Hey there!

Just wanted to link to a recent post on different blog that I write on. It’s been awhile since I’ve been blogging on here but I’m working on some quality posts now. Hint: They have nothing to do with Peanut Butter. Disappointing, I know, but true.

Anyway, enjoy!

The Community Marketing Blog

#FollowFriday Twitiquette (Twitter Etiquette)

When I’m at conferences, so much is going on that it’s difficult to take it all in.

As such, I’ve been reviewing the Twitter feed about the hashtag from yesterday (#GrowSmartBiz) and I’m aggregating my top-20 tweets from the conference in this post.

These are in no particular order, and disclaimer: I picked one of my own tweets, so clearly there’s a bias.

I also included a few of my personal favorites at the end of this post. Enjoy!

1.

gary1943: RT @ramonray: write plans in sand; have goals carved in stone (#growsmartbiz) – roy / networksolutions

brendanlim: Chris Anderson “freemium is first new business model of the 21st century” #growsmartbiz (via @cselmer)

maddiegrant: RB: personality matters because customer loyalty is not guaranteed. WOM #GrowSmartBiz

4.

meganmcq: @RohitBhargava How2 add personality 2 ur business: 1.Write like a human 2.Be humorous 3.Disclose ur purpose 4.Make it sharable #growsmartbiz

theredstapler: Your logo is not your brand – your brand is the emotional aftertaste people have after interacting with you #growsmartbiz

dcconcierge: Love it – A website without search engine marketing is like putting on your really nice suit and then sitting in the dark. #growsmartbiz

GloriaBell: #growsmartbiz Top 10 SEO Tips 2. Linking, Linking, Linking / 1. Know what you are actually up against – u are up against ur competitors

8.

PatticakeGirl: RT @smallbiztrends: John Arnold of @ConstantContact says email comm should be 80% educational value & 20% promotional. #growsmartbiz

9.

LDpodcast: Do an ROI on potential clients- make sure you are taking on work wisely and be willing to say no. Reisa Lesonsky #growsmartbiz

10.

wickedjava: RT @shonali: A customer needs to identify with the brand. A brand needs to identify with an audience (@anthonypappas) #growsmartbiz

11.

chrisabraham: “Brands are built online — 61% of people will probably view your product online before they interact with it” @PappasGroup #growsmartbiz

12.

koa: In a weak economy consistency is important in maintaining brand. #GrowSmartBiz

13.

csread61: Anthony Pappas: Brands are built online. Online mktng is 61% more likely to influence consumers over other media. #GrowSmartBiz #fb

14.

putitaway: Automate any manual task in your small business – Anita Campbell #growsmartbiz

15.

Jillfoster: Customer service is big differentiator for small biz in competing w/ ‘the big corps’ #GrowSmartBiz on small business success index data

16.

ShannonRenee: over 50% of consumers get their 1st brand impression online #growsmartbiz

17.

smallbiztrends: RT @RamonRay Word of mouth marketing has leap frogged online (Danilo B – Loudoun Scene) #growsmartbiz

18.

ShannonRenee: social media allows us to share, connect and LISTEN in a way we couldn’t earlier #growsmartbiz

19.

shonali: Steve Fisher’s 10 Rules for Killer Business Cards. #growsmartbiz #1: Tell me what you do. Quickly.

20.

earthwriter: “See the risk, but seize the opportunity.” Rieva Lesonsky Great speaker! #growsmartbiz

Also, some personal favorites:

debbieweil: RT @chrisabraham: Have a sense of humor (even if you don’t have one) b/c humor is DEAD SEXY, baby. @rohitbhargava #growsmartbiz

Bigm_aem: Love it! RT @maddiegrant: Hate the phone. My VM says “tweet me” #justsayin #GrowSmartBiz

cardcat: Ramon ray: date your leads and marry your customers #growsmartbiz

GloriaBell: Don’t be fearless, just know what your fears are & be willing to face them & conquer them #growsmartbiz

wbjsarah: ! RT @rferrier #growsmartbiz always choose passionate amateur over bored professional

GeoffLiving: Just had a side chat at #growsmartbiz about the ills of ghost blogging, cannot believe this is still thought of as acceptable. Save ur soul!

colderICE: Screw that LOL RT @BrentLeary: Small biz survey: 41% of small biz owners surveyed lowered their standard of living to survive. #growsmartbiz

gwickes: The blogger bullpen goes crazy welcoming @jillfoster to stage for last panel on social media #GrowSmartBiz

Rohit Bhargava is next and will be discussing how to add personality to your business.

Why is personality important?  How about the obvious: to retain your previous customers.

Personality is important because it’s the number one way of retaining previous customers and increasing word of mouth about your brand.

Studying the tools of social media is the smallest part of the process—understanding the underlying principal—having pertinent and valuable content for your readers.

Here’s the 4 main reasons.

1. Talk like a person
2. Have a sense of humor
3. Admit that you’re marketing: Full Disclosure
4. Make it sharable

Simple. Sweet. Swag.

Nice work.

You can follow Rohit on Twitter @RohitBhargava

Today I’ll be live blogging from Grow Smart Biz conference in DC, hosted by Network Solutions.  There is a great speaker lineup and I’m happy to have stolen the password asked politely for the password to the Internet, even though I’m not officially registered as a blogger today.

Here’s the play-by-play: Roy Dunbar just spoke on the state of the small business economy. Next, Alex Orfinger from the Washington Business Journal is headed on the stage and is running down the Agenda for today’s conference.

Now, Chris Anderson, the Editor and Chief of Wired Magazine will be speaking on two things: 1) The opportunity for small businesses overall, and 2) the economics of running businesses today.

As a small business owner in the technology industry, Chris Anderson understands the needs of small businesses and believes this is the golden age of small businesses. Here’s what he had to say:

1) The opportunity for small businesses overall:

This thought is taken from Chris’s first book, The Long Tail.

The niche element of small businesses offers supreme ability to offer better customer service and specialization of trade. Small businesses are able to target a market who want to obtain a highly-specialized product.

As consumers, we are able to differentiate our own unique and individual tastes and preferences–and support those tastes and preferences that best fit our needs. Small businesses can target these customers and refine the means by which the products and services are delivered. With globalization, large companies are targeting ‘the mass market’ and as such, don’t capture the entirety of the market.

To capture this market, small businesses are able to be adroit and ascertain the proper strategies online to reach the markets–a “scale-up” approach to find these niches and market to them. Large companies face a disadvantage when trying to ’scale-down’ to these SM approaches and capture the market.

2) The economics of running businesses today:

His second point comes from the theory outlined in his second book, Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price.

Pre-Millennium, business owners would market their product by giving away elements of their product, but not its entirety.

For example, they would have people dip-into the product for free, but then have to support it for several months or years afterwards. For example, the razor/razor blade theory—Give away the razor, but sell the blades. This way, people have to buy into your product.

But now, we have a new theory of free—going from a people business to a software business—from brick-and-mortar to the digital. Digital costs are minimized every year. The Internet, for example, is a media channel that is ‘free to use.’

First wave of the Internet included banner ads. The second wave included digital targeted ads. However, the third wave of the Internet is the Freemium model.

The Freemium (sp?) model:  It’s the 21^st century of free. It’s the reverse of the previous understanding of the market. If you give away 90% of your product or service and then capitalize on selling the rest of the product by enhancing it in some way.

Side note: The problem I have with this understanding of the economics of business is that you can’t just offer a product or digital service—‘if you build it, they will come’ theory. Your constituency still needs the power of the Groundswell to illustrate the importance of the product or service. My thought is that building the influence of a product or service has to be an essential element of the marketing and PR campaign—finding and marketing to the increased niche market.

Back on track, however, the thought process is that customers will be using free products and then eventually ‘opt-in’ to the ‘paid-version’ of the products. The ‘free’ option has to be highly valuable, but then, your ‘paid’ version of the product has to add even more value.

For example, the music industry was one of these industries that went from hardware to software. The video game industry and software industries are also going from freemium to premium models of business.

However, the psychology of freemium has to be carefully understood and then created. Having increased convenience, less or zero advertisements, troubleshooting, etc. There are a multitude of ways to monetize the freemium model. The key is to innovate your service.

Another side note: I also think that when companies go ‘digital,’ they can easily lose the personalization of their product or service. They need to ensure a strong brand image through the

Anyway, I’m now gearing up for a special note from Senator Mark Warner, who ran his business in the high-tech industry for 20 years and began Foundations to help private citizens of Virginia before being elected to the US Senate for Virginia.

Recently, I was held at gun point asked to volunteer for a local campaign in my home town. (Note: The election is non-partisan).

Yesterday, my City had a ‘Olde Towne Gaithersburg Day,’ to celebrate different businesses and causes that are local to Gaithersburg. As such, the incumbent decided to sponsor a booth to increase awareness of his campaign.

We had bright yellow teeshirts and handed out balloons to passers-by. It was a lot of fun.

But almost immediately after the event started, I noticed that there were a majority of Hispanic citizens that were attending the event. Their children would run up to get a balloon and I just looked at them and their parents and smiled. While this would have been the time when I pass out a flier and explain that the forthcoming election is non-partisan and that they would be receiving pamphlets in the mail, this opportunity was lost because I was unable to brake the language barrier that existed between the two of us.

Call me shameful, but I called my good friend and asked him to translate a few phrases for me so I would at least be able to ask them if they wanted a balloon (¿Quieres un globo?). Even though I was unable to say much more than ¡de nada! or other small phrases, it was clear that I was more an ally than a stranger when I spoke these simple phrases as opposed to just smiling.

Our pamphlets were printed in one language as well, and I think we missed out on an opportunity to become one with the community since little research was conducted on the market to whom we were reaching. I learned a lot from the experience that conducting sufficient market research is the best way to ensure campaign success.

If you’ve ‘done your homework’, or research, you’re more likely to develop campaigns that most adequately resonate with your market.

As social media strategists, it’s our job to understand to whom you are trying to reach when you’re developing a marketing plan for digital communication. We’ve been passing along the ideas that ‘Content is King,’ meaning that you have to have pertinent information to respect your audience’s limited time. We also tell each other ‘Listen to your Market‘ so you monitor the conversation before and after your message is disseminated.

But these two things are based in Knowing your Market.

And as marketers, we can not forget the opportunities that are missed by not conducting that adequate research before starting a campaign.

Note: I’ve decided that because I write the “This Week in Writing” post the week AFTER I’ve written these posts, one of two things needs to occur: (1) I change the date I post on to be within the actual week that I wrote said posts, or (2) I change the post title to Last Week in Writing.

I’ve decided to go with option (1) because I do believe that ‘Now is Gone,’ so waiting until the next week to write about the previous week seems counter-intuitive (again, given the rapid pace of the Internet Age). I will probably write this post on Friday or Saturday. Please continue to bear with me as I figure this post series out.

Community Marketing Blog

Personal Branding as a Corporate Communication Function

Shoe Girls

Yet another post where I make some crazy link with social media because clearly I have no life. For real, ya’all. I have an overt obsession with this stuff.

Shoe: Concert Shoe. Note:Yes I know this is a man’s shoe. All will reveal itself as you read.

Last week, I had coffee iced tea with Tim, a dear friend of mine. We were discussing his recent venture in Colorado, eight-week long music festival for some of the most talented musicians in the country.

One of the reasons he was so inclined to pursue this program was for the networking opportunity it would offer him. These musicians will become some of the most influential in their industry, and having such an intense program for these promising individuals will help them form the basis for many of their future job leads.

This festival fostered authentic interpersonal relationships between members in the same industry.

(Here’s the part where I make the connection between coffee iced tea and social media):

…So this conversation gets me thinking about social media. I personally am of the framework that social media is meant to enhance the capability for interpersonal interaction, not replace it. Tim has laid the groundwork for use of social media. He was telling me how since the orchestra festival had concluded, everyone has been befriending each other on Facebook and writing on each other’s Facebook walls.

I just wanted to give Tim a standing ovation for this perfect demonstration of the correct way to conduct social media relationship building. Of course, I recognize that there are some difficulties (i.e., propinquity), that surround having ‘real-life’ interpersonal interactions. Life is not without its complications.

But here’s why I’m applauding Tim. Companies need to look to his example and recreate these gold standards with our constituencies when building our networks:

1. Being Authentic: Tim’s NBF’s (new best friends) were formed through a genuine passion for the music industry. They were all true to their roots and passions and by being true to oneself, we can better surround ourselves with those who have similar passions.

2. Storytelling: Imagine as if you’re conversing with your friends. You’re not *selling* what you do, you’re *telling* what you do. Communicating your story should enhance your audience’s perception of your personality alongside your knowledge about your profession. Just communicating with your audience, you will humanize your personal brand and become more respected and valued by your constituency.

3. Interpersonal relationships: If you want to use social media, use the tools to enhance the relationships you already have and foster genuine connections with new people.

4. Eliminating the “we/they” dichotomy: If you’re genuinely interacting with people, you are able to drop the “preaching” element of your story, and it’s an easier story to tell. What your network says to you should be as important (if not more important) as what you communicate to them. Ideally, you would want to respond and engage in open dialogue.

Ultimately, this list has one overarching theme: being true to oneself.

1.) To be authentic and 2) engage people via storytelling that 3) builds interpersonal relationships that 4) eliminate the we/they dichotomy, we must not lay an idea of who we want to be on top of our pre-existing personalities, we must live who we are.

Tim, congratulations on pursuing a field that embodies your true personality. You’re bound to reach your dreams by following what it is you are passionate about.

I blog in several locations. As such, I’m beginning a new series on Sundays to consolidate a location where you can find my previous week’s blog posts.

Beginning next week I’ll be adding a section for my top-5 picks for industry posts I found most pertinent.

Musings

IMC: A Juggling Act?–I reflected on a meeting with an acquaintance where we discussed his complex marketing campaign. From an integrated marketing communication standpoint, I determine

Traditional vs. Social Media Marketing Campaigns: Round 1–After a conflicting conversation with a friend, I outline some of the basic tenants of social media use that are sometimes misunderstood by social media practitioners.

Shoe Girls

Google: *Thee* Social Network–A quick post that discussed Google as a cumbersome, yet brilliant, entity.

I’m shoxed!–I analyzed Nike’s custom shoe product and President Obamas presidential campaign in terms of both digital and traditional word-of-mouth.

Shoe: Awesome NikeID Shox. Personalized with “Megan McQ” On back of the heels. (Real picture coming shortly) Did I mention they are Awesome?

So I just got back from my fist time playing volleyball in about a month due to a few injuries.

While I was playing this evening, I became aware that I am not as quick as I used to be, even in comparison to just a few years ago. I can’t do the cool things I once could (i.e., pancake/roll–see below), but this could be because I don’t play every day for 2 hours a day year-round. I also have to play with contacts now. Ouch.

In fact, I’m only approved to play once a week less any additional injury. (It’s a good thing I think the number “3” is the number “1”—let’s keep that between you and me).

For me, this realization that ‘every day we’re getting older’ was a ‘carpe diem’ moment. I didn’t touch a ball for about four years but I’m glad I’m back on the court for as much as I am able to be. (This was a shameless plug for insisting that you follow your dreams, no matter how far-fetched you may imagine them to be, bla bla, etc. I’ve found I’m typically my own worst road block.)

On another note, the best part of this evening was getting to break in my new pair of NikeID Shox. They are actually supposed to be running shoes but I need to break them in slowly, and I think my actual court shoes may not be supportive enough for my broken foot.

Despite a few moral issues I may have with Nike, I have to tell you I like Shox. I also think that Nike made an amazingly brilliant decision to allow for personalization of various shoes. With their NikeID Web site, I can customize virtually every element of a variety of different shoes. From the ’shox’ color to the color of my shoe laces–I even had the left heel personalized with my first name and the right heel with my last name. Pretty neat, huh?

In social media marketing, there’s a high debate that’s questioning the best way to determine if your campaign is successful. While this is one of the many issues that our industry seems to disagree on, I personally think that a campaign is successful by the amount of conversation that is generated about your company, product or message. (There are various ways to monitor for conversation and I’m sure this blog post may very well end up on a monitoring report about the company later this week.)

But I was thinking about it, and what a better way to generate a WOM conversation than by being able to create off-line user generated content (UGC)?  I can share my own individual story about Nike by purchasing these custom shoes. My shoes embody Nike’s corporate story. And since birds of a feather flock together, the people with which I converse with will ask me about my *totally awesome* shoes, and I’ll tell them to check out the site.

Win-Win. I get great shoes, Nike gets great publicity.

The same UGC concept holds true for other successful campaigns. President Obama’s campaign (Note: this blog is not politically affiliated) was very successful in garnering interest in his party for the election by having individuals create and display their own personalized version of his logo, among other social media tactics.

According to a white paper by Edelman entitled the Social Pulpit:

The MyBO Web site contained videos, speeches, photos and how-to guides that gave people the raw materials they needed to create their own compelling content in support of Obama. In return, supporters created more than 400,000 pro-Obama videos and posted them to YouTube. They also wrote more than 400,000 blog posts on the MyBO Web site.

In Obama’s case, this was all digital UGC. But the fact of the matter is that this digital UGC transferred from online to off-line action on election day. Pretty neat, right?

In essence, UGC may be one of the more important elements of determining if a campaign is successful. And that’s what I thought about while playing volleyball.

PS: Yes. I’m making social media connections while playing volleyball. Deal.

PPS: This was not a sponsored post.

Images via Gauntlet and  Planspark’s Photostream

First let me say that this shoe will now represent all of the times I’m writing about a subject that I’m confused about. That is because this shoe literally has a Gameboy in it. It also has a Pokemon in it. I think that’s all of the explanation you need in order for me to begin this next post.

So here’s the deal.Whenever I find a social media topic interesting, I like to conduct a fair amount of research on it before I begin a post so that I sound like I know what I’m talking about.  A few weeks ago, I noticed how many blog posts I had been reading about Google. Thus, I decided that it was time for me to understand more about Google’s capabilities.

Here’s the reason. I’m a Google child at heart. I’ve been on Gmail and Gchat since the time when you needed an invite to join (aka ancient Mesopotamia times).  I’ve noticed that there are so many more capabilities of Google that I probably don’t use but should. I mean, Google is a translator, a search engine, a navigator, an operating system, an Internet browser, a television, etc.

Google. When I joined. We communicated with hieroglyphics. No foolin'.

Ultimately, the reason why I wanted to begin this blog post was because Google is a social network. It’s the all-in-one. The creme-de-la-creme of social networking.

It’s like an iPhone commercial for applications, except for Google: Need a translator? There’s a Google for that. Need an email? There’s a Google for that…I’m already sick of the commercials and they don’t even exist (yet).

Point being is, Google is a social network, so I wanted to demystify it for my clients on my company blog.  And, I’ve been working on this blog post for awhile now. The problem is that Google is so large, every time I try to understand it all, it becomes more overwhelming. Luckly I’ve found a few great resources to help me out.

However, I’ve decided to narrow my post to the forthcoming Google Wave. I hope that I can secure an invite when it’s first released in September.

Image via For Ladies by Ladies