because he does so much travelling – @culturematters
7. @RickCogley, an American business consultant living in Japan. @vgr an Indian innovator living in the US – @tdebaillon
8. I like your list of international people to follow on Twitter. – @DR4Ward
9. My absolute favorite @queenrania – @XCulture
10. Hmmm … @johnniemoore is someone I have followed since the first year I was on Twitter (2007). – @jackyan
11. I really enjoy tweets from @ShellTerrell @kalinagoenglish @MissShonah @familyonbikes @KirstenWinkler – @CotterHUE
12. Adrian Monck ( @amonck ) an ex journo & current prof & head of comm. at World Economic Forum in Geneva … I answered as such because Adrian is international to me… and a Canadian perspective may be international to you, for example, and others; so for those interested in Canadian perspective, I would recommend Irshad Manji ( @reformingislam), @whoweareca, and @mathewi (Canadian journalist heavily involved in social media) – @DoreenatDMS
13. @globetrotteri is a friendly and international Tweeter: Canadian writer / photographer / teacher living in Taiwan – @pocketcultures
14. @volunteerabroad b/c I would like to travel by sharing my skills and competencies whilst learning – @psitutor
15. @glcuccureddu, @GotSagaLatino, @Marilyn_Res, @PatriciaVance, @hungaryguy, @PierrePaperon, @maxbehar, @mikebutcher – @culturalrealms
16. Couldn’t resist myself to give these 3 names – @guykawasaki @wchingya and @shellykramer (Possess great networking skills) – @mintblogger
17. @dragosroua Quote: “Think happiness is a process, not a goal.” Inspired by Aristotle? He is on your int’l s.m. list. – @lyceum
18. I would follow @talk2brazil. He tweets about Brazil’s economy, BizDev, etc. Brazil is going to be huge market in the future. – @SeanJamesOliver
19. If you have interest in international educational exchange/mobility research & literature then I recommend following @IDPDRIE – @DavidComp
20. I like @HoeferleConsult because his tweets make me feel connected to Germany, where I used to live – @CateBrubaker
21. One of my favorite international business profiles on Twitter is @finikiotis – @CindyKing

Who are your favorite international people on Twitter?

• Do you have a favorite international person on Twitter?
• Where do you get the best international insights on Twitter?
• What do you like most about the international people you follow?

As usual, please share your comments below.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

21 International People to Follow on Twitter

Twitter

Here is my article which was first published on Social Media Examiner:

You’ve likely heard stories about how big companies are using Twitter as a powerful listening tool. And although Chris Brogan has been telling us to grow bigger ears for a while, what are you actually doing about it?

Do you want to improve your Twitter listening skills? Here’s a closer look at how to monitor your brand, yourself or your competitors using Twitter (and you don’t need to be a big business!).

Why Is Twitter an Ideal Listening Tool?

Here’s why Twitter is one of the best social media platforms for listening:

• Real-time results. We’ve all heard examples of how breaking news spreads immediately on Twitter. Because of Twitter’s real-time search engine, you can get a quick pulse of public opinion.
• Wide reach. Twitter is useful to many different types and sizes of businesses.
• Direct feedback. You hear what people are saying as they say it.

With these points in mind, simply follow these guidelines to grow bionic listening ears.

#1: Decide What You Want to Monitor

Decide which information you want to monitor. Common types include your brand names, industry keywords, customers and competitors.

A daily listening routine gives you more value over time. Spend the time you need to find the right mix and create a routine that works for you.

# 2: Find the Best Real-Time Monitoring Tools

Real-time market information is valuable to many businesses today. Here are Nathan Hangen’s suggestions for using Twitter tools. But as professional blogger Ching Ya says, “there’s no such thing as the perfect search tool.” Have a look at Twitter monitoring tools in the decision tree below that Ching Ya put together:

Twitter Monitoring Tools. Image source: http://www.wchingya.com

A good place to start looking for the right people to monitor on Twitter is Twellow. Also check out Twellowhood for location-based searches.

# 3: Track With URL Shorteners

Use URL shortening tools to monitor the links you share on Twitter and help you find out what’s popular with your audience.

As Jeff Bullas says, the popular URL shortener bit.ly “allows you to track how many people are clicking on the shortened link with a set of metrics that displays it in a visual format as well as textually.” This makes it easy to track your important links and monitor the interactions you have on social media.

#4: Follow Hashtags

Hashtags are a simple search tool. People follow hashtags for Keywords, Events and Trending Topics.

You can simply use Twitter search on a hashtag. You can also go to Hashtags.org for statistics.

Found a hashtag, but don’t know what it’s about? Look it up on What The Hashtag, a user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags.

There are also many tools to help you monitor hashtags such as Monitter and Twitterfall. Have a look at how John Haydon uses multiple hashtag searches on TweetGrid to make sure he doesn’t miss parts of the conversation relevant to him.

Be sure to watch the above video!

# 5: Monitor Trends When It’s Appropriate

Twitter is the best social media platform for real-time search. If staying current on what’s happening in the world is important to your business, you also need to stay current on the latest tools for monitoring trending topics on Twitter.

Hashtags are also used for trending topics, so the tools you use for hashtags can also help you to monitor trending topics. In addition to the hashtag tools mentioned above, there are a few other tools to keep in mind when following trends on Twitter:

• Trendistic provides a variety of graphs to follow and compare different trends.
• Tweetmeme reveals popular retweeted content.
• Follow @twithority and @TweetingTrends for up-to-date tweets on current trends.

#6: Use Twitter Lists to Monitor People on Twitter

You might find it convenient to create your own Twitter lists and monitor people through these lists. Remember, you can set up a private list to follow your competitors and you’ll be the only person to see this private list on your Twitter profile.

You can also set up an RSS feed to follow someone else’s Twitter list using Twitter Lists 2 RSS.

#7: Set Up a Listening Plan

A simple listening plan can involve these simple procedures:

• Check your keywords on Twitter Search.
• Sign up for RSS feeds of the search results you need.
• Sign up for email updates for your most important keyword results using tools such as SocialOomph.

You might lose the edge of real-time search but you’ll find more value in a regular routine. With clear objectives on what you need to monitor and by drilling down to find what you’re looking for, simple monitoring tools can give you great results.

#8: Build Relationships

As Olivier Blanchard says, you’re listening to people, so remember to be human. Listening is the first part of creating real relationships with people and it’s only one part of using social media for your business. You still need to connect your Twitter listening to other social media activities to cultivate and nurture relationships in social communication.

As you proceed to connect and engage with people on Twitter, here are a few words from Olivier: “Engagement doesn’t have to be a perfectly designed and executed PR program where every bit of interaction is carefully crafted and weighed against all possible outcomes. Let it be a living, breathing, imperfect thing: Wing it a little.”

To develop your bionic ear you’ll need to interact and adapt your approach based on what you learn when listening on Twitter. Follow these 8 steps to listen more and learn more about the people you want to connect with on Twitter.

What are you doing to develop your Twitter listening skills? How is it working for you? Please share your comments below.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

8 Easy Twitter Monitoring Ideas

Twitter

Here is my article which was first published on Social Media Examiner:

Twitter is a networking haven for businesses. But is there an easy way to draw the right people to you with Twitter?

The answer is yes and there’s a great Twitter feature that can help you: Twitter lists. Twitter lists can grab the interest of people you most want to meet, help you make a great first impression and can help you with marketing segmentation.

Below I’ll show you some unique ways to use Twitter lists. But first…

How Do Twitter Lists Work?

Twitter lists creates separate lists of people. If you haven’t already used Twitter lists, watch this video to see how you can get started.

There are two interesting points to remember about Twitter lists:

• You don’t need to “follow” people on Twitter to include them in your lists.
• You can have both public and private lists.

Now here’s a look at what you can do with Twitter lists.

#1: Listen with Private Lists

Twitter lists are great to monitor and listen to different groups of people. No-one else can see your private lists, so this is a good place to start using the Twitter list feature. You can create private lists to:

• Monitor your competitors
• Carry out specific market research
• Keep track of different networks of friends and colleagues

Private Twitter lists can help you segment the fire hose of information streaming in through your Twitter feed, according to Rohit Bhargava. Segmenting people into lists also helps you more effectively listen to and monitor your market.

John Jantsch says Twitter lists make it easier to listen to what others have to say.

And monitoring people without following them makes it easy to carry out specific market research or intelligence gathering. Once you’ve finished doing your market research, you can simply delete your list without making any changes to the people you usually follow.

#2: Craft Your Brand With Public Lists

There’s not much space to brand yourself on your Twitter profile page. You do have space for a few words in the bio box and you can add in background graphics. But you can also add another dimension to your branding by carefully crafting your public Twitter lists. Here’s how.

Choose appropriate names for your lists
Spend some time finding the best name for your list. There are a few things to keep in mind when naming your Twitter lists:

• Engage the right people. You’ll get more people interested in looking at your list if the name sparks their interest.
• Remember to communicate with everyone. Don’t limit your audience. The right name could help you reach more of the people you want to connect with.
• The SEO bonus. Another reason to think about how you label your lists is for search engine optimization (SEO). Look at the screenshot below. This Twitter list is in a good position in Google search results for a competitive keyword.

The bad news is that if you change the name of your list, the URL of your Twitter list changes too and you’ll lose the people following that list. So take some time to get this right.

Choose appropriate Twitter lists for your public profile
When creating your Twitter lists, you want to think of how lists help you:

• Connect with your Twitter followers
• Achieve your main goal for using Twitter
• Continue the story you began in your Twitter bio

As you build up a following on Twitter, your followers will be interested in your Twitter lists. The choice of Twitter lists found on your Twitter home page is important for engaging with people.

Choose the number of public lists
Remember, there’s a limited amount of space available for your Twitter lists on your home page. Although you can create a larger number of lists, only about 4 to 6 will appear on your home page depending on the character length of the names of your lists. Your audience will have to click on the “View all” link to see all of your lists if you have more than this.

So you may want to think carefully about the number of lists you want to create and the order in which you create them. Put your most relevant lists at the top.

Advertise your Twitter lists
Create Twitter widgets for specific Twitter lists and put them up on your blog or website to engage people and establish your areas of interest and expertise.

Better Marketing With Twitter Lists

Twitter’s list feature can add some extra marketing power to your Twitter strategy if you take some time to get it right. You also need to find the right way to make your lists work for you. This will depend on your goals for Twitter, your audience and how they like to connect with you.

A good Twitter list improves your visibility in your market. Here are a few more benefits:

• The people you follow in your public lists will appreciate the recognition.
• By providing a useful resource, you’ll increase your credibility in your market and attract more followers.
• As you become more popular, you’ll be listed on other people’s lists. This is another way to measure your social media influence.

What are your thoughts about Twitter lists? How are you using them? Do you regularly follow other lists? Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

How to Market Your Business With Twitter Lists

Twitter

Here is my article which was first published on Social Media Examiner:

Are you using Twitter and wondering whether it’s doing anything for your business?

Do you have a strategy? Or do you find yourself haphazardly tweeting at all hours of the day about everything from what you had for breakfast to news in your industry?

If so, you need a tweet plan.

What Is a Tweet Plan?

A tweet plan is a series of scheduled tweets used in conjunction with your real-time tweeting. The tweets in your tweet plan are carefully crafted to target your preferred audience. The result: Every day you consistently brand your Twitter presence and attract the attention of the people you want to reach, providing them useful information.

And because your tweets are evergreen, they can be scheduled in advance. This means you only spend a couple of hours writing and scheduling up to 4 weeks’ worth of tweets at a time. Here’s how it works:

Why You Should Use a Tweet Plan

There are three main advantages to a tweet plan.

A tweet plan brands your Twitter presence. Your audience immediately knows what you want to talk about, even when your Twitter discussions take you slightly off topic or you become busy with other things.

A tweet plan brings consistency. Even when your schedule gets busy, you will still share valuable information on Twitter.

A tweet plan saves time. You can write your tweets at your own convenience and schedule them to be tweeted up to 4 weeks later.

8 Steps to Creating Your Tweet Plan

Step 1: Choose Your Preferred Audience

Before you begin crafting your tweet plan, give some thought to whom you want to connect with on Twitter. There are many different types of people who could help your business. You will probably have best results if you choose just one or two. This is your preferred Twitter audience. Here are some suggestions:

• Prospects: Find out more about what people want and connect with them early in your sales cycle
• Clients: Find new customers ready to buy your product or service and provide customer support
• Referral sources: Reach out to people who can help your business find more clients
• Joint venture partners: Find other peers and research opportunities
• Business network: Keep your business network alive and share ideas
• Suppliers: Network to find suppliers and stay up-to-date with industry news

Step 2: Decide How Many Tweets You Want to Send Daily

Before writing your tweets, you need to decide how many timeless tweets you want to publish each day. You will base your decision on:

• Your current Twitter presence and how many real-time tweets you usually send each day
• Your audience and what they like. You are going to provide your preferred audience with content they want, so this is more a question of how much time they have for you

The important thing to remember is that your tweet plan only provides a backbone of tweets. It should not become your sole source of tweets on a regular basis.

Many people aim for a total number of about 20 tweets a day including both scheduled tweets and real-time tweets. In this case, a good number of timeless tweets to start with in your tweet plan would be 3 to 5.

Here’s an example. If you have 20 tweets a day on average and only 5 of these 20 tweets are from your tweet plan, you still have 15 tweets to engage with your followers and to respond to current news.

Important: The tweet plan’s main purpose is to get you on the radar of the people you are most interested in reaching. You still need to engage with your audience.

Don’t make the mistake of relying solely on the scheduled tweets in the tweet plan to connect with people and expect to build your business. You still need live tweets to engage with people. Live tweets help you to connect with people in a way that brings them beyond Twitter and leads them along the path you want to take with them.

Step 3: Decide How Long You Want to Make Your Tweet Plan

After deciding how many tweets you want to put in your tweet plan each day, you need to decide how many weeks you want to run your tweet plan and schedule tweets in advance. Again, this will depend on certain business factors and your audience. The two important considerations:

• How much time you have
• How quickly you can process the feedback you get from your audience to include in your next tweet plan

My preference: As a freelancer, I particularly like a 4-week tweet plan. This means once a month I spend an afternoon revising and scheduling my tweets. After 4 weeks, I have more insights and feedback that I’m eager to include in the next tweet plan to create a stronger connection with my market.

Step 4: Find the Keywords You Want to Use on Twitter

You use keywords in your tweets to send a consistent signal to tell others who you are, how you want to connect with them and what you want to talk about.

Choice of keywords. When choosing the keywords to use in your tweet plan, remember your preferred audience, the people you most want to connect with on Twitter. You want to use the keywords they use.

Number of keywords. The easiest way to write your tweet plan is to choose the number of keywords to correspond with the number of scheduled tweets you want to publish each day. So if you decide on 5 daily tweets in your tweet plan in Step 1, you should try to come up with 5 keywords.

This means your scheduled tweets will provide your preferred Twitter audience with useful information every day on each of these 5 keywords.

Suggestion: When choosing your keywords, keep Twitter’s 140 character limitation in mind. Use short words or word strings.

Step 5: Choose Different Formats for Your Scheduled Tweets

When you sit down to write your tweets for your tweet plan, you will need to write many in one sitting. Here’s the math:

• 5 timeless tweets a day x 7 days a week = 35 tweets a week

So, if you decide to plan 4 weeks of tweets, you will need to write 140 unique tweets.

• 35 tweets a week x 4-week tweet plan = 140 tweets

This is a large number of tweets. So you want to make the task easy. Using different formats helps you to do this. You will be able to write many timeless tweets on the same keywords when you use different formats.

Another good reason to use different formats when writing your timeless tweets is to add variety. You don’t want your Twitter feed to become boring.

My preference: I use 7 different formats and schedule one for each day of the week. I also increase the variety and experiment with results by changing the order in which these tweets are published each week. Here’s a snapshot from one of my tweet plans:

Step 6: Write Your Timeless Tweets

You want to write your tweets to provide your preferred audience with the information they are most interested in. Each tweet must be unique content because Twitter does not allow duplicate tweets.

This next step of writing a series of unique tweets is simple if, for each tweet, you:

• Keep your preferred audience in mind
• Use one of your keywords
• Use one format to write your tweet

If you have chosen to use 7 different formats for your tweets, all you need to do is to write the number of weeks of tweets for each variation of keyword + format. For a 4-week tweet plan you will need something like this:

Tip: Use good Twitter practices when writing your tweets. Remember to include hashtags and limit your tweets to 120 characters to make it easy for others to retweet.

Step 7: Choose Your Times

You don’t want to publish all of your scheduled tweets at once. This does not look “natural” in your Twitter feed and you would only reach the audience online at that time. You want to spread your tweets out throughout the day. Ideally you will also be publishing the majority of your tweets in real time. By spreading out your scheduled tweets, they will appear in between the other tweets in your Twitter feed.

Tip: Make note of the hours you use for your different keywords in each tweet plan. This allows you to test the best times for your different keywords the next time you schedule your tweet Plan.

Step 8: Schedule Your Tweets

Now it’s time to schedule the publication of your tweets at the times you have chosen.

There are many tools available to do this. The two most popular ones are SocialOomph and Hootsuite.

Tip: Keep your list of tweets and refer to it along with the feedback you get from interactions with your preferred audience on Twitter to craft your next tweet plan.

Is a Tweet Plan for You?

Although a tweet plan is useful when your schedule gets busy, it’s not a way to avoid real-time tweeting. The tweet plan’s main advantage is to maintain brand awareness consistently and attract the people you want to meet on Twitter.

But there are different opinions about scheduling posts. Many people feel scheduling tools take away from the value of real-time interaction on Twitter. And they are right.

You must find a balance to make this work for your business. And you can only find this balance by jumping in, listening to your audience and tweaking the content you share on Twitter to get the best results.

What do you think? Would your business find value in using these scheduling tools strategically?

Need help creating your tweet plan? Click through to read more about what you need to do and how I can help you create your tweet plan.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

8 Simple Steps To Grow A Quality Twitter Following

International Business Networking

Business networking habits play an important role in international business.  It’s how we discover international opportunities and avoid cultural blunders.  Our business networking habits help us to learn how to do business in other cultures.

One of the important things about international business networking is that it needs to be done consistently.  It needs to become a long term habit. You cannot jump in, network for a month or two, and then stop because you think you have all the answers you need to take action.  The risk of making a cultural blunder is too great.  Consistent networking ensures that we stay current and it’s how we verify our understanding of our international markets.

This explains why networking has become second nature. And why I’ve used this networking habit to build my international business network after first connecting online.

Daily Skype Calls To Connect With New People On Twitter

At the beginning of last year I decided to implement a new business networking habit by regularly speaking to interesting people I meet on Twitter. It was simple: I tried to Skype one person every day as often as I could.

This may seem a lot, especially when you consider calls almost always last more than 30 minutes and often a full hour. But I’m lucky, the time difference plays in my favor. You see, I try to schedule these calls late in the afternoon just before wrapping up and this happens to be mornings on the other side of the Atlantic.  And I although I’m fairly flexible on the time, I always keep the calls limited to an hour.  So I aimed to spend an hour every day whenever possible to connect to someone I had never spoken to before.

The first 6 months of last year I probably averaged about 3-4 calls to new people I met on Twitter each week. After a while this lead to regular Cross-Cultural Twitter Interviews. And again I called first and got to know each person before the Twitter interview.

In the second half of the year I paid less attention to how many new people I connected with. This was partly because I started speaking to several people on a regular basis and did not keep track of how many new people I spoke to during the week.  And after 6 months of consciously choosing to spend an hour to reach out and connecting with people on Skype it simply became a habit at the end of my day.

The results?  To put it simply: this works. While networking on Skype I meet valuable people to add to my international business network. I don’t add everyone I speak to.  But I now have a great list of valuable business contacts.

Weekly Guest Posts To Connect With A Broad Audience

As last year’s business networking tactic has now become a habit, I’d like to start using another business networking tactic on a regular basis. The habit I’d like to install this year is weekly guest posting. As you may know, I already write content on a regular basis for several different blogs:

• Social Media Examiner
• Top Sales Experts
• ClickInsights
• Bloggertone
• Sales Bloggers

But I’d like to add a bit more variety to this mix to fit some of my other online activities.  Two things happened recently to make me take this decision.

Guest Posting. I read Chris Garrett’s ebook which explains how to guest post and why you should do it. It costs about $10 and yes, this is an affiliate link.  After reading this ebook I was convinced of the value in adding more variety to my guest posting.

My Blog Guest.  I discovered Ann Smarty’s online community where you can both ask for guest posts and also find blogs open to publishing your guest posts.  It’s also a great place to share guest posting tips and experiences.  Ann has set up a grading system for the blogs open to accepting guest posts.  I have to say I’m impressed with how this is set up and the quality of members there.  My Blog Guest makes it easy to find guest posting opportunities.

My Guest Posting Plan

So this year my business networking plan is to write at least 1 guest post a week in addition to my current activities.  Why?

• To reach a wider audience
• To also write articles on 2 new web marketing activities: WishList membership sites on WordPress and product launch management

My core expertise is international marketing and sales strategy for international business development through social media.  This involves several different domains of competence and I need to stay current to apply these skills online.

This is why I’ve decided to use guest posting to expand my international network within the areas of my different skills.

What about you?

• What tactics do you use to grow your international business network?
• Do you think guest posting would help your online business networking?
• Would you like me to write a guest post for you on membership site marketing or business networking for product launches?

More on International Business Networking:

• Networking With The Wrong Questions
• 2 Habits To Grow Your International Network
• The Biggest Mistake In International Networking
• Follow Up With Your First International Clients
• Online Business Networking When Cultural Communication Styles Clash

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Two Great Business Networking Habits To Grow Your International Network

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Martin Lindeskog . Martin is the person behind the Twitter handle @lyceum.

Martin Lindeskog is a “trader in matter & spirit” and a small business entrepreneur in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a board member of the Swedish National Association of Purchasing and Logistics (Silf, Western Region). He has started a new series of interviews for his podcasting show on the Solid Vox network.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview for 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Martin Lindeskog – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Martin.

Hi Martin, for those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Martin Lindeskog: I come from the west coast of Sweden. I live close to the second biggest city called Gothenburg (Göteborg in Swedish). I studied Business Administration at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA, between 1997 – 2000. After my studies I worked as a cost analyst at a manufacturer of welding products in Troy, Ohio. I went back to Sweden in 2002.

I am an American in spirit, so I am happy that I have I received material regarding the Diversity Immigrant Visa program for the year 2010. I am planning to return to the Land of Opportunity – USA. Please feel free to give me suggestions on great cross-cultural and international places in the Melting Pot.

I speak Swedish and English (my second language). I understand and read German (I had it for six years in school), but I haven’t used it for a long time, so I don’t speak it fluently. I want to learn Interlingua at some point in the future. My wild guess is that Hungarian is one of the most difficult languages. I learned only a few words and phrases during my school project (international project coordinator) at a windshield (windscreen) manufacturer in Sopron, Hungary.

If you want learn some more things about me, please read my post, Seven Things About Me.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Martin Lindeskog: I picked up my cross-cultural skills at an early age. I have been interested in fundamental ideas, history and philosophy for all long time. In my teens, I started to read foreign literature in English, subscribing to magazines, e.g., The Economist. I have a special bond to the Anglosphere and I have visited London several times. (Did you know that Gothenburg has a nickname: “Little London”.) I am a member of Vasa Order of America. It is a Swedish-American fraternal, cultural and educational organization. I celebrated Independence Day (Fourth of July) with my fellow members of Vasa.

Do you use your cross-cultural skills in your job?

Martin Lindeskog: As an experienced purchaser of raw materials from different parts of the world and an international project coordinator, I have been interested in international business for 20+ years. I started a hobby business in the end of the 80′s, importing computer stuff and teas from Asia. I visited Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Thailand in 1992.

Can you tell us about your blog?

Martin Lindeskog: I had read blogs for some time and heard how the interest for this new type of journaling had grown in America, especially after September 11, 2001.  On May 7, 2002, I stumbled upon Blogger.com and created my first blog, EGO. Ego is I (am) in Latin and has its foundation in the description of the blog by the following keywords: Reason – Egoism – Laissez-Faire Capitalism.

Anita Campbell (Small Business Trends) wrote a PowerBlog Review of EGO blog in 2004.

I haven’t had time to update my blog for a couple of weeks, but I will do as Stephen P. Smith and take some time to reflect on my blogging and publish a new post in the near future. I have started a new blog carnival, but the first edition is delayed. I will kick-off 2010 with a new series of podcast interviews, when the producer of Solid Vox has fixed the recording studio and other technical issues.

In the meantime, please read my annual report VII and my post on guest blogging.

You could find me on several social media places. I have listed them at KnowEm and Card.ly.

I must thank you Cindy for adding my Twitter profile to your International Social Media list. I am honored to belong to this fine group of individuals. As an example, I see that Charlene Li is included in this list. I think that Charlene Li’s & Josh Bernoff’s book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, is a very important book on social media.

I have a couple of lists I’m building here on this blog, and wonder if you have anything you would like to share.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you, or you find inappropriate?

Martin Lindeskog: Here in Sweden you could find an ugly version of anti-Americanism. I started a blog in Swedish, covering this issue, but I got so fed up with the negativity so I have put it on hiatus. I am fighting hard to “bring back the smiley face to America.”

Do you have a favorite movie that could help people understand cultural issues?

Martin Lindeskog: I am not a movie buff, but I would recommend you to watch Lost in Translation. I want to visit Japan and attend a tea ceremony someday…

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Martin Lindeskog: I read Cross-Cultural Business Behavior: Marketing, Negotiating, Sourcing and Managing Across Cultures by Richard R. Gesteland during my studies in international project management.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Martin Lindeskog: I want to do a wine trip to Hungary and a tour around the United States of America in order to find a good place to set up a business.

Martin, thank you for sharing so much with us in this portion of the interview. I’m looking forward to hearing your answers to the 10 Cross-Cultural Questions on Twitter with you later today.

Martin Lindeskog- Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Rajeev Edmonds – @mintblogger
• Rossitza Ohridska-Olson – @culturalrealms
• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Martin Lindeskog

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Charmayne (Char) Paul. Char is the person behind the Twitter handle @psitutor.  And Char is one of the people on Twitter I enjoy being around the most. Although she has not travelled she has a wealth of cultural skills the most experienced of us can appreciate. Her business is dealing with people from different cultures. You can tell that she experiences all of the challenges of cross-cultural communication on a regular basis and has a healthy approach to dealing with these differences.

Char is an Online Tutor:Mentor for students in higher education. She has a Bachelors Degree in Psychology (with Honors) from JCU, Cairns, Australia. She is currently completing her TESOL certificate online and taking e-courses to develop as an online instructor.

PSI stands for “Personal Study Instruction” to emphasise the tailored services to meet the needs and expectations of students. Students come to her when they need additional support with understanding concepts or completing an assessment. Over half of Char’s clients are ESL speakers who may be studying here in Australia or overseas, such as Saudi Arabia, China or Western Europe.

Char uses Skype, email and her blog to provide students with a range of academic services:

• Help with research for an essay/presentation or thesis
• Writing aid to structure an argument that flows
• Research design and analysis using SPSS
• Proofreading and formatting to APA, Oxford, Chicago and MLA styles
• Improvement of academic English skills for ESL students

Char also runs a Daily Skype Study Chat (psi_tutor) for students feeling overwhelmed with their workload at uni or college or just needing to bounce their ideas off somebody else.  In 2010 PSI Tutor:Mentor will be running a series of online workshops~ so let her know what you find most challenging with your studies!  Here’s a video to watch.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview for 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Charmayne Paul – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Char.

Hi Char, for those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Charmayne Paul: I live in Cairns, a delight for those who adore reef and rainforest in tropical north Queensland in Australia.

My job is great! As an Online Tutor:Mentor I get to work with tertiary students from all over the globe~ from my home. I’ve never lived or worked abroad, but as Cairns is a tourist city there are many cross-cultural work opportunities. After high school I took a Community College course in Japanese and then worked with a Duty Free Store~ they thought my language skills very old fashioned Cultures that I feel close to are those that existed on and around this tropical island I call home; Indigenous Australian, Torres Strait (TI) and South Pacific Islander. Going to school and living next door to people of other ethnic backgrounds was the norm for me.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Charmayne Paul: Any cross-cultural skills I have were mostly developed through interactions with those of other cultures. As a kid my friends were Aboriginal, TI, PNG, Dutch as well as Anglo-Australian. Later at TAFE and in the workforce I extended my skills by learning about Japan. As I travelled within Australia I met many international visitors and at uni we had a salad bowl of ethnicities. Nowadays I have Korean and Czech students living with me, coming for tutes and sometimes I provide homestay. Also, as my online tutor:mentor service grew I found that I have needed to take language courses (shout out to EduFire) to understand my clients better, and to show respect for their cultures as well. English may be the international language of communication for now, though it would be terrible to discount other languages because they are not “the norm”. Language is culture.

How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your job?

Charmayne Paul: To cultivate patience I like to learn a few basic words in a client’s language to show them that I value their culture and appreciate that they want to learn about mine. It is a great way to build rapport and to get a better understanding of how each culture approaches communication of particular topics. I also put into practice the basics that I know about different cultures, such as making sure my shoulders are covered on Skype cam for Muslim students, not making too much eye contact for Chinese students, and slowing down my speech patterns for patriarchal cultures. Living in this time where technology allows us to get to know others from around our global village is awesome. I am in awe at how much we can learn from each other, through language and communication styles. These two things reveal so much about how we make meaning of our world, thus how we interact. Amazing.

Can you tell us about your blog?

Charmayne Paul: Disillusioned with the culture within my work environment at the local university, I realised that I could meet my goal to provide student study support and their improved community engagement by striking out on my own. Personal Study Instruction is a common request from tertiary students. Not everyone works at the same pace, in the same way, science knows this yet so often in learning institutions it is not put into practice. I have a patient nature and it is fantastic to work with a student who really wants to understand a concept or achieve an academic outcome~ besides getting a good grade. In the real world employers and users of services want confident, efficient, effective and empathic professionals. The PSI Tutor:Mentor blog aims to encourage and support tertiary students in their personal and professional development. Cross-cultural awareness is a big part of this.

The majority of visitors to my blog are international. I started with a website though found it too static for higher education student needs. The interactive nature of a blog makes it a portal of conversation as well as a storehouse for tertiary resources and a contact point for tutor or mentoring services.

2010 will see the launch of my Membership site (fingers crossed~ must understand the software I’ve bought first!). My $1 for 1 year model aims to make access viable for tertiary students in developing nations as well, whilst providing a source of revenue that will enable me to create jobs for other tutors. I anticipate it to be a win-win-win, for uni/college students-other tutors-and me

Social media like Facebook and Twitter are a must for making contact with an international audience and to learn about their cultures. My excuse for reading the variety of blogs that I do is so that I can post material for students! I am very blessed to work at something I love doing, so even in my downtime what I am reading can usually be related back to my career purpose: To support student learning.

Besides blogging I take part in e-courses such as learning to use Moodle, WikiEducator and e-conferences.
I also run classes on EduFire and publish non-peer reviewed academic articles on Lulu. I am learning to podcast and braving myself for more YouTube videos. Apart from work I use the Internet to exchange poetry and short fiction feedback. Again, this is a great way to meet others from around the globe.

I have a couple of lists I’m building here on this blog, and wonder if you have anything you would like to share.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you, or you find inappropriate?

Charmayne Paul: Once in a while a student may assume that because I live in Australia that I am affluent~ and perhaps I am compared to their living situation. However, I come from a very humble background and maintain a very simple lifestyle~ I am not a capitalist per se, more of a sustainable person. My business is not about making a profit, of course some profit is necessary to pay bills and to extend my services, such as providing jobs for others. Overall though, my goal is for equal access to learning support. Students in my home of Cairns have the option to trade fruit and veggies or labor around my home for my services. So, yes, sometimes it bothers me that another assumes that I am wealthy and should want to do work for free or no fee.

Do you have a favorite movie that could help people understand cultural issues?

Charmayne Paul: Sure~ but are they appropriate…? 300 is one i watch regularly as I love the message of celebrating one’s culture and not taking a “melting pot” approach, especially when it means the dilution of the values under the tyranny of another.

The Kite Runner brought home the cultural differences between my country and Afghanistan, as well as highlighting cultural issues for youth that have migrated to a western nation. Bend It Like Beckham shows the difficulties of a second generation Indian teenager who is female and wants to play soccer.

A favorite Aussie movie is One Night The Moon, set in 1932 about a missing Anglo-Australian child whose parents resist taking up the skills of a local Aboriginal tracker due to their racist feelings. The movie highlights how the farmer (Anglo) sees the land as “mine”, whilst the tracker sees the landscape as “me”. Two mutually exclusive ways of approaching life. Beautiful message, cinematography and ending~ tracker find the child.

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Charmayne Paul: A Son of the Circus by John Irving, he has a wicked sense of humor and his sarcasm resonates well with my Aussie culture. The book is fiction, about an Indian man and his Indian wife who return to Bombay every couple of years for their holiday. Their Americanized culture is so different to the “norm” in their home country. Lots of laughs as well as insights into cultural values in the East and West.

And finally…

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Charmayne Paul: I would like to travel more overseas when my business is sustainable; it would be great to visit other nations, teach English in trade for homestay and to experience other cultures and their beautiful land and seascapes. So far I have only been to a couple of places in Micronesia~ Guam twice, and Palau. Oh, there was the airport in Manila

I am actively learning at least 500 words and phrases from an assortment of languages at present; Czech (so hard!), German, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Spanish and Arabic. I would like to add to these in 2010 with French, Pali, Portuguese and Turkish.

Due to my pet companions, I am not keen at this point in my life to live in another country; though I am eager to travel more often for 3-6 weeks at a time in one place. Especially I want to travel to the developing world, where I can contribute my teaching and researcher skills. I am also an avid gardener, so perhaps I could help out planting crops or digging holes for a well. Wouldn’t that give me some perspective on life!

Char, thank you for sharing this with us.  I hope others can see why I value your cultural insights. I’m looking forward to  going through the the 10 Cross-Cultural Questions on Twitter with you later today.

Charmayne Paul – Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Rajeev Edmonds – @mintblogger
• Rossitza Ohridska-Olson – @culturalrealms
• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Charmayne Paul

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Lucy Chatburn. Lucy is is co-founder and managing editor of PocketCultures.

She is the person behind the Twitter handle @pocketcultures. And if you do not follow her there, I highly recommend you do. Lucy always shares interesting links for anyone interested in culture, travel and different place in the world.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview for 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

UPDATE: The transcript of the Cross-Cultural Twitter Interview with @pocketcultures is now below.

Lucy Chatburn – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Lucy

Hi Lucy, for those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Lucy Chatburn: Hi Cindy. Thanks for inviting me to do this interview. About me, originally I’m from the UK but I have lived in Turkey for the last 3 years. I have also lived in France (2 years), Spain (3 years) and spent 3 months in Italy. So those are also the languages I know. I’m studying Arabic too, but I’m still at a basic level.

Turkish culture is quite different from English culture – among other things it’s less individualistic and people here are more gregarious – but I feel very much at home here. Maybe having experience of other Mediterranean cultures made it easier to adapt.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Lucy Chatburn: I don’t claim to be a cross-cultural expert! But I do love learning about other cultures and meeting people from different places. My passion for discovering other cultures started with an ERASMUS exchange to Paris when I was at university. I also studied a master’s degree at IESE in Barcelona, which is a very international school. It was a great opportunity to make friends from many different places and backgrounds.

I find it fascinating that two people from different backgrounds can see and interpret the same event in very different ways.

Can you tell us about your blog?

Lucy Chatburn: The best thing about PocketCultures is getting to know and exchange opinions with people from all over the world.

Our main aim with the project is to help people discover foreign countries and cultures from the inside. Sometimes the view of a country you get from the outside is quite different to the one you see if you visit, or talk to someone from that country.

Many sites and news sources feature accounts by travelers and expats or analysis from international experts, and these are very valuable perspectives for understanding other cultures. But we can learn a lot from the locals as well, and sometimes (more so for some countries than others) their voices are not heard as much. With PocketCultures we would like to give them a voice.

So we try to emphasize the local point of view. We feature blogs and stories from around the world and we also have stories from people in cross-cultural relationships, as this is one place where cultural differences are sure to pop up! We’re currently building a team of regional contributors from around the world who can write about their country from an insider’s perspective. At the moment we represent 6 different countries, and we’re looking for more contributors who would like to join us in this mission.

A couple of my favorite posts are:

• The real Phad Thai
• Celebrating peace and freedom

These posts are great because they show local opinions from Thailand and Costa Rica. I could never have written them myself!

We also write about international issues, like world languages and the effects of globalization. An example would be this post on the Top 20 Languages of the World

Current world social and demographic trends mean that this top 20 list could look quite different in 20 years time.

I have a couple of lists I’m building here on this blog, and wonder if you have anything you would like to share.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you, or you find inappropriate?

Lucy Chatburn: Well, all stereotypes are inappropriate to a certain extent, because they reinforce the idea that you can describe a place or a culture with a single point of view. I really liked this TED Global presentation by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I think illustrates the problem very well.

One of the things we try to do with PocketCultures is choose stories that challenge cultural stereotypes and show a different side to countries that suffer from undeserved reputations.

Do you have a favorite movie that could help people understand cultural issues?

Lucy Chatburn: The movie ‘The full Monty’ has a very silly storyline (please don’t think such a thing would happen in real life!), but it captures very well the background and people of my hometown, Sheffield. Things have moved on now, but many British towns went through a similar slump following the demise of UK manufacturing. With The Full Monty they managed to make a very funny film out of a bad situation. It was hugely popular in Sheffield when it came out.

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Lucy Chatburn: I’ll stick with the UK theme, because that’s what I know best. Anyone familiar with the UK will know about the ‘North-South divide’: a slight mistrust which still exists between the different parts of England. George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier is not a light read but gives some useful insights into the background behind that tension.

I also enjoyed The White Tiger (by Aravind Adiga), which is set in contemporary India. But to come back to the single story idea again India is huge and varied, and one book can only show one small part of it.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Lucy Chatburn: We’d love to hear from anyone who is interested in sharing their country and culture with PocketCultures readers. There is more information here

Lucy, thank you for sharing this with us.  I’m looking forward to  going through the the 10 Cross-Cultural Questions on Twitter with you later today.

Lucy Chatburn- Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Rajeev Edmonds – @mintblogger
• Rossitza Ohridska-Olson – @culturalrealms
• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Lucy Chatburn