Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

A Moment with the Master: Social Media in Action

Beth Robeson • February 17th, 2010 • Comments (0) Bookmark and Share

Gary Vaynerchuk probably gives a little more to his business than most people are willing to give, but if you’re in business,  pay attention to what he is saying. It’s easy to get side tracked by the same old tasks and strategies you’ve always tackled and miss this opportunity to set yourself apart from your competitors.

Gary Vaynerchuk: Teaches Basic Social Media Principles to CNN:

Gary is probably the best in the world at using these tools to grow his business. Will your social media plan be different from his? Yes, but the fundamentals are the same:

1. There has been a radical change in marketing communications. The structure, tools and the nature of business communication has changed.

2. The nature of business is changing. How your clients/customers define value, customer service and loyalty is very different today than it was two years ago. In order to keep up with the pace of change, you need to create the tools and establish the systems you company needs to engage and interact with your clients and customers.

Beth

http://bit.ly/aBGqBa

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Trust Agents: A Book Review

Beth Robeson • December 15th, 2009 • Comments (0) Bookmark and Share

Trust Agents Tab Rating: 38*

Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

This book was written more for Chief Marketing Officers, Marketing Directors, and Entrepreneurs, than the average CEO. However, a CEO of an established company will find a lot of wonderful insights and action items throughout the book. The section on how Trust Agents use LinkedIn wasn’t very impressive. But, all in all, Chris and Julian, who are both immersed in the social media industry, do a great job of providing you with a wealth of resources and tips for monitoring your online brand and building up your company’s online community.

4 Key insights from the book:

1. Put a listening system in place.
Chris and Julien recommend building a listening station that will enable you to monitor your online brand or image as well as that of your competition. I find most companies are surprised by the sheer amount of information already out there about their company. People are talking about you, even if you haven’t yet engaged in the conversation. But how do you find out what they are saying? There are lots of online tools at your disposal, and in the first chapter they walk you through a step-by-step process for setting up a customized listening station!

2. Understand Social Networking Etiquette.
If you got along well with others in kindergarten you shouldn’t have too much trouble socializing on the web, but there are a few insights Chris and Julien offer that will give you a competitive edge in building your online community. First, understand that each social networking site has it’s own culture, for example; “Digg users are not Twitter fans.” So spend some time getting to know the culture of the social network before you step in. Second, and I think one of the most important, “promote others 12 times as much as you promote yourself or your company.” Internet communities frown on blatant self-promotion or advertising. The way to grow your business on the web is through building strong relationships first. Finally, if your company makes a mistake, and it will happen, they recommend you “remember the three A’s: acknowledge, apologize, act. There have been many mistakes made by reputable companies and those that follow those three simple steps are often in a better position than they were in before the mistake was made.

3. Building your online community.
Chris and Julien offer lots of guidance on how to find communities that will be the right fit for your business and tips on creating the types of content that will enable you to start building your own community. Those two options not being mutually exclusive of course. To find already existing communities they recommend you use one of the many search tools available on the internet: Google, Blogsearch or Technorati for example, and simply enter words that pertain to your product or service into the search box, with the words “community” or “network” after it. This should give you lots of options. Just make sure you create a manageable plan for interacting in these communities that isn’t going to overwhelm you current staff.

4. Techniques for Building Trust.
While the techniques for building strong relationships with your customers and prospects haven’t changed much, what Chris and Julien offer you are a set of new tools that make building those trusted relationship easier and less expensive.
You now have communication and or media distribution tools at your fingertips. However, there has been a profound change in the nature of the communication taking place. As the authors state,  the Web is different from all other media developed over the past 50 years, and that’s because it wasn’t created for advertisers and commercialism. “The Internet was conceived to enable scientists to communicate more fluidly.” What this means, is that your communications efforts need to take a more personal tone. The types of communication that companies are finding most effective look more like casual conversations than the impersonal or dry copy most companies are used to.
This simple element will probably be the biggest struggle for most companies, especially those who offer a technical service or product.  It requires that you (your customer service and or marketing staff) be able to respond quickly, often daily, to the conversations that are happing in your industry.  They must have the talent to communicate well and the self-esteem to not take company criticism personally.  This book should give you and your staff a solid foundation for participating in the communication revolution taking place on the internet.
The book also presents, in the form of very hands on actionable tactics, lots of other great information. For example they have a great section that hights tools for increasing your productivity, something all of us could use some help with these days. If you find their book valuable I recommend you take a look at their blogs: http://inoveryourhead.net/  and http://www.chrisbrogan.com.

Other Resources Chris and Julien Recommend:

Bit Literacy
by Mark Hurst: written to help you understand how to deal more effectively with information in its new digital form.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: for those of you who are afraid to jump in and get your feet wet. Nassim suggests you go at these new tools with the mindset of a “Tinkerer.”

Getting Things Done
by David Allen: another book on handling information overload.

Inbox Zero
by Merlin Mann: offers tips on keeping your inbox empty.

The Tipping Point
by Malcolm Gladwell: a fascinating analysis of how popular trends develop.

*My Tab Ratings reflect the total number of post-it tags I wound up putting in the book because I found a piece of information on a specific page very valuable.

To order Trust Agents or any of the other books highlighted in this review please visit our CEO Bookstore. All proceeds from the sale of these books benefit the charity selected for our free 2010 GOALs Strategic Planning Session.

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You Don’t Have to be a Blogger to Leverage the Power of Blogs

Beth Robeson • October 4th, 2009 • Comments (0) Bookmark and Share

Blogging entails a large time commitment, let’s face it. It can be hugely rewarding, but some companies are just not ready to take on the responsibility of managing and updating a blog. They may be ready three months from now but that’s the future. There are still numerous ways you can leverage the power of the blogosphere without creating your own blog.

Read Blogs

Just reading blogs or setting up your feed reader to automatically download the most important blogs for your industry can be a great way to utilize the value that blogs bring to the business community without the time commitment and expense of creating your own blog. Blogs are a tool for keeping up with the latest developments, breaking news and products that effect your industry.

This is really a necessary part of being in business today. The tricky part is organizing all the information that is relevant to your company into a form that will allow you to access it when you need it and utilize it to your advantage with out becoming overwhelmed. The best tools for organizing information on the Internet are called social bookmarks. Social Book Marks allow you to filter out the information that’s not helpful and access the information that is. Once you’ve found the information social bookmarks give you the tools to store the information so that you can access it as you need it.

Guest post on someone else’s blog

If the pressure or work required to have your own blog doesn’t interest you, you can still influence the dialogue in your industry by writing articles for other people’s blogs. Industry bloggers are often looking for “experts” to serve as contributors on their blogs. Just contact the bloggers that you respect in your industry and pitch an article that might be of interest their readers. Bingo, you have instant exposure.

Become a Blog Commentator

A blog commentator is someone who contributes to industry discussions by placing comments on the discussion section of blog sites. These comments can answer others questions, pose new topics for discussion, ask questions, or share new insights.

Link to Blogs

Linking from your website to blogs that will be helpful to your clients or customers is a great way to demonstrate value, your knowledge of current industry trends and your connections in the industry. It also encourages other bloggers to link to your site, thus building your traffic.

Good luck and happy blogging.

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