It’s not easy being social

: Image by tysongoodridge via Flickr

Better said “It’s easy, but not simple”. Jay Baer’s got some great thoughts on adding social media to your mix…

“Social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s different expensive.

In the QA portion of recent speeches, I’ve frequently been asked this is great, but doesn’t it seem like it will take a lot of time?

Yes. It. Will.

Succeeding on the social Web requires daily participation. Whether it’s brand reputation management, PR and influencer outreach, customer service and social CRM, interacting with fans on a brand community, or just creating content that builds thought leadership — it all takes time.

Fundamentally, there are no shortcuts in social media, because the entire premise is that you’re interacting with customers one on one (or one on few). That is of course more time consuming than reaching hundreds, thousands, or millions of customers at one time with a paid advertisement. How could it not be so?

The only way America is even keeping its head above the global water line is by squeezing every last drop of productivity out of all of us. Please raise your hand if you’re working fewer hours these days than you did five or ten years ago. Exactly. Unless you’re somehow on Justin Bieber’s management team, you’re probably busting your hump like never before, tethered to the world by the iWhatever. So, I recognize that you probably don’t have the time to really commit to social media, and neither does anyone on your team.” Source: Nobody Said Social Media Was Easy Continue reading “It’s not easy being social” →

April 22, 2010 0

Social media isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.

One of the biggest mistakes I have seen in social media use is visualizing the process as a sprint. Individuals or organizations open up a million accounts, follow or connection (friend) request hundreds of people and only use their timeline to blast information about their company, deals, sales or events that YOU need to attend. With a lack of a proper advertising budget – or strategy for that matter – social media is being used as a cheap advertising medium and not an engagement tool.

These are easy rookie mistakes to make but they are fogetting one important element to social media. The difference between social media and traditional advertising is that you have a selective audience. Your listeners have to choose to want to listen to what you have to say. They have to click “Follow” or “Become A Fan” (or “Like” now) to allow your messages to infiltrate their news feeds.

How is this permission granted?

It’s not something that can be achieved in a matter of a couple of weeks. Unless you are a very well established national brand you aren’t going to gain a huge following very quickly. It takes time to build relationships with people, establish trust and prove your credibility with a few. Eventually, provided you take the time to engage and not purely self promote, your network and audience will grow and your brand will prosper as a result.

via socialmediatoday.com

I’m fond of saying that social media isn’t something you do — it’s something you are. Whatever analogy helps you to remember you’re in it for the long haul is the one you should grab on to…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

April 20, 2010 0

The answer is ‘both/and’

: Cover via Amazon

I’m always fond of saying that the answer is rarely either/or but both/and. Mitch Joel says the same thing here but in a slightly different way…

“Digital Marketing is not the silver bullet. Digital Marketing is not the only marketing a brand should be doing.

Branding works. Traditional mass media advertising words. Direct Marketing works. PR works. And every other niche of Marketing, Advertising and Communications still works too. It’s a matter of understanding the strategy of the brand, the marketplace of your consumer and then implementing a healthy strategy that will help you achieve your business goals and ROI. Yes, for some brands, that will mean a heavier focus on the Digital Marketing component, but it might also mean looking at your market from a different perspective. And yes, because of the growth of Internet usage and the multitude of new opportunities, Digital Marketing definitely deserves a seat at the adult table of a proper marketing mix.

Everything is “with” not “instead of.”

Some of the brands understand this so well. I’ve been in meetings where a CMO has shown me how their 30-second spot drives sales (and when they stop the TV advertising, the sales plummet) and how their Social Media activity keeps the interest and loyalty in-between and during campaigns. It’s that healthy balance that we all too often forget about. Just the other day (March 24th, 2010, to be exact), eMarketer had a news item titled, Combining the Strengths of Social and E-Mail, which stated:

“‘Even though people are spending more time using social media, they are not abandoning e-mail,’ said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Maximizing the E-Mail/Social Media Connection. ‘The two channels can help each other, offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections.’ More than four in 10 business executives surveyed by StrongMail said integrating e-mail and social was one of their most important initiatives for 2010, just after improving e-mail performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists.”” Source: Everything Is “With” Not “Instead Of” | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

When I spoke last week at the Ashwaubenon Business Association, I was chatting with a direct mail marketer afterward and I wanted to be sure that he understood — as I hope that you understand — that I don’t advocate stopping ANY traditional marketing methods that are working for you. Just add the social media ones that make sense!

Strategic Digital Marketing is Now Mainstream (revenews.com)
Ammunition for your social media arsenal (e1evation.com)
Thoughts from Mitch Joel of Six Pixels of Separation (broadcasting-brain.com)

March 30, 2010 0

Practical, tactical social media

Tomorrow I’ll be speaking on ‘Practical, tactical social media’ at the monthly luncheon of the Ashwaubenon Business Association. Lunch starts at noon at the Ramada Plaza, 2750 Ramada Way, Green Bay, WI 54304 (920) 499-0631. The cost of lunch is free to members and $11.00 for non-members. It might be a nice idea to give them a call if you plan on attending…

Social Media Is Dead: Long Live Common Sense (darmano.typepad.com)
links for 2010-03-17 (brendancooper.com)
Companies: use your catered lunches wisely! (makegood.com)
The Seven Harsh Realities of Social Media for Any Brand (futurelab.net)
Be VERY Careful Using Social Media (downes.ca)

March 22, 2010 0

I talk to strangers

: Image by Moth via Flickr

The social media elite are gathering in Austin, TX this week for SXSW. Here’s a reminder for the rest of us…

“No matter how shy you think you are, the person next to you may be even more shy. So be the one to break the ice, and just say hello. Start up conversations with the person in line behind you, with the person walking down the hall near you. Smile and make a comment about the long, long walks between sessions or the beautiful sunshine outside that everyone is missing. I met a guy from Belgium as I walked back to my hotel yesterday and got some wonderful insight into how others perceive our country and our conferences.” Source: 10 More Tips For Enjoying SXSW – WebWorkerDaily

Me? I’m one of those guys that usually talks to strangers. It’s fun. Sometimes it’s rewarding. Last week, while stranded in Detroit, I struck up a convo with a guy named Marty who was my twin separated at birth from a business standpoint. Coincidentally, we were joined my a mutual friend who also ended up being stranded [thank God he had a pass to the Delta Sky Club and could get us in for the rest of the day!] at the Detroit airport until later that evening. Try it! It’s an interesting way to pass the time and sometime, just sometimes, it can be really rewarding. You just have to make the first move…

SXSW Road Trip Challenge: Final Recap (fastlane.gmblogs.com)
Cartoon: Can’t Go to SXSW? We Feel Your Pain (readwriteweb.com)
Your GPS doesn’t lie: you aren’t at SXSW (robcottingham.ca)
Forget SXSW – Come to NXNE! (lostremote.com)

March 18, 2010 0

Creators and Curators

From my perspective, there are two main types of blog content; creation and curation…

“The idea behind curators and content curation is that there is such a flood of new content pouring through the Internet pipes these days that being aware of all of it and sorting it out in meaningful ways is simply not possible. Curators are people or organizations that do the hard work of sifting through the content within a particular topic area or “meme” and pulling out the things that seem to make most sense. This effort involves significantly more than finding and regurgitating links, though.” Source: Who are your curators? | Content curator | Digital Curator

You don’t have to ‘create’ original content in order have original blog content — you can curate content from other thought leaders for incorporation into your site. The content you aggregate from other sites [properly attributed, of course] along with your perspective is a public reflection of your brand as well! I rarely post anything without at least one quote from another thought leader — in fact, it’s usually those quotes [like the one in this post] that encourage me to weigh in on my blog in the first place. Where do you fall on this issue?

Collecting related content isn’t curation (RexBlog.com)
Does Curated Content Drive Vendor Preference? (thecustomercollective.com)
The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators [Voices] (voices.allthingsd.com)
Steve Rosenbaum: Are we a Curation Nation? (huffingtonpost.com)

March 15, 2010 4

Top 10 passwords you should never use

For most people who experience a password hacker in real life, they find out too late that using a strong password is important. Like the kid who think he is invincible and jumps off the roof because he doesn’t believe in gravity, having your website, Facebook account, or your system’s server hacked into is a lot like the ground smacking you in the face. Gravity does exist and so do bad people who would love to gain access to your life and wreck havoc.

According to a report, most users still haven’t answered the call by security experts to implement more robust passwords. In fact, in a list of the most easy to hack passwords, simply typing ‘123456’ took a truly forgettable top prize.

Security firm Imperva recently released its list of the passwords most likely to be hacked based on 32 million instances of successful hacking. Imperva named their report “Consumer Password Worst Practices,” and some of the entries near the top are truly simple and could lead to theft or identity fraud.

Top 10 Worst Passwords
The following is a list of the most predictable passwords, and should not be used under any circumstances (Source: pcworld.com):

123456
12345
123456789
Password
iloveyou
princess
rockyou
1234567
12345678
abc123

Hopefully you don’t see your current password on the list, but if you do or don’t, it doesn’t really matter. Most people have a simple enough password that it could be hacked by someone who knows what they are doing. Even if you have a better than average password, you may be like the millions who a. never use it or b. use it for every account they own. After all, who wants to remember all those passwords!

We’ve all received those Phishing emails from people trying to gain access to your various accounts, right? Facebook, MySpace, Banks, and Twitter. Well, if you fall for one of those emails and they figure out one password, they then check to see if you’re using the same password on the other sites too.

If you are using social media, most of your other accounts are visible to everyone so they can connect with you and that makes you vulnerable to getting hacked.

How to Strengthen Your Passwords
Other key findings in the report: it seems that almost 1 in 3 users choose passwords comprised of six or fewer characters; more than half use passwords based on only alpha-numeric characters; and almost 50 per cent used variations on their name, popular slang terms, or simple strings of consecutive characters from the average QWERTY keyboard — such as ‘asdfg’.

Imperva has made several obvious recommendations, suggesting most users adopt passwords with at least eight characters and to mix those characters between upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords should be simple enough that they won’t be too easily forgotten, but the idea is to make cracking the code virtually impossible for either an unknown or known hacker.

About this article: Dennis Faas is the CEO and Chief editor of Infopackets.com: a daily, digital publication dedicated to MS Windows, computing, technology trends and solutions to real life computing issues: all written in simple English. Subscription to Infopackets Windows Newsletter is free. Visit us today! http://www.infopackets.com

So, how do you create a password that is easy to remember, unique for each account, and extremely difficult to hack? I want to give you the answer! Leave a comment on this post and let me know what you think. I’ll post the answer to the question soon.

Kirk Anderson
Guest Contributor

Kirk is owner of Interactive Business Solutions, a Business and Marketing Development Consulting company in Northwestern Wisconsin. He works with small and medium size businesses to to implement technology solutions that help a business become more productive and profitable. Interactive123.com

March 10, 2010 2

Socialize your email II

Recently, a good friend of the blog told me about a tool called Xobni that integrates ‘contextual social media’ with your inbox…

“There are a number of email plugins that look to give you contextual information about the person you’re communicating with. The first one I tried (and arguably the best I’ve seen) is Xobni, an Outlook plugin.

There’s now a similar plugin available for Gmail users called Rapportive. Rapportive replaces the ads you normally see in the right-hand sidebar with a profile of the person you’re emailing with that is automatically generated by searching online services for your correspondent’s email address. Rapportive is only available to users that are using either Firefox or Chrome as their browser, since Firefox and Chrome have a plugin architecture.” Source: Rapportive replaces Gmail ads with useful social information

Need to get up to speed on Xobni?

“Xobni is a plugin for Outlook that adds advanced search and social functions to the email client. When we last looked at Xobni, the service indexed your email messages and created personal profiles for each of your contacts by automatically extracing phone numbers and loking users up on LinkedIn. Now Xobni has rolled out an update that adds integration with Skype, Facebook, Hoovers, and Yahoo! Mail.

Here’s how it works. You can search for email using the Xobni sidebar. When you click on a message, Xobni will pull up information about the sender, including information from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Hoovers. If your contact’s Skype profile or phone number are available, you can also initiate a call with the click of a button.

In addition to searching your Outlook mail, you can also have Xobni index your Yahoo! Mail, although in order to reply to messages you’ll need to login to the Yahoo! Mail web interface.” Source: Xobni brings Skype, Facebook, Yahoo! integration to Outlook

I use and recommend both of these technologies. Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or contact me to discuss how this applies to YOU…

March 9, 2010 0

Why no one is reading your blog…

You want to throw a party and have lots of people show up.
You want to have a successful blog but you want people to read it.

It’s a trick
So here’s the trick (and it really is a mental trick). You have to write a blog post like someone is reading it…even if no one is. Anyone who knows how to use Google and can “cut and paste” can add analytics to their site to see exactly how many people are visiting. Here’s my advice…add analytics and then ignore them. They’re too discouraging and in the end it’s not the point. CNN.com has a lot more visits than your web site and they always will. So what? If your goal is to spread your ideas then start spreading them one post at a time. You’ll know when your ideas are spreading, trust me.

How do I get traffic?
Somebody cares about what you’re saying. If no one seems to care then talk about something else or change how you’re delivering your message. But, somebody cares. Let’s go back to the party comparison. If you don’t come to my party guess what…I’m not coming to yours. So if you want me to come to your blog then come to mine and let me know how to get back to yours. If you want readers then spread the love. Spend time at other blogs and then go back to yours regularly and write like someone is reading it.

You better have a frosty beverage for me
The other reason you need to write like someone is reading is that one day, when you do start to get visitors you’ll need something for them to read. Blogs archive your entries so they’ll have a treasure trove of info that you’ve written if you post before they show up. Not regularly posting to your blog or creating content of any kind (podcast, ebooks etc.) and inviting me to visit your site is like inviting me to a party without having any good beer to drink or any food to snack on. When I get there…I expect something from you. It’s bad news if you expect those people to come back if they didn’t find anything the first time they showed up…they’re not likely to return.

Action points:

Install analytics on your site
Ignore the analytics for a long time
Comment on other sites every day (you can start with this blog). Commenting on the big blogs can get you traffic…not from the big names but from other people who leave comments (happened to me this week).
Write a post a week (minimum). But please write something.

March 7, 2010 0

Want to beta test my new course?

A couple of weeks ago, I announced that my “Social Media Academy” course would be available April 5. I’m looking for three to five beta testers to help me perfect the content. The course is very much still in it’s infancy stages, but I am looking for a few people who would like to participate in testing the course as I build it…

This course is mean to address what I feel is a huge gap in the social media space — there seems to be no shortage of strategists who are generating demand by describing the social media ‘promised land’ but they leave seminar attendees wondering how do they take the next step. My focus will be on the practical tactics and tools outlined in my series ‘Top 10 Tactics and Tools for Tightening your Tribe’. It is meant for solopreneurs, small business owners, organizational leaders or marketing professionals who want to add social media to their mix but still want to get home for supper. You know what I mean? No one has more time in their days — “how can I add social media and without adding hours”? is the thrust of the course.

In exchange for helping me beta test the course, the participants will of course get free access to the course materials as I create and publish them, as well as semi-private coaching and the opportunity to potentially earn some money by promoting the course as affiliates when I launch it. Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or contact me to get more details…

March 5, 2010 0

Handling Email; 5+ emails you should filter

: Image via CrunchBase

Email is such a simple tool but it makes or breaks so many people’s productivity and it breaks my heart to see how many people struggle with handling it…

“How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? Are you an inbox zero freak like me? Or do you have emails piled up and unread that you’re hoping you’ll get time to get to?

I’m not judging – I used to have as messy an inbox as anyone. And even now, if I go on vacation or don’t check my email for too long, I can get in a heap of trouble: the email piles up, and it can be a real chore getting back to my empty inbox.

I’ve got a few tips up my sleeve though to make dealing with email a little less painful – and I’ve found the best defense is a strong offense. In this article, I’m going to give you some concrete tips and examples to reduce the number of emails in your inbox instantly – and help you keep it that way long term with the use of filters.” Source: 5 Types of Emails You Should be Automatically Filtering – Stepcase Lifehack

Here are the 5 types:

Newsletters
Forwarded articles
Comments and pings from my blog
Facebook/Twitter/Social Media Notifications
Store Promotions
cc:’s [This one is my own — and I’ll explain later]

You’ll have to go to the source if you’re interested in the full rationale behind these statements. #6 [the one I added] comes from seeing how email is used as a CYA tool in large corporations. I have a friend — let’s call her Sue — Sue is an important mucky-muck at a large manufacturing organization and she’s stuck in email hell. She’s a slave to Outlook and her BlackBerry. I would venture to say that 70% or more of the email she receives is CYA. How much easier Sue’s life would be if she’d only use Outlook to put all the emails where her name appears on the cc: line in a special folder to read later when she had more time. Or used the filter on her BlackBerry Enterprise Server to only send her the emails where her name appeared on the to: line. Sigh!

As the author says, these filters work particularly well with Gmail or Google Apps [both of which I use] to manage mail effectively.

“Once you’ve created some of these filters, GMail (what I use) has an option to immediately run them on whatever you’ve got in your inbox. Use this to instantly filter low priority items away so you can focus on what’s important.

Going forward, your filters will be applied to any new email that comes in. This will keep your inbox clean so you can read the relevant, important emails first, before you head to your folders to deal with these low priority emails that may still be important to you – but don’t require as quick a response.” Source: 5 Types of Emails You Should be Automatically Filtering – Stepcase Lifehack

One more thought for those of you unlucky enough to be on MY emailing target list. I send ‘just in case’ info from my personal gmail account and important ‘just in time’ email from my e1evation account. If you’re smart, you’ll filter emails from toddlohenry@gmail.com and make sure emails from todd@e1evation.com are granted the HIGHEST priority! Those of you who are prolific emailers may want to grant your frequent recipients a similar escape hatch…

As always, I invite readers to comment, call or contact me and let me know what YOU think [or ask for help if they’re caught in email hell!]…

Top 10 email clients, according to Fingerprint (b2bemailmarketing.com)
All Things Google: Using Filters to Manage Your Inbox (profhacker.com)
Filters make things clean (justanasterisk.com)

March 2, 2010 4

The brand called you

: Image via Wikipedia

Tom Peters wrote this article over 12 years ago, but it’s truer now than it was then…

“The good news — and it is largely good news — is that everyone has a chance to stand out. Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark.

Who understands this fundamental principle? The big companies do. They’ve come a long way in a short time: it was just over four years ago, April 2, 1993 to be precise, when Philip Morris cut the price of Marlboro cigarettes by 40 cents a pack. That was on a Friday. On Monday, the stock market value of packaged goods companies fell by $25 billion. Everybody agreed: brands were doomed.

Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services — from accounting firms to sneaker makers to restaurants — are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their categories and become a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz.” Source: The Brand Called You | Fast Company

Must read! Go to the source and devour this article…

March 2, 2010 0

Thought leadership. It’s not just for geeks anymore!

Kevin Naze, one of my favorite outdoor writers, of the Green Bay Press Gazette writes…

Dave Nolan is a family man on a mission of faith.

While part of it includes finding a new career after an 18-year stint in the automotive industry ended when General Motors decided to stop making Saturns, another component to his master plan is getting more people to look beyond the world’s values.

“My dream job would be to have a career in sync with my passions — the outdoors partnered with the Christian ministry,” Nolan said. “My goal is to be the face of an organization and build relationships with an organization that shares the same passions.” Source: De Pere’s Nolan following a new path | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press-Gazette

What thrills me most about this is knowing the backstory. You see, Dave is a client of e1evation, llc and a good friend to boot. I was with him when his job at Saturn was pulled out from under him and I’ve been there every step of the way as he has made his decision to follow his passion and follow God’s lead into a career in the ‘outdoors’…

Dave is using the good, fast and cheap tools I advocate to build his business. He’s still taking baby steps at Dave Nolan Outdoors, but he’s making all the right moves. Track his progress! This guy’s a thought leader who is going places and he’s partnering with e1evation, llc to make it happen…

March 1, 2010 0

How often should I post?

: Image via Wikipedia

Let’s start here…

“Without question, blogging provides an effective way to market your business, be a valuable resource and build your personal brand online. And most folks know that, generally, the more frequently you blog, the higher your traffic. But does that mean you should follow the advice of many to create a new post every single day?

Focusing only on traffic numbers, instead of the concentrating on sharing content and building relationships will send you down the path to burnout. Here at WebWorkerDaily, we have multiple writers contributing to help keep the content fresh. But for one-person blogs, blogging daily works for some and not for others.” Source: Just How Often Should You Blog? – WebWorkerDaily

Go to the source for some good thoughts on ‘how often’ — it’s really good stuff! In the meantime, I’m heading in another direction…

I just closed out my best blogging month ever traffic-wise. What was significant to me was that I did it in a ‘short’ month with no speaking engagements. Usually, when I have a chance to speak, my traffic spikes because all the seminar attendees check out my site — it’s usually good for a couple hundred pageviews. In February, however, I did it all on my own, post by post by post. I’ve already laid out all my tactics and tools in the series “Top 10 Tactics and Tools for Tightening your Tribe” and yes, I used them all this past month. I did make two significant changes, however. #1 I redesigned my site using the ‘Thesis’ theme which promises some kind of magic SEO foo and really seems to have delivered for me. #2 I experimented with spreading my posts out throughout the day. Instead of posting 3-5 posts at 6:00 AM, I spread them out every two hours or so throughout the day. Whether it was one, or the other, or both, my traffic’s going nuts!

HubSpot gives me a grade of 96 on my site, Google tells me I have 6,076 pageviews over the past 30 days and Alexa tells me my site is ranked 484,123 in the US. Not much left to prove from my perspective and the thing that excites me most is that my success is the result of a systematic process I can teach to anyone. I usually benchmark myself against local radio station WTAQ because I like to see how I fare against ‘old’ media in my market. They have an Alexa ranking of 116,615 which is really awesome. It thrills me that I’m actually ranked higher than local social media wunderkind Dana VanDen Heuvel [a good friend to e1evation], although I’m sure that won’t last long. He’s at 520,219…

I’m certain my traffic will drop some during the upcoming month as I’ll be directing a great deal of my creative energy toward three projects I announced in February. They are the Social Media Academy — an online training class on the top tactics and tools for effective social media, The Damn Good Social Media Guide — the accompanying ebook, and last? A weekly podcast. I’m currently looking for beta testers for the Social Media course. If you’d like to save yourself the $499 fee and get all the content in a rough format for free, comment, call or contact me and let me know. As always, thanks for reading…

Slide Deck:Using Social Media to Connect With Your Customers Online (marketingsavant.com)
Social Media Keynote – Rochester, NY – 2/25/10 (marketingsavant.com)
Blogging and thought leadership (e1evation.com)
Tactic #3: Blogging. The ‘why’ and the ‘how’… (e1evation.com)

March 1, 2010 0

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