Posted in Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Social Strategy, productivity, small business, social media, social media marketing

4 comments

14/04 2009

Social Media According to Zhang Yu

I am re-reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

Let me be clear. When I say I am re-reading it actually means I am reading it for the first time, a second time. It is amazing the kind of insight you take away from a book when you read it through different parts of life. It has been a couple of years since I picked up the book and a section about adapting caught my eye.

Zhang Yu : Adaptation means not clinging to fixed methods, but changing appropriately according to events as is suitable.

We are in a phase of adaptation in the world of marketing communications. With the advancement of the Internet (mainly the growth of commercial social media) a new phase of communication is quickly becoming a premiere way to connect with a demographic. But..

You have to adapt.

If you do not adapt to the changing business environment.. you will be lost in a world that is moving faster and faster with every moment. It is important to destroy the learning curve that is forcing multitudes of companies to rethink the way they communicate with their clients and potential clients.

Remember that adapting and changing is not an easy thing to do but it needs to be done. The key is to learn and soak in as much as you can when it comes to business communication. We are all in this changing environment and some are adapting faster than others.

The key is to adapt, strategize, and execute….

and repeat.

This Means War? (killerblog.com)
When to NOT Use Social Media (readwriteweb.com)
Is social media turning mainstream? (martinspalette.blogspot.com)
Thoughts on the MA in Social Media (thewayoftheweb.net)

Posted in Speaking Event, indianapolis, social media

0 comments

14/04 2009

Flickr a Tweet in the Facebook. Speaking at Fundraising 2.0

I will be speaking at the Fundraising 2.0 Conference on Friday put on by the Association for Fundraising Professionals. There is an amazing list of speaker from the city of Indianapolis and it is going to be AWESOME! Check out the information below.

—————————————-

The web isn’t what it used to be.

Social networking is here and here to stay. Can you Flickr a Del.icio.us Tweet in the Facebook? Would you even want to if you could? Obama used it, raised millions and fundraisers raised eyebrows.

Studies show that all ages are using these media in some fashion, but how do you tell what is right for your organization and where to start? How do you spread the word without spreading yourself too thin? Well, if you’re ready to learn, you need: Fundraising 2.0 – Raising Money on the Social Media Landscape
AFP’s Spring Conference will give you the quick and dirty on how to Digg the Newsvine if you Stumbleupon an RSS Feed. We’ll help you determine exactly what social networks are best to accompany your organization’s fundraising plan and how to use them efficiently to meet your objectives. Hear from the experts and walk away with a manageable toolkit to get started.

Web 2.0 – It’s here to stay (at least until 3.0)

8:30 Hazel Walker, BNI – The social media movement (an overview)

9:15 Mitch Maxson, MediaSauce – Best Practices, Practical applications (what’s working)

Build it and they will donate – A How-To Workshop!

10:00 Erik Decker, Pro Blog Service– Tools and design (what to use, how to use it right)

11:00 Kyle Lacy, Brandswag – Productive Social Media (Impact in 30 minutes a day)

Learn more about the speakers here!

Where: Riverwalk Conference Center
When Friday, April 17, 2009
7:30 am Registration and breakfast
8:00 am Workshop begins

Cost: $75 for AFP members (Scholarship assistance may be available)
$95 nonmembers

Thanks to our sponsor!

Posted in Social Strategy, social media, social networking

2 comments

14/04 2009

Being Social is Better than Silence

It seems fairly obvious doesn’t it? The art of human interaction is built off of many things but mainly communication. You can define communication in a variety of ways but it still rooted in sharing of ideas between two individuals.

We want to interact. We want to be heard. We want someone to listen.

You have to be social in order to facilitate human interaction. The same goes with social media.

When talking with business owners about using social media there are the metrics and values that are attributed to lead generation and customer retention. You can talk about the massive amounts of eyeballs an ad can hit or the customer service value Zappos and Comcast has delivered.

But the main point is this…

There is someone talking about you somewhere. Wouldn’t you rather be involved in the conversation than not

Being social is better than silence and listening is just one key to success in social media.

Social Media Three For One (marketing.blogtanker.com)
The Social Media Stalemate (altitudebranding.com)
The Best Social Strategy: First Know Thyself (thesocialorganization.com)

productivity, social media

5 comments

13/04 2009

7 Tips to Maximize Plaxo

Plaxo? huh? I know at least two of the eyeballs reading this post thought… “Why is he writing about Plaxo?”

Frankly, I don’t hear or read much about Plaxo. Why not? It is still a viable tool to be used in terms of business networking. In light of the past-Easter weekend, I thought I would put a list together to help with the use and optimization of Plaxo. The following 25 tips are things I have learned by using Plaxo and what I have gained by reading along the way.

1. Upload a picture. This should already be common knowledge for the majority of you. We want to see a face. No more excuses. Scan a college or beauty picture is you have to!

2. Feed your blog into your profile. Go to Edit Profile–>Websites

3. Add your powerpoint (via Slideshare) to your Plaxo feed. If you are a speaker and want the world to know what you are talking about… add your slidedecks to your Plaxo feed. To learn how check out: Add SlideShare to your Plaxo Profile.

4. Synch your Address Book. Plaxo Plaxo has the ability to synchronize with address book from Outlook Express, Hotmail, Windows Mobile, AOL, LinkedIN, Windows Mail, Mac, and Google. If you make a change in one of the multiple address books… the change is made universally across all platforms.

5. Maximize Plaxo Pulse. Plaxo Pulse is the social stream you can find on your profile page. Every social media site is starting to have the waterfall-effect-social-stream (see: your Facebook wall).

6. Invite Your Trusted Connections to Join You on Plaxo. Notice I underlined TRUSTED. Do not import your entire address book to Plaxo because they ask. Of course they ask! They are wanting as many invitations to leave your hands as possible. Only invite the people that will not be offended by you spamming them with Plaxo invites.

7. Automate Your Plaxo Status Bar with Ping.FM. If you are using multiple networks like LinkedIN, Facebook, and Twitter you can automate a status update using a site called Ping.FM. Ping lets you send one status update that will hit all of your networks. This will save you a small amount of time in the long run but remember to keep personally visiting the sites as well. Add that human flavor into the mix!

I Don’t Care If You Are On Facebook and Twitter (kylelacy.com)
Social Network Tools (From AlertThingy to Zemanta) (edbatista.com)
HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Status Updates (mashable.com)

Corporate Strategy, business, corporate blogging

4 comments

13/04 2009

Jason Falls to Speak at Special Event in Indianapolis!

My company, Brandswag is proud to sponser social media genius Jason Falls at a special event coming in May. Here are the details:

Confluence is very excited to announce social media expert Jason Falls of SocialMediaExplorer.com will speak at the May 27 Confluence NorthNetwork event.

His topic will be “The Future of Social Media for Corporations.”

Jason is the director of social media for Doe-Anderson, a brand-building agency in Louisville. He is also the co-founder of the Social Media Club Louisville. Jason is a widely-respected speaker at conferences and special events throughout the country. He speaks about how social media can build corporate brands, and how corporations and organizations can use social media. His blog is one of the leading blogs on the subject of social media.

Registration begins at 2:30, and Jason will begin speaking at 3:00. The cost for the event is $20, and you can purchase tickets at the Confluence website. Members come free – and membership only costs $20/month for access to all 3 Confluence events. The event will be at the Blu Martini, at 96th & Gray Rd.

(Social media rock star Chris Brogan even says “Jason rules.“)

Limited Space: Secure Your Seat by Purchasing an Advance Ticket Today

Marketing, Social Strategy, social media, social media marketing

3 comments

13/04 2009

Why Banks Should Listen to Social Media

I was in a recent conversation with an owner of a local advertising firm in Indianapolis and we were discussing the merits of social media with banks. In my mind, any business can benefit in some way from using social tools on the Internet. Even if the only strategy is to listen and respond… that is better than not listening at all… right?

Nielsen recently partnered with NeuroFocus, the global leader in neuro-marketing, and released a study focused on the banking industry. There were some startling facts. You can find the entire study (here).

I read the report and here is what I walked away with:

Feelings of stability, solidity, partnership, empathy, and understanding scored highest.
Clutter free, humanized web interaction that was different from everything seen earlier scored the highest – time to invest in web site redesign
Empathy is most important: Consumers want to hear that banks understand their pain. Claims of “sacrifices” and applying “hard work” did not resonate as well.
Blogs work: Blog postings – even those written by parties with a vested interest in the subject – were deemed to be the most effective form of written advocacy among consumers.

If you needed any more evidence that now is the time to step up in the banking industry and take advantage of social media… there it is.. easy to read and right in front of you.

Partnership and human interaction can be accomplished by using social media as a form of communication with your clients. We want to know you CARE about what we are experiencing.

Take that cold outward demeanor and turn it into a loving embrace… and it will be welcomed.

“The strongest message consumers want to hear from banks is how much their bank empathizes with their pain. These are neurological insights that banks cannot afford to ignore right now,” said A.K. Pradeep, CEO of NeuroFocus. Nielsen, 3/31/09

Internet Marketing Ads Business (wealthyways4you.com)
Replacing ANTI-Social Marketing (tedshelton.blogspot.com)
Alex Jeffreys Student Blogs Revisited: Is Your Problem That You’re Unlike Alex? (stephenbray.com)
How to Save Newspapers? Radically Restructuring to Dominate the Digital Media Landscape (seomashup.blogspot.com)

Marketing

4 comments

11/04 2009

The Value of Ink and How It Grows My Business

We are in a tough economy. Now more than ever YOU need to stand out from the rest.

Remember those sleepless nights trying to figure out how to better market your company? Your competition was awake with you… thinking the same things.

I wanted to give a quick idea for making a impact with current and potential clients: notecards. Every time you meet with someone. Every time you get a referral or a new client.

Sit down and write a note to that person. Tell them it was nice to meet them. Tell them that you are excited to meet again. You will be amazed how far a handwritten note can go in this day and age.

In the Internet age.. Ink still has a place.

and in my opinion.

It always will.

Micro-Blogging, Social Strategy, business, twitter

9 comments

11/04 2009

I Don’t Care If You Are On Facebook and Twitter

There are hundreds of thousands of ways you can use social media.

Facebook… Twitter… Vimeo… YouTube… LinkedIN… SmallerIndiana… Plaxo…
They go on and on and on and on and on.
The tools are becoming universal. They are becoming secondary. The learning curve is dissapearing.

Frankly… it isn’t unique anymore to just be on Facebook and Twitter. The world is hitting social media with a force and with that force comes millions of people using the same tool. How do you set yourself apart? How do you make a difference using the same site (Facebook) that upwards of 250 million people are using?

Put your heart into the content. Create an extreme value that PEOPLE and the masses cannot ignore. Only then will you cut through the noise.

Gary Vaynerchuk has an excellent video blog that talks at length about the vale of content and the “2.0 hustle.” Do two things:

1. Watch the video below

2. Follow the link above and subscribe to every little ounce of Gary Vaynerchuk content your little mouse pointer can handle..

Corporate Strategy, Micro-Blogging, Reputation Management, Social Media Community, Social Strategy, innovation, millennial, small business, social media

15 comments

10/04 2009

Forget Social Media Measurement. Get Back to the Basics.

There has been a lot of talk about measurement and return-on-investment in the world of social media. Where and what do we measure? Is there any type of return on investment we can micro manage down to the point of dollars and cents?

Richard Stacy asked a brilliant question on his Social Computing Journal post called Social Media Measurement – Are We STaring At Stones? Are we measuring/looking at the wrong thing? Are we missing the point when we use Web 1.0 measurement tools and try to squeeze them into a Web 2.0 – 3.0 world? I think so. I would guess that Richard would agree.

Are we staring at the finish line without starting the race?

We are focused so intently on understanding the measurement model of social media that we fail to recognize the tool itself. We fail to realize that a complete understanding of social media (as a tool) has yet to be accomplished. We need to back up and refocus. As a company, we are just as guilty.

It is hard for me to swallow the concepts of using traditional and web 1.0 measurements tools (traffic, click-throughs) to social media tools like Twitter. What is the answer? Ad agencies are falling over themselves to gain as many viewers as possible to online videos. We can have 2 million views on a YouTube video but does that measure to actual growth in sales? It is hard to tell and becoming increasingly harder (Google aquisition of YouTube).

I don’t have the answer. Every interactive marketing firm on the planet is trying to measure this phenomenal new medium of communication… We all have case studies but there hasn’t been a proven formula for measurement.

Maybe we need to go back to the basics… refocus on completely understanding a new medium that is changing our entire communication formula.

When to NOT Use Social Media (readwriteweb.com)
This is a viral blog (bbc.co.uk)
Timothy Karr: The Future Begins Thru You (huffingtonpost.com)
Earning back trust | Corporate blogging news digest (socialmediatoday.com)

Marketing, indianapolis, innovation

11 comments

9/04 2009

What’s Behind ILearningGlobal.tv? Coal or Gold?

There has been a slow but steady push (at least here in Indianapolis) to join a website with the likes of T. Harv Ecker, Brian Tracy, and Dr. Tony Allesandra. It is called iLearningGlobal. The whole concept behind the site:

“As an iLearningGlobal member you have direct 24/7 access to the most valuable training and learning content available today. iLearningGlobal provides training videos, audio programs, and ebooks from the top speakers, trainers, and authors worldwide. Fresh new content is added to the site weekly so the information is always fresh and you never run out of resources for continuous learning.

iLearningGlobal offers you the most advanced user viewing experience today within the iLG Signature Video Theater where you can experience full screen, High Definition video free of loading and buffering. This is web learning 2,0!” -From the Features section on iLearningGlobal.tv

I guess the question now is… what is this post about? I want to know what everyone thinks about the concept of iLearning Global. There has been the negative and positive viewpoints shared about the site. The negative borders on the Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) aspect of the site. Another negative has been the monthly cost of a online video based site (around $80/month). There are just as many positives as negatives.

The content on iLearningGlobal is excellent. I have watched multiple videos and they are short, concise, and give you a good boost of either confidence, ideas, or business knowledge (pick your poison). The instructors are fabulous and the video player is actually quite good.

On the other hand there are plenty of great content sites that are free. What is the draw?

Does the MLM pose a problem to people when using the site? Are you disgusted with the multi-level hundred grand a month scheme? I haven’t made my decision yet but I thought I would ask the more important critics: the readers of this blog.

What do you think?