Imagine Your Reality

When I talk with businesses about social media I see one of two reactions to it:

The first reaction I see is one of resistance and fear. The new technology seems intimidating and the idea that the business needs to learn how to use social media to promote themselves, on top of whatever else they do just feels like one more task on top of an already sizable list. These people feel overwhelmed and also simultaneously hostile and resigned to social media. What they really want is someone who can explain how to use it and make it more manageable for them.

The second reaction is one of confusion and over eager enthusiasm. These are the businesses that have jumped on the bandwagon of social media, without developing a consistent message or strategy for using social media. Their use of social media is either inconsistent, or worse they come off as spammers. They don’t really understand why they aren’t getting responses from people, and are starting to get frustrated by using it.

Both reactions are valid ones to have. The problem, however, is that businesses approach social media with a desire for an automatic guarantee of business, but often don’t implement the strategy or tactics that will allow them to actually get business from social media. They also get caught up on the technology, while forgetting that the technology is only facilitating communication in a different medium.

Ultimately the problem boils down to developing a realistic social media marketing plan that allows a business to successfully communicate with people in a consistent and non-spammy way. To create such a plan you’ve got to spend some time answering some questions that can help you figure out what social media sites you should be devoting your time to.

The first question to consider in your social media strategy is simple: Who is your ideal audience/clientele? In other words, who are the people who come to you and what problem are you solving for them? You’ll want to spend some time looking for specific patterns for these people, such as age range, what kind of business or profession they are in, do they have hobbies relevant to what you do for them, etc. Until you know your audience, you can’t really know if they are on social media sites, and just joining any old site won’t necessarily put you in touch with them.

And added question to ask is: Who are my power partners, aka, the businesses that tend to refer clients your way. Again identifying these types of businesses may be very useful in determining what social media sites you should be on.

In part 2, we’ll discuss the next question to consider in your basic social media strategy.

This Wednesday at the Rocking Frog Cafe there will be a round table discussion on social media etiquette.

The Rocking Frog
2511 Se Belmont St
Portland, OR 97214 US

Social media technology continues to evolve by leaps and bounds. New applications are developed and released on a regular basis, all for the purpose of helping us communicate even more often when we already do, and for creating a tighter social web.

We’ve got the technology. Now what? This discussion focuses on what the etiquette is for using social media to communicate with other people. We ask:

When does social media become narcissistic? What is the right approach to cultivate relationships in social media? When do you become a spammer, and how can you stop doing it? How do businesses communicate their brand and marketing while cultivating real relationships? How should businesses handle situations where someone complains about their services?

By asking and discussing the question we can start to look at not only what we use social media for, but how we use it to create genuine relationships, while also establishing an etiquette that enables us to maintain those relationships.

Please come and share this event with your friends. It’s free and an excellent opportunity to discuss what social media is evolving into.

The latest episode of Social Media Coach Radio is up.

I was a guest blogger on Search Engine Optimization Portland in a post about how to use video effectively on your website.

My latest article on Biznik focuses on how to take your social networking to the next level.

Upcoming Classes

Social Networking for Business 101

If you want to leverage your social networking profiles on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook, and other social networking sites to market your business, this message is for YOU:

Join us on Monday October 26th, 2009 at 1pm for a special 4 hour class on how to set-up and optimize your social networking profiles, where you will learn the following:

• How to claim your personalized url for Linkedin and Facebook, and why it’s important to do it.
• How to optimize your social networking profiles for search results and as a way to market your business.
• How to connect your social networks to each other.
• The key to developing effective connections on different social networking sites.

• Organize your thoughts, pick a key message
• Use current events to keep your status updates relevant.
• Write DREAMY, attention-grabbing copy

Social Networking for Business: One half day delivers killer writing and optimized social networking profiles!

Register here

Seating is limited register early.

Eight Steps to a Successful Social Media Marketing Plan

This is a 12 Week Webinar for Business Owners who are great at what they do, but feel overwhelmed when it comes to Social Media Marketing

If you’re like most business owners you’re frustrated by social media technology and having to fit it into your already busy schedule. Additionally having to learn how to market yourself on social media can be intimidating because it also involves learning the correct social media etiquette as well as the tools.

You feel discouraged because you know social media is becoming more important for marketing a business but don’t how to use the technology or you do know how to use it, but wonder why no one ever responds to your posts.

We meet twelve times over four months and will go through the 8 steps to a success social media marketing plan. You’ll work on setting up your social media presence and gradually develop a successful social media marketing plan.

You’ll be part of a powerful group of entrepreneurs who own businesses, just like you, who want to get unstuck with social media. You’ll learn the technology AND the marketing together.

The sessions will be a very focused combination of teaching, sharing, feedback, and support.

At the end, everyone will have a completed social media marketing plan and presence to take into 2010!

To register, please go here.

Earlier this week , I taught for the first time, a webinar on social media marketing. I’d never used a webinar before so I realized upfront that I needed to plan for that by offering a second date for the class. And while I already knew the material and was comfortable with it, I also knew that because I was presenting it for the first time, it was better to do what I call a dry run, where I’d simply do the class without putting pressure on myself to record it.

I did get asked by participants if I was going to record the webinar, and as I told them, I’d record the one on Wednesday, but not Monday. And I was glad I didn’t record it, because there was one or two technical issues that I had to deal with, which I didn’t really want recorded. So now, I know these issues, and I’m more prepared with presenting the class, because I’ve done it once. Now I can record the class, because I have a better idea of what will happen.

A dry run of a class, basically just doing the class for the sake of seeing what will happen is always essential, in my opinion, for making the class successful. It allows you to see what is working without worrying about what others beyond the attendees will say if they happen to see the information. It can also give you some good perspectives on what to improve for the next time you teach the class. I do a dry run really to help me improve myself.

To be fair, having a recording can be useful also. You can listen or see yourself and from that learn what mistakes you made. Some people will benefit from doing a recording, if they especially want to focus on the talk itself. In this case, because I was dealing with technology, I decided I wanted to go without the recording and focus on making sure I had a good handle on the technology, before taking that next step and recording the talk.

Regardless of what you do, if you’re going to use something you’ve recorded for commercial purposes, make sure you only do so after you have done a few trial run and feel comfortable with the product you’ll be providing to people.

Given that I’m a Social Media coach and strategist, it’s important what I discuss with my clients is also reflected in what I’m doing with social media. This last weekend, I needed to revise my website, because I was adding a social media Webinar, an in-town 6-month business class, and a Webinar version of the 6-month business class to my website, for the upcoming months of September and October.

I decided that I’d also add icons of my twitter and facebook accounts to my website, but in the process of evaluating those icons and the portals I already had on my website, I ended up changing my mind and not using the icons. Here’s why:

I already have a Retaggr card on my site. Retaggr is an excellent resource, which allows you to save all your social media profiles to Retaggr, so that people can access and add themselves to your social networks, all from one place. It’s very convenient and easy to use. I’m on a number of social media sites, so it actually made sense to not use Facebook or Twitter icons, when I already had an all in one social media button that people could access to add themselves to my network.

Consequently I decided to get rid of my Facebook badge, which was taking up a decent chunk of the space at the bottom of my website. I also moved my Yelp badge, to just underneath the social bookmarking buttons I have in the left column of the site. I’ve kept the twitter link in the left column for the forseeable future.

By cleaning up all that space, it actually makes my website look less busy, and thus easier to navigate and look through. But I wasn’t finished with the social media changes to the site.

Next I created rss feeds for my radio shows on feedburner. I like feedburner’s ability to track numbers, as well as offering other services. Plus if people subscribe to the feed it makes it easy for them to keep up with the latest radio show. I took the feeds and added them to my website, in the feeds sections in the left hand column. I also added the feeds itunes and the podcast directory sites, in order to increase exposure of the shows.

The final part of this social media strategy is to actually blog about what I’ve done and share some of my social media strategy with others, as an example of some of the work I do with my clients, but also to demonstrate what I consider to be good social media strategy, a strategy which integrates social media into my marketing and also generates interest in how it can be integrated into other business models.

At one of the social media events in PDX, Jeremiah Owyang, was asked to comment on a blog journal titled, “Is Twitter a waste of time for small business?” The original poster had come to the conclusion that it was, but Jeremiah made an excellent point that if your audience is on twitter, it isn’t a waste of time. As someone who is a small business owner, as well as focusing on teaching social media to other people, I thought I’d put my own response to that question, but frame it within the wider context of social media.

The fact is, social media is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere, and in fact social media sites are seeing increasing numbers as people join. Ignoring it or pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t work. Saying that it’s a waste of time is the kind of thinking which looks toward trying to quantify social media as a way of finding ROI.

Certainly social media can and does contribute to the success of businesses. But something I’ve noticed missing from a lot of the analysis being focused on social media is the lack of understanding about the networking component of social media. Networking is about building relationships and ideally that’s what occurs in the social networking aspect of social media. We build relationships. We learn about each other, our wants, needs, etc. And then we help each other out. And from that you can grow a business, but you’ve got to realize you are building relationships with people. Without that relationship factor, social media marketing won’t be successful, because it’s driven by the consumer, by the buzz that people generate and to get that buzz you’ve got to engage people in a meaningful manner.

This is why a lot of the marketing efforts where people ceaselessly spam others with their latest products and services and ways to get thousands of followers is starting to backfire. They aren’t engaging the people they spam in a meaningful way that will make those people want to know more. Instead what they are really doing is striving so hard to get an ROI that they appear as the carpetbaggers and snake oil salespeople they really are.

Social media isn’t a waste of time, but how YOU approach it could be. If you’re only going into social media to make a quick buck and get rich, then you may be disappointed when you find out that people care more about the relationships they create than about the products and services you try to shill out. Check out this link for An excellent example of social media at work bringing in business It shows that businesses can succeed at social media when it focuses on engaging those people and building relationships!

That’s pretty powerful, and it’s based on a qualitative approach to social media…building quality relationships over quantitative relationships.

Upcoming Events

Why do I need Social Networking for my Business? Yes, you can do it less than one hour a week.

Social networking is a hot topic in businesses today. Many of us are not sure how it helps grow our business or acquire new clients or where we will have the time to add one more thing to our hectic lives. However, one thing is for sure, if we don’t come and find out, we will never have answers to these questions.

In this program, Taylor Ellwood will explain what social networking is, why it’s important to be on these sites, and how it can benefit you and your business. He will explain how to automate your social networking presence so you only need to spend one hour a week and still have time to run your business and live your life. In this class you will learn:

• What Linkedin, Facebook, Biznik, Twitter are and why it’s important to be on these sites or some of them.
• How to get clients and business from these sites.
• How to automate your online presence so are spending minimum time and effort, yet getting maximum returns.
• What a status bar is and why it’s a good idea to update it regularly.
• How these sites can be used to obtain recommendations and testimonials from your clients.
• The do’s and don’ts of Social networking and how to maintain a professional profile on each site.

Taylor will not only explain, but also demonstrate the benefits of social networks, and show you how you can attract more clients to your business.

Date: Friday, August 7 2009

Time: 11:30pm to 2pm

Price: $35.00 per person, Lunch included

Location: 607 Main Street Suite 240, Oregon City, 97045

To register please RSVP with Diane Dahlins. Check and credit cards only please, when rsvping.

Are you networking effectively? How to turn your natural network into your referral team

Networking isn’t just about online social networking sites such as twitter and linkedin. And it doesn’t just involve going to a chamber meeting or other type of in-person networking event. Networking involves learning how to create relationships with all the people you know, so that you can help all of them, even as they help you. In this workshop, I’ll discuss how you can take your natural network of friends and family and interests and mesh them in with your network of business associates. By the end of this class, you’ll get started on turning your network into a lean, mean referral machine!

In this class you will learn:

• What networking is and the do’s and don’ts of networking.
• How to recognize a networking opportunity in everyday interactions.
• How to mesh your natural network with your business network and have everyone benefiting from it.
• How to listen and make connections between the people who need something, and the people who can help them.
• Know who to refer to what job
• You’ll get a free e-book when you register for this class on the Eleven Elements of Business

Date: Thursday, August 6 2009

Time: Noon to 2pm

Price: $35

Location: Bravo! Publications 630 B Avenue Lake Oswego OR 97034

To register please rsvp with Taylor Ellwood at Imagineyourreality or register via paypal

Checks or paypal only please

Teleseminar: What are your Businesses’s Strengths and Weaknesses?

Do you know what your strengths and weaknesses are for your Business? In this one hour teleseminar, I’ll provide you an assessment tool you can use to assess where your business is strong and where it is weak. You will come away with increased clarity about what’s working in your business and what isn’t, as well as with a plan of action to remedy the weaknesses and capitalize on your strengths. You will learn the following:

• Why it’s important to check your business plan every 3 months, and how it can help you improve your business
• How to assess your business model and determine what your strengths and weaknesses are
• Action steps you can take to make your business successful

3pm to 4pm (PST time), 6pm to 7pm (EST Time) on August 10th and 17th

Cost $20, and you get a free e-book on social media marketing when you register

To register, email me at Imagineyourreality or via paypal