15 Ways To Be HUMAN Online and Not A Screen Name

Jason Baer at Convince and Convert has an excellent post today on the 9 Ways to Humanize Your Brand (with real Humans). It got me to thinking about how we try and humanize ourselves as much as possible in the Internet landscape.

I know that I try on a daily basis to be as human as possible online. I don’t want to be seen as another social media marketer trying to sell his/her wares over the Internet. I’m just me and me is the best I’ve got.

Jason has 9 tips to Humanize your brand and I will add 11 more tips:

1. Build and optimize a blog
2. Reach out to other bloggers in the category for guest posts
3. Syndicate content to vertical aggregation sites
4. Publish white papers and ebooks, and/or conduct Webinars
5. Create a few killer presentations and get them on SlideShare
6. Do at least a little video blogging to make him/her three dimensional
7. Hustle for speaking engagements
8. Get on Twitter and make sure he/she sets aside time to really engage people
9. Make sure current company customers know all about the initiative and are invited to participate

These are great points and I wanted to add in some small business owner pointer to humanize your personal and professional brand online.

11. Join an offline networking organization: I am involved in a group called Rainmakers which allows me to network in the offline world and then connect it to the online environment or vice versa. This allows you to start connecting with more and more people over the course

12. Attend TweetUps and parties centered around social media. I would rather redirect you to an awesome post by Corvida of SheGeeks: Using Social Media To Get Our Of Your House.

13. Join Geographically Base Social Networks. Ning has a huge database of niche social networking that will allow you to meet and start conversations with professionals and other people in your area. I am a member of Smaller Indiana and it has given me a massive amount of exposure as a HUMAN and not a screen name.

14. Join a Network like Flickr or Facebook for Picture Galleries. This is not meant to say you should post every party or outing you have been involved in. This is just a way to post pictures or your family and friends. People buy into people and not products. In this emotionally charged world, a brand is the people behind it and not the billboard on the side of the highway.

15. Authenticity. Authenticity. Be Authentic. I preach about this non-stop. Authentic communication and content is key to humanizing yourself in social media. Talk about what you do and add personality into your posts and usage of social media. I can pick up the Wall Street journal every morning. I want to read REAL content.

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Social Media? Networking? Good For Small Business?

Ricardo Bueno has an excellent post at Ribeezie called Social Networking: Is It Good For Small Business?  He piggbacks off of a Seth Godin quote from the Amex’s Open Forum:

“Networking is always important when it’s real and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. What the internet has allowed is an enormous amount of fake networking to take place.”

This quote hit me simply because I have been debating on how to make social media more effective in a marketing environment.  The small business marketing world in Indianapolis is a buzz with the concept of using social media marketing to drive revenue. So how do we go about using social media to drive revenue? Brand development? Pure enjoyment?

Ricardo and Seth hit it right on the head: Genuine Relationships.

When using social media it is extremely important to take time in developing your network on a personal level. The concept is the same with Offline Networking in a group like Rainmakers Marketing Group. Offline and Online networking are extremely similar in many aspects when it comes to mutual respect between individuals.

Respect me. I will respect you.

Add in a personal thing or two. Do you have kids? What do you enjoy most out of life?

I would rather not have posts constantly talking about your new blog post or new product offering. Tell me something that makes it personal.

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Taking Social Media Beyond the Comfort Zone

I was reading through The Next Web and came across a post called the Perfect Viral Marketing in 2010. I thought to myself, “I love viral marketing so why not check out the video that Boris listed underneath the post. The video is an absolutely brilliant video produced by Slate V on Youtube.

I doubt that marketing companies will ever take the concept of viral marketing to the point where they are paying actors to actually relate to a consumer group. The concept is absolutely hilarious.

There is something to learn from the video from a marketing perspective. When you are building and implementing a marketing strategy try to get into the heads of your target market. Don’t take it to the point where you are PERSONALLY entering into their lives.

The concept is worthy enough to note. Watch the video!

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Part 3: Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Attention to Action

We spend a lot of time talking about increased exposure for your company or personal brand in social media. We spend countless hours reading on how to gain attention to our content or service offerings. Personally. I spend quite a bit on Google Reader trying to stay ahead of the curve and consume the next big idea.

Many small business owners concentrate on one aspect of social media: the attention of the users. It is mainly the increased exposure to potential clients that starts the interest wheel turning in many owner’s heads. This is the old marketing strategy of the more you do the more eyes you will hit. We need to take it a bit further than just building brand recognition. It is hard to measure brand recognition in terms of return on investment.

Initially when entering into a social media marketing strategy companies need to think about the attention gaining concepts for the plan. Whether you are doing a contest, spending time in the networks, or launching a new platform it is important to initially focus on the attention aspect of social media.

What is truly important (in a business sense) is the action the user takes to buy and/or become interested in your product. You have all the attention you can muster! How do you turn the user’s attention into action.

4 Ways to Change Attention to Action

1. Free eBook:

Write a short book about your expertise. Are you an accountant? A business coach? Maybe you are a plumber who is just getting involved online? Write a quick page turner on some topics that will be beneficial to your readers. Offer it for a free download and capture their email address. This will allow you to build your database while already zeroing in on interested prospects. Chris Brogan has done an excellent job at this.

2. Blog or Email Subscription

In everything you do in social media it is extremely important to always have a subscription box for users to subscribe to your thoughts and offerings.

A great email tool for wordpress is Subscribe2 or the FeedBurner Email Subscription.

3. Promotional Banners or Links for your Profile

Always have a link present (image or text) that offers a discount on your services. You can also have a link directed to your company website that allows users to invest more time in learning about your services. This is a huge example of way to drive your attention users to your website and sell them on your services.

4. Gain Their Trust

You need to become involved in the communities that potentially may be a revenue source for your company. Take the time to respond to questions, ask questions, invest in writing great content, and helping people out. This is a huge aspect of changeing attention to action. The steps towards the buying pattern of a user has a lot to do with trust in the social media environment. Gain their trust and offer them something to hard to put down.

Gaining the trust of a user is the more important of the four steps listed above. User’s attention is not a bad thing but in order to measure your  ROI  you must take some of them to the action steps.

Always measure and document what you are doing. Time management is key.

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Part 1: Social Media Marketing For Small Business: Prioritize, Plan and Execute

We are constantly selling.

Whether a sole proprietor or a multi-employee company, small business owners are constantly selling themselves and their service/product. Most of the time the two go hand in hand.

From traditional marketing to email marketing, there are a multitude of ways to go about marketing your products and services. Social Media has just recently come to the limelight in the small business circle. There has been a recent push to utilize the world of social media to

Image via Wikipedia

take advantage of the multitude of eyes and ears in this space.

At Brandswag we talk a lot about using social media for your small business marketing strategy. The biggest hurdle in explaining social media is the issue of weighing the benefits against the time spent on social media platforms. If you are thinking of social media in terms of a sales cycle you should stop. Let me say that again…. Just stop!

By looking at social media as a sales cycle it keeps you from seeing the absolute value and benefits of using platforms like Facebook, Myspace,  Twitter, and LinkedIN (to name a few). If you view your use of social media as an instant ROTI (return on time investment) you are going to become frustrated and give up before the magic happens.

Social media takes time. There needs to be sense of importance and goal setting when using social media for your small business. You need to be able to set aside the time every day to check your social media sites and update your blog.

If you have goals set and a plan laid in place to utilize social media you will succeed with creating brand awareness, organic search engine optimization, and becoming a trusted adviser in your local industry.

It is extremely important for you to prioritize, plan, and execute. Execute. Execute. Execute.

Prioritize

Take some time to travel in and out of the different social media platforms. Figure out which sites make sense for you to spend some time. Check out a previous post of mine (in collaboration with Brogan, Rowse, and Sanders) on how to be productive and choose the right social networks.

Find four to five social media platforms that cater to what you are wanting to accomplish.

Plan

Figure out how much time you can committ to using social media. If you want to set aside 30 mins a day to take care of your sites.. DO IT! By all means, the time involvement is important but frequency is just as important. Community users want to know you care and are active in the site.

Execute

Follow Nike when they scream JUST DO IT through all of their advertising. Execute your plan with perfection, create meaningful content, and communicate with your friends online. You can prioritize, dream, and plan all you want but if you do not execute…. well, I wont have anything to say to you.

By executing and joining in the conversation you are developing your brand every single day you spend on social media.

This is part 1 of a 5 part series on how to help small business owners understand, utilize and become successful using social media.

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Home Bases, Outposts, and Frontiers: Using Social Media

Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse have been discussing the concept of  home bases and outposts to describe the use of Social Media in their daily routines. Darren talked about the concepts of homebases and outposts in his post: Home Bases and Outposts: How I Use Social Media in My Blogging. From the post:

A home base is a place online that you own, that is your online ‘home’. For me my home bases are blogs but for others they will be other types of websites.

Outposts are places that you have an online presence out in other parts of the web that you might not ‘own’.

Chris Brogan also talks about the concept of Outposts in his post, Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy. Chris explains that an outpost is another way to define a social media service that brings awareness to the homebase, much like an outpost in mulitary terms.

I decided to go a step further and add in the frontier. Dictionary.com describes frontier as:

A: the part of a country that borders another country; boundary; border.

B: the land or territory that forms the furthest extent of a country’s settled or inhabited regions.

My social media definition of frontier: a website or service you have a presence on but rarely go. This is a site where you may have an RSS feed plugging your most-used social networks (Twitter) or your blog. The concept of frontier can be compared to Chris Brogan’s idea of a passport but shed in a little different light.

Above you will see an illustrated example of my use in Social Media. This is a mesh between Chris and Darren’s ideas, as well as my previous idea of the 4 Touch Points Model for productivity in social media.

In order to stay productive in Social Media I try to use four sites that cater to four different aspects of my life: education, social development, business interaction, and business productivity. You can read more about what these four sites mean in my being productive post. The four social media sites where you spend the most time would be categorized as outposts. I use the “home base” to center my four outposts and vice versa.

The frontier sites sit on a completely different level. Examples could range anywhere from Digg to Technorati or even Twitter. The frontier is a place where you have a presense (RSS FEED) but you have not cultivated the actually site in regards to your time. They also represent different combinations (overlaps) of the outpost sites.

This is a work in progress and I would love your thoughts. What should be added? How do you use social media? I am open for ideas! What is your outposts and frontiers?

The Deciding Factor of Becoming a Social Media Expert

The business world has its share of experts and/or consultants. You can find a wide array of professionals in practically every business topic imaginable.

The Social Media world also has a fair share of “experts” and it can be difficult at times to figure out how the title was earned (self-proclaimed or not). Recently, Steve at Social Media Soap Box decided to investigate whether or not the term “expert” can be attributed correctly. He makes some great points on why some of us still “shirk” at the idea of a social media expert. One of the four determining factors from Steve’s Post:

“I think it’s safe to say that there are few things that evolve as quickly, as dramatically, and within such short time frames, as social media.  It’s hard just to keep up and understand the implications of these changes, much less build a foundation of knowledge and experience that one would traditionally need in order to be considered an expert.“

Louis Gray and Chris Brogan have also weighed in on the topic of what it takes to be a  social media expert.

In his post, Social Media Experts are the New Webmasters, Louis states that the individual’s “efforts to rebrand as social media experts will be short-lived and futile.” Louis encourages the self-proclaimed social media experts of the world to stick with their traditional expertise (marketing, communications, PR) and add social media into the mix as a foundation builder.

In the post What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know, Chris Brogan calls upon the self-proclaimed SM experts to focus on the strategic and tactical aspects of social media. A social media expert should be familiar with everything from “how your role ties to marketing, PR, advertising, R&D, finance, HR, sales” to having at least “five stats worth knowing for any blog/website.”

I have been debating on the concept of a social media expert because, frankly, I have wanted to give myself the title. What I have come to realize… there is one factor you need in order to be properly titled a social media expert.

1. The True ROI Expert

If you are touting yourself as a social media expert you are either:

• A. Selling your expertise in a B2B relationship
• B. Selling your expertise in a B2C relationship

Whether you are categorized in the A or B category it is extremely important that you can show potential clients a return on investment in social media. How do you do this? Gain success with current clients. The concept is simple but the process can be hard.

Have you helped a company or individual gain success in the social media world? Have you been able to map an increase of sales based on a communications strategy in social media? Have you seen increased visibility and traffic to a clients website?

You can have a wealth of knowledge in platforms and applications but if you cannot create success for your clients…. your title is a mute point.

Create success for a current client or even in your own business. Use it as the foundation to support your social media “expert” title.

If you can use social media to create success… you deserve the title of social media expert.

Thank you to Michael Fruchter for turning me onto the Social Media Soap Box.

Online and Offline Networking: Connect the Two

The past couple of posts at KyleLacy.com have been about the value of a relationship driven model of social networking. The process of connecting to individuals on and off the web is an extremely important idea that needs to be embraced.

Chris Brogan has always done an excellent job at giving tips on connecting to your readership, as well as, social media friends and acquaintances. He wrote recently on the Five Ways to Connect and Add Value to your networking practices. I thought I would add my own spin on connecting on and offline.

1. Combine Online and Offline Connections

In any business centered social networking group in an offline environment being a connector is a huge priority to most members. In Indianapolis we have Rainmakers, the Chamber of Commerce, and BNI (plus many more).

Personally, I am a member of the Rainmakers Marketing Group. We have hub meetings all over the state of Indiana and we are approaching 3000 members in the community. The group has recently launched a social media platform for the members called: Let’s Make It Rain. The community has allowed for members to network online and move the relationships to an offline meeting (whether lunch or coffee). This has increased the potential for strategic relationships because of the power of connecting 24/7 in an online environment.

I use the sites Let’s Make it Rain and Smaller Indiana to align myself with professionals I may not meet at a Rainmakers Marketing event. If you can use both networking mediums (web and events) to grow your network you have a better chance of connecting with the right people!

Combine the two models to get the most out of networking (whether business of personal).

2. If You Want To Be Interesting, Be Interested

This follows the second guideline on the Chris Brogan post, Connecting Other People. A fellow FriendFeeder, Mona N. (check out her blog), posted a feed that had this image.

This image speaks volumes when pertaining to the concept of the value of connection in social media and networking.

If you want to be interesting to other people you need to be conscious of what they are needing in return. If someone sends you business, write them a note or send them a gift card!

Always be thinking about the individuals who helped you get to where you are today. In the small business world and even in social media this is the most valuable concept you can and SHOULD remember.

Pay it forward. Always, pay it forward. Take interest in what your friends are posting. Take interest in what your clients are doing (other than your project.

Be Interesting. Take value in what others are offering. Connect with your online friends in an offline environment. Make the community a rich combination of community and influence.

Social Media has huge potential to help companies all over the world connect with each other. It is our place to help that dream become reality.

Redefining Innovation in Social Media: Adaptation

Social Media Innovation is a huge topic among early adopters of technology in cyberspace. Talk about an over-used phrase! The term social media is already dieing in the minds of the technologically savvy. And innovation?

First, let’s define the terms from Wikipedia:

• Innovation : may refer to both radical and incremental changes in thinking, in things, in processes or in services (Mckeown, 2008).

• Social Media : the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings.The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

It makes sense to couple the terms together to create a definition for beta products, new platforms, and applications on the web. However there is a new way to look at innovation in Social Media. I read a post from Brandon Coon titled: Redefine Innovation. In the post Brandon talks about the concept of innovation in business and technology:

“We relate the word innovation with companies like Google and new products like the Internet, Social Networks, or Blogging and innovation is all of these things.  But innovation can also be different ways to do business.”

“Always be trying to invent new products, services, ideas.  But almost more important is that we always find a way to make our business model better, more profitable, and more (invent a word to go here).”

You are hip to the beat if you are on the next best thing in social media. Beta applications and products are released on a daily basis and become slightly overwhelming (except for Louis Gray who has the uncanny ability to be on all networks).

The only thing I hear sometimes is innovation, new applications, and beta tests.

This may be an old thought. This may be something that has been discussed in the community driven world of social media. Perhaps… I thought I would expound upon it: Turning to Adaptation instead of Innovation.

I have found it difficult to keep up with the countless number of social networks out there. I have decided to become an adapter instead of an adopter.

• Adaptation: are traits that have been selected by natural selection

The concept of traits being selected by natural selection can be applied to social media. When we are investing time into a social community we are building respect among members, as well as, sharing information back and forth. By natural progression, as users, we start to single out certain traits of a site that could be changed or improved. This is the beautiful concept of adapting a process into something better.

The concept of becoming a continuous adapter instead of an early adopter could be a post in itself.

It is encouraging to see members taking the necessary means to help make a site better instead of joining and spreading out over new platforms.

We don’t always have to be radical. The concept of being rational can make that much MORE of a difference.

When a social media community helps the site adapt, in my opinion, that is when the magic happens.

Social Media Consultants’ Top 2 Dangers and the Solutions

I love social media. I love it. No question about it.

Through all the giddy love and unquestionable dedication to social media in the past few months, I have realized one thing. There is fine line to draw when it comes to embedding yourself into the social media world, especially as a business owner and social media consultant.

The Dangers of Social Media:

Danger 1: Loss of Productivity in Your Offline Work Environment

When I first started getting involved in sites like FriendFeed, Plaxo, LinkedIn, and Smaller Indiana I started to see a slow decrease of my productivity in my work flow. I was spending so much time writing blogs, commenting in FriendFeed, and searching for new content my Clients were starting to suffer. I was missing a few deadlines and not getting the sleep I needed to run a successful and productive company.

I have read more than a few posts in FriendFeed pertaining to this topic. When you become entrenched in a social community you grow to love the content and the people on the site. What do we do when we love something? Invest in it. Plain and Simple.

Solution

• Time Management: Try to set a certain amount of time aside for social media once a day. Set a goal to spend 30-60 mins in the morning and 30-60 mins in the evening (this is just an example). Maybe you decide to spend time on social media at night after you get home. Maybe it is on your lunch break. Manage your time and stick to it.

• Crowd Sourcing: Use your social media communities to help with your work! I recently needed some ideas of where to find stock pictures of run-down gas stations. I posted the question on FriendFeed and within 2 minutes, I had 6 responses! Social Media communities are filled with extremely intelligent and talented people. USE THEM!

Danger 2: The Curse of Knowledge

Most of us on the social media circuit are self-proclaimed social media experts. We love to be the early adopters. We love to try every new and shiny beta out there. We debate and talk about certain sites to the point of beating the conversation to death.

Owning a company that caters to small businesses, I have found myself ROCKED with the curse of knowledge. Most small business owners are not engrained into social media. LinkedIN and Plaxo are the extent in which they enter into the social community realm. For social media tycoons and experts the curse of knowledge can be detrimental when consulting to your small business clients.

“Have you ever tried Twitter? You should really check it out.” ***blank stare*** “Okay, let’s go back to LinkedIN and Plaxo.”

Solution:

It is simple. Remember that the social media fanatics are a completely different crowd than most small business owners. I have tried to slow myself down when discussing social media with a prospective client. I tend to get really excited and go on tangents of social media effectiveness and crowd sourcing in FriendFeed (blah blah blah).

• Get to the source of the pain. Maybe you are overwhelmed by all the sites out there? Maybe you need some help in finding the right sites and managing the content to the sites? You want to get into blogging? The Basics? Sure!

The greatest lesson I have ever learned is actually from the Sandler Sales Course, which I would love to take some day. Ask questions. Get to the source of the problem. Don’t overwhelm with knowledge and wealth of information.

Most people could care less about the amount of knowledge you have about social media. They already know you are good…..They are meeting with you. They want to know how YOU are going to solve THEIR problems. They don’t care about the new THING in social media. They care about how it helps them.