How and Why I Use Social Media (a work in progress)

Ok folks,

Here's the overview (a work in perpetual progress)

Why - I use social media to:

• Connect with old and current friends and contacts
• Meet new folks
• Support and promote friends, companies, and causes
• Share who I am
• Share thoughts of others I find inspiring, interesting, beautiful, or just fun
• Share my thoughts
• Help others when I can
• Promote our business(es)
• Have fun
• Connect with the collective creative universe
• 
  

What - I use social media to:

• Recognize and celebrate others' birthdays, accomplishments and successes
• Draw attention to other people's businesses and efforts
• Quote others and myself
• Show off my writing, photography, video, graphics, and overall cleverness
• Express my love for my wife and my family
• Notice questions or problems others ask or state and, if I think I have something worthwhile to share, step up.
• Be witty
• Share specific examples of foods, exercise, places, people, animals, and nature shots I enjoy.
• Share tech tips that matter to me and I think have relevance to my circles
• Mention our (Marge, myself, and our companies) events, promotions, progress, missions, purpose, and fun
• Comment, "like", and engage with others' social media posts and updates
• 
  

Where - Social media I focus on primarily include:

• Facebook
• Google+
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

Also Where - I also post with varying frequency at (selectively for the same purposes above)on:

• en*theos
• 3rd Street Plaza
• my BeingBruceBrown.com blog
• our HealthyHappyHotandFit.com website/blog
• my Team Beachbody websites: BrucetheCoach.com and Shakeology.com/BrucetheCoach

When - Daily:

• en*theos
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• BeingBruceBrown.com

When - Weekly:

• YouTube

Going forward, I intend to:

• Publish minimum of 2 Youtube videos per week (cuz video rules - and it's fun!)
• Develop a checklist for FB/T/Li/G+ posts that includes:
  • workouts
  • recipes
  • ingredients of Shakeology or other nutritious foods
  • team and coach successes
  • our physical and financial successes (general)
  • specific Team Beachbody and Beachbody events, promotions, new products, news, and opportunities
  • promotion of our 31 Days books
• Develop a checklist for:
  • LinkedIn recommendations
  • Comments and 'likes' on others Facebook posts
  • Follow more blogs and actively comment (this is pretty vague right now, I realize)
  • Actively seeking comments on blog posts, and book reviews on Amazon for our 31 Days books

So that's where it is as of now, folks.

Thanks for reading. 

And I would LOVE to hear what you do now and what  you want to do more of.

Social Media Strategy

Okay, so you’ve decided it’s finally time to start using social media for your business, or if you’re already doing so, you’ve figured out that having a strategy will give you better control and understanding of what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it as well as the costs and benefits.

While to an extent it’s arguable that many businesses should have a presence on social media just because most businesses are already using social media in various formats, the stronger case can be made that your social media implementation should reflect your unique business, its strengths, its market and clientele, its mission, and certainly its personality.

So how do you determine exactly what your social media strategy should be? Take it back to the basics.

First off, let’s assume you already know:

* What social media is, and is not.
* What social media is best for, and is bad for.
* Which social media you should be using or at least considering (and if Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and maybe LinkedIn aren’t on the list, go back and think again).
* Who your market is and which social media they frequent. (This is a trick question, because the answer is, “It depends.” You have to find out, there’s no one answer for all businesses.)

With those basic but important pieces covered elsewhere, let’s get to strategy.

First, here’s a form you can use, or a format you can recreate with software or on paper:

The purpose of the Social Media Strategy Worksheet isn’t to restrict, but to serve as a simple tool for structuring what can otherwise easily be a very random, unsatisfying experience.

My suggestion is that everything starts with your Big Why, in this case, not “why” to use social media, but what’s the Big Why about your company? Why should people want to hire you or do business with you? What is it that makes you unique among others in your field? What do you do better than anyone else or any other company you know? Only you can answer these questions (and perhaps your advisers or board of directors if you have one).

Rather than using a (typical) shotgun approach to social media and showing up everyone and responding to everything, I strongly suggest you focus your social media contributions and conversation on those topics or activities that support and underscore your Big Why.

It’s imperative with this still relatively new technology with many and a rapidly increasing number of moving parts that you remember who your market it and be sure to direct your social media efforts toward that market. It’s not the case that all “eyes” are the same on the Internet. Techniques that exist just to build traffic and get you “the top of the first page in Google” many not be in your best interest – unless those eyes that find you are absolutely the eyes of your very specific, tightly focused target market and ideal clientele.

Okay, so this gets you started. Once you have a clear sense of your business’ Big Why and the how you will translate that on social media. The next steps are to determine:

* What will be the actual the contet?
* Who in your company is the best person to accomplish and be responsible for creating your company’s social media content?
* Where – meaning on what social media sets will it appear?
* When – how often will you publish information?
* Measurement – how will you determine if you are getting the desired results from your social media strategy?

Note the form above also has three columns:

* Initial.
* Implementation.
* Next step.

It’ s important to realize that your social media strategy will change. It will change for two reasons:

* As you learn what works and what doesn’t work, you’ll want to make changes.
* As new types and methods of social communication with your market emerge you’ll want to evaluate and, when appropriate, work them into your strategy.

Designing your company social media strategy is key, and the the definition is individual to your niche, your clientele, and the personality you convey with it. As a work-in-progress, you’ll want to confer with our business advisors and possibly enlist the aid of coaches or consultants for your strategy. If you would like to discuss it with us, contact either of us for a free 15-minute consultation.

Bruce Brown, Bruce@QuantumResultsCoaching.com
Marge Brown, Marge@QuantumResultsCoaching.com

Video on Video - Clip 0

So, you wanna be in pictures, huh?

Oh wait. You don't? You just want to market your company, your products or services, or yourself?

And that's why you're checking out this blog post?

Okay, I get it. You don't have a burning desire to be a video star, but you do want to at least check out what it takes to use video in your business marketing.

Well, that's fair enough.

I mean, if you had your heart set on being in video you'd have gone to acting school, right? And if you really wanted to make movies you'd go to film school.

What you're interested in is finding out if you can easily and hopefully inexpensively create videos that will help market you, your company, or your products. And the videos have to be good enough to do the job; they don't have to be film award nominees.

Got it.

And actually you've got it, too, because if the above profile is yours, or similar to yours, then you're exactly who we are, too, and why we developed our video course celled Video on Video.

Here's a short clip I made that took about 5 minutes including shooting and editing. I'm sure that shows, but the point is, it makes the point and demonstrates how easy it can be. Watch it and then read on to see how you can get our Video on Video absolutely free.




So that was a short video clip. As I said in the clip, the way to get the video series as we product them, is to sign up for my weekly newsletter, Bruce Brown at the Edge. The newsletter is free and the video clip series will be free as well, but only to people who get our newsletter. By the way, of course you can always unsubscribe to the newsletter and you will automatically be removed from the mailing list.

Here's the form to sign up for "Bruce Brown at the Edge"

Enter your email address in the form below and click "Go"

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Coastal Carolina Concepts Ribbon Cutting April 30, 2010

Lauren Formalarie's Coastal Carolina Concepts social media marketing and advertising company is making waves in Brunswick County and the Greater Wilmington, NC area. On Friday April 30th CCC had ribbon cutting at the offices of the North Brunswick Chamber of Commerce.


Here's Lauren, as usual with a big smile.


Lauren and her Mom, Melody Formalarie.


Lauren and her brother Nolan.


Scott Reeves.


Supreme Ambassador Alice Razzano, NBCC Executive Director Dana Fisher, and Justin Williams (showing us his put the lens cap cover on the camera with your elbow trick).


Tony Vlach.


Lauren with Kerry Kasotsky and Monica Clark.


Bob Baer hugging Carolyn Pirnat.


Lauren talking to the group about her company's services.


Jason Miller with Dave Seaton and Kerry Kasotsky.


Lauren and Ben Bagby.


Donna Damiano and Ken Schiess.


Nolan Formalarie and Donna Damiano.


Ben Bagby and Melody Formalarie.


Dana Fisher and Nolan Formalarie.


Connie Reeves and Ken Schiess.


Another successful ribbon cutting!

Lauren, welcome to the North Brunswick Chamber of Commerce - we're proud to have you and your company as a member!

[Photo credits: Marge Brown]

Check out our 31 Days Mastery Books on Amazon.com

Why I Think You Should Read "Crush It!"

Wow, what a book!



As I said in the video, Bruce Henderson of Hanover Center was the guy who first told me about "Crush It!"


A few weeks later Buddy Blake, a fellow Realtor at Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Realty in Wilmington, NC sent me a copy as an unexpected gift! Thanks, Buddy!


So now I've read the book and "Whoa, what a powerful book!"

The basic message is: with the new media available thanks to the Internet, anyone can create their own, personal brand and "crush it", but only if they work hard and focus on something they're very passionate about.

My quick take is there are six parts to the book. I like 'em all, but I like the fourth part best.

Part One - Sell 'em - Get people pumped, get out the messages about loving family, working hard, living passions and combining the last two. Makes the points about social media, personal branding.

Part Two - Teach 'em - Major social media and new media Internet platforms, why and how, gives examples.

Part Three - Make it personal - More about branding. Why you should, how you can, and what it will mean personally.

Part Four - Bigger messages - What it really means on this planet and to you!

Part Five - Blueprint - Take it and do this on your own. You can and you should, but if you don't, don't come crying.

Part Six - Gifts - Some examples of possible fields in which to "crush it" that if you don't at least check them out a little, you really don't get it (cuz subject doesn't matter, it's the medium and the method, silly).

OK, so that's my read on this book (first time thru anyway). Here's a link where you can buy "Crush It! it from Amazon (and btw, that's not an affiliate link because they're not allowed in North Carolina with Amazon - so I won't make any money if you buy it). You should also be able to get it soon at RBR Books in Leland because last week we warned our buddy Clif Bridgers who owns that bookstore that we were going to blog about it so he better get in a few copies.


So yes, I like the book. A lot. And I really like the major message and the message behind the message, which is that it's OK to be "you". And in fact, you can become a brand! If you have no clue what I'm talking about, and especially if you're in business, or want to be, you probably better read the book.

And if you want to check my books on Amazon (and, oh yeah, I make money on these), please go to my Amazon Bruce Brown Author Page.

And I'd love it if you subscribed to my newsletter, Bruce Brown at the Edge. It's easy, just fill in the box below and hit Enter.

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Business Social Media Tip #31 - Anticipate Change

Social media use in business is increasing and changing in form and applications. These trends will continue. Don't deny or ignore change or, if you do so, ignore the transformations at least knowing that you will be missing out on opportunities - which may be just fine for some enterprises (I'm frankly at a loss to think of one, for even religions, art, and poetry have found great use of computer technologies, so I expect the same from social media).

The business healthy strategy is to expect change in technology including social media and make the best of it as soon as it's practical (please note, 'practical' does not mean the same as 'economical' or 'when we have time'). Practical in this sense means you should utilize relevant technologies as soon as they are stable and proved to be valuable in your business.

Even better than expecting and adopting technological change is anticipating change. If you can predict, for example, which way social media is heading, you can be among the first to enjoy the advantages of change. How does that sound? Pretty cool, huh? Well it is, but be aware that being an 'early adopter', while often exciting and sure to provide cocktail chatter, often comes with a price - newest technologies often sputter when they first hit the market and take a while to become stable. The cost to you can be money and time - two important resources indeed. If you can anticipate and get ready for social media change without over-committing time and money until the technology is stable and at least beginning to deliver, you'll be in the best position.

It's also important, when attempting to understand and predict change, to keep the subject in context. In the case of social media context includes personal computing and personal communications technologies, Internet access and speed, technology adoption and acceptance, and a growing world market.

Looking forward right now, left-brain trends to consider as you attempt to anticipate social media change include the increasing adoption of mobile communications devices (especially but not only phones), cloud computing (where applications and data reside on the Internet, not on physical devices one owns), the continued explosion of personal video, collaboration or collaborative utilities for various social and personal media sites, location technologies, and personal identification and tracking technologies. On the ever more influential right-brain side of development design, play, empathy, social reach, personal touch, and story-telling are all significant. So throw all those factors in a hat, pick any two or three and make your best attempt at anticipating the next big social media business application.

Business Social Media Tip #29 - Use Utilities

Third party utilities are programs that are created to help you get the most from other programs. Used judiciously with social media, third party utilities can save you time posting and even creating content, increase your presence by posting data in multiple places, and give you a higher level of control and extra features than you'll often get from using standard social media sites.

Many of the earlier business social media tips and strategies I've written about can be completely controlled by, assisted, or even augmented by third party utilities.

Presently there are utilities to help you set up sub-groups, create separate windows or columns to track search terms such as your company name, your personal name, or anything you desire, and there are also signaling devices that will alert you with visual and audio indicators when specified activity occurs.

You can take it too far with third party utilities and spend inordinate time trying to know about every utility available and also seek the very best ones. I suggest you find a reasonably strong utility suite and stick with that until you hear others bragging so much about another suite that you can't resist. Why waste time searching for the perfect utility suite when "good" will be good enough.

The trend now is for utilities to bridge multiple social media sites - for example a utility suite called TweetDeck works with both Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. The concept of a utility "deck" is similar to a console or a dashboard that has indicators, readouts, or alerts for a variety of content or tracking data.

Unless you have a lot of time on your hands (and that likely leaves out most of us), I wouldn't advise switching social media third party utility suites more often than every 6 months - that's probably sufficient time to allow the fast changing list of utilities and menu of services and features to make significant leaps.

Another word of advice on the subject of utilities is it's best to let others work with the very first versions of any new program while the bugs are being worked out. Also, when new version of a program or utility is announced or launched, hold off for a month or two before switching or upgrading - it's not uncommon at all to hear people speak of new versions causing problems with old data, at least at first. So let others be pioneers so you can stick with your primary business, but still be on the lookout for the third party utilities for your social media management and creation.

Business Social Media Tip #28 - Make It Easy on Yourself with Auto-Posting

A growing number of people use social media personally and for business, some just a little bit and others seemingly all the time. Others have no use for social media at all.

Do you know what these three categories of social media users and non-users have in common? They think maintaining an active social media presence takes too much time.

While non-users may also question the value or use of social media, even avid proponents of social media's increasing marketing force are concerned about the time it takes to plan, create, and post content.

The good news is you can significantly cut or at least control the time it takes to post a lot of content on multiple social media sites.

There are three primary methods you can use to multiply your social media impact:

1. Schedule your postings -- You don't always have to post content immediately. With many sites such as blogs your can schedule postings in the future. In some cases when the social media site doesn't have post scheduling you can use third party utilities for the same purpose. At first controlling the posting schedule may not seem to be a great time savings because you still have to create each post, but if you can create a batch of content at one time for posting over a later period of time, the efficient time management can be a great benefit.

2. Use multi-site posting utilities -- There are a growing number of third party utilities that enable you to create a single post that is then simultaneously posted to multiple social media sites and on blogs and web sites. For example, I currently use Ping.fm to simultaneously post anywhere from four to six entries on Facebook, Twitter, LinkIn, Plaxo, and MySpace every morning. Ping.fm also supports other social media sites but those are the ones to which I currently post.

3. Use RSS feeds -- With RSS feeding, the full definition and use of is beyond this tip guide, you can set up your blog content to automatically post on other sites, including web sites and social media. When I post on my personal blog all or part of the headline and a link to that blog are automatically picked up by Facebook and Twitter - a setting I made within my blogging program. If you have multiple blogs or websites you can also set them to feed content from one to the other.

You could spend most of your time keeping info on your web site, blog, and all your social media sites current - though it would be hard to stay in business. You could also spend money on third parties who will post on sites for you (using your content or content they create). Alternately, the three techniques in this tip can save you lots of time, increase your social media presence, and give you greater control of your schedule.

Business Social Media Tip #27 - Tag, You're There!

It's a wonderful world when others do your advertising, marketing and public relations for you. In social media it happens often that people will mention businesses or other people and in many cases they also include photographs. If you're out and about often in your community the odds are that you'll be at least noted on various social media sites. If you watch the sites of people who often post photos, especially on Facebook, make a point of checking for photos of yourself, your co-workers, your alliances, and your business. When you see yourself or someone you know in a photo, take the time (it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds) to 'tag' the personal or business in the photo.

Exactly how tagging works and how notice of the tagging is spread varies with different social media, but it's a good idea at least to search for instances when others have tagged you. One way to look for tagging is to search your personal or business name on Internet search engines, looking specifically for images. Also, if you were at an event it's pretty easy to search for that event, again using search engines, to see if you show up in any photographs.

Be aware that not all images that show up may be complimentary or to your liking. Forgetting unfortunate photos you and your friends might have posted during high school or college days, even contemporary photos where you look silly or awkward can be irritating. If you do find there are photos you don't like of you or your business, take a two pronged approach to remedy them:

1. Contact whoever posted the photos and ask that they be taken down (which may nor may not happen); and

2. Actively post and tag complimentary photos so that the earlier ones will be pushed further down on Internet search result. Obviously if you're a celebrity caught in a compromising or unfortunate photo, the photo itself may quickly spread to a wide audience with lots of hits and stay higher on search results, but for most people and businesses, it shouldn't take long to push down undesirable photos if you actively substitute better images for a week or two.

The bottom line with this tip is to take advantage of the opportunity to have images of you and your business play marketing and public relations roles for your business, and also be on the lookout for uncomplimentary images that you can attempt to remedy in the two ways mentioned above.

Business Social Media Tip #26 - Be a Selective Fan

In social media, as in real life, it's prudent to be selective in one's relationships. As much as it's desirable to establish a great number of connections and relationships for your business, have a care about indiscriminate fan relationships. The closer the alignment your business has with your personal passions, strengths, interests and beliefs the easier it should be to select individuals, groups, other businesses and causes to be fans of.

There are two primary purposes to be a fan of relatively narrow list:

1. Your market niche and specific target -- If you start with the assumption, which I taken as a given truth, that the path to business success and prosperity lies in defining a specific target market, with a narrow, definable and easily conveyed appeal, then you want to attend to your alliances, whether they are real or just perceived. For example, if your target market is New York Yankees baseball fans, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to publicly become a fan of the Boston Red Sox. You could logically be a fan of overall Major League baseball sites, or the Baseball Hall of Fame, but to give the impression of allegiance to a competitive team confuses the issue and die-hard Yankees fans be less likely to have great loyalty to your business presence. You'll also want to avoid having too many alliances - that, too weakens your core message. The more you dilute your business's social message presence with contradictory alliances or large numbers of unrelated alliances, the less effective it will be.

2. The Piling On Effect - Another reason to be a selective fan is the very real chance that if you happen to become a fan of an entity that has a strong stance on one side of a controversial issue (whether or not you're aware of that stance) is that people who hold the other side will ignore you or and have negative thoughts about your business. You also may find yourself flooded with fan requests from groups aligned with the side of the original entity. The point here is you can find yourself on a side of an issue whether you wish to or not, and your primary business message and presence can be lost or even hurt.

The more clarity you have about your business social media presence purpose and goals, the easier it is to choose alliances. Just because someone asks or suggests that you become a fan, a friend or a follower doesn't mean that you have to agree.

Business Social Media Tip #25 - No religion or politics

Unless your business is involved with religion or politics, be wary, or at least careful with both topics in your business social media presence.

This may be one of those way-too-obvious seeming tips, but I'm not only talking about bringing up religion or politics yourself. It's quite possible, in real life of course as well, to find yourself in a religious or political discussion that was originally presented as a seemingly unrelated question or request. I don't want to spend a lot of space on this area, because I dislike focusing on negative anything, however, I do strongly suggest that before you take a side on any issue being discussed in social media that you do at least a modicum or research about the person, business, or organization asking the question.

I speak from experience on this one. I was asked by a friend if I was in favor of something that certainly sounded good for all. Before I responded, however, I looked a bit further at the website where my response would go and it turned out to be run by an organization with very strong political opinions, some of which I agree with personally, and others which I do not. Rather than pursue my research or the issue further, I just didn't respond to the request for my opinion. In my private life I do not hold back on opinions, but I do my best to keep my business communications focused on business issues and my target markets.

One of the first rules of social media success is engagement with other people and certainly that means conversation and of course that can include answering questions and stating opinion. In no way do I suggest you not communicate with others on social media - that would defeat the whole purpose of your business being there. I do, however, suggest that you exercise some prudence in your conversation - first because it's the case that once something is on the internet it's pretty much there forever and also because you can't practically control how someone else might use the information.

One other quick note on this topic. If you are a business owners and have employees or contractors produce your social media content, have and communicate a policy that addresses the types of content or subject matter, including conversational topics, with which you do not wish your business to be associated.

Business Social Media Tip #24 - Bring 'Em On! Accept All Followers

Pop quiz: How many followers or friends do you want on social media?

Answer: All of them!

Better answer: It depends. (Doesn't it always?)

When some people start using social media (and we're all really just starting, since it's a relatively new communications form), they keep their friend and follower lists at a minimum. Those folks have no intention of using social media to create new relationships, but rather as a way to communicate with their existing "tribe".

Others reach out, more or less openly, looking to make as many connections as they can, either just for fun, to be social, or to get their messages out.

Business use of social media parallels personal use. Many businesses want as all the people (and other businesses) they can attract as friends and followers. Other organizations would rather limit their social media circles to a select clientele (this likely won't compute for some, but what I'm thinking of here are, for examples, companies that have an extremely elite client base where the bar of entry is quite high, or possibly a company that caters to a very narrow interest.

So what should you do? Most likely the best bet, unless you already know you only want a very limited following, is to work for big numbers. So accept all friend and follower requests. It could also suit your objectives to use one or more strategies for building follower lists, such as searching for "friends" in certain locations or by particular interests. The various social media usually have built in friend search features and there are also third party utilities that serve that purpose.

When is it not a good idea to take all followers or accept all friend invitations? Often you won't know in advance, but, since many people will look at your existing friends/followers before deciding to follow you, if your list is slanted toward a specific demographic you might miss opportunities to expand your reach. For example, if your follower list is populated with people who all appear to be banks or news sources, you might not be followed by individuals looking for casual information or relationships.

You also can consider the wisdom of accepting followers if doing so exposes your existing list to others who might use the list for their own purposes. I don't want to make too big a deal about this and it's certainly true that with many social media sites even non-followers can see who your friends are, there's no reason to make it easier for spammers, for example, to use a social media 'friend' relationship with you to contact your real friends.

So pay attention to the types of friends and followers you attract and certainly at first be somewhat selective in an attempt to trend your follower list toward your target market. Once your list gets huge, of course, generally you won't have time or much reason to cull follower requests.

Business Social Media Tip #22 - You Win!

Here's a no-brainer, great way for any person or business to utilize social media: Announce to the world any time you win an award, accomplish a goal, or hit a major milestone. As long as you write with sincerity and enthusiasm, others will enjoy it and be attracted to your post.

You do want to be real about announcing your wins, meaning they have to be actual accomplishments and it's not appropriate to over-exaggerate or gush, but a little exuberance is just fine.

As always with social media, your personal cheer leading is best when balanced with other contributions. It's also a great idea, maybe even stronger, to announce and celebrate others' wins as well as your own.

When you announce your wins on social media, depending on the actual media, do what you can to share the story and the personal feelings behind the event. Blog posts are perfect for story telling and adding photos, but with Facebook and Twitter, for example, you need to tailor the length and content of your posts to the specific media.

Whatever media you use, don't be shy about including links to your blog or web site or other sites where interested readers can find more information or background.

Business Social Media Tip #21 - Polling on Social Media

Did you know you can use social media for polling? Well you can, but it's best to do so only occaisionally. Here's why.

Remember that social media is not about selling stuff or speaking only to customers and prospects about your business. While you may be spending time, effort, and possibly money (via staff resources or third party sources) to keep up with and lead your business efforts and presence on social media, the primary agenda is not business.

Given that reminder, however, once you've established a significant following or friends' list, it's perfectly acceptable and often effective to poll your followers and even to solicit other responses.

If your question is simple and only one-dimensional, e.g., "Do you think mens' ties will be narrower or wider this year?" it's fine to include the question in your post. If you have a more involved poll, survey, or questionnaire, a link to the poll is probably a better idea, though the odds are great your response level will drop off a lot if you require anything that seems like work or requires going to another site.

You might consider offering a prize drawing or a small gift for everyone who completes your poll or survey, and that should up your response rate and, especially if you ask for names and e-mail addresses in the survey, give you more data on potential clientele.

It's worth repeating that you want to use polls, questionnaires, and surveys sparingly - over use them and your responses will suffer. Also, if you are a 'giver' yourself, if you take the time to help others and engage them online, odds are that when you post an occasional survey that your response rate will be much higher.

Business Social Media Tip #20 - Social Media as a Research Tool

Social media can be a convenient research tool with a time element you won't find elsewhere. Because you can search for what people are saying or posting about topics right now, your searches can have an unmatched immediacy.

Various social media differ in their usefulness as research tools. They won't replace scholarly or scientific historic research (probably ever, right?) but for tracking trends or current news and events, there's no current contender. You likely have noticed that virtually all major news outlets have a presence on Twitter, for example, and not only do they post headlines about major stories (with links to their web sites), they also often have reporters on the scene posting comments and commentary. Amateur news reporting, or maybe it's better called "real person on the street" via Twitter, including immediately uploaded digital images.

So how can you use social media as a research tool for your business? One way is to use key word searching. You can search for terms or phrases significant to your business or industry manually or, by using utilities such as Tweetdeck, set up searches that are updated automatically.

Twitter also has a Trending Topics feature that automatically displays on the home screen the most-talked about topics of the moment.

As social media matures, ever-stronger research tools and techniques will emerge. The value of being able to data mine the contemporaneous online contributions of 10's or 100's of millions of people will spur individuals and companies to invent (and possibly sell) tools for tracking the data you seek for your business.

Business Social Media Tip #19 - Track Yourself

When you're in business there's possibly no more valuable information than what other people and companies are saying about you. With social media, since most of the content is in the public data "streams", it's easy to track comments and mentions of your company or your own name.

Why is it important to know what others say about you and your business? You're not just looking for compliments (which are nice to find) but it's also helpful to know if people when complaining about or criticizing. In addition to thanking or maybe returning the favor for someone who praises your company, with knowledge of what's being said you can also do damage control if someone is dissing you.

While you for sure do not want to get into a negative message exchange with anyone on social media, knowing what's being said does give you the chance to state (your version of) the facts.

Social media can also be a great tool for quality control (know what people do and don't like about your business) and customer relations. For example, if someone is happy with your business and says so online, you can thank them publicly - which is a nice thing to do. And if someone has a problem, imagine how powerfully positive it can be if you contact them based on their posting about it on social media and do what you can to make it right?

To an extent, you can also use self-tracking to test the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising in all media, including social media. Because many people Tweet or post about anything they do, have, or buy, tracking mentions of your company during or after a promotion can be a measure of the promotion's impact.

It's pretty easy to do simple tracking. Facebook and Twitter, for example, each have a search feature that makes monitoring mentions of your business, your products, or any of your personnel simple. Depending on the uniqueness of the terms you search on, you may have a lot of results, but built-in filtering can help separate the useful from the irrelevant.

If you're searching on your name, you might find that adding your location will narrow, or at least order the search results. If you have a common name, as I do, you many find another person with the same name in the your town who is mentioned on social media. It can get a little confusing in that case - not for your friends or for customers who know you, perhaps, but possibly for people who are just looking you up or only know you by name and not by your photograph.

I've been fortunate that the other "Bruce Brown"'s in my area are nice guys, but if they weren't or if they were in the news or mentioned on social media for negative reasons, I might not like it, but at least it would be helpful to know what's being said by or about a namesake.

The bottom line is that not only does social media give you the ability to communicate in public, it also provides tools that can help you track your impact and your image.

Business Social Media Tip #18 - Check Them Out

Wonder how others in your business use social media?

Guess what? It's easy to find out. Just use the readily available public social media sites and networks and you can see what your friends, alliances, and competitors in your industry and in related fields are doing.

Whether you look up business by name, by category, by location, by key word or search term or even by asking who does whatever [replace your business category for 'whatever'], it couldn't be easier to find out how others use social media for marketing and relationship building.

You may or may not want to engage in "competitive intelligence", and you can take it to extremes and avoid doing much yourself, but surely it's a good idea to stay informed about how others businesses in your field (especially good ones) use this powerful marketing tool.

When you're checking out other companies' use of social media, keep in mind:

- Just because someone has a flashy page or presence on social media that doesn't necessary mean it's a great idea. Keep it all in context and first assess the business. A great way to approach is to look at the use of social media by the companies in your field you most admire.

- Don't blatantly copy something you see that you like. That can backfire. Look for inspiration, but do your own work.

- Don't assume that you are seeing all that goes on. Companies that use social media well blend it with other marketing and customer/client relationship modes and methods. To check out the blend, why not call the company (if you're on good terms) and ask to talk about it. Alternately, if you know or can find some customers of the other companies, ask them.

- Don't get too stuck on using social media for competitive intelligence, and look for tools or methods to simplify the process, for example, searching on keywords that matter in your business to see what folks are saying.

- If you're looking for inspiration but don't want to copy what other businesses in town are doing, look in other states with similar markets and see what the market leaders in your field are doing there.

Combined with Internet search engines, social media can be a very powerful way to stay informed about your business sphere even if you don't use social media much or at all yourself.

Business Social Media Tip #17 - Happy Birthdays!

Whether you use social media or not, acknowledging customer and client birthdays is a slam dunk decision. Sales professionals in retails stores in fields as diverse as real estate, new car sales, ice cream shops, insurance agents, and high end jewelry stores know the proved value of sending birthday greetings.

In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I are distributors in SendOutCards, a company that makes sending birthday cards or any types of standard or customized greeting cards fast, easy, and, oh yeah, very inexpensive. So I do have a dog in this hunt (and if you want to check it out and maybe send a free greeting card to a customer or loved one on me, just go to our web site, www.fatcitycards.com and click on Send a Free Card).

OK, so back to the tip. To make life easy for recognizing customer birthdays you'll want to set up systems for:

- Capturing people's birth dates (month and day are fine, few people are threatened or offended if you don't ask for the year)

- Being sure you have a real mailing address if you're going to send something - preferably a home address because mail often gets re-routed or delayed in offices

- Reminding yourself ahead of time of the upcoming birthday. If you're just going to make a phone call, or send an e-card (which I do not recommend), getting a reminder on the day of is fine.

Using social media for noticing and wishing someone happy birthday is easy as most social media sites request birth date information --though some do not require or won't display birthdates without permission. Facebook is to date the easiest social media site on which to find friends' birthdays, just go to the your personal Home page, look to the events section (most likely in the right hand column) and birthdays of your friends are listed.

There does remain one last step you need to take to pull this all together (social media, your clients, birthdays); you want to find out what social media sites your clients' use and make a point of hooking up with them on any and all media in which you both participate. This process is pretty easy if you ask for Facebook and Twitter IDs when you're first recording new customer or client data (ask for their birthday at the same time). If you already have a client database, but no birthdays or social media info, this is a great time to add to the richness of your client data. You can just send e-mail (we once sent e-mail to a big bunch of clients and most were very happy to send birthdays), but if convenient and possible (which means you can't have too many), why not call your contact database to have some personal contact and verify the info you already have for them and then ask for birthday and social media use as well.

If you have the time and inclination, you can also search Facebook and Twitter for your clients' names, but with the millions of people using both services, it's probably better to make personal contact.

A quick birthday wish via social media doesn't replace real cards (my bias) and it certainly won't replace cake, or presents, but even a brief birthday message is a nice touch with your social media-connected clients.

Business Social Media Tip #16 - Don't Trivialize

Avoid trivializing your business social media presence by over-adding causes, cute little applications, polls, tests and games. Stick to your business purpose, which is to observe, engage, share, and contribute in a manner that adds to your community, appeals to your target market, and directly or indirectly promotes your business.

Many social media sites, particularly those open to other applications that can run in or parallel to them (which means it's someone else's business product or service) are loaded with polls (Which flower are you?, Who's your favorite super hero?), games (adventure, quasi-reality, team building), and little gifts you didn't know you ever needed (sending "fluff" or "flair" or graphic coins that will never buy a cup of coffee). The preponderance of these applications indicates that many people like them and many companies attempt to make money with them.

Just because trivial applications apparently abound, however, doesn't mean you should use them. Or play along.

It's fine to join causes or become a "fan" of causes, people, businesses, or places that you truly care about and would like to have associated with your business. If you are promiscuous in joining causes, however, you dilute your own value.

Remember, too, that when you join a cause or group or become a fan, that means your social media identity is on someone's list and odds are, just like IRL (in real life) you're likely to get hit with (be solicited by) other causes, groups, or fan bases. If indiscriminate joining suits your business purpose, certainly go for it, but realize it takes you away from a clearly defined market niche.

Social media is a powerful tool to personalize your business presence for the purpose of engaging and attracting your target market. If your business presence on social media appears distracted or absorbed by games and trivial applications, your customers may go elsewhere, attracted by a business that focuses on target market needs and preferences.

Business Social Media Tip #15 - Promote Others' Events, And Your Own, Too!

Let's start with the assumption that anyone who spends more than just a little time on social media is interested in people, and very likely interested in events other people attend. If you make a practice of promoting other business' and other people's events there are two positive results you can count on.

First, if you promote others' events chances are they'll promote yours. Even without asking (but you should) you are likely to find others very willing to cross-promote events.

Second, if you actively promote others' events, it's even more Okay to promote your own. All of this is in the context, of course, that event promotion is a relatively small portion of your social media content.

It also bears mentions what an 'event' constitutes. If a business group is sponsoring a chili cookoff to benefit a charity, that's an event. If someone has an in-store opening of a new line of something (jewelry, clothing, art, vintage wine, or furniture) or is introducing a new chef, that's an event. Only very rarely is a sale an event. As much as people spend advertising money on sales, business people should remember very clearly that social media is not advertising, and not a place to post a continuous stream of ads - doing so will have negative results and likely result in a loss of followers.

I think the best event announcements are those in which excitement and purpose are as much a part of the posting as the actual content. Used in moderation, those can work. If of course, it's overdone and one gushes on a daily basis about one thing after another, that quickly gets old.

If you have something going on in your business that you're really pumped about and just can't wait to tell the world, certainly go for it, but I'd reccomend waiting at least a few days before being so moved again.

One last point on event posting. It's certainly fair and expected to ask others to support your events and promote them - this is done all the time in social media and is seen as an easy way to help other people and businesses. You needn't feel obligated to promote all events nor should you expect that everyone you ask will promote yours. If one of your best friends has just promoted someone else's event and you ask him to do the same for you, she or he may demur, not wanting to overload their own content with promotions.

The bottom line is promoting events on social media is commonplace and a great way for businesses to help each other out. Moderation is the key.
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