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Embracing Change for the future of your business

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

I wrote this piece originally in December of 2009 but I think it warrants stating again. I will add a few more comments at the end of this post.

Technology is constantly changing the way businesses act and conduct business daily. How willing are you to adapt to the changes as they come along and incorporate them into your business plan? If you are not, you may want to re-think before your all your business has been captured by your competitors.

The video below started as a movie review of Transformers 2, but since I didn’t care for the movie that much, it turned more into a lesson on how to embrace change for your business. In fact, if you want, you can skip right to around 1:24. That way you don’t have to listen to my babbling about a movie that I felt was not that great. Hopefully the next Transformers will return to the awesomeness that the original possessed.

In the video, I reference Blockbuster Video and how they have not been able to embrace change as fast as competitors like Redbox which are now slowly putting Blockbuster out of business. You need to embrace change in your business and integrate social media into your plan if you have not yet. If you refuse to embrace change, you will end up just like Blockbuster in a few years….an empty building with a for lease sign in front of it. Please take a few moments to watch:

The Moral of the story? Technology is constantly changing the way we handle our day to day businesses. Be alert to these changes and be willing to embrace/implement them into your business plan. Even if you feel you do not like it, or feel it is a waste of time, you need to at least test out the new technology to see if it will help or hinder your business before you form an opinion on them. Assuming they won’t work because of something you hear from somewhere else could be fatal to your business. Plus, we all knows what can happen if we just assume….

Since writing this post originally:

Since writing this post in December a few things have happened: First, more and more Blockbuster Video stores have closed. Also, Redbox locations have grown at a very rapid rate. The other big news since the original posting is that Netflix has noticed the need for changes in there business model and has adjusted for the changes in technology. Now you can simply log onto your computer and download movies directly to your television, computer, or gaming console. By the addition of this technology, you can now watch great movies without the need to leave your home. Also, you have no late fees, or timelines on how long you can keep the video. So with these changes it will force the competitors to change their products more and develop newer strategies to compete. Netflix has been able to once again place itself as one of the leaders in their industry.

Nevertheless, the moral of this post remains the same:

Be willing to make changes to the ways you conduct business on a regular basis or you may end up out of business. Embrace technology and figure out ways to use it to enhance the way your consumers interact and use your services/products. If you decide to fight against the new technological trends and fail to change, your business will start to die off to your competitors who recognized the change and made it will thrive on your lacks.

So I leave you with this question, are you willing to embrace change?

What constitutes a Social Media Guru?

Social Media Advisors

So what constitutes someone receiving the title Social Media Guru?

Unfortunately many like to use the term social media guru or expert to describe themselves. They feel that they are expert because they are involved on a network and use it regularly. Since you may not yet be on the social media platform, they feel they are fully qualified to teach you how to do it. The only problem is that when they begin to teach you how, they share their bad habits with you. They teach you how to set up automated ways to gain 1,000 followers on Twitter which sounds great, but really will not help your business. I had a conversation on Twitter the other day with a well respected person in the social media realm. The statement @garyvee made was this: “If u are seeing this tweet I have one simple thing to say : THANK YOU, it stuns me that people care about the # of followers, if u have 1 :)”

Focusing on the one connection you have to make that single person feel like the most important person in the world can be more beneficial for your business than having 350 that you do not engage at all. Word of mouth referrals is always the most powerful way to build your business. Also, if you are automating everything to focus on getting more followers, those that do follow will instantly look at your content as an annoying spammer and probably either block you or place you in a hidden list that they ignore completely.

So how should you go about hiring someone for online consulting as your social media advisor?

Before hiring someone and paying them money you should first see what type of help they are offering. Is it just a CD series of what they did to get their big batch of connections or is it going to be training that will help teach you how to use social media platforms for your business to grow your business. Remember, you need to get information to teach you how to engage prospective clients and to convert them into raving fans, not just get more people connected to you. Use the Kevin Costner method, “if you build it, they will come.” Set it up properly and use the correct practices and you will gain the following you want.

The other night I had someone approach me and ask if I had ever heard of some guy that was on TV selling a CD series on how they were able to make thousands of dollars in less than 24 hours of time using the internet. After sharing with the gentleman that I had never heard of him, he said “well I was up late last night and this guy was on TV around 3 AM selling this series that he used to make all this money online. I bought the CD’s. Plus they have a money back guarantee, I just have to wait a year to get my money” I turned and said what I always tell clients: If it is such a good product & method that can make you so much money, why would the guy share the secrets with you instead of just making the money himself? Not to mention, you just gave this gentleman an interest free loan for a year!

Which brings me to my second point, There are no quick ways to make money with social media. The gurus who say you can do this and within 30 days it will start making you millions with only working 1 hour a week are sharing lies. Effective social media marketing takes time and hard work. It takes constant work of writing new blog content, engaging friends & followers on both Facebook & Twitter. If someone says you can do this a different way, RUN!

Thirdly, ask the “guru” for proof. Instead of just hiring them because they gave a good sales pitch, ask for them to show you their Facebook Page, Twitter Account, and Blog. See if they are actually using social media effectively in their business first. This is a huge indicator as to what they will be sharing with you. Also, do not be afraid to ask for testimonials from previous clients. They should be able to easily & quickly provide this as well as a portfolio of some of the work they have done for clients. If you do your homework before hiring them you will not end up spending thousands of dollars on a website that never gets produced. I learned this one the hard way.

I was helping a church get a website a few years back and went online did a little research and found a company that looked like a reputable site and asked them to create a website for the church. Since they only focused on church sites I thought this was a slam dunk winner. I looked at the portfolio of work & it looked nice so we went ahead and paid them to build the site. After $1,500 spent and no site they fell off the earth. We had the shell of the site built, but didn’t have access into it so we could not log in to remove the spam & PORN that was being plastered all over the forums of the church site.

Needless to say the church was not happy with the results and since then has not had an online presence. Luckily they trust me enough to build them another site which will hopefully go live in the next few weeks. This time however, I will be doing all the creating and building of the website myself, so it will hopefully go a lot smoother and end up with an even better result.

Lastly, before hiring the social media guru, take some time to research them on the internet. Go and Google their business name, their personal name, phone number, & address. People who are unhappy about someone are going to share about their displeasure of a company. Don’t just search the company name, but take it a step farther & search the person’s name & phone number. Whenever my phone rings with someone trying to sell me something I go straight to the search engines and enter the phone number in. Within seconds I can tell everything that people who have had experience with this company really think & feel. You will know quickly that this number will call to sell the world, but then disappears and is extremely difficult to get the automatic payments stopped. You will know if they promise to get you 10,000 visits to your site but after signing up you then realize that the package you purchased only gets you 200 and to get the larger numbers of traffic you need to spend another $300 per month. I can normally know before even hanging up the phone if I wish to do business with this vendor or not.

In closing, if you Invest a little time at the beginning of your journey into social media you will end up with better results. By not taking the time in the beginning, you could end up investing a lot more dollars to receive the same result in the long run.

Twitter Application- Review of Tweetdeck version 0.34.3

Social Media Advisors

As many know, I can be quite the twitter addict at times. I find myself on many mornings visiting twitter before even looking at my email. On occasion I have also had the tendency to get caught up in conversations and before realizing it, hours have passed by. That being said, when it comes to using twitter, I need a Twitter Application that will perform well for me and allow me to sort & categorize things to make sense of it all.

I have been a long time fan of Tweetdeck, ever since my list of friends started to go over 200 followers on twitter. I love the fact that it allows the setup of columns and filtering of my twitter feed. When you start having over 2,000 people you follow, that main timeline flies by and you miss so many good things. But, by being able to filter people into lists of those I want to really focus on I can manage my stream much better. Tweetdeck columns allows you to not only filter your stream but also allows you to add columns for specific terms you wish to track.

Tweetdeck is also one of the Twitter applications that will allow you to use more than one Twitter account at a time. Since I do some community building for a few companies, I use this regularly as I can add each Twitter account to Tweetdeck & do it all from one place.

What’s New in Tweetdeck 0.34.3?

With the release of Tweetdeck 0.34.3 there have been a few great additions to an already great Desktop Twitter Application. Here is a brief rundown:

Addition of Foursquare & Google Buzz- While I will admit I am not a huge fan of Google Buzz and do not really use it that often, the addition of Buzz & Foursquare added to a Twitter application is pretty cool. I really enjoy being able to follow where my friends are checking in. I also have found myself interacting with friends more often by paying attention to this column. In addition to more engagement, I also have used the Foursquare column to learn about some new great places in town, where the best gas prices are, and also what restaurants have specials at the moment.
Update of Facebook Pages- This feature another huge addition. One of my biggest complaints of previous versions was that I could always update my Facebook status on my profile from within, but there were times I wanted to send something to my Facebook business page and would have to then take the stuff from Tweetdeck, copy it, log into Facebook and then paste it there. Now I have the pages I manage loaded into my Tweetdeck account and can update from inside this application.
Scheduled Updates- Sometimes there are a few things that I might want to schedule to tweet out to my friends. The reason I would schedule these tweets is because I might be tied up all day with a client but want to remind my friends on Twitter of something important that is applicable to that particular day. For example, if I have a friend who has a birthday tomorrow and I want to send a special birthday wish, I can now find the funny video on youtube, write my special 140 character message and schedule it to send at midnight so it arrives right as their birthday starts. I no longer need to sit up waiting to accomplish this same thing. Not only can you schedule your Twitter updates but also your Facebook & Facebook pages, and all the other services that Tweetdeck supports.

In addition to these three great new updates, Tweetdeck still gives you the ability to update your LinkedIn & Myspace accounts as well. That means that now from one program that started as a Twitter Application you can now update statuses on 6 different social network platforms. Obviously as you can tell this is no longer just a standard Twitter application, but a powerful tool for managing your social media plan.

What is still missing from this Twitter Application?

The one major flaw of Tweetdeck that I was hoping this version would fix is the sync function. I have tried on multple times to sync the Tweetdeck account between the two computers that I use on a regular basis. I would love nothing more for the Tweetdeck application on my desktop & laptop to have the same filtered columns, searches, applications, and accounts. But for some reason this sync function which works so well on a few other twitter applications I use does not seem to want to perform properly in Tweetdeck. If it did, I would probably be more committed to Tweetdeck as my main application for Twitter & other social networks.

Other than this small issue, I think the new additions to Tweetdeck have helped to solidify it’s place as one of the frontrunners for desktop Twitter applications that people will use. If you have not yet tried version 0.34.3 of Twetdeck, I would suggest giving it a try today. Also, make sure to connect with me on Twitter, I am @jb140.

Father’s Day Gift Dilemma Leads to Technology Revelation

Social Media Advisors

Yesterday afternoon, I had to show properties for a few hours, and my wife kindly took the opportunity to take our four kiddos shopping for a Father’s Day gift. Her destination was Fry’s Electronics. If you’re not familiar with Fry’s (I have no idea if they are nationwide), it’s basically a giant warehouse with every gadget, game, and TV that you can imagine. They sell phones, and speakers, and computers, books, CD’s, cables, you name it.

It’s one of my very favorite stores. Frankly, it’s difficult for me to go to Fry’s without getting anything at all. This is what’s known as an exercise in willpower.

While she was shopping, her first impulse was to buy me a movie or DVD series, then she realized that with Netflix, I can get pretty much any movie I want, many of which can be streamed directly to the TV from the internet, or enjoyed on the computer.

Then, she thought of getting me a CD. However, she knows that I have an iPod, which makes CD’s less appealing overall since it’s so easy to buy songs via iTunes.

How about a new book? Well, I have a Kindle, which has an application that allows me to read from my laptop, iPhone, or the device itself.

She settled on a gift certificate. 🙂

My point in sharing this is to illustrate the fact that technology has completely changed the way we consume information and entertainment. I recognize that this isn’t exactly an earth-shattering concept, but this was a real world example of how quickly things have changed in our household.

I remember when I had a massive CD collection, and lots of DVDs, too. Although we have steadily purged books, we still have roughly 1,000 of those in the house. I haven’t counted, so it could be more.

Prior to that, we had cassettes (sold or gave them all away) and albums (kept many of those since we have a working turntable and some of the classic ones are worth money).

I guess I just find it intriguing and exciting to realize how little space we have to use to entertain and inform ourselves now. We can even screen out many of the ads on “regular” television with Tivo/DVR devices.

So, here are my questions for you, gentle reader:

What item(s) other than the internet and your cell phone can you not live without which didn’t exist 10-15 years ago?
What do you foresee as indispensable 10 years from now that is in formative stages now?

I would love to hear your responses. Thanks for reading!

Photo Credit by Sammy0716

How to Optimize Blogs on a Budget

How To Blog, Social Media Advisors

Trying to optimize blogs can be a very difficult task. But trying to optimize a blog on a tight budget can be even more daunting a task. I often get asked by clients how to blog and how to write them to show up well in the search engines. This is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. With the current state of the economy many of the clients I help are not at liberty to spend bbuckets of money on advertising and PPC campaigns, so they are trying to optimize a blog on a small to non-existent budget.

So how do you optimize blogs with minimal money? Well, there are plenty of ways. The first step is to start with a small niche. The biggest mistake I normally see is that someone starts up their blog and begins writing with goals and aspirations of dominating search engines for these really broad & generic terms like car batteries, or wedding cakes. But if you go for more specific items like wedding cakes in Myrtle Beach, or a Duralast Gold 24-DLG car battery, then you will start to gain good rankings easier and quicker. The instant gratification will inspire you to continue on writing as well.

Secondly, know what people are searching for. Google Adwords is a great place to get an understanding of what type of terms are being searched and how often they are being searched. Sometimes just the slightest tweaks to your keyword focus can be the difference to getting to the top page of Google with your post. The biggest thing is to choose keywords that are attainable for great rankings. So be realistic in the terms you choose. I guarantee that if you take some time & focus on this before starting to write you will see results. A recent client of mine who has a very small budget and a completely brand new site was able to focus on a few good keywords and has been able to already start receiving clients directly from her blogsite. She also has several terms already ranking #1 in the search engines after only writing a handful of posts.

Thirdly, links can be a difference maker in how your site shows up in the search engines. Look for places you can link back to your blogsite. This can be a large time consumption, but if you can find things like your profiles on other networks, friends who are willing to link to you, it will increase your traffic to the site as well as the number of incoming links your site has. The one warning I would make is that this is where you could end up blowing your budget out of the water that you have set up for optimizing your blog. Companies will try to sell you links and charge you high prices for those links. This also can be the place that your site goes from ranking #1 to being blacklisted if done improperly, so please do some investigating before you start. While there are very reputable ways to do this, there are also several ways that the search engines frown heavily on.

The last way to optimize your blog and drive traffic to your site is to use your imagination and make your business different from everyone else’s online. When all the competition has the same type of advertising campaign you do, step outside the box and be creative. A company that recently did this that comes to mind is Pepsi. They stepped outside the normal box of advertising this year during the Superbowl. Instead of spending millions on 30 second commercials, they decided to use that income to build a giant online community of followers that would spread the word about their site & push traffic to them. Has it worked? Well, take a look at the stats according to compete. Year to date their web traffic is up 10% while their biggest competition, Coca-Cola is down 24%. Coincidence? I don’t believe so. I believe this is due to the change in their focus and doing something unique from the rest of the competition.

These four basic steps to optimize your blog can all be done for relatively no budget at all. It will just take a little bit of time, effort, and creativity to accomplish. Finally, I leave you with this video from the master of SEO, Matt Cutts from Google Webmaster. It seems we agree on this one 100%.