Communication has always been an important part of business. Anne Craig, Group Vice–President of Jockey Person to Person knows this well. As a Group Vice President with one of the top teams in North America, her passion is to coach, inspire and empower women to reach their potential personally, professionally and financially with a home based fashion business.

Anne has been in direct marketing for over 20 years, first with Weekenders Canada and now with Jockey Person to Person Canada. She traditionally worked with her teams, coaching and planning by phone or in person. About a year ago Anne approached us to teach her about Social Media. She realized that this new medium was an important way to communicate and collaborate with her group. Anne also recognized that as a lot of her team were made up of younger women, Social Media, specifically Facebook would be a good place to start.

Anne approached her Social Media training with the same passion and single–mindedness as her business. From our point of view it was an interesting project, as we had to define the basics that most people take for granted, such as: "friends" in Facebook! It was also a valuable experience for DFC, because Anne made observations and asked questions about Facebook (and the other Social Media) that gave us pause and made us think about various approaches. With patience and persistence, Anne is utilizing Social Media on a regular basis with her Group. Later this month, Anne intends on tackling the other two of the "big three": LinkedIn and Twitter with Hootsuite to manage all her Social Medial postings. DFC will be there to guide her along the way.

DFC International Computing Inc is an Advanced Business Partner with IBM and has been so for many years. As IBM's focus seemed to change away from the SMB space and the "rules" kept changing, DFC was engaging less and less with IBM and looking to bolster its business in other lines.

Based on advice by DFC's business coach, Laura Posey of Dancing Elephants Achievement Group, a lot of energy was spent on building our LinkedIn presence. Debbie Fitzerman's LinkedIn profile was upgraded, connections were made and groups were joined. It's not enough just to join groups; one participates in groups by posing questions and answering other's questions. One of the groups joined was IBM Business Partners, a closed group. Eventually membership was granted and the perusal began. One day someone posted something about the ASL (Application Specific Licensing) program…this sounded perfect! DFC could still develop its applications and not have to bother customers with an extra cost of licensing say, Lotus Notes! We could just bundle everything together. Not only was the program a perfect fit, but the contact person for this program was enthusiastic and a joy to work with–something DFC had not encountered from IBM for quite a while.

Eventually the contracts were drawn up and program introductions made. Being part of the ASL program allowed DFC to connect with more customers which in turn connected us with more IBM people turn availed DFC with more opportunities. All this came about from LinkedIn!