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How to succeed quickly in the Social Web and the Internet – disruptive version

May 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

success easy internetI usually get asked questions by email which seem very specific but are as vast as the universe itself. These questions are of the following kind: “What can I do with my brand/company to position it on the Internet quickly?”, “How can I reach all my potential audience on the social web?” or “I need some advice to increase my company/brand on the Internet, help me!”

Some are even more bold and direct: “What do I do to be successful in social media?”, “How do I maximise my effort on the Internet and social networks to obtain real results?”, “I need any type of advice you can give me to get results in social media” or “Could you give me any idea to sell more online?”

Success awaits you

Clearly everyone wants to be successful on the social web and Internet. And, of course, they, want that success to be fast, simple, effortless and using a special trick you download from the Internet. Oh, and I forget! It must also be free.

This is the answer to those who ask how to quickly be successful on the social web and in social networks overnight:

  • Help out a lot. Helping out isn’t taking advantage of a situation.
  • Share large amounts of useful and valuable content. Sharing doesn’t mean your own content.
  • Make it visual: use photos and videos. Remember they must be useful and valuable.
  • Say what you think. Be yourself. Use your own voice.
  • Just accept that many people won’t like you. That will help you focus on those who do.
  • Decide what it is you want to do and do it.
  • If you have something to say, say it.
  • Create chaos, start revolutions, bring about disruptive innovations, go against the flow.
  • Launch as many ideas as you can. Start things that are easy and quick to start, take on small risks.
  • Adopt a small movements strategy – those are the ones that matter.
  • Market what you do, make the most of every occasion, however small. Everything can be communicated. Marketing involves coherence, intelligence, subtlety and results. However, self-glorification means laziness, selfishness, despair and babble.
  • Do whatever may create change in people/customers and show it to the world.
  • Make your strong point your life constant in your daily work flow. That’s how you’ll be creating something that no one else usually does.
  • Come up with a blog that serves a purpose to both you and your audience, a blog that makes them better. Create it, launch it against the market and blog 366 days a year (yes, you read it right, 366!).
  • Don’t work for the likes, comments or RTs. Do it to get deeper into the problem and find the solution.
  • Consider euros in the bank as your end measurement. And work towards achieving them.
  • Invest time, Sundays, nap times, holidays, vacations and Christmas to creating your personal brand.
  • Connect in the most human way possible with the people you know in the social web. That’s what they’re expecting.
  • Use the social media universe  – not the other way round!
  • There’s life beyond LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest – just kidding!
  • Forget about online reputation and invest time in monitoring, analytics, ROI and online branding.
  • Ignore Whatsapp.
  • Be very active. You should be everywhere at all times, helping and being useful.
  • Don’t take calls while you’re doing important work.
  • Close Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and your email and do what needs to be done to make an impact.
  • Don’t accept meaningless meetings, only those with clear objectives, a defined agenda and with people in charge at every step. That is, accept only 5% of your meetings.
  • If you want to do business, go do it. But don’t say you’re going to network at an event if you’re there to do business.
  • Don’t go to so many conferences, seminars or workshops. Instead, spend more time with a blank sheet of paper and do, experiment, fail and try something different.
  • Being an expert won’t help you to be successful. It will only serve to see how wide, round and deep your own bellybutton is.
  • Change masters degrees and advanced courses for blogs, videos, TED conferences and your own experiences.
  • Trace your own plan, establish your goals, develop a strategy and find your spark.
  • Don’t say you’re an online/social entrepreneur, prove it!
  • Use all your followers, readers, fans and connections to promote those beneath you. It’s easy, doesn’t take much time and it seems to be a strategy that works.
  • If no one offers you to take part in an event, workshop, initiative or movement, build one yourself and invite yourself. Think of something amazing.
  • Results are king, not content.
  • Take the maximum possible number of fans, followers or whatever you want to call them to your website.
  • Use calls to actions wherever you go.
  • Take care of your community.
  • Talk to clients and ask them in what other ways you could help them.
  • Stay human and value human relationships above everything else.
  • Transparency, honesty, authenticity, coherence, being consistent and passionate, excitement and determination are the keys for anything to work.

I told you, overnight. You want to be successful? Then go and be successful.

You don’t claim or pretend victory, you win it!

Photo credit: marsmet541.

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Filed Under: 3.0, Howto, New Media, Social Media, Tactics, Tips Tagged With: , , , ,

8 Ways to Increase Engagement of Facebook Posts

January 22, 2013 By 2 Comments

Brands have always accepted Facebook as a key marketing tool to generate engagement and branding. The question is whether Facebook creates more engagement, visibility, traffic and experience than other tools. Searching for an answer to this for some time leads to understanding how the different attributes of Facebook posts have an impact on the number of “likes”, comments and “shares” that a post gets.

How to Increase the Number of Likes in Facebook Posts

Below, I identify 8 ways to increase the number of “likes” a post receives:

1. Focus. Stay up to date. I’m talking about messages that relate to holidays (Christmas), festivals, gigs, world issues, relevant events, anything related with current affairs. Perhaps they won’t be directly related to the product’s or company’s essence but they will be perceived as something more personal and, hence, better accepted (more so, even, than promotions.)

2. Express yourself through photos. Every picture tells a story. A photograph communicates something personal in a fast, easy way. You also have to make an effort to match a suitable text to the picture. Images from your company’s product catalogue generate greater engagement than other types of content.

3. Share what we love. Sharing success stories and also failures, achievements, prizes, apologies or thanks make you more human, accessible and familiar to your community. Many will also identify with the brand. When they “like” a post, they’re telling their network of friends why they identify with the brand.

4. Branding. Don’t hesitate to promote the brand and its products. When your customer visits your Facebook page, they should leave with a good impression of your brand and products/services. The public will visit the walls of the brands they’re interested in.

5. Humour rocks. Laugh and everyone will laugh with you. We all enjoy a laugh. Make your posts fun as funny posts get many “likes” and will be shared a lot. For instance, funny pictures. Being funny is an art.

6. Humanise the brand. Inject emotion to it. Brand communication starts by using the “human” side of social media. The community loves messages that turn a wall into a living object that expresses human emotions in the form of videos, images, or real-time personal statuses, for instance. Facebook is a communication platform rather than a production channel. Shar0ing posts that contain emotions helps connecting with the community. In turn, they share these emotions with their network.

7. Educate and equip. Create content that is informative. Brands sharing content that is useful to their audience get greater exposure and engagement –more “likes”–, especially in the case of information designed to improve and enrich the brand’s fans. This education could include the company’s history, the product creation process or the state of the market, for instance. When fans interact with this type of content, they’re creating educational content which is shared in their network.

8. Ask to be “liked”. Ask and you will receive. It’s simple. If you ask to be liked, like for instance Veuve Cliquot does in their posts, you’ll get more “likes”. Ask in a polite, fun way, and don’t overdo it; otherwise, the cure may be worse than the disease!

What other ways can you think of, do you know of or do you implement to increase Facebook engagement?

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Filed Under: Facebook, Human Media, Social Media, social networking Tagged With: , , ,

How to Rock your Company or Brand with Social Media

January 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

It all has to do with rocking, the rocking you create, share and learn. So, here are some of my ideas to rock your company or brand in the Social Web:

Rocking Social Media

  • Objectives: if you don’t know where you want to go before you get started, you’re better off staying where you are.
  • Don’t run: you will fail. Your family, your boss, your colleagues, even I, know it. Fail fast, and learn what works and what doesn’t faster still.
  • Take a run-up: jot things down, work hard, don’t settle with what you’re doing. In social media you can always do more than what you’re doing. Vertigo? No, it’s a springboard!
  • Excellence in excellence: take care of every detail in your online presence: design, profile pictures, banners, bio, descriptions, titles, spelling mistakes, punctuation marks, permanent beta, elaborate communications, fast and efficient answers, taking a real interest for your people and, always, going a little bit further.
  • Listen without talking: listen to the conversations that go on in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn updates, blogs, and forums. Show up, contribute and add to the conversation but don’t just show up and start a preaching discourse, you’ll be ignored!
  • Share even yourself: don’t speak of yourself only, we can all do that. Share whatever you think is valuable and adds to the change. Do it often and see how you start connecting with opportunities and people. The more you share, the “luckier” you’ll be. Here’s an example: Eva Collado.
  • Create change: I’m sure you have something to say to the world. When that happens, you create change. Start a blog, create a hashtag, a LinkedIn group, a Pinterest board or a blog/email in Posterous and shed some light. We’re expecting it.
  • Human is sexy: when we speak of love affairs, “opposites attract” is tantamount to saying “even if I’m not interested in what you do, we could get into bed together and see what happens.” We’re looking for people like us. Therefore, we’re looking for brands and companies like us: human, a kindred spirit, in line with us and with whom we share an interest. This is no different. Brands are increasingly human because they give off emotions, feelings, warmth. They resonate. They are increasingly human because they connect with us in different ways; they listen to us, hold conversations with us and care about us. That’s quite sexy!
  • Speak the same language: speak in a close, familiar and friendly way with those with whom you interact.
  • Always answer: maybe you’ve got enough on your plate or you’re “busy” like we all like to say, but unless you’re Lady Gaga, David Guetta or Justin Bieber, answer, we arrived at your doorstep, don’t let us down now!
  • Do something: you thought you were going to get off scot-free? Get out there and do something: contests, promotions, offers, cross campaigns with your partners/sponsors, set a calendar for publications, landing pages to measure traffic, creative campaigns to measure your reach and participation, communicating with your community one to one, open days for your fans/followers/readers or product trial to get some feedback. Anything, but do something: that is the driving force behind creating value.
  • Social CRM rocks: you can create one without having software costing 10,000€. You can start with the information you gather from your clients when you follow and monitor them, or the information you collect when you interact with them. You can bring together all this information in a spreadsheet used as a database and classify and handle it in cells with fields regarding your clients.
  • Analytics are hot: of course they are! Everyone is doing the same: publishing, sharing photos, answering and, in the best of cases, observing how the number of followers/connections/contacts/readers/fans grows, as well as embedding links and videos. So, when the analytics with results arrive, with variables and ways to get where we want to go, then yes, we get crazy hot!

The key to being brilliant is, in fact, being brilliant, not pretending to be.

Rock on.

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Filed Under: Howto, Social Media, Tips Tagged With: ,

13 Quick Tips To Optimise your LinkedIn Profile

October 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

1. Set a personalised URL with your name. The same name you use with other profiles: your brand.

2. Create a unique extract. Can you summarise everything into a single sentence that makes you unique and special, something that sets you apart from everyone else? I bet you can!

3. End in a clear, direct and powerful way. End each section in your profile with something that really makes an impact on the reader; we always remember what we read last better than what we read first. It is quite common to start strong and end weak. Remember, go against the current! No one else does.

4. Achievements and tasks. One of the best profiles I’ve read lately has been the one set up by Víctor Ronco. His way of listing his achievements and the tasks he was in charge of is sensational. Of course, you do need to be a doer and a tryer for that!

5. Media. You can create a media section showing all your appearances in the media in a Presentation/PDF (slideshare plugin).

6. Skills and expertise. Don’t mention your management, business and consulting skills only. Include also something more personal: your human skills, abilities and characteristics… as it happens, this side of things is mainly what’s missing in our environment right now and rarities have an added value. Think about what you’re like as a human being, that’s the key!

7. Interests are key words through which you may be found. Catch the drift?

8. A blog makes your profile much more attractive and powerful.

9. Recommendations. Ask for recommendations from people who may have something interesting to say about you which is valuable.

10. Have you taken any courses that expand, improve and prove what you can do? Include them!

11. Move forward! This involves taking part in groups, setting up your own blog –did I mention that earlier?- and reviewing your profile for 10 minutes every week to streamline it.

12. Show what else you do. Do you have online presentations? Are you showing them?

13. Header. The header is the best opportunity available to position yourself. There are already too many experts in social media, senior community managers and marketing directors. If you’re doing what everyone else does, in what way are you standing out for me?

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How to Integrate the Social Web into your Business

February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

human mediaPerhaps you don’t know where to start, that’s ok. Every project, person or business requires something unique, a special treat, it’s a new adventure.

On the other hand, perhaps you are tired of listening terms such as social media, new media, human media or social business, social CRM and so on. I believe that it can be annoying when people talk too much about these “buzzwords,” let alone not showing real results or even giving a starting point. Please, we need something actionable and applicable from you, please.

Here you have my “no problemo” approach, I would like to provide you with some movements that may help in your path towards building an online presence. Find here some of the essential points for implementing the social web, social media and so, new media into your business.

How to implement the Social Web into your business

- Strategic formulation: design, structure, integration, implementation and the make-of of a strategy based on general and specific goals. Think about how this fits into the business model, it should be integrated within the overall business strategy and aligned with the offline marketing and communication. Also consider the role that SEO, digital marketing, creativity, web development, APPs and mobile marketing are playing.

– Training and guidance: A must for most of the group, this is something complicated because many brands either allocate one / two people to work on it or go for the outsourcing model. As we have seen many times and you probably know, Social Media is not an isolated case, neither will it do the magic. The real potential lies in integrating people and processes and making them work. You should be looking for interdepartmental work, which means involving all company areas in the online interaction. Make use of the training process to harness that opportunity and inspire those people.

Do not sell complicated to people who come to you to buy simple. Once you have opened their minds and hearts, it is the right time for using the the tools, platforms, APPs, channels and media more effectively, so they’ll have the tools to reach their goals - theirs, not yours.

- Social processes: interactive works, social media customer care, online-emotional touchpoints, community funnel, best practices handbooks (internal and external) and cross media. Basically, offline-online job transformation, taking departments and processes to the social web and developing extended functions.

- Social Media guidance, creation, distribution and leadership: choose someone who is close and in constant contact with your business. They are the ones who should create, distribute, exchange and share social objects: pictures, videos, posts, podcasts, etc. Don’t manage, but lead.

– Development, optimization and understanding of the Social Web Ecosystem: first select the tools, channels, APPs, mediums and platforms. Then develop a highly online-oriented strategy supported by let’s say, two main goals based on the intended typology, quirks and peculiarities. Finally allocate resources and schedule each of them. The result: you have already designed a customized online ecosystem for your business. The main idea is that it allows you to see the big picture of your online strategy.

- Community engagement: lead, build interactive bridges between brands and people, respond, redistribute and filter content, connect and interact with your audience. Say what you are going to do, how, where and with whom.

- Actions: ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas and more ideas. You have only one big commitment, being accountable for the brilliance, you are responsible for the online campaigns and social media actions that will impact your audience, but most importantly, it should be designed to reach your goals: monetization, branding, visibility, virality, direct sales, traffic, etc,

- Reputation, tracking and monitoring: online branding, naming, digital corporate identity, listening techniques (opportunities and threats). Sending reports about what is said about the brand within the online landscape. Furthermore, taking care of the brand, its reputation and carry on with a qualitative and quantitative brand analysis. What happens in our brand atmosphere is really useful in order to get the word out .

- Monetization: set up the techniques and methods which you would help you obtain the expected ROI. You are waiting to get something in return, aren’t you?

Is there any other advice that you would add about the implementation of new media in your business? What is your take on this?

Photo credit: conexus marketing.

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Filed Under: Business, Howto, New Media, Social Media, Strategy Tagged With: , , ,

15 Tips and Howto’s to Empower your Social Media Career

November 24, 2010 By 1 Comment

practical advice on social media

I’ve been asked several times for some students, that I should put together practical advice on going through the social media pathways and how to avoid the pitfall. Well the pitfall – meaning failure – is part of the game - However,  I can definitely take some concepts that best have been worked for me through these almost 4 years of adventures and experience in Social Media and list them.

15 Tips and Howto’s to Empower your Social Media Career

1. Hang out!

Meet people outside the Social Web. You’ll engage with them by meeting them personally in real-life. This is goal of Social Media. isn’t it?

2. Be an  entrepreneur

Start things, try, fail, make things happen, make business, set up social media initiatives, create needs, anticipate trends, trust in your gut…

3. Screw it, let’s do it!

Life spent wishing is life wasted

4. Manage your Social Media Time (idea by ChrisBrogan)

In order to engage, connect and interact with the community, you need to set up a social media policy, which allows you to manage your social media time, not for the sake of your time, but for creating the perfect relationship between the community and you.

  • Reading/listening: Spend 2/4 of your time reading and listening blogs, posts, updates, comments and so on…you’ll have a full understanding of what’s going on in your community, not to mention learning, thus gain insights and expand your knowledge, which is always great!
  • 1/4 Commenting: How do we expect people connect with us if we don’t reciprocate? We just expect comment from other people, but what about themselves? If we do so we’ll build a trust-based relationship with our audience and suddenly, we’ll realize that we’ve influencers and “high value partners”
  • 1/4 Creating: And the last one, create content, your content is important and is also essential to get you known – I’m not talking about quality and relevancy, we assume that – but at the end is auto-promotion, so my advice is promote your content 1 time for 20 times you promote others’ content.

5. WOM is your best friend

Nowadays, the WOM is the best marketing ever. The good news? In Social Media he’s our best friend, let’s see how we can make an effective use of him…

6. Social Media World

Offer social media platforms to collect feedback and at the same time-sharing and interacting.

7. Learn to say thank you

Say it! Do it publicly and please, customize your message, avoid mass untargeted messages.

8. Connect!

Connect your audience, create your tribe, start with a small group of people first. It’s a hard and slow process, it requires consistency, transparency charisma and imagination. But, let me tell you, that when you start seeing the results, it’s worth to make this effort.

As SethGodin says, you don’t need a keyboard to lead, you just need the desire to make something happen.

9. Network

Hell, yes! We’ve not talked about it yet!  Build a network, join social media associations or communities as Social Media Today, Social Media Marketing, word of mouth marketing association, third tribe marketing, mashable, techcrunch, adictos al social media, social mediopolis, life hacker or inbound marketing to name a few.

In all this groups, there’s a great amount of information exchange about social media and other related subjects. These are fantastic places to get in touch with what’s hot in social media, upcoming trends, but also to connect and engage with other professionals, enthusiasts and even businesses. Here, in Social Media, the opportunity has no name!

10. Breakeven point

Find you breakeven point – between professional and personal life. Establish beforehand which platforms are going to be for professional use and which ones for a more personal and private use – if you think you may have – In my case, I use Facebook for chilling, bragging, whining and so on with my people, I like to know what are they up to. I’m afraid, but unless I know someone who had me as a friend, I’m not going to friend her/him. However, they can always find you on LinkedIn, Twitter, foursquare, blogs…Does it make sense?

11. Multi-task

Be ready for being a multitask, owning your own Social Media brand, working as a freelance for big agencies, setting up synergies for collaborating in bigger projects, working for big brand, travelling, giving business talks, teaching Social media classes, posting regularly, commenting every single interaction, helping out others, having friends, family and even girlfriend/boyfriend…It’s OK to have 30 or 40 windows opened, it’s OK to have 100 passwords, is ok following and managing 10 communities, is Ok Posting each day in 5 or 8 blogs…at the end you are a Social Media Rockstar, right?

12. Always IN

Forget vacations, I said that because with Social Media you always should be on the top of the wave, doesn’t matter if it’s with a laptop or with a smart phone, always IN

13. Plan for failure

As we said before we’re on the gates to a new world, so there’s a lot to discover, learn and win. Nevertheless, as we don’t know what’s going to happen, you’d better have a plan B, C D and even E. Have always a contingency plan.

14. Your Spark

Everybody has a spark, if we take it from the foundation that we’re all different, and we won’t find another person identical to us. Then, as everybody has something that makes her/him unique – call it the Spark – You’ve one, Did you find it? Yes? How would you apply it? Is your Spark the ability to connect with people? To be open-minded? Catalyst for change? Heretic? Leader? Think about how you can use your Spark to boost your Social Media rock star Career…

15. Attitude

Did it mention before? A strong willing attitude for being remarkable, following your dreams or make a difference are sings that you are a social media rock star and if not, no worries, you can learn them, nobody is born being social media rock star.

What’s your opinion? What other tips would you add to the list? What’s left?

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Filed Under: Branding, Examples, Howto, Social Media, Tips Tagged With: , , , , , ,

40 Tips on Social Media for personal branding

November 17, 2010 By 1 Comment

One topic, which is discussed this days, and is also very hot is HOW TO use Social Media for personal branding, and yes, uncle Isra is going to strip it.

40 tips from Isra Garcia

Let’s move on, and talk about how we can boost our brand – either personal or business – using social media. I’ve gathered some powerful concepts that I’ve learned through this all this years. It’s been showed that they have worked for people really well – and hope for you too…I’m going to give you 40 tips for empower your brand using social media.

40 tips on Social Media for Personal Branding

  1. Be authentic: Each of us is completely different from the other, don’t communicate in lousy and boring way, don’t settle for good enough and do it for the best, be what you really want to be without imitate others. Sure you know how, right?
  2. Your identity: Did you find it? Nice now Stick with it everyday of your life!
  3. Share: Share, share…Sharing what can be from interest of others – It shouldn’t need to be your content, but others’ – will grant you with a respected voice that people will listen. Consequently, your public will start to see you as an authority in your field.
  4. It’s not about you: Not about me, neither about us, It’s about them…give them the voice, be empathic, try to focus on what they want form their own approach, not yours. Suddenly, everything changes! Surprise?
  5. Be Friendly: Think that every interaction give you the opportunity of being remarkable, how would you act?
  6. Start local: Before attempting to be the king of your country, try to be the king of your own place! Do you get the idea?
  7. Always practice the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, easy, isn’t?
  8. Realign yourself: Be what you want people see. Align yourself and don’t lose a single opportunity to market yourself!If I would like to hire you and we’ll see each other everyday, how would you act?
  9. You are the same: Transparency, probably the most important characteristic, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in front of the laptop or not, think in it as an extension of you. The more human you are, the more people will follow you.
  10. Never quit: Really? Don’t be everything for everybody, quit what doesn’t make you happy – and what doesn’t give you any money – You’ll say, what about what you said before? Stick with it and don’t quit! It can work sometimes, but…Do you remember the macho-man saying: “Winners never quit!” Screw it! “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time”
  11. Best Marketing ever: Your crowd, they have more power and influence than our brand, difficult to understand, but essential to assume. If you want to use them, you’ll get disappointed, instead they’ll use you, best thing to do, join, melt down and team up with them.
  12. We can do it: Attitude, there’s no bad skills, but bad attitudes, remember that people see you as you are – even if you are behind the networks – the only way we truly engage with people is having the right attitude
  13. No Sales pitches: If you do that at first sight and with everybody, you’re dead man!  The first step is engaging, after they’ll come to you, if they see us interesting, of course, they’ll buy from us.
  14. Build Credibility: Build a relationship, be interesting, listen, support your people, help them, talk with them, share with them and you’ll have it!
  15. You’d better take a seat: It’s gonna be a long journey, it doesn’t mean that because its social media it is going to grow faster – bigger yes – but not faster.
  16. Focus on make a different in your community: Understand your community, know what they want and focus on what they expect from you – and what not –  Do all of this, without asking nothing in return and before they’ll ask you. if you make a difference in their life you’ll be indispensable, and you know what it means, right?
  17. Set up your goals: short/mid/long-term goals as a strategy plan
  18. Coolhunter-trendstter: You should know what’s going on in your industry…What or Who Will Continue to Shape our Social Media World? The faster, the better…
  19. Privacy: be careful, Privacy is unbreakable, for them: don’t spam others with your messages, even if you think they’re interested in…for you: take this game seriously and think of you as a brand, keep what should be private, in private – forget permissions and control what people publish and say about you. If it’s not public why do you publish it? Think in how what you do in Social Media can impact on others – and on you -
  20. Keep your profiles consistent; Customize your profiles and updates to align with the values and uses of each social media platform – but at the same time, keep up a common theme through
  21. You are the brand: It’s hard to build a reputation if you keep changing, If you don’t switch your personality from time to time, why should your brand do it?
  22. you are your brand: And as you’ve grown up and developed skills, traits and abilities through the years, your brand requires a similar kind of development.
  23. Help: Help help help, no matter if it requires some time (not all your time) it will pay off for sure, you’ll have your reward
  24. Human Relations: remember, It’s all about human relations. Connecting in an honest way can bring in new supporters for your product or brand.
  25. Commitment; Everyone talks about passion, but commitment takes into account, if you’re committed you’ll success or at least you’ll will be respected and trust by the audience,
  26. The brand called you: Be consistent with the tone and approach, so all your profiles feel like you. Don’t forget people use social media to connect with a real person. Develop an identity you’re not only proud, but also you can stand behind.
  27. Be human: Think about the image you want to present. We use to act one way around in different situations, with the boss, our girlfriend, our best friends…even if we’re the same person.
  28. Productivity: Set a time to focus on your community, plan and put your efforts on keeping a regularity.
  29. Give: Create stuff that interest others and give it for free, it’s the first step to gain visibility and exposure
  30. Take care of yourself: Be aware about what people say about you. As you use monitoring tools for your clients, use them for you too!
  31. Reputation: Your reputation is built in what you do, what you get and how you get it. It’s important what people say about you, but more important is what you say about people.
  32. You’re not: Don’t try to be everywhere, realign the social media platforms with your strategy and goals
  33. Know your community: Know who is your audience and give your tribe what they want from you differently in each platform. Customize their need according with the target.
  34. Listen: In order to be understood, understand them first, truly understand them! Listen what they have – and want – to say, perhaps you’ll find that isn’t what you thought it was…
  35. Expectations: Clarify what you expect from your audience. Remember that you’ve build credibility on them, so they trust in you, don’t fail them
  36. Don’t be a real pain in the ass: Hey! Give them a breath, give them time to digest your content, it doesn’t matter if you share, create or comment it. Build a logical timeline where you interact with them and give them plenty of time between interaction.
  37. SM platforms; Identify each social platform, know its target and look for the ones that best meets your needs, then set up goals and milestones for each of them
  38. Leverage: This is about leverage! People can help you to get you known, but they’re busy.  If you want to make a great start, I’ll recommend you listening and commenting their posts
  39. Dislike: Honestly, not everyone is going to like you. You’d better accept it.
  40. Shut up and do it: Social Media takes commitment and so doing a little often is a better way of getting results and not showing up sometimes. Remember: if you only show up some of the time, what does that say about you?

Does it makes sense? What other tips would you add to the list?

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Filed Under: Branding, Howto, Social Media, socialnetworks, Tips Tagged With: , , ,

Social Media Framework

January 26, 2010 By 5 Comments

Have you ever thought in your social media framework? Since I’ve been here in the States – Oh! Did I mention it before? So yes, I’m in the United States researching and studying about social media trends, expanding my knowledge and gaining new ideas and approaches – I’ve thought in how I could empower other people by architecting and disassembling concepts and ideas for maximize their reach, build influence and harness the power of global communications and build relationships within a social media marketing perspective. So, I thought that explaining how you can manage your social media framework would be a good start, right?

To me, the social media framework aids comprehension of workflow experiences by describing their components, it also optimizes my social media workflow in an easier way since a framework may include components that are applicable to them all.

Why do you have to care about? because badly designed processes lead to slow and inefficient response of your audience, ineffective communication, wasted time, disappointing experiences and poor degree of engagement. Not to mention driving yourself to nowhere.

This is how I’d do it – Actually, it’s how I do it -

  • Did I mention the word sharing? Share news resources, tools, best practices, tips and guides through social bookmarking platforms.
  • Rock with Twitter: Use it heavily for different purposes such as, RT useful links, WOM, spread the news, share insights with professionals, learn what is hot now, real-time conversations, gain more affluence and traffic in your social networking platforms, support interesting initiatives, building an outstanding reputation being taken into account in the field I work on, promote your blog, look for trends topics , getting ideas and enlightening tips from brilliant people.
  • Your effort and sacrifice deserves being showed and shared for the benefit of others: Posting papers, concepts, frameworks, reports, projects, strategies, marketing plans or campaigns I’ve developed, so the job people can get insights from them.
  • Knowledge don’t belongs to you nor me, but to the universe: Spread what you know, share what others shared with you, teach what you’re good at, learn from everybody, write about how you put in practice these campaigns or explain how you reached that conclusion, which made you successful, but above all, quote your resources!
  • Fall in love in a “long-term relationship” with LinkedIn: Use it insistently for giving and receiving feedback, reading interesting posts, commenting on them, find your key connections and engage with them, share ideas in the groups discussions, also participating in Q&A (either giving advice or receiving it). Should increase your visibility, it will improve the chances of being contacted.
  • Have a break and have some fun on Facebook: Aim it to talk and engage with your friends. Create lists to giving different degree of permissions to your crowd and segmenting the information according to the content you usually share with them.
  • Don’t make waves, ride them: Use Google Wave for a collaborative tasks, develop projects, exchange ideas, brainstorming, conceptualize campaigns and seeing how others can enhance your work.
  • Grease the hub of your timing belt: Your blog, Do you love it? No? You must, because it’s the place where all your efforts, time, money and even romantic relationships are going to end up. All you do on Social Media has being meaningful to your blog. If not, I suggest you may want to reconsider your strategy. Give him a personality, a sense of humor, a purpose, a regularity,  a bottle of Möet if he wants it and you’ll have your reason to give the very best of yourself in this URL.
  • Managing and optimizing:  As I explained in my last post about the social media resolutions for 2010, it’s essential define your strategy, set your goals and  monitoring your results but, it’s vital not being overwhelmed by its magnitudes. Hence, write down every procedure, pattern or system you follow to implement your social media workflow and start developing a schedule with all the tasks you performs every day, together with the time spent, the activities, the allowance, restrictions, and of course, deviations.
  • Plan for failure: If it doesn’t work, try changing and adjusting things to your needs. I know how it works to me, for you instead it can be slightly different. Be aware that you need to have hundred of bad ideas to have 1 or 2 great ideas. Do you get the idea?

Does it works for you? How would you enhance it? What would you add? Do you have your own social media framework? I’d like to know your thoughts…

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Filed Under: Human Business Interactions, Social Media, social networking, Strategy Tagged With: , ,

Social Media with Ease

December 7, 2009 By 16 Comments

I’m here to talk plain and frankly from my approach about Social Media with ease, so everybody will be able to understand the essential role Social Media is playing in today’s business world.

What is Social Media about?

I’m sure we can find thousands of different definitions on the Web and all very valid and even more accurate than mine, but that is what Social Media is about, sharing and interacting for a common enrichment. As I said above, here I leave my view…

Social Media is about giving value, being social and communicative with everybody who cross your path,  all that is moving from traditional  communication “you to all” (press, television, billboards, etc.) to a communication “all to all”.

Recently, it was about providing information to the folks, so the communication was going only in one-way street. On the other hand, Social media concerns about the people, giving them a voice and granting them a power to change things and make decisions that can affect very straight our brand, either in a profitable or harmful way. Therefore, communication becomes a two-way street, where public and brands interact, storing and distributing content created by all different natures, for instance. Its content allows to take part, collaborate and distribute information “to all, from all”. What’s more, influencing Social Media takes profit of the “social” phenomena to strengthen the emotional ties that bind people together, creating fans instead of customers.

Social Media is not only about creating and sharing content, but the best experiences achieving when we’re listening, reading, discussing, blogging, commenting, or giving feedback to the rest of the crowd.

In short, social media is about building an effective communication between brands and their environment, helping them to merge a strategy in each social working area

Why Social Media?

Using Social Media for our companies is accept the reality, which today’s environment demands. We’re tired, we need change, we need to have fun, we need to love but above all we need brands, which be authentic, reliable and truly inspiring – not to mention BELIEVE in –  We live in an over-communicated society, where tones of messages try to gain a little of space in our minds, but now the wheel has changed hands. Those traditional advertising methods “I communicate – you receive“ are no longer valid, that’s water under the bridge - or it’s not as efficient as they were before (for being tender to those who think the  conventional communication still has a place in this scenario where we are living just now).

If we intend to innovate, we’d better speak customer’s language, which means we should melt down with , listen , understand them and offer the content that best meets their needs.

Advantages of using Social Media

  • Stays closer to the younger audience, so makes easier predict trends
  • Strengthen relationships between folks and brands
  • Builds loyalty, turning a customer into a fan – they’re the ones who are going to cross the street to buy only from you -
  • Differs from other media reaching the audience in a less intrusive and in a more original way.
  • Connects the brand with a more immediate environment
  • Makes your brand be seen more sociable, familiar and therefore, popular
  • Goes viral: the brand will reach more people in less time - the more you use Social Media, the more spreads -
  • Trustworthy and efficient research tool
  • Continuous Feedback

Social Media Tools

Communication: Blogs, micro blogs, social networks and events.

Sharing content: wikis, google reader, social news and opinion sites.

Multimedia: photo-sharing sites, videos and music sharing, and Live casting.

Opinions and reviews: Review of products/services, communities of FAQs and Wiki-questions

Entertainment: Advertaiment, virtual worlds and game sharing.

Others: Information aggregators

As a sample…

One fact that illustrates the great benefits of Social Media is the landslide victory that achieved Barack Obama during the 2008 cycle in the U.S. election, where Obama elected president, it was clearly Social Media, which was one of the several key factors that gave Obama the differential advantage. The Obama’s organization used Social Media and its tools for spread the word in and connect to his potential audience – also known as fans – It allowed the awareness campaign’s organization, creating an expanded social consciousness and let the people were more closer to Obama in a more intimate setting.

In fact, the White House continues using Social Media to connect citizens with the president and for many more purposes…

What is your take? What do you think about Social Media? I’d like to hear from you.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Howto, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

How to meassure the ROI on social media

May 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

roiIf the social media has advertising attached to it, you measure ROI by the number of views / connections in the network versus the ad rate. You determine the revenue generated from the ad and compare it to the expense of placing the ad. Your ROI would also be impacted by the value of the network you are interested in. For example, if you are promoting meat and animal products, you probably would find a vegan social network a pretty low ROI target. On the other hand, if you were promoting ecologically friendly cleaning products there might be a peripheral interest for that vegan group that rated a higher network value.”

“Social media as a marketing tool on a small scale is going to be disappointing at best. The nature of “social” interactions via the web require a large number of people in order to be compelling. that is to say that if you have 100 people on your social media site connected with your light manufacturing firm, what is going to compel those people to return? Now if your talking about running adds on twitter, the story is different, however you need to consider your audience as well. are the masses using twitter going to be interested in what you have to offer enough to pay attention to your feed? Its best not to worry about the ROI directly, but rather look at social networking in the context of a broader “grass roots” campaign to build name recognition and brand identity. Leverage a blog and a social site with links to twitter, facebook or other well established sites. Give it away until it hurts, then see if they flock to your cause. Besides, doing small things and leveraging big things costs almost nothing, but might get huge returns. That’s the best I can offer on such a general basis.”

“go to www.Stevegasser.com. He has a bunch of stuff on social media marketing“

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Filed Under: ROI, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,
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