Don’t Be Scared Of Negative Feedback On Social Media

For many people, the idea of actively engaging in social media is down right scary!  And, for big brands, it can be even more scary.  After all, how will they respond when social media attacks your brand?  There is a saying that goes “All press is good press”.  But, in a recent “Twitter Fiasco”, I think Air Canada could argue otherwise.

I first heard of the “Air Canada Breaks Wheelchairs” story through an article written in the Globe and Mail.  The article titled “5 Social Media Lessons For Air Canada” was written by Amber MacArthur and offered great insight on how Air Canada could have improved their response to the negative press they received via social media.  For anyone (or any business) that is interested in understanding how to properly react to negative feedback on social media, Amber offers some great advice in this interview!

Meet Amber MacArthur (aka. AmberMac)

Amber MacArthur is a new media host/producer, strategist, and speaker. Most recently Amber worked at Citytv as its New Media Specialist in 2006, reporting on new media and interactive news and trends on a national news program and hosting/producing Webnation, a half-hour current affairs program about internet culture. Prior to Citytv, Amber spent two years working as a TV host/producer with tech guru Leo Laporte at G4techTV, a national television channel entirely devoted to technology.

Amber also developed “commandN,” a popular video podcast that covers online and offline technology trends. Aside from experience in the broadcast industry, Amber spent four years as a web strategist at Razorfish and software start-up HigherMarkets, both in San Francisco. She also worked as a web strategy manager for Microsoft Canada, but she is a Mac fan at heart.

Amber is represented exclusively as a speaker with The Lavin Agency. You can also find Amber blogging at ambermac.com.

Social Media Interview

1. The article that you wrote recently in The Globe & Mail about the “Air Canada Twitter Fiasco” has received a lot of attention in the social media world.  But, even in the traditional business world, it’s kind of opened the eyes to some big businesses to show that it’s one thing to engage in social media, but it’s another thing to put up accounts and not use them. I think your article was a great example of that.  Can you give everyone a bit of a background on the situation and what your perspective is?

Well, I think for people that followed the story, it’s the story of 10 yr old Tanner who flew to NYC and his wheelchair got broken.  Air Canada took it to get it fixed, however there was all this information happening on Twitter where people were talking about Air Canada.  And, Tanner’s aunt hadn’t heard from them and was very critical of them. The whole thing exploded, so over the course of like 16 hrs, there were all these negative comments about Air Canada.

And, unfortunately, Air Canada didn’t really participate in the conversation at all. I was a little bit critical about their response in the sense that for a huge brand like Air Canada, I believe you are serving the public and you have a responsibility to monitor the web. And, there were comments on the Globe & Mail article where people were saying “Well, it’s a lot of money to hire someone to watch out what’s happening on Twitter and all these different sites”. Well, I’m pretty confident that Air Canada can afford to put some resources there and it’s 2010 and that’s what people expect.

So, I think they made a mistake, and I think it’s unfortunate because there was so much press about this certain incident. I hope that they will do something to change their social media practices.  Try to reach out and just be smart about engaging online. I mean, they need to get control of the Air Canada account on Twitter, they need to actively be using Facebook and not just use it as a broadcast platform to talk about Air Canada sales.  But, instead to engage with people who are upset about their interactions with the brand, there are also customers who are happy about their interactions with the brand. And, they really need to embrace the social media environment.

I think over the next few months we’ll see that happen, or maybe it doesn’t happen. Maybe there is a follow up article here?

Trevor: No kidding.  I think, to what you are saying there, you have to wonder what the cost of all the negative press was.  It’s really tough to put monetary values on these things.  But, if you want to talk about the cost of employing someone, what was the cost of all the negative press that Air Canada received over this?  I know I personally commented on the article and I was actually quite blown away by some of the responses that people were giving saying that Air Canada should completely avoid social media, act as though it doesn’t exist.  I’m to the complete opposite belief and I believe we can both say that confidently.  It’s one thing to be really aggressive and actively involved, but at the very least, to be monitoring what people are saying so that you can react to those types of situations in a timely manner.

There are definitely a lot of people that still think social media is all nonsense.  “It’s just people out there complaining”. I would say to the same people who commented on the Globe & Mail article. There was a lot of people who were anonymous and wouldn’t even put their names there who had negative comments. And, so, if they think the social media space is sort of this “big uncontrolled party that they shouldn’t get involved with”, then hey, I respect their opinion.  But, at the same time, when they go and comment anonymously, I have to ask myself that hey, if you feel this strongly about something then use your own name.

So, I was very surprised by some of the posts.  But, at the end of the day, we just don’t know who those are coming from. It could be one person logging in with different names.  And, this is one of the negative sides of the whole “commenting” environment.  Whether it’s on newspapers or other sites, it can be manipulated. And, in this circumstance, I think the only good thing was that there was a really healthy and hearty conversation happening there.  And, I would have liked to see Air Canada perhaps get more involved.

Trevor: Ya, it was very cool to see.  I was one of the ones that put my name down because I actually made that comment too that a lot of people were throwing out all these opinions, but they weren’t really standing behind anything by saying who they were. It doesn’t hold the same kind of weight.  I even knew that I was throwing myself out there a little bit to be criticized, but it is what it is.  You stand behind your belief and go from there.

Anyways, that is somewhat of a side topic.  I just wanted to commend you for the article because I thought it was great.  I thought your perspective was bang on with the way that they should be considering approaching this and like you say, we’ll see what happens in the coming months here.

2. So, speaking specifically about you Amber, how did you get involved in the whole social media world?  If you can summarize how you started and what’s got you to this point where you have all these online properties and manage multiple accounts. You’ve seen a lot of success.  You’ve written a book recently as well!

Ya, I mean, I think in the social media space many people hear that term and they think this is something that is brand new.  But, if we look back at the history of the internet, there are many social networking sites. Kind of the early days of the online message boards and the community forums.  For me, in 1999, I had a great opportunity to work at a company called Razorfish in San Francisco during the dot com boom.  And, there was a lot happening there as far as trying to build these communities online.  We just didn’t call it social media.

So, during that time I just got so excited about the idea that you could use this platform to connect with people all over the world.  It’s the first time we’ve truly had a platform where we could do something like this.  And, I just knew that I would spend my life essentially building content and working on projects that allowed these connections to happen.

So, fast forward 10 years later and now social media has really exploded. Fortunately I was just in the right place at the right time. I had followed web trends along the way as they’ve sort of gone into the social media space in a significant manner.

3. So, how do you find the balance now that you’ve got all these different properties, both personal and business. How do you manage those? Is there a separation between your personal and business brands?

I think that’s a really good question. I mean for me personally, there isn’t much separation with anything I do.  Whether it’s between personal brand or professional brand, between personal life and professional life. I find it’s all just in one bucket.  You know, I basically live in an environment where I may be online at midnight and I may be working on a project through my company MGI Media, or I might be updating or leaving a comment on my video podcast CommandN.

So, all the worlds are kind of connected and they all sort of leverage each other.  And, that kind of works best for me.  I don’t need those lines of separation. I love that technology is so exciting and it’s such a fun space to work in, so I see how some of the different projects I work on really compliment other projects. I mean, people always ask “How do you come up with so many ideas?”.  I mean, I write about 5 columns a week, I do multiple shows every week.  But, when you do that much content, you can leverage articles that you’ve written and that ends up being content on TV.  Getting a client because of some connection between interviewing someone on my shows.  I mean, there really is (and I hate using this word), but there is some nice synergy there.

Trevor: Ya, and repurposing content is a good thing to take away from what you are saying.  You are utilizing your blog articles or your videos, turning them into blog articles, creating interview opportunities. It’s a great way to build content for those that are starting up a blog for the first time and wondering what the heck they are actually going to write about. It comes together pretty quickly.

4. Are there any particular online sources or blogs that you read to keep up with all the trends in social media?

Honestly, the number one place that I go, and it’s so popular, lots of people are familiar with it, is Mashable. Mashable tends to be this ultimate guide for all things social media.  What I love about it is it’s been following social media trends for a few years now and they have case studies for different industries, they really keep up to date on a lot of the different tools and services that launch on the web. And, so I read that religiously.

There are a couple of other blogs that I read maybe once a day, but with Mashable, I check in at least a few times a day. And, I really believe that for the average person that is interested in social media, if you check into Mashable and spend 10 minutes a day there, you could eventually get a really good grasp on what is happening in the social media space. And, you could start to understand what works and what doesn’t work in that environment.

Trevor: Definitely, Mashable is always a great place to start. And, with regards to blogs, do you use RSS to filter everything into one RSS reader and try your damnedest to stay up to date with it?

You know I find I’ve used a lot of the different readers, but     what I ended up doing a lot is just following people on Twitter and getting some of my best content there. I do follow a lot of people on Twitter, so it’s not that easy to sort through all of the different updates.  But, I find it to be an invaluable resources. Because, there are some people I follow, I’m thinking of Scott Stratten (@unmarketing), Mathew Ingrim (@mathewi) who used to work for the Globe & Mail, Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel).

All those people in some way or another contribute to the news information I consume on social media. So, if they post a link, I automatically end up retweeting it, looking at it.  Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) is another person.  And, that ends up being a major news source for me. So, for anyone who wants to try to follow along with content, one of the best things to do through your Twitter account is, just get it setup so you follow certain people. And then maybe you use a desktop service like Tweetdeck or something else, where you put those people into different groups and you have your “social media experts”.  That way, you can really focus and get all your updates based on one specific topic.

Trevor: Ya, that’s great advice.  It’s very timely and if it’s coming from trusted sources, you know that it will be worthy of your time. Those people build up their reputations over time that makes you want to read stuff that they have to share.

5. I find everyone has some type of story, that WOW moment with social media that makes them believe it is a game changer in the way we do business or personal life. Do you have any stories like this?

Well, I always talk about this one moment.  It was a couple of years ago when I was travelling down to Washington, DC to speak at an event.  And, before I had left Toronto, I went onto Twitter and said “What hotel should I stay at in the DC area?”. All of a sudden I had dozens of replies and recommendations. I saw that the majority of people are recommending this one hotel, so it must be good. And, then I’m thinking to myself at the time, well, how did I used to get this information? I used to go to Google. And, I would do a random search and I would get a million plus results and I’d have to go through all these pages and I wouldn’t really know which content was paid for.

Well, forget about that, social media had become my avenue to chose how I was gonna spend money, who I was gonna connect with, what brands I was going to support, what news information I was going to consume.  So, my content interests really shifted and I developed this trusted network of people who I follow and network with on a regular basis.

So, that was kind of the “Ah Ha” or “WOW” moment for me. And, I think you’re right, everyone does have that.  And, I always encourage people that think overnight they are going to understand how social media will help their brand or business. That’s not going to happen. You need to invest and commit to social media for a few months and then you will have that moment. But, it won’t happen right away and you need to be patient.

6. And, you are leading perfectly into my last question for you. Is there anything else that you would give for advice to individuals that are just starting out in social media that might be intimidated by all of the noise and everything the feel they “need” to know?

I know, it’s scary.  Within my book, Power Friending, I actually devoted an entire section to the fears.  And, it’s something I added in at a later date because I realized that one of the reasons people are not adopting these tools is because they are afraid of the technology. And, what I would say to people is “Stop focusing on the technology because the reality is, the technology has never ever been easier to use”.

It’s quite simple to update your status on Twitter, upload a video to YouTube.  I mean, you need some pretty basic computer skills. What people need to realize is that social media is about being social. It’s about building communities.  it’s about having social graces.  It’s much more about how you network than it is about the tools themselves. Sure, you need to know them, but don’t be afraid of them.  Because, the good thing about the social media world, I believe, is that people are very forgiving, they are very helpful and they will lend a hand along the way. So, what you want to do is just get out there, start tweeting, start blogging, facebooking, all these different things and building a community around you that will support you as you navigate these online waters.

Trevor: And, I think those are great tips for individuals, small businesses, even big businesses like the Air Canada’s out there that are looking to just get started.

Connect With Amber

Current Occupation: New Media Host/Producer, Strategist and Speaker
Company: http://mgimedia.ca
Speaking: http://thelavinagency.com
Shows: http://webnation.tv
http://commandn.tv
http://twit.tv/natn
Blog: http://ambermac.com
Facebook (Fan Page): http://www.facebook.com/ambermac
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ambermac

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Claim Your Brand Online And Create Your Own Fame

In this interview, I chat with Laura Roeder about how she got started in social media and how she has built multiple online businesses based around social media training.  Laura has an energy about her that is infectious and as a result, her clients can’t help but praise her for her teaching methods and fun approach to social media.

For those of you that are feeling overwhelmed by the idea of starting in social media, Laura has a message for you that will ease your worries!  It’s simple, you don’t have to know everything and you shouldn’t feel stupid about just getting starting in social media.  We all started with zero experience, so, the only step you need to worry about is jumping in and getting started.  And, don’t worry, she offers a number of great resources that will help you along the way!

Meet Laura Roeder

Laura Roeder is a social media marketing expert who teaches small businesses how to create their own fame and claim their brand online. She is the creator of the Creating Fame Classroom and Your Backstage Pass to Twitter.

She resides in Venice Beach, California where she video blogs about social media, entrepreneurship and personal branding.

Laura has been a speaker at numerous influential industry conferences including, The South by Southwest Interactive Conference, Online Marketing For Women Entrepreneurs, The Social Communications Summit and Blogher 2009 in Chicago, discussing online marketing, social media, personal branding, community building, and making authentic connections online. Laura has been quoted in the Los Angeles Times, CNET and has contributed to many influential online publications such as ProBlogger, Eben Pagan’s blog, The Launch Coach and The Wealth Spa.

Social Media Interview

1. Can you tell everyone how you got started in social media?

Ya, so when I first started my business, I did web design.  Kind of your typical web design and development for local businesses that needed a website. But, I grew up on the internet, you know, I just turned 26.  I’m kind of that first generation that got AOL and Compuserve in the 4th Grade and I’ve always communicated with people that way.  You know, I taught myself to code websites in Jr. High School.

And, so, everything we call “social media” today has existed on the modern web in different forms. We haven’t always had blogs, but people always had, we used to call them just “personal sites”.  A place where you’d keep your diary and info about your life.  So, I’ve just always been fascinated by that stuff.  I’ve always loved all that stuff.  It’s something that came natural to me, which is using these tools and connecting people online. And, I’ve always loved marketing, I studied advertising in college.

When I was doing web design, I would advise my clients about, why does your site exist?  And, how are you getting people there?  And, what are they doing once they are there?  Which I thought was what you are supposed to do and what you should do. But, I found out later that most web designers are not doing that for their clients.  And, people started telling me that this “social media thing” is a really hot topic.  Twitter had just come out and people were really interested in how you might use it for business. Facebook, at that time, was opening up more and more.  First, it was just colleges and then high school then everybody.  And people started wondering how this could be a marketing tool.

So, people would ask me about that all the time.  And, finally enough people kept telling me “You could charge money for the social media stuff.  And, you could just do that”.  And, I was like WHAT? Who would pay for that….that’s crazy!  You know, everybody knows how to use Twitter or Facebook.  But, I found out that’s not true at all and there are a lot of small businesses that are definitely willing to pay for these tools that can really help their marketing. So, that’s sort of how I got into this whole world.

Trevor: Ya, and I think you are a natural at the teaching side of things.  There is a lot of feedback that you display on your website with a Twitter tool.  I know you put together a short little video on how you can post your testimonials to your website. And, there are tons of responses from people out there saying how much you’ve helped them and that is obviously a testament to how you approach the teaching methods around social media. Making it simple for people.

Ya, thank you.  That’s a big part of what I do is encouraging people, making things simple.  In the tech world, there is a lot of snobbiness and there’s a lot of “ohhh…you should know this already, this is so easy.” And, a lot of people that are interested in exploring online marketing get turned off by that attitude of kind of the “Web 2.0″ world. So, I try to be the antithesis to that and say there are no dumb questions.  You can ask me anything.

I remind people that we all have to start somewhere.  I started doing this stuff really young so it’s very intuitive and natural for me. But, everybody starts out with Twitter feeling really weird and having no idea how to talk to people. Everybody starts from the beginning, even though people say “I’m too old to learn this.” or “I feel dumb”.  And, I say, no your not too old, you can do it.  Everybody had to start out. So, ya, that’s a big part of what I do is encouraging people to jump into these things, even if it feels a little scary.  And, making things really really simple and easy to understand.

Trevor: Ya, and I think the other thing about social media too is that it’s changing so much every single day. So, for somebody to say that they feel awkward, well, I think you can probably say this as much as I can is…..I feel overwhelmed some days.  There is always something new to learn.  So, people that are starting out shouldn’t feel that kind of fear.  You have to start somewhere, right.

2. With regards to online branding, how do you go about separating the personal from the business, or is it one in the same?

Ya, I brand as me.  So, if you go to my website, it says Laura Roeder at the top.  People ask me what my company name is and I’m like, it’s just sort of my name, it’s just sort of me, I don’t really have a company name. I have found that people really identify with that personal connection. They want a human being that they can have a relationship with and a connection with that teaches them.

I think personal brands are really powerful for so many businesses. I think it’s a great way to market and brand your business because people are really craving that human connection.  So, as far as the issue of blurring the lines between a personal brand and a business brand, I’m very casual and very open online. Especially about my business, I’m pretty much an open book. You can ask me anything, I’ll tell you how I do things on the inside of my business. But, I don’t share everything about my life online just because, you know, I do have a real life outside of the computer. You can still share personal things about yourself without letting everything hang out, you know. I have a newsletter that I publish every week where I often will publish a picture of me on vacation. I just put a picture of me when I went to Lake Tahoe, so I’m sharing my personal life, but not sharing every detail of the trip or every person that was on the trip. I guess that’s a way to look at it, I’ll share everything about me, but not necessarily share everything about the other people in my life.  And, I think that can be a good guideline to go by.

3. So, with regards to all these tools you can use online.  A lot of people tell me that they use Facebook for personal only and Twitter is a business tool, or whatever it might be. Which tools do you use most frequently and how do you try to separate that from the personal and business side of things?

It’s a hard question, I find Twitter to be the best business tool, I find it to be most effective for business. And, the reason is, it’s normal on Twitter to talk to new people all the time. That’s kind of the point of Twitter is to meet new people and meet new friends. And, of course, in a business it’s key to always be bringing in new prospects, always be talking to a new audience.  And, Twitter does that very naturally.

Facebook, a lot of people don’t use it that way.  And when you are talking about being friends with someone on Facebook, there has to be a mutual agreement which is a huge problem from a marketing perspective, right, you need to be able to reach out to new people.

There is no perfect solution.  The way that I use Facebook is I use my personal profile just for friends and “quote/unquote”, real people that I know. And, I use my Facebook Fan Page, which is called “The Dash” for business.  But, you know, I probably absolutely lose leads. I probably lose people doing it that way because people do try to friend me on my personal profile.  You can write a message but nobody reads it.  So, there is no perfect way. I do that because the spam gets out of control.  A lot of people find friending on Facebook.  It makes it really hard to use because you log in and you see all these people who you have no idea who they are with the updates. And, that’s what turns a lot of people off.  They try to use Facebook, or Twitter the same, they will say it’s just a bunch of spam and I say, well don’t “friend” those people, don’t “follow” those people. You have control over your experience. So, that’s what I do, but there is definitely at this point, with Facebook, there is not that perfect solution.

Trevor: And, filtering the noise I think is a great point I think you bring up too.  Because that is one of the challenges that I think delays people from getting involved in social media.  It is overwhelming, there is so much.  Especially with Twitter, there is a constant stream of noise coming at you, how do you actually filter through the good stuff

4. Is there anything in particular that you do to manage all of your accounts efficiently?

Well, for Twitter, the biggest thing is that you don’t have to follow everyone who follows you. This has always been a big controversy in the Twitter world.  Do you have to follow back or not and from day one I’ve said, just follow who you want.  And, a lot of the people that were advocates of following everyone back found that it wasn’t scalable and found that it didn’t work.  That happened with a lot of the big name people that were following everyone. They said I have to stop doing this because obviously it doesn’t scale, right.

You can’t keep up with 50,000 people and, again, it’s imperfect.  I’m sure there are people who’s feelings are hurt because I don’t follow them and because there is a limit to attention, there are a lot of people that I want to follow but I’m already at like 500 and I just can’t handle anymore.

So, it’s imperfect, but the top thing is just engage with people who you are interested in.  Follow people who you want to, because what’s so cool about Twitter is you can still talk to everyone with @ replies.  I talk to everyone who talks to me, it doesn’t matter if I follow them or not.  And, that’s a good way for me to still interact with people who want to interact with me for a marketing perspective or just for a relationship perspective but not fill my tweet stream with stuff that I’m not really interested in.   Which makes it a really not fun and interesting experience.

Trevor: So, the summary on that is stick with quality vs quantity when it comes to Twitter.

5. What do you use for information resources?  There is a lot of stuff out there, both blogs and more traditional news sources.  Is there anything in particular that you could give advice on for other people to check out?

It’s kind of funny, but the advice that I give businesses is, you don’t need to keep up. Because the thing is, as a business, you don’t want to use anything until it hits mainstream. I mean, there might be some sort of niche site for your industry, right.  If you only target steel companies, there could be one site for steel companies that you want to be on. But, as far as the general social networking sites, as a business, why would you want to be an early adopter, right.  You want to be where everybody is, you don’t want to be “cool” in this situation.  You don’t want to brag like “oh, I’m on this site that nobody has ever heard of”, what’s the point, there is no customers there because it’s so new. So, I actually encourage people not to stress about keeping up. You don’t have to know about the latest and greatest site.

The big ones are the ones that most people have heard of.  Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube (if you consider that a social networking site).  You don’t have to stress about anything else. I say, when you hear about it on the local news, then you know it’s time to use it for your local business. By then, it’s reached that critical mass.  And, people get themselves really stressed out and really overwhelmed reading too much news, trying to keep up with every little latest and greatest thing. So, you can subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll tell you the ones, it’s free, and I’ll tell you the ones you need to know. If it’s not in my newsletter, don’t worry about it, that’s what I usually tell people.

6. For myself and other people I’ve interviewed, everyone always seems to have a interesting story around social media, that WOW moment, where you realize this is a game changer. Either in the way you do business or even just on a personal level. Do you have a moment like this that you can share with everyone?

Definitely, I mean, I’ve met so many people through social media.  So many people that are business people that I really admire and I want to connect with.  And, one person that I met through social media, who has become a good friend and an amazing mentor to me, is a guy named Cameron Herold. He’s a little bit more famous in Canada than he is in the States, he’s a corporate coach.

He lives in Vancouver like you do and he had a TedTalk recently that was really popular talking about raising kids as entrepreneurs.  He was the COO of 1800-Got-Junk and a bunch of other impressive companies and he is someone who, I had seen him write articles in magazines, so I was following him and I was following him on Twitter.  And, one day on Twitter, he posted “I have a long drive coming up, put your name in and I’ll do a 20 minute call with you for free, I love talking to entrepreneurs and I want to entertain myself on this drive”. Usually he does really expensive corporate coaching.

So, I jumped on it as soon as I saw it. He had a little Google form that you filled out and put your number in. And, it was funny because when I hit it, you know on Google forms, when it’s a public one, you can see there is “this” many people on the form, so there were time slots and I was frantically typing my name in as they were filling up.  But, I got a time slot with, we had a great phone call where he gave me really good advice and I kept in touch with him after that.  He was in LA and we had lunch and he’s become someone who has become really important to my business and someone that I really admire.  And, if I hadn’t followed him on Twitter, if I hadn’t jumped at that opportunity, we never would have connected and that’s how I meet most people now is through social media.  And, I’ll just find somebody who I think is interesting and I’ll say let’s have lunch, let’s meet up.  It’s a great way to meet people and a great way to connect with other people that might otherwise be hard to reach like Cameron.

Trevor: Ya, I actually hear that a lot from people, it’s the connections that you make online that end up converting into offline relationships that really become game changers for people.  It’s like WOW, before, I had to try to email this person and randomly or phone and try to get through the gatekeeper, and it just didn’t work like that back in the day. And, now I think a lot more people are accessible. And, not to name drop or anything, but I know you’ve done some stuff with Eban Pagan lately too.  And, that’s another great example of just reaching out.  I think you wrote a blog article for him or something, did you not?

Ya, that’s another great social media story. So, he had just started a blog, I didn’t know who he was at the time.  Someone sent me over to his blog and he had a post that said “I’m having a little contest, I’m new to social media, tell me how to use it for business and the best one wins”. So, I was like, ahh I know I can win.  So, I did, I wrote a post about how to use social media and I won the contest.  And, at that time, again, he had just got into social media so he was using Twitter.  And, because I won the contest, he followed me on Twitter. So, he knew who I was so I just sent him a message and said “Hey, you’re in Santa Monica, I’m in Venice, let’s meet up”.  We ended up going to some networking event.

People are so scared to approach people, I don’t know if you know if you are listening to this call, but Eben is a very important person in a certain circle. And, I’m just like, I like to meet interesting, smart people, let’s hang out.  If he says no, who cares. And, a lot of people are afraid to take that next step. So, that’s how I became connected to Eben. Now, I’ve been a guest teacher on some of his programs.  He’s another person that I’ve learned so much from that I met through social media.

Trevor: Ya, you don’t get what you don’t ask for, right.  The fear of rejection is what, I think, stops a lot of people sometimes.  But, ya, it’s amazing how much people are willing to open up and really want to be connected with, right. No matter what their stature is, they are still people at the end of the day.

7. So, last question, do have any advice that you would give to small business owners that are thinking about getting started with social media?

Again, don’t worry about being on every site.  You don’t need to be a cool, cutting-edge person, you are already cutting-edge because you are using social media at all, compared to most businesses.  So, I would say don’t worry about being on every site. And, the big hump that most businesses need to get over is just jumping in. You know, I talk to people all the time that say “I’ve been thinking about starting a Twitter account for 6 months” or “I started a Twitter account but I was too scared to say anything, because I didn’t know what to say”.

You know, you can check out my site and my blog and there are lots of other amazing blogs with good advice about social media. But, the most important part is, like we were saying, just having that courage to reach out and talk to people and ask.  And, on a tool like Twitter, I always tell people, you don’t have to know what to say, just respond to other people.  People feel all this pressure about what should I tweet? It has to be really smart and it has to be really impressive.  Don’t worry about it, just respond to what other people are saying. You are just making conversation, it doesn’t have to be profound, it doesn’t have to be amazing.  It can be “Cool link, thanks for sharing that”. It’s a totally valid thing to say to someone on Twitter.  That’s how those relationships are formed.

So, my biggest advice is just jump in and give it a shot.

Trevor: That’s great advice, and I think to add to that, when people are first starting on Twitter, I know for myself I started sharing other people’s content. That’s how I got involved.  Instead of trying to think about what the heck I’m actually going to say, just start following people that are of interest to you, that you value what they have to say and the info they are providing and share it with your network.  You will just naturally see it start to grow from there and the relationships start.

Connect With Laura Roeder

Current Occupation: Social Media Marketing Expert
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This blog post is Part 3 of 3 in an email series titled “3 Critical Steps To Social Media Success – A Social Media Manager Shares His Secrets”. It has been written in collaboration with Reid Travis, Social Media Manager – Panchero’s Mexican Grill.

To receive all of the emails and articles in this series and to sign up for our newsletter, click this link and sign up now.

Reid Travis has been working as a Social Media Manager for Panchero’s Mexican Grill for over 18 months now, and in that time he has adopted some great practices that have helped him excel in his job. The basic everyday roles of a social media manager can be divided into three umbrella categories; monitor, manage and measure. For the remainder of this post we are going to dive into the details regarding the monitoring portion of Reid’s job; share a few tips and hopefully inspire you to implement some of these practices for your company, or personal brand.

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You Can’t Improve What You Don’t Measure

Welcome back to the third and final part of our blog series about social media. Thus far, we have covered how to begin monitoring a brand online and also how to efficiently manage a brand once you have started establishing a presence online. This final article will focus on the measuring aspects of your social presence.

There is one question that keeps social media managers up at night, haunts our dreams, and sends shivers down our spine: “What is the ROI from our social media?” This loaded question can sometimes be difficult to answer, not because ROI doesn’t exist in social media, but because the process of measuring your return is quite a bit different than the traditional ROI equation.

Before I get into the breakdown of measuring social media ROI, I want to show you some tools you can use to properly measure your social media presence. After all, if you can’t prove people are even paying attention to your content, than any hope of proving social media ROI is pretty much lost.

Google Analytics

Our old friend Google is back again! Google Analytics is a free tool used to analyze the traffic for websites and blogs. Google Analytics displays basic information such as unique visitors, page views and visits but also hits the nitty gritty stuff like entrance paths, bounce rate and time on page. (It can measure your Google Adwords campaign, too!) The service can be implemented by simply embedding the code into your website or blog.

I unfortunately don’t have the wherewithal to hit all the features of Google analytics in this post. Fortunately, though, Google has put together an incredible YouTube channel chocked full of videos to help you be an analytics pro!

Twitter

I’ve been utilizing a service called Squawq to help me track my conversation and brand mentions on Twitter. Squawq gives me a graph of brand mentions over time and also a few other analytics including keyword association and a list of VIP twitter handles that interact with me at a high frequency.

When looking at this information, specifically the graph to the right, you see obvious spikes over the last month. Part of my job is to isolate these spikes and compare them to my communication timeline and see what might be causing these jumps in brand mentions or interactions. In this case, the spikes come on Fridays, for the most part, which is when I play an online Trivia game via Twitter, therefore we see interactions spike.

Shortening links is a huge necessity on Twitter. When you only have 140 characters to work with, it doesn’t fly to have a link with 130 characters. Services like bit.ly allow you to not only shorten your links, but also see analytics for that link.

Here’s an example of the type of information you can analyze by using a bit.ly link. Click on this link: http://bit.ly/bh0l6e+ (Notice the + at the end of this link that takes you to the bit.ly analytics page). The analytics you see is for a blog post I did about Panchero’s and this content is available from any bit.ly link and allows you to prove that people are interacting with your content and passing it around! (that’s a big deal!)

Facebook

Facebook has an analytics service called Facebook Insights. Facebook Insights can be accessed through a Facebook Fan Page by anyone who holds admin status on the page. Again, I put a huge stress on patterns with these kind of analytics. It’s great to see someone visited your page, but the key component is drawing conclusions of why and how they are visiting your content.

Now you know how to see if people are interacting with you online, time to take this to the next step! ROI…

How To Measure Social Media ROI

ROI is found by taking the difference of your gain from investment and cost of investment and dividing it by the cost of your investment. This equation tells you whether your initial investment is yielding positive results. However, that equation is pretty cut and dry. It asks you to have some rather specific numbers so that you can plug them into the equation.

Social media measuring can return some hard numbers (and I will show you where and how to get those) but you aren’t trying to make those numbers fit into a cut and dry equation. Social media measuring is more about discovering patterns and correlation. Patterns in your consumer’s behavior or your business can be just as useful, if not more useful, as a simple equation.

Examples of where you may want to be looking for patterns:

• Year over year overall growth.
• Sales revenues
• Number of transactions
• Net new customers

Step One: Create a Baseline

The specific metrics you want to pay attention to will differ based on your goals and your business, but these are just a few examples.

The first step is establishing a starting point. Create a baseline for these numbers to grow from. Take a look at your month to month sales revenues and draw a big fat line down the month in which you started your social media. From now on, when you refer back to this data you have a specific starting point to reference.

Step Two: Create Activity Timelines

Make a timeline of your weeks and continue to fill in exactly what content and activity took place on your social media channels. This isn’t just great for ROI measuring, it also allows you to look back on your content over the months and make sure you are actually covering the goals and content you set out to create when you started. (talk about a win win situation!)

Step Three: Compare and Prove Relationships

Remember that line in the sand you drew in your sales revenues? Reference back to that point, look at the growth and then look for the comparisons and relationships you can find in your social media activity charts.

How were people touched by social media, if at all, during those sudden jumps or continuous growth in your sales over the last month. By proving these relationships you can help to justify that your social content is really working and driving some sort of change. No, it’s not a cut and dry equation, but yes it’s better than tweeting like a mad man and wondering if it has had any impact on your sales.

The Social Media ROI equation

Measure your social media and prove that people are, in fact, visiting your pages and interacting with your content. Then, take to the books and show that the interaction you’ve had on specific days (or over time) are responsible for the positive impacts!

I didn’t say this was an exact science. Social media is a powerful tool and can make serious impacts in numerous areas of your business, but it doesn’t come without a little bit of work on the back end.

Just like with the rest of this blog series, there is far too much content around this topic to truly cover all aspects in a single blog post. However, this should get you thinking and hopefully give you some ideas! Use the examples and apply them to your own specific needs. The goals and areas of measuring social media ROI is very different from company to company, but it all boils down to patterns. Try to look for patterns and/or anomalies in your business and use the measuring techniques to show that social media was a driving force in that difference.

Screenshots and information attributed to Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder)

Thanks for checking out the final article in this series “3 Critical Steps To Social Media Success – A Social Media Manager Shares His Secrets”. I would love to hear what you think! Do you have any tools that you use to measure your social media that I haven’t covered in this article?

Reid Travis – Social Media Manager
Panchero’s Mexican Grill
@Pancheros
@ReidBTravis

Bookmark It

This blog post is Part 2 of 3 in an email series titled “3 Critical Steps To Social Media Success – A Social Media Manager Shares His Secrets”. It has been written in collaboration with Reid Travis, Social Media Manager – Panchero’s Mexican Grill.

To receive all of the emails and articles in this series and to sign up for our newsletter, click this link and sign up now.

Reid Travis has been working as a Social Media Manager for Panchero’s Mexican Grill for over 18 months now, and in that time he has adopted some great practices that have helped him excel in his job. The basic everyday roles of a social media manager can be divided into three umbrella categories; monitor, manage and measure. For the remainder of this post we are going to dive into the details regarding the managing portion of Reid’s job; share a few tips and hopefully inspire you to implement some of these practices for your company, or personal brand.

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Manage Your Social Media, Don’t Let It Manage You!

Welcome back to part two of our three part series. Last week we ventured into the realm of monitoring a brand’s presence in the social realm. Starting off the series with that post was no accident. I believe that when you are beginning to bring your brand onto social channels it is vital to begin the process with a proper monitoring and listening plan. After establishing this mode of listening, however, the next step is to begin interacting and managing your brand online.

Managing a corporate identity and portraying a personality for a brand are some of my largest responsibilities at Panchero’s. In this post I will show you how to properly tap into your brand’s voice and portray a consistent personality. I will  talk a bit about finding proper conversation outlets and content generation, also share with you a few services that help make the managing process a little more streamline.

Finding your frame of mind

When someone arrives at a party they don’t immediately walk in the door and begin shouting random things at the other guests and attempt to start conversations with everyone in the room all at once, right? Nor do they stand in the corner and randomly yell at people, trying to get their attention from a distance. There is proper etiquette to be followed when interacting with other people, and everyone is expected to know this. The online social world is no different; improper social etiquette is easily noticed by other social media enthusiasts and is definitely not received well.

When someone arrives at this hypothetical party the proper thing to do is to mingle for a second, listen to the conversations taking place amongst each social circle, join a conversation when appropriate and hopefully make meaningful and worthwhile interjections as the conversation progresses. I can’t stress enough how much your social presence should reflect this basic understanding of human interactions. I’m about to tell you the secret of social media managing success; show up, listen, add valuable content, listen some more, don’t be intrusive. It truly is that simple.

Finding your conversation

Part of the job of a social media manager is to discover where your brand fits within the vast depth of the social media world. There is nothing worse than showing up to a party and realizing that no one there gives a hoot about what you are talking about. Brian Solis has a beautiful visual representing the numerous areas a brand or person could choose to maintain a presence. Where as some networks are obviously a good choice to utilize simply because of their size (ie: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) some of these niche networks may already be set up with a focus that aligns perfectly with your product or service.

I’m going to venture a guess that all the people who are on that niche network that perfectly aligns with your product or service are probably very interested in what you have to say! Keep an eye out during your listening exercises we talked about in the last post for any networks or forums that continually contain mentions of your brand or other buzzwords you are tracking. Perhaps rather than just listening to that conversation now, it’s about time you take an active role and participate in the conversation. Starting to see the parallels of the party metaphor? We just showed up and started mingling and listening to specific conversations.

Your content and their content

Social media is NOT just another medium in which to market a product or service. Social media is communication, it is designed to nurture relationships with your consumers and hopefully create a few brand evangelists along the way. If you are providing worthwhile and interesting content, it will be spread by other users. My most favorite recent example of a company truly embracing the new tools of social media is Old Spice. The creative and unique nature of these “commercials” may not work well on TV as a blasted message, but they made a killing on the social realm when people were able to pass them around and watch them willingly. Aside from creating content, though, prepare to be able to comment on and discuss content generated by other people. Be sure to identify yourself as a representative of the company, and make worthwhile interjections without taking over the conversation.

No brand is without it’s negative press, and social channels are no exception. If I can stress one point about negative content from users, it is to take the conversation offline. Immediately. The more you converse in an online public space about a negative experience the easier it is for anyone to find that conversation, or even snippets of the conversation, and take portions out of context. Have a designated email address (or Skype name!) in place that you can use strictly for online complaints. True story, I’ve had users remove criticism from online channels because of how impressed they were with the timely and effective response they received online. Most consumers will feel very good about having personal attention paid to them when they feel they have been wronged by your company or brand. Even if you can’t directly fix their problem, simply listening to their complaint can be just as powerful.

This is the part of the party where you have settled in, effectively mingled and joined a conversation. You had a back and forth dialogue with people at the party and are well on your way to becoming a functioning member of the online community! Keep this cycle going. Your behavior when conversing online should hold very little differences to how you would converse with someone in person. Keep your messages focused and worthwhile; give people a reason to listen. Be courteous, and take your turn talking and listening in the conversation.

Making It Easier

Spreading yourself too thin online can be pretty easy to do. It’s important to keep up with your social presence, and there are tools in place to help you do it efficiently. Leaving a social media presence unattended can be disastrous to your brand reputation. Trevor talked about a specific scenario not long ago where a PR fiasco was made worse partly because of stagnant Twitter handles.

A service I have used quite extensively for managing the Panchero’s social presence is HootSuite. There are a few others out there such as Involver, and some even focus almost primarily on Twitter, like Tweetdeck or Cotweet. Most of them offer very similar services such as posting to multiple accounts from one interface, scheduling posts for later (don’t abuse this power), setting up continuous searches, monitoring multiple accounts from one interface…etc… I would highly recommend trying out a few of these services and find one that fits your style. If you have a presence on a site that isn’t supported by one of these managing services find out if you can set up email alerts. Having alerts sent to your email when someone interacts with you on a social site can be a great way to cut down on the number of times you have to physically go check the site, but still ensures you won’t leave comments or mentions going unnoticed for days at a time.

Conclusion

I have only brushed the surface of managing online social communication, but I hope this has placed you in the correct frame of mind for tackling a social media presence. Keep an eye out for companies doing it right, and companies doing it wrong; learn from their mistakes before you make the same ones and borrow a few tips of the trade along the way.

Here are some examples of brands doing it well:

• Jimmy John’s
• Panchero’s Mexican Grill
• tastiDlite
• WestJet

I would love to hear what you think!  Do you have any tools that you use to manage your social media that I haven’t covered in this article?

Thanks for tuning in for the second of the three part series on social media. Next week we talk about measuring your online presence and evaluating the success and return of your online efforts.

Reid Travis – Social Media Manager
Panchero’s Mexican Grill
@Pancheros
@ReidBTravis

Bookmark It

This blog post is Part 1 of 3 in an email series titled “3 Critical Steps To Social Media Success – A Social Media Manager Shares His Secrets”. It has been written in collaboration with Reid Travis, Social Media Manager – Panchero’s Mexican Grill.

To receive all of the emails and articles in this series and to sign up for our newsletter, click this link and sign up now.

Reid Travis has been working as a Social Media Manager for Panchero’s Mexican Grill for over 18 months now, and in that time he has adopted some great practices that have helped him excel in his job. The basic everyday roles of a social media manager can be divided into three umbrella categories; monitor, manage and measure. For the remainder of this post we are going to dive into the details regarding the monitoring portion of Reid’s job; share a few tips and hopefully inspire you to implement some of these practices for your company, or personal brand.

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The Importance Of Monitoring Your Brand Online

Monitoring is an aspect of social media that is too often overlooked. Marketers sometimes come into the scene only to create more content for the web. However, content already exists, and it’s being created by everyday people.

Over 500 million people spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, Twitter boasts more than 50 million tweets per day, and everyone and their Mom is  blogging. (literally, Google Mommy blogs)

The point is, people are spending a ridiculous amount of time on the internet these days, and majority of it is spent just talking. Social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the web. Instead of simply consuming content, everyday people are more excited about being able to create content; even if it’s just 140 character messages blasted to the world. Like it or not, some of that content is about you or your brand, it’s inevitable. I want to show you how to take this fire-hose of information and filter it down into streams of content relevant to your interests.

SocialMention.com

The first service I would like to introduce you to is called Social Mention. Social mention is a free service that drills down and takes a great look at general chatter. Compiling mostly, but not limited to, public Facebook statuses and Twitter updates, Social mention is able to show you a good snapshot of the conversation surrounding a keyword or brand at this very moment.

Other small analytics such as sentiment, key words associated with your brand and top users are also offered from the service. Definitely a great place to start if you’ve never tracked a brand before, but also used pretty heavily by serious social managers. If you’re already an RSS user, the feed can be RSS’d for easy updates, too. I highly recommend taking a glance at social mention.

Google Knows (almost) Everything

Next up, lets take a look at Google Alerts If you are a Gmail user, this is a great service you can utilize to help keep an eye on news and blog updates regarding your brand. Social mention may look at live chatter, but when your brand is mentioned in an online news source or even a blog, the mention can sometimes get buried beneath the constant chatter in a large social aggregator like SocialMention.com. Positioning alerts inside your Google mail system will ensure that you don’t miss mentions.

Enter a keyword into the box, and position the various drop-down menus to fit your delivery preferences and hit go! Google constantly sweeps the internet for you and sends results directly to your Gmail address when it finds a hit. I have Alerts set up for “Pancheros” and “Panchero’s” to be sure I don’t miss any stories regardless of how the author spelled Pancheros in the article. If you have a brand name with this sort of attribute, or maybe even a common misspelling (bloggers are not perfect editors) I would suggest tossing alerts up for those words as well, just to be sure.

If you don’t have a Gmail address, but still like the idea of being able to see when your brand is mentioned in online news sources, give the Google News search a try. Bookmark this page in your browser and make a habit of searching your brand every morning when you arrive in the office. Might not be automated updates like the Google Alerts system, but at least you’re still seeing the news.

Don’t Forget To Monitor Blogs

So, we have basic chatter,(Facebook and Twitter) and also online news sources taken care of, with a dash of blog sweeping. But, like I said, everyone and their mother is blogging so it doesn’t seem like quite enough to depend on Alerts for your blog mentions. I want to show you two more services that are pretty darn good at pulling in blog posts by keyword searches.

If you can’t tell already, I’m a pretty big fan of Google; a lot of their services are free and they really do work wonders with the internet. So naturally, the first blog tracking service I want to show you is another Google service called Google Blogs. If you have ever used a basic Google search before, this is essentially the same thing except all the results that appear are strictly blogs. You are able to filter out all the news sources, websites and other content that you may not be concerned with right now and just focus on those wondrous blogs!

Not as much of a fan of Google as I am? That’s fine, option two for blogs is not a Google service; meet IceRocket. With a focus primarily on blogs, IceRocket is very efficient at showing you what’s being said on the internet via those amateur, but sometimes very influential web writers.

Prefer to Watch vs Read?

Watch this 7 minute video that reviews the tools mentioned in this article.

Conclusion

There you have it, an arsenal of free services at your disposal to help you be more informed about your own brand. Social media content can be powerful, running a new marketing campaign, adopting a new product or service, looking at acquiring a new company or partner? Use any and all of these services to check what the public has to say! These keyword searches don’t always have to surround just a brand.  Get specific and use the content out there to make some seriously informed decisions about your company or brand.

Just monitoring a brand can be a full-time job in itself, especially if you are tracking a very popular brand. But remember, none of these services are any good if you don’t take the time to slow down and actually read a lot of the content coming through your searches. Find what genre of blogs typically pick up your brand, take some time to really identify with the consumers that are talking up your brand online by actually reading and getting to know their content. It will make you feel more connected to your consumers and more familiar with how they are interacting with your product, service or brand.

I would love to hear what you think!  Do you have any tools that you use to monitor conversations online that I haven’t covered in this article?

Thanks for tuning in for the first of the three part series on social media. Next time we will tackle how to efficiently manage a social media presence and what tools I’ve found to be a great help.

Reid Travis – Social Media Manager
Panchero’s Mexican Grill
@Pancheros
@ReidBTravis

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The Virtual CEO Shares His Success Story

In this interview, I speak with Chris Ducker (CEO – Live2SellGroup / Founder – VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com) about his Philippines outsourcing business and his aspiration to become a full time “Virtual CEO” by the end of 2010. We also discussed how social media has played a key role in helping him achieve his goals.  Chris is a passionate guy that is a businessman first and a blogger second.  But, that being said, he does a hell of a job pushing out quality content on his blog and has built a massive following in only 6 months of dedicated blogging on VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com.

Anyone that is looking to outsource their business, or is interested in learning what this actually means, should watch this interview and check out Chris’s blog.  He offers a free ebook (which I’ve personally read and found a tremendous amount of value in) on his website titled “Saving The Day – The Virtual Way“, so make sure to sign up, download the book and let me know what you think in the comments section below!

Meet Chris Ducker

Chris Ducker is a 19-year Sales and Marketing Veteran and Entrepreneur originally from the U.K., but now residing in the Philippines. He currently spends most of his time overseeing the daily operations of his Outsourcing company, The Live2Sell Group.

Chris has been involved at every corporate level throughout his career in Sales, Marketing and PR and has appreciated every boss, gate-keeper, prospect, customer, co-worker and supplier he’s ever worked with. To date, Chris has trained approximately 8,000 professionals on the subject of telemarketing and telesales techniques.

As Chris has ‘grown’ as a professional he’s realized that spending 14 hours a day ‘at work’ is now something of the past. He now concentrates on quality, rather than quantity by utilizing different systems and processes that he have tested and put in place to make his lifestyle less hectic, and more fun to focus on.

Social Media Interview

1. Can you tell everyone how you ended up in the Philippines from the UK and what you now do on a daily basis?

I was originally born and raised in London, England (if you can’t tell from the accent). This is actually my best Californian accent right here. How am I doin? Am I doin ok?

I came over to the Philippines about ten and a half years ago where I was originally contracted to work with one of the large international banks over here, helping them train their telemarketing teams and generally help them from a local sales standpoint.

Eventually, it’s tough to be here and not know about the outsourcing world and not ultimately get involved with it. I started doing consulting work within the industry about 8 years ago.  Within 2 or 3 years of doing that I was done helping other people make money with their business and decided to set my own company up and the rest as they say is history.

Here we are 5 years young as a company.  We started out with 7 employees and we’re now up to about 220. So, building things up slowly but surely.

2. When did you get involved in the social media world, both with your business and personally?

You know, I gotta be honest, I’m a late bloomer man.  I guess my first real flirtation session with social media was with Twitter and it would have been around August 2008.  And, I remember the date because I was in the UK at the time and I remember I had been out with some friends one night and someone was talking about this thing called Twitter, or as we were calling it, Twatter.  So, I get home and I’m checking my email and I thought I should check this thing out.  I signed up but I did nothing with the account for months and months.

Trevor:  Which I think most people do when they first get on Twitter.  They get on and don’t know what to say.

I didn’t know what the hell, I didn’t know what it was all about.  I was like, 140 characters?  How the hell are you going to say anything in 140 characters?  So, I was very perplexed with the whole thing to be very frank and honest with ya. But, I think it was around the beginning of last year when I started using it properly in 2009. But, it didn’t really grow to anything astronomical until probably the beginning of this year when I launched the blog, VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com.

I launched the blog and I think if you just give people great content and something to think about and try to inspire them a bit, which I try to do all those three things. People are going to be happy to hit that “follow” button. And, 9 times out of 10, I guess that’s how people have been following me. But, you know, I’m not one of these guys, you see big guys online that have got 10’s of thousands of people following them and follow like 50 people back or something like that. I generally try to share the love a little bit on that stuff and try to follow everybody back as well.

Ya, so Twitter, as a company, we have a Twitter account called @Live2SellGroup and then my own personal account @ChrisCDucker. We use them in very different ways.  When it comes to the business one, I personally very rarely tweet on that account myself.  And the same can be said for our Facebook Fan Page as well. I’ve got people that handle that sort of stuff for me on a day to day basis.

But, on Twitter, my personal account, I generally tweet about 85% of what you’ll see. The other 15% is my assistant tweeting out links to the new blog posts and that type of stuff. She is grossly overpaid for doing just that one thing, I must get her doing other things, don’t you think.

Trevor: I wasn’t aware of this Chris, but did you say that you just started your VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com blog at the start of this year?

Middle of January, ya. I used to blog at my own domain name, ChrisDucker.com, which is now just sitting there doing nothing. But, I found that whenever I did anything in regards to outsourcing or virtual living and lifestyle design and all these other sort of buzz words that are out there.  Whenever I did anything on those types of topics, I used to get the most amount of feedback. Not just comment wise, but also retweets and general buzz about it. And, I stated doing some stuff on YouTube as well which really helped to promote, I’m not going to say me as a brand because it sounds so egotistical, but it kind of helped get my advocacy of that virtual business lifestyle out there before it was even called VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com.

So, it was actually just over Christmas last year when my wife actually said to me, you should just do a blog and focus purely on that.  Because, there are so many things you could write about but just get a little bit more concise and focused on it rather than just rambling all the time.  And that’s exactly what I did. I setup VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com and my first post there was a video post where I launched my goal for this year which is to become that full time Virtual CEO. I’m relatively virtual at the moment, but I’m still in the office about 100% more time than I want to be. And, the goal by the end of the year is to completely rid myself of this big chair and this nice office I’ve got here.

Trevor: Find the nice hammock on a beach, right.

There you go, that’s what I’m talking about. But, ya, it’s just literally the beginning of the year.  That’s when I kicked it all off, that’s when it all started. And, I went from like 800 followers on Twitter and I’ve now got, I don’t know, 11000 or something. So, it seems to be building with popularity.  So, that’s obviously a good thing.

Trevor: I think you bring up a great point there which is, a lot of people get fearful in blogging by thinking “What am I going to talk about?”.  I think the first step is the way you did it.  You established your own personal site and you just started writing about anything that comes to mind and eventually you kind of find that niche. And, that area of interest that you can get up and talk about every single day and eventually you can brand yourself in that way.  Cause, essentially you have done that, you have branded yourself as the Virtual CEO regardless of whether or not you are at the moment right now. If it’s a 6 month or 1 year plan, people see you as that person because you’ve established that online identity and have been consistent.

You know, I want to clarify, I didn’t actually go out to do that. But, I’m getting a lot more people relating to me in that way, in some way shape or form. And, it wasn’t really actually the plan to become the “Virtual CEO”. You know what I mean.

What I wanted to do more than anything else, I just wanted to document the journey.  I just wanted to document that 1 year long goal.  Month by month broken up into little mini goals on a monthly basis.  Of which I am bang on target.  Literally bang on target coming to the end of this month. I wanted to be able to look back on that year at the beginning of next year, when I was a full time “Virtual CEO” and say, wow, look at all the crap I went through to get to where I am. I was really worth all the nightmares and it’s not plain sailing, any goal that is a mid-term goal like that, nothing is going to happen just like that (snaps fingers).

So, that was the main reason why I set it up, but I don’t know, things have just started to spiral a little bit. And, I get the opportunity to meet cool guys like you and interview published authors like Dave Crenshaw and other guys like that who I admire as well from a readership standpoint.

And, hey, let me give Dave a plug. Here we go, Invaluable. Let me tell you something, this is how cool this published author really is. I interviewed him a couple weeks ago and this book came out about a month ago, I think. And, I read his first book, The Myth of Multitasking, and that was great and that’s how we connected.  And, we actually ended up doing a bit of business together as well. But, this is not released in the Philippines yet. You can’t get this book anywhere.  So, he actually had Wiley, based out of Singapore, send me a complimentary copy. How cool is that, he’s a pretty cool guy.

Trevor: Ya, and it just goes to show you that engaging with these tools can connect you with anybody really in the world.

And, I connected with Dave for the first time ever on Twitter.

3.  So, Twitter is obviously a heavily used tool for you, but is there any other tools like YouTube that you are using to distribute your content?

Ya, I mean, I’ve tried a bit of everything. I know a lot of people want to stick with written content with blogging, but, to be frank with ya, I’m just lazy man. The idea of sitting there and fine tuning a 700-800 word blog post for hours and hours on end just bores the hell out of me. But, I do have the content to share and for me it’s just easier to hit the record button on a video recorder or just a webcam and just pump it out there like that.  Very raw, pretty much as unedited as possible, I mean there might be a few things added.  You know, sometimes I’m in the office and every now and then the phone will ring when I’m in the middle of recording a video. I’ve left it in a few time, but I’ve also edited it out as well.

For me, I think video is the really the way that things are going. It’s the medium that I prefer to share what I learn and what I practice in. Because it gives you the ability, instead of reading an article about working from a beach for a week, I can blog daily in 4 or 5 minutes with a video camera and people can actually see me on the beach. There is realism right there. And that’s something that can’t be communicated through photographs or words.  So, I think video is what I really enjoy.

And the other thing is, and we were talking about this just before you hit the record button on the video here, the other thing with video is that you can turn it into an MP3 and bang, you’ve got a podcast ready to go. I think podcasts are nothing new, but they are highly disregarded in the lifestyle design / entrepreneurial model. And, I think, more and more are coming up now, they are becoming much more popular.

But, I think for me, video is what it’s all about going forward. And, I think it’s going to be the medium that sees the most action now.  Because people like to watch other people doing stuff. It’s those natural voyeuristic tendencies we all have as human beings I guess.

Trevor: I don’t know for certain, I just kind of skimmed over the home page of your website today, but you just did a recent series of posts, a 3 part series talking about why you want to be a “Virtual CEO”. And, just in quickly looking at it, it looked like you got a ton of responses in the comment section, perhaps even the most you’ve ever had?

Well, I’ve had two or three really good quality posts that have done really well, they gone crazy viral and been tweeted out 80 or 90 times. Which, might not sound like a lot compared to guys like Tim Ferris who has like 600 retweets when he blogs once a month or something like that.  But, that’s a best selling author right.  But, I mean, for me to get 40 or 50 comments on a blog post is awesome.

And, I had a feeling the “Why I Want To Be A Virtual CEO” posts would be quite popular, but I didn’t know they were going to be that popular. And the last one, which went live last Friday, that was for me the most important one.  There were three main reason as to why I want to become a Virtual CEO.  The first one is to be location independent, work wherever I want to work and go wherever I want to go and do it whenever I want to do it. The second one was to be able to take myself out of my day to day brick and mortar business     and being able to focus on a lot more projects, predominantly online based going forward. And, it’s hard to do that when you are in the mix all the time, 9 hours a day running a 200+ employee company, it’s very very tough.  And, the third one was to spend more time with my family. And, that for me was the sweet spot.  And, I thought that that might get the most comments, but it didn’t, it was the actually the first one about being location independent. But, there was still quite a few, it was up in the late 20’s.  But, seeing some of the comments on that last one with me and my son playing around in front of the camera, people really got it and that was the big thing for me.

Trevor: Ya, and the one thing that stood out for me on those two was that, you could tell they were not scripted videos. They were just 2 or 3 minutes of just telling it exactly how it is or what you are aspiring to live to on a daily basis.  And, I think people can really relate to that, it’s a real person behind the camera.

Right, exactly.  And, you mentioned the word script there, and I think a lot of video bloggers do tend to script their videos quite heavily. I know for a fact a couple of them that really script their videos quite heavily. I generally, if I’m going to shoot a video blog post, I generally try to keep it under 5 minutes, around the 3 to 4 minute mark, because it’s easy to digest it like that. And, I tend to have 2 or 3 points in my head, I have no notes in front of me, very rarely anything like that at all. 2 or 3 major bullet points that I can go to at any point if I find myself kind of rambling.  You know, come on Chris, sort yourself out, get to the point now.

Trevor: Ya, and one of the other tools you use, and this is one of the ways that I really got to know you and your business is when you hopped on Ustream one day and did a live Q & A with some followers.  And, I think there was what, 15 or 16 people on that first one?

It went a little higher actually, come on, give me a little bit more credit here. I think it went up to like 24 I think was the max, or something along those lines.  But that was me with like an hour and a half break in my schedule, which is     rare. I literally just tweeted it out, put it on Facebook and 20 odd people showed up. And, I actually have another one coming up this Thursday (**This ended up being rescheduled for a later date due to a scheduling conflict.  We will update the scheduled date when Chris announces it) and I don’t know when you are going to be putting this video out but if it’s any point in the next day or so, it might be relevant.  But, if not, you can go to the Ustream channel and get the recording there.  But, I’m doing it because the majority of that first Q & A session of that very impromptu webinar was questions on “How do I do this with my VA?”, “How do I train them?”, “How do I pay them?”, “How do I hire them?”, “How do I look after them?”, you know, that sort of stuff.  So, I’m going to do a 1 hour long webinar titled “How To Work With A Virtual Assistant”.

Trevor: Ya, and this interview definitely won’t be live by then, but I’ll definitely link it up because, as you say, they always get recorded so it will be on your Ustream channel.  I’ll make sure people can find that.  Cause, that’s a great way to share content.  I know I do all of my live webinars via Livestream, which is very similar to Ustream.  It’s just a great, interactive way to deliver content in real time.  So, I think you are going to enjoy it, well, you’ve already done the first one so you know the type of feedback you get.

You know, that was really impromptu, I had nothing.  I had no notes, I had no idea what to expect.  I was a complete webinar virgin. I think I’ve only attended like 2 in my life. So, I figured, what the hell.  I’m just going to do it and see what happens. But, the feedback was awesome, I mean, people really enjoy them and I didn’t expect that. I really didn’t expect it.  So, I want to try to do it monthly if I can.

4. What resources do you use to keep up with trends in social media?

You know, I get asked that question quite a bit.  There isn’t actually any one sites or services that I actively follow. There are literally only a handful of blogs that I subscribe to in my RSS reader. I don’t know, maybe I’m not as focused on that stuff as maybe I should be as someone that wants to go into the online space more and more. Not just from a branding standpoint, but also from a business standpoint.

But, Mashable is great.  I also love LifeHacker.com as well. I think that a very cool site.  The have some pretty cool content on their as well. Other than that, I tend to not really get too heavily involved in following any one person or business.

However, there are several blogs that I enjoy. I really enjoy reading ZenHabits by Leo Babauta.  I think that’s a really good blog. And, I think in today’s lifestyle where everything is going 180km/hr (or miles/hr depending on where you are in the world), but those kind of sites are really important.  I read Tim Ferris’s blog pretty much religiously.  He’s kind of swayed away from the stuff that I really enjoyed, you know, that The 4 Hour Workweek, personal outsourcing, location independence sort of stuff.  He’s kind of swaying away from that a little bit. And, I hope he does get back on track because that was what I really enjoyed when I used to read a lot of his stuff. But, other than that, there’s really not a lot of stuff that I follow regularly, to be honest with you.

5. I find a lot of people have a story around social media, that WOW moment where they’ve either connected with somebody they didn’t think was possible, or something else that makes them realize that it’s a game changer. It changes the way they do business or live their lives.  Do you happen to have any stories like this?

In relation to social media, not really, but in relation to the internet and the online world, yes.  It was the middle of 2008 and I was contacted by Entrepreneur Magazine that wanted to do an article on me and the company. Which, as an entrepreneur, I think every entrepreneur on the planet has read that magazine at some point and thought to themselves, wow, I’d love to be in that magazine. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a cover story or anything like that, it was a 1 page feature.  And, it was a nice big photo of me on there with a rundown of what I was doing in regards to setting up the company and building the company and things like that.  So, for me, that was an accomplishment. That for me was a nice piece, they wrote it real well and that kind of recognition is awesome.  Do I want to be on the cover?  Absolutely! Do I want to be on the cover of Inc. and FastCompany and those kind of magazines as well, you bet your ass I do.  And, it will happen, but it won’t happen for a little while I don’t think.

Trevor:  Well, I don’t think your too far off from it Chris.

That’s good to hear.  And, you know, it’s all about you.  If Trevor thinks I’m almost there thats good!

Trevor:  We”ll, I don’t know if it’s all about me, but it potentially has an impact when there is 10,000 or 50,000 people out there that are like me and are following the stuff that you have to put out and liking what you have to say. I think that’s where the impact of a lot of this stuff comes in is that what you are putting out there is impacting people one person at a time. And, what it is to them is different for every single person

That’s it, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a good online presence, that’s what I always say.

6. Which is a great lead in to the last question. Do you have any advice for those just getting started in finding their way online and using social tools to help connect them with other people or promote their business?

It really depends in what way they are trying to do it.  If they are trying to do more of a personal branding thing, that’s one thing.  If you are looking to try and promote and brand your company, that’s a whole different ball game. Because I think there is a very fine line between the two nowadays, however, particularly with a company such as mine which is based towards corporations and medium to large size companies, rather than the entrepreneurial, bootstrapped startup. You have to be seen as a company.  You have got to be seen as a company that is trustworthy, has a good reputation and that sort of thing. And, you’ve got to be very careful what you Tweet and post on Facebook.  That stuff doesn’t go away. I read stuff about people being fired for stuff they sent out 4 months ago and that sort of stuff.

But, really, tips from me. The one thing for me, when I really saw a boost in my personal Facebook and Twitter was when I branded them. I used the same image, the same terminology, the same logos, the same colors and that sort of thing. And, I noticed a big boost in the numbers right away. I mean, it wasn’t heartstopping or anything, but there was a definite increase in the number of followers and fans that I was getting in those two main social media networks. I guess I try now, even more so than ever before, I try to make sure that when I use either Twitter or Facebook, that everything has some sort of value, rather than just idle chit chat. And, I think that’s important. If you want to be seen as a thought leader and someone who really knows what they are talking about, you need to have value in pretty much everything that you say. And, people are pretty tough to please nowadays because there is so much out there.

I think generally, if you want to try to use social media to try to get yourself up to the next level, it’s about the content.  It’s about what you give people. And, stop trying to charge for it. I see people trying to sell 15 page ebooks, why are you trying to sell a 15 page ebook? That’s insane, give it away! Give the damn thing away.  I mean, I give away a 31 page ebook on my blog.  Sign up now kids ;) I literally give away a 31 page ebook because its content that I want to get out there and I think that people can genuinely learn from it.  So, I think that’s it really.  Make sure your content is good and that people can get something from it.

Trevor: So, ya, I think consistency and authenticity are really two words that define what you are doing with your online presence.  You know what to expect every time you come to your blog and every once in a while you throw in things that just keep it entertaining too, which is always great. It doesn’t have to be boring, you should be able to have fun with this stuff as well.

Well, I literally just over the weekend, I had a lifestyle change and it hit me.  I was at a friends party on Friday night, and I don’t work Friday’s. I don’t go into the office anymore.  I still email a little bit, but I don’t generally work. But, it was Friday night at my buddy’s house, beautiful house, beautiful pool, the whole shebang.  And, we are sitting there drinking wine and everyone is having fun and my Blackberry would not stop going all night long. One email after another.  So, after about 2 1/ 2 bottles of wine I threw it in the pool. And then I dove in and got it and Saturday, in my kitchen, I blended it.  You know, like the “Will It Blend” thing, I blended it and I’m going to slam it on the blog at some point.

Trevor: Oh, I was gonna say, Chris, tell me you recorded that cause I wanna see this!

Ya, I did, I video’d it.  So, we’ll put it on the blog at some point.

Trevor: Nice, i think a lot of people will be able to relate to that one for sure.

Connect With Chris

Current Occupation: CEO – The Live2Sell Group / Founder – VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com
Personal Website/Blog: http://www.virtualbusinesslifestyle.com
Business Website/Blog: http://www.welive2care.com/
Facebook Fan Page (Personal): http://www.facebook.com/virtualbusinesslifestyle
Facebook Fan Page (Business): http://www.facebook.com/live2sellgroup
Twitter (Personal): http://twitter.com/chriscducker
Twitter (Business): http://twitter.com/live2sellgroup
YouTube (Personal): http://www.youtube.com/chrisducker
Linkedin: http://ph.linkedin.com/in/chrisducker
iTunes Podcast: http://itunes.apple.com/ph/podcast/virtual-business-lifestyle/id377846535

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Those that follow social media on a regular basis know that it doesn’t take long for news to spread online.  Unfortunately, it seems as though bad news is much quicker to spread than good news.  And, this latest story, involving Canada’s largest airline Air Canada, is yet another example of how NOT to approach a social media crisis management situation.

Tutus For Tanner Story

For those of you that are not familiar with the Tutus for Tanner story, here’s a brief summary.  A 10 year old boy, Tanner Bawn, who is fighting a terminal illness was traveling to New York City this past Wednesday to live out one of his final wishes. But during his travels, his motorized wheelchair was broken leaving him unable to move around freely.

Of course, this was devastating to Tanner and his family and I’m certain that Air Canada officials were deeply sorry for what happened.  However, what proceeded over the next 24 hours turned into a PR nightmare for Canada’s largest airline.

While Air Canada was in the process of fixing Tanner’s motorized wheelchair, they failed to properly communicate with the family and disclose this information to the public in a timely manner.  So, Tanner’s aunt, Catherine Connors (@HerBadMother) turned to Twitter to voice her displeasure with Air Canada.

What resulted was an onslaught of comments on Twitter directed at Air Canada that caused the company to take notice and react.  Now, this article is not intended to bash Air Canada.  After all, they did what they could by trying to get the motorized wheelchair fixed, but unfortunately, they didn’t do a very good job of communicating this to Tanner’s family or the public in a timely manner.

Listen to an audio interview conducted with @HerBadMother by Amber MacArthur (Trending Tech Contributor for the Globe & Mail)

Air Canada has since fixed the motorized wheelchair and has offered to send Tanner and his cousins to Disneyland to fulfill one of his dying wishes.  So, in the end, they did the right thing, but there have been many lessons learned along the way that will hopefully make Air Canada take notice of how social media impacts their business.

The Importance of Monitoring Your Brand Online

So, what lessons can be learned from this whole ordeal?  Well, first and foremost, this incident brought to light the importance of monitoring your brand online.  While Air Canada does have a presence on Twitter, it appears as though it is a mishmash of random accounts that’s main purpose is to broadcast information, similar to what you’d see in a traditional press release or email newsletter.  Here is a list of all the accounts I could find.

• @aircanada – Inactive account that does not appear to be owned/managed by Air Canada
• @aircanadacsp – Air Canada Customer Service Platform (400 Followers / 0 Following) – Some engagement but mostly used to update people on Air Canada mobile applications
• @AC_webSaver – Air Canada WebSaver (5646 Followers / 51 Following) – Most active account that informs followers of flight deals on Air Canada
• @aircanada_com – Air Canada’s “Official” Twitter account (1711 Followers / 69 Following) – Last updated on May 20, 2010
• @AirCanada_OPS – Air Canada Travel alerts (411 Followers / 4 Following) – Last updated on May 16, 2010
• @ACTopTier – Air Canada’s Top Tier Program account (1138 Followers / 1158 Followers) – easily the most active and engaging account that Air Canada manages.
• @AirCanadaVac – Air Canada Vacations (2060 Followers / 213 Following)

I think it’s pretty clear that Air Canada does not have any type of strategy or policy when it comes to using Twitter as a communication tool (Aside from the ironic fact that the only account that Air Canada actively follows back their followers is on their “Top Teir Program” account). Now, there are many that would argue that in light of the “wheelchair” incident, Air Canada should completely abandon Twitter and stick to more traditional means of communication.  After all, just take a look at this comment posted on a Globe & Mail article written by Amber MacArthur:

Now, I can’t disagree that social media, and Twitter in particular, can be overwhelmingly filled with noise and may include messaging that is spread by a misinformed public.  However, that is even more reason for a company like Air Canada to engage in Twitter.  After all, by quickly responding to this incident on Twitter, Air Canada could have easily dispelled all of the myths and misinformation being spread by the Twitter community.  Air Canada was doing what they could to help Tanner during this unfortunate event, but the key point in all of this is that they did not communicate it in a timely manner.

To comment that Air Canada should completely abandon social platforms like Twitter and stick with traditional press releases is just ridiculous. Today’s connected consumer demands that information be shared in a timely manner.  And, the fact is, official press releases do not allow for this timely response and the cost of employing the manpower required to answer thousands of customer complaints via telephone far outweighs the cost of implementing an effective social media strategy.

Can Social Media Help With Crisis Management?

Here’s another comment that was left on the Globe & Mail article:

Now, one thing to note on this comment is that there were 174 people that gave this comment a “Thumbs Up” and only 17 that gave it a “Thumbs Down”.  This leads me to believe that a good chunk of the population still believes that new technologies like Twitter are still a FAD, when in fact, social media is causing a fundamental shift in the way we communicate!

If Air Canada wants to learn how to properly approach social media, they only need to look as far as their direct Canadian competitor, WestJet.  I wrote an article in November 2009 outlining “My WestJet Experience Via Twitter” which reviewed my own potentially negative experience that was quickly turned into a positive experience because of their proactive action to solve my problem in a timely manner.

My argument to the comment above would be that if someone was to comment poorly about WestJet on social media, they have a plan in place to proactively react to these potential crisis situations.  And for every 1 person that “targets WestJet with their obnoxious misinformation”, there would be 10 people that would come to the defense of WestJet or at least point that person in a direction where they could be properly informed by an official WestJet employee. This kind of loyalty and trust between WestJet and their online advocates did not happen overnight, but it is a testament to the value of actively engaging in social media and empowering a “Brandividual” to speak on behalf of a company online.

Social Media Crisis Lessons Learned

Now, the one caveat to all of this is that companies that are genuinely transparent are more ideally suited for social media. If there are holes in a companies approach to corporate culture and customer service, those weaknesses can easily be exploited in social media.  So, before jumping in with both feet, it’s important to work on fixing the internal problems first.  However, there is no excuse for not monitoring your brand on social media so you can at least react to potential crisis communication situations before they spin out of control.

Here’s a short video I found that profiles a few other prominent “Social Media Crisis” situations over the past year. It is hard to believe that some big brands have not yet grasped the impact social media can have on their bottom line. But, as with everything in life, negative experiences can easily be turned into a positive if you learn from those experiences and do everything you can to make sure it never happens again!

Stay tuned as I will be releasing an email series very soon with tips and tricks on how to properly “Monitor” your brand online.  To receive notification on this email series…..make sure to sign up for my newsletter by filling in your information in the contact form at the top right of this page.

And, let me know what you think!  What should Air Canada have done differently? What should Air Canada do going forward with regards to social media?

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Living a Nomadic Lifestyle

In this interview, I chat with John Bardos about how he has taken his passion for traveling and life-long learning and turned them into multiple online ventures while living a nomadic lifestyle. John made a choice 13 years ago to by-pass the standard 9-5 lifestyle and instead ventured off to Japan where he started and ran a successful English school.  Since discovering blogging and social media, John has seen his world completely change and now travels around the world sharing his experiences and connecting with like-minded people along the way.

His refreshing approach to social media focuses around building relationships online through blogging, guest posts and commenting on other blogs.  Anyone interested in leaving their boring day job in search of a better life can learn a lot from how John has approaches social media in his daily routine.

Meet John Bardos

John Bardos has been living abroad for more than 13 years. He has been traveling regularly through Asia, Europe and North America. He and his wife got rid of their business, house and all possessions to begin a nomadic lifestyle. These changes have happened largely due to advances in technology and relationships built through social media. His two passions are exploring new ways of living and working on his JetSetCitizen.com and IdeaEconomy.net blogs.

Social Media Interview

1. Tell everyone a little bit about your background and what’s brought you to living a nomadic lifestyle?

After finishing University, I didn’t want to get into the 9-5 and work my way up into a big corporation.  So, I moved to Japan.  At that time, backpacking was very low-tech.  People just brought a backpack and sandals and travelling was much simpler time. We went to internet cafes and had big clunky IBM computers and sent email back when Hotmail was popular in the good old days. Now, the world has changed a lot, anyone that travels now knows that it’s a completely different world.  We are so connected, there is wi-fi access everywhere and we can get so much information.  It really is a different world now.

So, I went to Japan 13 years ago.  I got married a year and a half later.  My wife and I started an English school and ran it for 10 years. And, we built up a good business, were making good money and had decent vacations, but our life kind of stagnated.  We weren’t’ moving ahead, so about 5 years ago we said “Let’s do something different”. We’re not happy, we are not growing and we are not developing as people, what can we do in the next stage of our lives?  So, we thought it would be nice to travel more, and lead a more nomadic life.  But, it was difficult to get started because it’s scary to think that you are going to give up all of your possessions, give up a secure income and travel around the world.

So, we sat on the idea for a few years while continuing to talk about it, but had no motivation to actually do it.  And then about 1.5 – 2 years ago, I started blogging and started connecting online on Twitter and started meeting people and talking to people that are actually doing it. Social media, blogging and commenting on other blogs allowed me to connect with 1000’s of people living this lifestyle.  Any kind of idea you have, there is going to be hundreds of people that share similar interests.  So, you can connect with a tribe online, find like minded people, share ideas and you build a support group. I think social media for me is about finding that support network where you can share ideas and get the confidence to do what you love.

So, about a year and a half ago I decided that in 1 year, we are going to get rid of everything and we are going to travel, we are just going to do it. You can spend your whole life waiting for the perfect moment, but it never comes. There is always a reason to postpone your plans.  So, we just said, we have a 1 year deadline.  I wrote a blog post saying that in 1 year we are going to do it, no matter what happens and we beat it by a couple of months. And a big part of my success is because other trailblazers online showed me the way and showed that it was possible to make money freelancing or building niche websites. We really live in a world of amazing opportunities.

One of my main websites, JetSetCitizen.com, talks about getting away from consumerism and buying things to more about experiences and living as a global citizen. My other passion, IdeaEconomy.net is business ideas, trends, opportunities and business models and I blog about that as well because those are the two things I have been passionate about for many years. And, I have a few other English oriented website for teaching children English, but I don’t spend as much time blogging on those. They are more focused on selling products, so hopefully those will be the income source, but the other stuff is the fun stuff I do because of my passion for travelling and business.

2.  When you first started out, were you using your own personal brand or did you launch the JetSetCitizen accounts and use that as the face of your personal and business presence online?

I started with JetSetCitizen.  A lot of people start with their name, but I didn’t want to go down that path because no one knows my name.  So, I didn’t want to brand myself with JohnBardos.com.  My personal and business life are one in the same. I didn’t really want to talk about what I ate for dinner and stuff like that online. Everything I do revolves around the business side of things and the global citizen side of things.  That’s what I do in my free time, that is who I am personally and professionally.

Trevor: Ya, I hear that a lot from people that they combine their personal and business brands online. Even from a branding perspective with JetSetCitizen, you use a caricature of your own face on your Twitter account as well, correct?

Ya, I just wanted to create something a little different and unique. But, basically, I think a lot of people are inauthentic, they are not true to themselves when they do their online business. They put on a business perspective that labels them as a “Guru” but when they go home, they say how much they hate their job.  But, I really do love what I am doing, I do this stuff for free. I am not trying to make money directly from my blogs, I am trying to connect with people.  I have other things that make me money.  The reason for blogging and social media is really to connect with like minded people.

Trevor: Which, of course, will spin off into other opportunities that could be monetized. But, as you say, making money is not necessarily the number 1 priority in why you blog.

Exactly, I think a lot of people put the money first and that screws up all of your relationships. I think if you put the relationships first, then opportunities come. It’s building social capital.  You can’t just say “My name is John, buy my stuff”, you have to say “My name is John, how can I help you, I love what you do, is there any way we can work together, let me help you promote”. I think if you are generous and you give a lot, you will build your network and start creating value for other people and those people will be willing to support you and give you assistance when necessary.

Trevor: Absolutely, the whole idea of reciprocity, right?  You do something without asking for anything in return and it will come back to you.

I often say, the “social” in social media is about relationships. A lot of people think it’s a cheap way to promote their business or services. You don’t see people acting in a pushy, salesy way in real life, so why do so many people do it online?  Many people think social media is another advertising medium.  It’s not an advertising medium, it’s a way to connect with people. And, eventually, those connections will lead to business opportunities, many new jobs or sales just like real life relationships do.  If you make the right connections you get ideas, you get job opportunities and partnership opportunities.  But the relationships come first.

Trevor: I think you bring up a good point there too John.  I think that’s the reason so many people get frustrated with social media is that there is not necessarily that instant impact that some people might be looking for, it has to be something that becomes a part of your daily life, your communication strategy as an individual and a business. And, naturally, it will grow over time, just like meeting people in person at a luncheon.  You don’t try to sell someone at a luncheon the first time you meet them.  You get a business card and you stay in touch and you build that relationship which could lead to business.

I think a lot of people, even when you meet them in real life, they try to qualify people.  “Is this person going to invest in my startup?” “Is this person going to buy from me someday?” And, if they don’t, you automatically shift to the next person. I think people that are lousy at networking in real life are going to be even worse online because they think they can get away with more. So, people that are good at building relationships and understand that good relationships require generosity and the more you give the more you get.

I often say that we live in a time of abundance. So, the old “keep as much as you can and horde everything for yourself” mentality doesn’t work anymore. The more you share, the more you give, the more social capital you build and the more you will connect with other people.

3. What social tools do you use for your own online ventures?

Twitter is my main tool because it is simple and gives you access to people that you normally wouldn’t have access to. You can’t just send an email to the CEO of a large company and expect to get a response.  But, on Twitter, you can mention someones name, promote their blog posts and talk to them. People are accessible on Twitter.

So, basically, I promote other people on Twitter and through those connections I can contact them and they know who I am by that interaction because I’ve built up some social capital with them.

Facebook is just fed from my Twitter account, so I don’t use it much.  And, Linkedin, I have an account, but don’t really do much of anything on there.

But, another one that people don’t see much as social media is blogging. Blogging for me is the ultimate social media tool because you are connecting with like minded bloggers. If you can connect with the right group of people, comment on each others blogs and write guest posts on each others blogs, that is the real way to build those connections in that network. For example, if you wanted to start a blog on “Making Money Online”, you can’t just go out there and market it yourself because there is so much competition. But, if you get in on the network with all the “Make Money Online” bloggers and everyone starts promoting each others affiliate programs, you can become a part of that group and they will market for you and help you sell your products, because they make money off of it. So, blogging is a great way to get involved because other bloggers can see that you are actively engage with their content, in their comments, you are promoting their topics, you can link back to them.

I would say that if you are in business and you don’t have a blog, you are missing out on a great opportunity. You can spend all day on Twitter and not accomplish anything.  Some people are putting the cart before the horse by communicating a lot, but are not communicating about what they want to sell.  They have no strategy or purpose behind what they are doing. I think, if you do it the other way around by building a central hub (blog), then use social media to promote it.  First, you need your thing that you want to talk about and I think blogging is the first step for most people.  Don’t get your Twitter account before you have a good blog.

Trevor: And, I think what you are referencing is “find out what you love”. Figure out what you love and what you want to talk about and then build a communication platform around it. You have to be able to get up and really want to talk about something in order to do it every day, to put in the time to make it work.

Not only something you love, I love playing the guitar and running, but I know I’m never going to make money with that stuff. It has to be something you love and also has the potential to lead into some business opportunity. A lot of people say “Follow your passion”.  But, if your passion is watching TV, chances are you are not going to get rich off of it.  You have to have a passion that has potential to lead to something in the future.  And, most things do, you can be the expert runner and running training or coaching.

4. Are there any particular online information resources that you use to keep up to date on social media trends?

I would say the number 1 site is Hubspot.com.  That is the one that consistently delivers good, quality information.  That’s basically the only one that I will consistently read all of their posts. There are so many others that say the same thing in a slightly different way, but Hubspot.com is top quality.  They have a lot of research papers and case studies.  Their is a lot of deep information, it’s not just the superficial info like “How to setup your Twitter account”, it’s more business oriented.

I subscribe to dozens of blogs, I can’t even remember the names of most of them.  I just skip over them frequently in my RSS reader. In terms of authors, there are many that I follow.  The Heath Brothers are fantastic. Both of their books are fantastic and, of course, Seth Godin is huge.

5. I find a lot of people have that one story or “WOW” moment with social media that makes them realize that it is a game changer.  Do you have a moment like this that you can share?

I think there are a few smaller moments.  I mentioned to you before, when I started blogging and connecting with these people online about living a nomadic lifestyle, living location independent and traveling around the world. I found out there are hundreds of people, thousands of people, with the same ideas.  I’m not alone in the world. You get that immediate support network that shows, yes, we are part of a community, I found my tribe.

In Canada, I always felt kind of out of place because I didn’t want to get the house in the suburbs, the SUV and work my way up into a big oil company in Calgary, my home city. I didn’t want that, it wasn’t interesting to me at all, so I always felt out of place. Moving to Japan made me an outsider, but it was good because I wanted to be an outsider. So, when I started getting online, blogging and connecting with other people on Twitter, I just found out how receptive people are.

I always thought “This person is not going to talk to me or that person is not going to talk to me”, but I always give the example of Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin.  Those guys are extremely approachable. Send them an email on a legitimate question or topic and they will respond back. You can connect with anybody in the world. We are people and we want to connect. I think we’ve lost a lot in our industrialization and our movement to cities.  We have kind of locked ourselves up in our houses and watch our TV all day and we try to avoid other people. But, I think a long time ago we grew up in towns where everybody knew each other and helped each other.  Before we were much more social. As we developed, we kind of lost our social instincts.

But, I think we are developing as a culture, as a society, getting back to connecting again and I think that’s hugely powerful. Meeting people in real life that you met online is just fantastic.

Another major group for me for social media is CouchSurfing.org.  Maybe some people are not familiar with it, but basically, people give you a room or a couch in their house for free. You connect with people online and when you are travelling to a different city, they will let you stay in their house for free. There is no expectation of a transaction, you are not supposed to bring them a gift or money, people actually want to connect.  We are developing as a society.  We are looking for meaning and purpose in our life and to me, it is about those connections and relationships and it’s amazingly powerful.  I can’t wait for another 5 years from now to see what’s going to happen.

Trevor: Ya, it’s almost hard to imagine what it’s going to be like in 5 years considering how much the world has changed in the last year, let alone the next 5 years. Couchsurfing.org is a great reference.  I know I did a webinar recently with a couple that have a Linkedin training business and they’ve couch surfed across North America for the last few years and swear by it. They always meet amazing people.

And, not to get into too long of a story, but I was on a sports trip last September and I ended up meeting a couple that went to all 30 baseball parks last year and we met them at their 30th game.  They had spent 90 days on the road and only spent 17 days in a hotel because they were put up by other people just using social media on Twitter and Facebook.  People were opening up their homes for them to be able to stay because they were on a limited budget and, of course, it made for an amazing experience. But, that’s what it really all comes back to is connecting with people.  And, I think we can both agree that when you meet with other people that think the same way as you do and you can talk for hours.

And, you can connect anywhere on the globe. A related idea is that social media makes us nicer because we have our reputations to uphold.  If you get bad reviews on Couchsurfing.org, you are not going to get any place to stay, right. So, it forces us to be nicer. People don’t say mean things on Twitter because people are going to unfollow you, right. So, we have to be better people. If you are making anonymous comments on a blog you can be a jerk and say this guys an idiot and doesn’t know anything.  And, you can get away with it cause you can give a fake email address.  But, if you are actually using the social media sites and using CouchSurfing.com, you can go and stay at someones house and steal their silverware because they are going to say “Hey, John stole all my silverware”. So, you are forced to be nice, in a good way! We are developing as people and maturing as a society. We are becoming nicer and it’s good, we need nicer people in this world.

Trevor: It almost forces transparency in order to be accepted into that world. I know for a lot of people that is somewhat intimidating.  Even for myself, putting myself on video for the first time, well, maybe not the first time.  But, actively as of last September.  There was that initial fear of “What are people going to say?” “Is my hair going to be messed up?” “People are going to laugh”. But, I found for me, once i got over that hump of just being who I am and showing the world who I am, it was a really uplifting and inspiring feeling because you get to be who you really are on a daily basis and connect with people that see you for who you truly are. It’s a pretty empowering thing.

That’s a great insight as well.  I think schooling and corporations train us to be fake. We are taught to sit straight in desks and pay attention and get good grades and follow what the teacher says and regurgitate facts and dates and numbers.  When we go to a job interview we say we are going to work really hard and we’re going to learn everything we can and we are going to be dedicated employees. And then a month later you don’t even show up to work on time anymore.  And, I think a lot of people are like that, they put that fake face on all the time.

But, on social media you can’t be fake so much. You have to be authentic.  If you are putting your word onto a blog or your face onto a video or doing podcasts, your true self will show up eventually.  You can hide it for a little while, but you can’t do it forever. So, finding your voice and finding something you believe in and are willing to put in the time and effort takes work.  But, we are becoming more authentic and we are connecting more socially and developing as humans.

People start saying “How can I make money on Twitter” and “How can I make money with Facebook“.  And, that seems to be the focus initially. But, I think the more you get into it, the more you see that it’s not just about the money, it’s not just about a transaction.  We are all connecting, we all have our own fears and insecurities, problems and opportunities and we all are dealing with many things and it’s great that we can actually connect around some of those things.

For example, if you have a cancer support network for a family member that might be dying of cancer or if you have a mountain biking tribe where you can get together, meet up in Colorado and go mountain biking or something. People are connecting around their different passions and interests and you are meeting people that are serious about those things.

To me, again, that is my “WOW” moment.  Just being able to connect with those people that just love a band so much or just love a sport so much or love a topic so much that they are willing to donate hundreds of hours of their own time talking about it, blogging about it, commenting about it. People that are really passionate about ideas.  And that’s why my IdeaEconomy.net blog was created.  Managing ideas and working with those ideas is the future. Goods and services are free. We can get food cheaper than imaginable.  We can harvest shrimp in Thailand, ship it across the world and still eat a meal for $5 in Canada. So, food and physical goods are becoming cheaper than ever.  What matters is those connections and those ideas, that’s how you stand out now.

Trevor: Ya, and John, it’s pretty obvious that you have a passion for the things that you’ve set up platforms around to share your ideas and connect with people with both JetSetCitizen.com and IdeaEconomy.net. Like I mentioned, I had only met you about a month and a half ago, but I’m a regular reader on both of your blogs now and of course, it’s led to me discovering other blogs that you’ve recommended.  Especially around the travel lifestyle.  I find there are quite a few people out there that are all very uplifting.  They almost kind of motivate each other to keep going, share ideas and solve problems.

6. I know you are about to embark on your next adventure.  Maybe share with everyone what you have planned for the next little bit and what they can find on JetSetCitizen.com as you continue on with your travels?

Well, next week we are leaving to Montreal for 5 days and then we are going to go to Europe for around 6 months. Basically, we are going to travel around and meet people. We are going to stay in places longer so we can actually work and have a decent internet connection.  So, maybe rent an apartment.  So, basically, we are going to live our life in different countries.  We don’t need a house, we don’t need the SUV, we don’t need a big plasma TV.  We can live pretty simply and inexpensively and we can do it from everywhere.  So, it’s great to have that opportunity to change and move to different cities and meet different people and connect with different ideas.  So, for the next few years it’s going to be jumping around from country to country and city to city and travelling.

Connect With John Bardos

Current Occupation:
Currently travelling but starting to do animated videos for websites, books and businesses to visually explain complex ideas. Also, runs several niche websites.
Skype Name: JohnBardos
Personal Website/Blog: JetSetCitizen.com
Business Website/Blog: IdeaEconomy.net
Facebook (Personal): http://www.facebook.com/jetsetcitizen
Twitter (Personal): http://twitter.com/jetsetcitizen
Twitter (Business): http://twitter.com/ideaeconomy
YouTube (Personal): http://www.youtube.com/jetsetcitizen
YouTube (Business): http://www.youtube.com/ideaeconomy
Linkedin: http://jp.linkedin.com/pub/john-bardos/1/988/ab4
CouchSurfing.org/

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Building Social Influence With Sports Fans

In this interview, I talk with JR from JRSportBrief.com.  JR discusses how he got started in social media and has very quickly made a name for himself in the online sports communication world.  JR has built a large fan base in his niche (Sports) by creating engaging content on YouTube where fan feedback is encouraged. (Just check out one of his recent videos titled “Top 6 Hated Athletes in Sports“. The video was uploaded only a few days ago and already has close to 500 comments!).

Big brands are starting to take notice of online influencers like JR and, I’m sure it won’t be long before we see a big brand attaching themselves with JR’s brand.  His combination of storytelling and humor makes his videos entertaining, thought provoking and leaves his audience wanting more!  Make sure to check him out online after watching the interview below.

Meet JRSportBrief

A workaholic, JR has turned a love for sports and the internet into a full time obsession. JR has developed a successful online sports brand of his own and has mastered the art of online distribution. Starting out in marketing and events at VIBE Magazine at the age of 17, JR is now a full fledged online marketing geek and guru.

Since leaving VIBE and attending Baruch Colleges Zicklin School of Business he’s built out online sex and relationship show Man and Wife and watched it become the first podcast to go directly from the web to MTV. He has developed online strategy for for many others including Legendary music icon DJ Grandmaster Flash, Madison Square Garden working on in game entertainment and his own online sports show JRSportBrief.

In his spare time JR enjoys talking online strategy with independent musicians, traveling, attending sporting events worldwide and watching BBC News.

Social Media Interview

1. How did you get involved in the social media world?

I was initially a producer on a show called http://www.manandwife.tv/, a sex and relationship show, with FatMan Scoop and his wife Shanda. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3whwEIAPL14). We built it up being interactive. They sat in their own bed in their own house and took sex & relationship questions via email, voicemail, video submissions and we ended up turning that into a TV show on MTV.

One day, I was in a meeting for Man & Wife to discuss some new distribution channels for the show and I was in the meeting with a gentleman by the name of Fred Cyber (Co-founder – NextNewNetworks.com) who was looking for new online content. That day in the meeting, I just so happened to have on New York mets gear. He was looking for new sports content and he suggested to me that I start a sports show and see how it goes.

Now, I’m a producer….more of a “behind the camera” type guy. And, you know, I went and made a video blog about Gary Sheffield needing to retire (last March 2009) and next thing you know, 500 people watched it and I just took it and ran from there.

Trevor: You clearly have a passion for the sports world and have utilized these platforms to essentially create your own media and it’s kind of exploded from there. You started your YouTube channel back in March 2009 and currently have almost 25,000 subscribers and 2.6M views on your videos which is really amazing.

Ya, at the rate I’m going, maybe before July is up, I may be hitting that 3M mark. I really think I carved a niche for myself in regards to sports communications via video online. People always used to use message boards.  And, when people go online to look for sports, it’s generally highlights they are looking for. And, I think I filled a niche, and I wasn’t necessarily the first person to do this.  But, I filled a niche in the format of how I did it in regards to fans being able to interact with each other around sports online. So, it’s been great!

2. How do you approach mixing your personal and business brands with regards to branding your online social accounts?

For me it’s all one. I’m JR. There is not a lot of personal and business separation. I can measure the two, you know, when I go out to eat with my girlfriend, there are times when my Blackberry will be going off.  People will be asking me about Lebron James per say.  Facebook and Twitter will be going off, it’s a balance.  But, I find it all mixes, because there really isn’t that much of a separation between who I am as a person and JRSportBrief as a brand.

Trevor: Ya, I hear that a lot from people that I interview that you really need to put a personality behind your social media efforts because that’s what people are engaging with. They are not engaging with a logo, they are engaging with a real person. In your case, your brand is yourself so it really works together that way.

There really isn’t any separation between what people see about me on camera and what happens when I turn the camera off. I’m generally the same around the clock. I’ve even picked up on comments that people have said like “Are you sarcastic all the time?”. I have to chuckle to myself when I hear that.  These people that follow me really know me pretty well.

3.  Which social tools do you focus on to distribute your content and create engagement?

I can find a happy medium using Facebook. I can find a happy medium via Twitter.  Whenever I turn my Skype on, regardless of whether or not I am away, there’s a million messages popping up with people trying to talk to me. I have so many people trying to reach out that I try to find a balance in between each one.

I mean, there’s times at the end of the day, I work from 6am – 10pm, and generally in the morning and late in the day I try to answer emails, comment on things people have said on Facebook, get back to everyone on Twitter.

I try to find a happy medium, but I can get back to the most people personally at the same time via Facebook.

Trevor: I think you bring a good point up there as that’s one of the biggest challenges I find when I get questions from other people.  They want to know how they can do everything as there are only so many hours in a day and if you want to be engaging and care about getting back to everyone, you really need to pick which platforms you are going to focus on (where your audience is) and focus on that platform.

It’s difficult because people know me and yes, I have the Blackberry.  It can be difficult because I have so many people hitting me up.  Everybody wants a follow up to what they are initially asking.  I try to get back to everybody. Certain people that know I have a Blackberry and use Blackberry Messenger, such as family and close friends.  But, I have people from clear across the world that ask me to share my BBM pin and I have to tell them to email me and I’ll answer them just as fast. So, there is a happy medium that I find with everything whether it be email, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

4. What resources (online & offline) do you use to keep up with trends in social media?

I’m a fan of Mashable and I’ll generally go there in regards to advertising and to see how these new applications fit in with people and how it applies to the business world. And, every once in a while, I’ll swing by Engadget.com.  But, those are the two main ones for me.

5. What is your “WOW” moment as it relates to social media?

There really isn’t one “WOW” moment for me. Every day that I can get up and say “WOW”, this is a cool ass job, that’s a “WOW” moment in itself. I’ve been stopped in Rockefeller Center, here in NYC. I think I told you, someone recognized me in the gym.  I get emails from people from as far away as Hong Kong.  Every message that I get, every fan that emails me, any person that requests any part of my time, those are all “WOW” moments for me.  I can’t necessarily rate one over the other, after that Gary Sheffield video gathered 500 views in a few hours, and being somebody that didn’t have anything on their account prior to that, I just thought that this is pretty cool!  Every day is a “WOW” moment, right now is a “WOW” moment talking to you Trevor.

Trevor: I agree, it is always cool to see how you can easily connect with new people everyday.  There are multiple “WOW” moments every time you flip the computer open and start interacting.

Ya, the first time I turned on Skype, there was a guy that I spend a few minutes speaking to and two seconds later he said “Oh my god, I spoke to JR” and I was like, “Oh my god, I spoke to you”. Every day is a “WOW” moment, I don’t take anything for granted.

6.  What kind of advice would you give to any other individual or business that is thinking about getting involved in social media?

You have to find that central location. I’m centrally located on YouTube. I’m also on iTunes.  And, I use the other mediums on Facebook, Twitter, Skype and email to keep in touch. So, I think what you need to do is find that one central location to communicate with your fans to start things off. I think once you have that, you can brand out a little bit.

At the same time, you have to know what you are talking about.  You have to have a subject, a topic, you have to be direct.  If you look at my earlier videos as compared to what they are like now, everything is much more direct.

It’s really not that difficult, you find a topic or subject, establish a primary place to communicate on and go from there.

Trevor: So, find a niche, something that you enjoy talking about and are passionate about is a good place to start.  I know it’s a lot easier to get up and talk about something love than it is to get up and do a job that you hate.

Ya, for instance, I love politics.  I get up in the morning and I will watch CSPAN just to hear people on the phone arguing with each other. But, if it was time for me to sit here and talk to you guys about politics, I mean, I’m not going to make a fool of myself.  No more than I’m not going to argue with my Mom about her cooking recipes, you know, it doesn’t work.

Connect with JRSportBrief

Current Occupation: Sports Video Blogger
Skype Name: JRSportBrief
Personal Website/Blog: http://jrsportbrief.com/
Facebook (Personal): http://www.Facebook.com/JRSportBrief
Facebook (Group): http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=105788112792252&ref=ts
Facebook (Fan Page): http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/JRSportBrief/129393440408622?ref=ts
Twitter (Personal): http://www.Twitter.com/JRSportBrief
YouTube (Personal): http://www.Youtube.com/JRSportBrief

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Creating a Content Strategy That Drives Targeted Traffic To Your Website

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Helping Entrepreneurs Build Their Businesses Smarter, Faster & Cheaper

In this interview, I talk with David Siteman Garland about how he has approached social media to grow his business and how he has very quickly established himself as a thought leader in the entrepreneurial space. I have been following David now for over a year and can honestly say that his approach to content creation, relationship building and content sydication online has inspired the way I approach my own online business ventures.

For anyone out there that is not following David online, you definitely need to check him out.  For all the big things that David is doing online, the one thing that stands out about him is that he is a REAL person that is focused on providing value and connecting with everyone that reaches out to him.  So, don’t hesitate to give him a shout out on Facebook or Twitter!

Meet David Siteman Garland

Entrepreneur, mediapreneur, speaker and author David Siteman Garland is the Founder of The Rise To The Top, The #1 Non-Boring Resource For Building Your Business Smarter, Faster, Cheaper and upcoming author of Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business (Wiley Publishing). He writes/hosts RISE, a a web show for entrepreneurs, forward-thinkers, business owners and marketers, as well as The Rise To The Top TV show on ABC.

His philosophy is simple: Money follows passion and not the other way around.

Social Media Interview

1. Tell everyone a little bit about your background and how you got started in the social media world

I’m very passionate about things that are not boring. I like taking things that are of interest to me and turning them into businesses.  My first business was not TheRiseToTheTop.com, it was professional inline hockey, which makes no sense, trust me.  So, I took something that I enjoyed doing and I turned it into a business.  We had a league here in the Mid-West, in St. Louis where I am from, and this was the fascinating thing that happened with social media.

So, when Facebook came out (to date myself as I was in college), and MySpace was big then.  I had this niche hockey league that had just came out.  And, I always think of the David vs Goliath story as it relates to business (no pun intended). There is always some type of big competitor, whether it’s real or perceived. So, as a small hockey league, we are competing with the NHL, when we are really not. So, we thought, what could we do back then that the NHL couldn’t do.  Well….social media!

All of the players were on social media, the fans were on social media and it became a good way to connect one on one with people to come out to the games, interact with the players and do all these different things.  So, my first experience with social media was really out of necessity because we built this league that had no money to market and promote and we had to get back to old fashioned one on one relationships.

Trevor: So, how long ago was that?

It was all the way back in 2006 when the league started.  It became interesting how social media evolved over time with the league.

Trevor: And, that was right around the time of the NHL lockout, wasn’t it?

Ya, and we had to come up with a positioning that was different, so, I would always say that “We are not going to charge you $25 for a hotdog and a beer, so, come out and interact with the players”.  We were always trying to be different and social media was a way to connect with people one on one.  Groups were very popular back then on Facebook, so you could get all of the fans and players into a group and they could be chirping at each other and having fun with it.

But, the interesting thing is that the league led to a radio show.  A traditional radio show here in St. Louis which was on the local ESPN station.  The asked me to do the show, so I said “Ya, sure, I’ll do a show (even though I have no idea what I am doing)”.  That’s when I started realizing that content, or media, was the best form of marketing and promoting. I started learning that because of the show mixed with social media.

Trevor: Ya, I think you were probably ahead of your time there.  I’m involved in the sports world through another venture (http://sportfanconnect.com) and in the last couple of years we’ve really seen the sports world start to embrace social media. But, I think you were in a unique position back then with the inline hockey league to  implement things that weren’t dictated by the beaurocracy of big time sports, so you could experiment a bit.

Sure, what was interesting about that, and I think it’s a lesson for anyone that’s watching this (Cause that’s what I  always try to do.  I try to take a personal story or stories I’ve learned from someone else and hope that it’s applicable to people and their businesses as well).  Back then with the sports, it wasn’t because I was sitting there and saying social media is the greatest thing since sliced bread and it’s going to be so amazing by 2010 or whatever it may be.  It was more like, we don’t have any money, so how do we even get the word out about this league?  Well, we are already really active on these sites and there are things that we can do here.  Not, push, push, push.  But, rather, be engaging and create a community. So, it was more of a necessity as opposed to this big vision of knowing where everything was going at that point.

2. What approach do you take in managing your personal brand (David Siteman Garland) versus your business brand (TheRiseToTheTop.com)?

I always like it when people are humans and not companies. I think there is a huge advantage to being a human as opposed to a company.  Now, of course, we all know companies are run by humans. But, having a presence that is a person on social media, I think is extremely vital. No one wants to be friends with a logo. There is confusion behind that.  You know…the logo is making a joke…I don’t get it.  You know what I mean?  I think there is a small “David” advantage there (no pun intended….vs Goliath) because you get to connect one on many with people.

So, for me, business and personal is somewhat of a blend. I also think it creates somewhat of an advantage.  What happens is, I am not always talking shop.  I’m talking shop a lot, but I’m also talking about other things that are interesting.  Not just because there is a business motive behind it.  Just because I like talking about  movies, sports and slow-pitch softball and random stuff like that.  For me, it’s just being myself on there and I think that’s the biggest takeaway for entrepreneurs.  When you try to put stuff into two buckets they start overflowing and you either look completely business or completely non-business.  And, I think that we are combining a lot of these things, but of course its always based on your personal comfort level and how you want to handle it.

Trevor: One of the ways you do that is by using your own photo on some of your business social accounts.

Yes, it’s an interesting thing about the photo. On social media, I think it’s a no brainer. I think that everyone should have the photo.  Unless you are Starbucks….as a small business….use the smallness to your advantage. One of the advantages is being able to be a person. If you have 5 or 6 people tweeting on behalf of a company, maybe they should all have their own accounts with their own personal brand on it. But, maybe have a broadcast account that pulls together the best.  But that shouldn’t be the focus of why your brand is out there building relationships.

For me, it became important, not because I think I’m awesome (which I don’t by any means).  But, because I felt like connecting with me was important for people that were going to watch the show or come to my events. Which is why you’ll see my photo on the website.  I wanted people to know that it was a person, that it was me trying to help.  And, not just some kind of faceless, non-personality filled content site.

Trevor: Ya, I think we are seeing a lot more of that lately.  The “Comcast’s” of the world are starting to brand their employees, with the company branding of course, but putting that face behind it. And, I know I’ve done a couple of webinars in the past few months with people that run social media programs with big companies and that’s one of the things they always stress.  Someone has actually coined a term “Brandividual“.  Someone that represents a brand, but is actually a person that  represents the brand.

Exactly, for example, Jeffrey Hayzlett (Former CMO – Kodak) who I’ve had on my show before. He was Kodak’s front line of communication on social media. It was his account and he became this persona on there.  His personal brand became bigger than Kodak. And, when he left recently, he skyrocketed out with a new book because he had built those relationships. I definitely agree with you though.  Big brands…this is more of a challenge for them than it is for small brands and I kind of like it. I kind of like that there is a small advantage for the little guy.

3. Which social media tools do you use the most for your business?  Which ones do you find the most value in?

Let me preface this, because I’ve had many debates on my show about the value of different platforms.  I think every social media site is awesome if you like it and you get value from it. If it’s not, it sucks.  Deciding which sites work for you is something that is very personal that takes into consideration your own style, your business, where customers and clients connect.  I don’t think there is a wrong answer of saying you have to be on Twitter or you need to go jump off a bridge.

So, for me personally, I get the most value from and try to give the most value on Twitter and Facebook. I’m on Linkedin, you can connect with me on Linkedin, but I am much more passive on there.  Someone like Lewis Howes, who you mentioned earlier, he is the master of Linkedin and spends a lot more time there than he may on Facebook. Everyone is a little bit different.  But for me, those are the two that work the best for me, that fit with my personality and allow me to connect with entrepreneurs.

Trevor: And, I think the clear message from that is whichever ones you chose, just be consistent and be on there to add value.  Spreading yourself too thin is one of the things I hear all the time.

Sure, whatever your niche is.  Perhaps it’s butterflies or whatever it may be.  I’m in the entrepreneurial niche.  So, if I was starting from scratch, I’ve had a lot of people I need to spend more time on Linkedin because there are a lot of entrepreneurs on Linkedin. And, nothing against Linkedin, but you don’t have to be on every single one just because your niche is on there.  You just have to be on enough so that you can make an impact and you can put an effort into it and enjoy it. I think that’s one of the things that is overlooked. It’s fun and it should be fun.

4. There are a number of resources out there, and as I mentioned, your website is a great resource of information for me.  But, are there any particular information resources you use to keep up with social media trends?

I am a big believe in being a student of the game. Whatever it is you are a student of whether it be sports or social media. So, I divide things into different categories.  On quick news, tech stuff, things like Mashable.com, Techcrunch.com, Engadget.com and Techmeme.com, those are the basic news sites I get a lot of information from.

I really like Hubspot.com internet marketing blog because I think they just “Get it”. One of the big things I talk about, and I think it’s important, is that we’ve gone from a society of product pushing to becoming a trusted resource, a publisher, a content creator, a connector.  And, I think Hubspot gets it and they are a growing company that offers a lot of good stuff.

I read ChrisBrogan.com, Chris is a great guy.  When Gary V puts out a new video I go and hunt it down. I know there is a lot of good content out there and I know I am going to leave a lot of people off, so maybe I’ll stop with that short list so someone doesn’t come and punish me.

Trevor: Ya, the list can be exhaustive for sure.  But, those are all great ones for people to follow.  Especially if they are just starting out.  If they follow those resources, they are going to get a lot of great tips from them.

Yes, and, explore around.  Maybe it’s not even in your niche. Sometimes you get inspiration from the most random things in the world. Just by keeping your eyes open and not getting stuck reading and watching the same thing over and over again.

Trevor: Yes, it’s good to get a variety of opinions because there really is no right or wrong in the social media world.

5. I find everyone has a “WOW” moment when it comes to social media.  Do you have a moment like this?

Ya, it is tough to narrow it to one.  Scott Ginsberg, the Nametag Guy, is an interesting entrepreneur who has a great saying that “Consistency is better than rare moments of greatness”. But, I think one that was interesting was, just on a personal level, the thing that I find most interesting is when I meet someone online and then we meet in person, that’s what I always find the most interesting.

But, specifically, a big “WOW” moment for me would be an article I wrote last year called the “10 Big Marketing Projections for 2010” and that was the first thing that went extremely viral for me.  Guy Kawasaki retreated it and I got to watch the magic of the internet unfold in front of me. A few people picked it up, then this happened and that happened and I was watching this out of fascination.  It was sort of like being inside the surgery watching what was happening. I really think that was a moment where I realized things can spread in a hurry now. It’s not like the news cameras have to come and pick it up anymore.  Good content, or content that is perceived as good can move and you can watch the results instantaneously.

Trevor: Yes. I get a lot of feedback from people that have launched blogs and are wondering why no one is reading their content. I don’t think there is any kind of magic bullet, a lot of it comes down to a little bit of luck, but more so being consistent and writing good content and networking and connecting with the right people.

It’s a slow burn. You have to keep going at it. Moments like the one I just stated are so rare.  That’s why I was almost nervous about mentioning it. That’s not why you blog, to get Guy Kawasaki to retweet it. You need a long term strategy of building up trust, building relationships and positioning yourself as a trusted resource.  You don’t do that by bragging up yourself.  The best people make it about something bigger where you motive is to help other first. Whatever it is, your products or services, they come second.  And, I think that’s what separates the most successful content creators from those that are trying to get going. But, there is no substitute for time. It doesn’t take 6 months or a year, it takes a while to get decent traction/traffic to feel like you are making a difference and that’s different than buying a billboard.

6. What other advice would you give to individuals and business owners getting started in social media.

An interesting quote by Shama Kabani, who wrote a great book called “The Zen Of Social Media Marketing“, said that “social media marketing comes last”. And, it’s funny when you think about that because you really need to have an overall content strategy for social media.

So, what I mean by that is…..what spreads?  Banner ads don’t spread.  Your product, unless you’ve created the next iPod, doesn’t spread. Cause, no one gives a crap about your product.  I think that’s one of the things that people need to understand.  People care about getting helped themselves, solving their own problems, sharing something that will look good, I just being honest here.  I’m not saying that everyone is selfish.  I’m just saying that you have to see what’s in it for others.

When you create a content strategy, be it for a blog, doing your own show, podcast or an app.  Whatever it may be, your content becomes the centre of your social media strategy. Your content (your’s and other people’s that you share) that is going to be the keys to your success.

Connect With David

Current Occupation: President & CEO at The Rise To The Top
President at The DSG Agency
Business Website/Blog: http://www.therisetothetop.com/
Book website: http://.smarterfastercheaper.com
Facebook (Fan Page): http://www.facebook.com/risetothetop
Twitter (Personal/Business): http://twitter.com/therisetothetop
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsitemangarland

David’s upcoming book, Smarter, Faster, Cheaper is a living breathing buffet of non-boring, fluff-free ideas, strategies as well as stories and takeaways from successful entrepreneurs (including author David Siteman Garland) so you can take advantage of this unbelievable opportunity whether you are an entrepreneur, solopreneur, freelancer or a forward-thinker ready to innovate.

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From Twitter To Courtside

In this interview, I talk with Peter Robert Casey who followed his passion for basketball and landed a dream job as the first media credentialed microblogger (Twitter) in college basketball history.  Peter’s story is one that is inspiring for others looking to leverage social media as a means to talk about their passion, connect with like-minded people and realize business opportunities that can present themselves as a result.

Meet Peter Robert Casey

Peter currently serves as Chief of Communications for Team Chemist, LLC. Prior to joining Team Chemist, Peter spent 5 years managing the student activities’ communication function at the nation’s largest and most comprehensive graduate school of education, Columbia University’s Teachers College. He was twice awarded the President’s Grant for outstanding community outreach initiatives.

In the fall of 2009, Peter was recognized as the first media credentialed microblogger in college basketball history. Labeled a “pioneer” for altering the composition of St. John’s press row, his story of social media success was featured in the New York Times, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, New York Magazine, MSG and NCAA.com.

Social Media Interview

1. How did you get involved in social media?

I was working at Columbia University’s Teachers College for 5 years and I was also studying there, I got my MA in Organizational Psychology in the evenings.  After I wrapped up my degree in May 2008, I was looking for a way to integrate my passion for basketball back into my life.  And, particularly, the hope was to make a transition into the business side of basketball so that I could move on into a new profession.  I was a lifelong basketball player, after college I did some coaching and then I had this moment in July 2008 after I graduated and got married that summer.

I sent a message through Linkedin to Greg Marius, the Founder of the Entertainers Basketball Classic at the famous Rucker Park in Harlem.  And, within hours, Greg wrote back to me saying “Hey, why don’t come up and work with us.  You can help us draft corporate sponsorship proposals”.  So, I had that moment where the lightbulb went off.  There really is value in using these tools.  So, that was my first segue back into the game of basketball.  And then, of course, in 2009 another big door opened for me with St John’s Basketball which led to my latest business venture with TeamChemist.com

Trevor: Maybe tell us a little bit about Team Chemist.

Absolutely, well, as I mentioned, I studied Organizational Psychology and I was trying to figure out a way to marry my educational background with my passion for basketball.  And, little did I know, there are already two gentlemen who were already working on it at Columbia.  I bumped into one of those guys, Dr. Nabeel Ahmad, and he was finishing up his PhD in Educational Learning.  We got to talking at graduation.  He was on his way out the door and I had recognized his face from Rutger Park.  We started talking and met a few weeks later for lunch and he introduced me to a third guy, David Guralnick, who is also a professor at Columbia.  David had crafted this project, a prototype called Team Chemist.  He did it about 4 years ago and he got some interest from the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Team Chemist is a decision management tool or a personnel management tool that helps NBA GM’s make better transaction decisions around trades and free agency signings.  It’s based on finding the right fit.  All these Organizational Psychology factors looking at off the court intangibles of these players.  You’ll see a lot of players that ride the bench on one team, they get traded and all of a sudden they excel on another team.  We are really studying all of those factors: teamwork, history and psychology of these players and how they fit into different systems.

2. Do you have a strategy on how to manage your personal and business social accounts?

Well, with Team Chemist, one of the really unique features nowadays is that all the players are public figures and a lot of them do have a presence on various social media channels.  So, we’ve been analyzing their presence. For example, what are they saying, what are they not saying, who are they talking to, how are they acting? And, a lot of that goes into the data analysis we provide to GM’s.  So, from that standpoint, social media is heavily utilized.

The product itself, since we are focusing on NBA teams, there are 30 potential clients in the first release.  So, we are kind of doing a direct sales approach, so we are not going to create a big buzz around it until we land a few clients and figure out the sensitivities around how much information we can share with the public.

For myself, my personal strategy has been all about using the tools to develop personal relationships with those on the business side of basketball.  Which, ultimately, will help us sell our product and build buzz around it when the time is necessary.

Trevor: So, your personal brand allows you to establish your personal network which obviously transitions into benefit for your business.

Exactly.  I’ve been covering basketball on my blog and social media because it is a passion of mine.  I’m very interested in learning about how the teams and online communities are connecting with fans.  How do they get them closer to the experience and bring them into it.  So, I use my blog as a place where I learn in public about it and then share those learning with those who come a read it on a daily basis.

3. Which social media tools do you use the most?

Linkedin, I initially used to build relationships.  Although, I have kind of slowed down there.  Mostly, I spend a lot of time with Twitter and Facebook.  Just because of the velocity of how fast you can connect with people and keep those relationships vibrant.

I also write for the Huffington Post which has a much larger viewership than my blog and it’s also a targeted audience.  So, I have spent some time there interviewing people who are prominent in the space and are seen as thought leaders who have already built a success brand for themselves.

Trevor: That’s a great tip for people watching this video is to guest post.  Obviously the Huntington Post is high profile, so it is a great opportunity for you.  It gives you a platform to establish yourself and drive traffic back to your personal sites.

It’s huge.  Someone told me when I first started that when you are trying to create something out of nothing and you have zero readers on your first day, it’s important to spend time where your audience already is.  And, of course, you can do that by asking to guest blog.  But, maybe even before that, become a member of that community and leave insightful comments that advance the conversation on articles you are reading.  So, I did that, and I still do to this day.  Going to SlamOnline, Dime Magazine and other basketball websites and I spend time there finding things that are interesting, sharing them with other people but also, just furthering their dialogue.

4. Are there any particular resources you use to keep up with social media trends?

I follow early adopters and innovators.  I obviously follow a lot of basketball people including journalists and players.  But, in my Google Reader, I follow a lot of people that talk about digital trends and social media.  Guys like Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble.  And, guys in the personal branding space like Dan Schawbel.  So, I focus a lot of my energy outside of basketball trying to stay on top of new tools.  I’m not necessarily an early adopter myself, but if I come across something cool and unique that can help people in the basketball community, I try to learn these new technologies and then share it with my audience.

Trevor: So, you find these tools and try to relate it to your niche.  Every single social tool out there is not necessarily suited for certain audiences, but when you find those gems that are being recommended by thought leaders you can then engage with those tools in your unique community.

Yes, it has to make sense.  Just because there are new platforms out there, doesn’t mean it always applies to an organizations goals.  You always have to establish goals up front and then the tools follow.  You have to apply the right tools based on those goals and if it doesn’t make sense, don’t use them.

5. A lot of people I talk to have that one “WOW” moment with social media.  Do you have a moment like this that you’d like to share?

Yes, in addition to getting my first internship with Rutger Park, there was also the moment when St. John’s first approached me in August 2009.  I was going about my normal daily business on Twitter by engaging with people talking about specific basketball events or products.  I received a phone call from the Sports Information Director at St. John’s Basketball, Mark Fratto. He approached me with the unique idea of independently credentialing my own personal Twitter feed as a recognized media outlet to cover the team as a beat reporter thru microblogging.

I was initially in shock.  One, because I grew up in Brooklyn, NY which shares the same island as St. John’s and I was a fan, so to me it was a big door opening up!  I didn’t think it would be a national news story, but it really struck me to know that people were paying attention to what I’m doing and I didn’t even know about it.  A lot of times people get focused on numbers (Followers, Friends, Fans).  But, you never know, even if you only have 5 people reading your content, one of those five people could be a decision maker like Mark who can come and approach you with a unique opportunity that never before existed.

Trevor: Yes, it’s a shining example and another reason why I wanted to talk to you.  You clearly have a passion for basketball and your original intention was not to try and make a whole bunch of money and land the St. John’s job.  But, because you were authentic and doing what you love every single day, it naturally happened.  I think that’s an inspiring story for people watching this video to get started. Start talking about what you love and engaging and you just never know what might happen.

That’s exactly it.  For me, money was never a driving force around why I started using social media or why I got back into basketball.  My passion for the game dates back to 3rd grade as a player and to me, it just makes me happy.  So, if I can do something on the business side of the game, which I also really love, it would be a win-win.  And, I still be doing this even if money was not part of it.

That alone goes a long ways. I had a 9-5 job working at Columbia and, literally, I was a newlywed.  So, my wife was very encouraging and supportive because I was spending a lot of time outside of the house going up to Rucker Park, coming home at 9-10pm and then starting to blog from 10pm – 2am. And then wake up and start it all over again.  So, when the money is not rolling in, no person in their right mind would stay up until 2am if the passion is not there.

6. What kind of advice would you give to individuals and businesses just getting started in social media?

I think the first step is finding out what you really love and enjoy doing.  For some people it’s natural, they know from childhood what they love.  For others, it’s a bit tougher. But, once you figure out what it is you love and you can talk about it every single day, then the rest really comes easy. It’s really about building relationships through conversations. Social media is inherently social. We use to just be readers and consumers of content, but now we can quickly shift from being a reader to a publisher through comments, starting your own blog or having a presence on any one social channel. You can find people that love basketball or basket weaving, whatever it is, you can connect with those people.  So, the first thing is finding your passion.

Or, you can just simply use it to keep up with old friends.  Not all social applications need to be around building a business. My parents, for example, are on Facebook and they are nuts about it.  They are connecting with people from their old block in Brooklyn back in the 70’s.

Trevor: Yes, it’s inspiring to see that kind of stuff happen.  Those are all great tips for anyone that is looking to get started in social media. Dive in, find what you are passionate about and start joining conversations.

Ya, that’s how you and I connected.  I remember watching some of your videos and reading your content before we ever connected.  And, here we are today having a conversation via Skype.  I think it’s just amazing.

Trevor: Yes, you never know what it will lead to.  And eventually we’ll meet in person, have that beer and share some laughs about your cat running across the screen.

Connect With Peter Robert Casey

Current Occupation: Chief of Communications – Team Chemist
Skype Name: PeterRobertCasey
Personal Website/Blog: http://peterrobertcasey.com
Business Website/Blog: http://www.nbateamchemist.com
Facebook (Personal): http://www.facebook.com/peterrobertcasey
Twitter (Personal): http://twitter.com/Peter_R_Casey
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/PeterRobertCasey
Huffington Post RSS: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=peter-robert-casey
Blog RSS: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/peterrobertcasey/VWVO

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For many individuals and businesses, getting started with a website or blog is a very daunting task.  After all, you have to register a domain name, setup a hosting account, install the website, learn how to use the software and then figure out what you are actually going to write about now that have a platform that allows you to voice your opinion to the world!

Now, I say this with tongue in cheek because it’s really not that hard. But, like anything in life, you do have to put in the time and educate yourself to get good at it. Of course, once you get past the point of setting up all the technical stuff and figuring out what to write about, you now have to figure out how to get people on your site to read your content.

Syndicate To Drive Traffic!

There are a number of ways that you can get traffic to your website organically over time, but, wouldn’t it be nice if you could follow a simple step-by-step process to syndicate your articles so that they can be found and read by hundreds, or even thousands of viewers?

I have experimented with hundreds of tools to help me do this for all of my online ventures. And, even though my list doesn’t even begin to cover ALL the ways you can syndicate your content, I have found a system that works for me and hopefully you’ll find value in it as well. The video below is the step-by-step process I take every time I post a new article on my blog.

Automate

There is nothing better than setting something and forgetting about it.  Here are three ways that you can automate your content syndication any time you write a new article.

1. TwitterFeed

TwitterFeed.com allows you to update your Twitter status automatically whenever you write a new blog article.  The service syncs your Twitter account to your Blog RSS and can also be integrated with your chosen URL shortener to ensure you can track the clicks on your unique links.

2. Facebook Notes

With Facebook Notes, you can import posts from one external blog so that they appear along with your notes and displays the article on your Facebook Fan Page wall. Facebook will automatically update your notes whenever you write in your blog via RSS. In order to add your RSS feed to the Facebook Notes application, you have to “Edit” your Facebook Fan Page, scroll down the page until you see “Notes”, then click “Edit”.  Then, in the top right corner of the page, you’ll see a link called “Import A Blog”.  From there, you just add your Blog RSS URL and you are all set!

3. Linkedin – Wordpress Application

With the WordPress App on Linkedin, you can sync your WordPress blog posts with your LinkedIn profile, keeping everyone you know in the know. Once added, you can filter your posts with a special LinkedIn tag and even display your personal WordPress Gravatar (global avatar). Updates are automatically sent to your network for instant notifications and gratification.

Manual

There are still some things in life where you have to roll up your sleeves and get the work done. (Or, outsource your work and have someone else do it for you :).  Regardless of which way you choose, here are four ways you can syndicate your content and drive more traffic to your website.

4. Linkedin – Status Updates

LinkedIn status updates are a nice way of helping to stay top of mind with contacts. If you were to call or email all your contacts any time you did something small but interesting, it would quickly become seen as pushy or spammy.

But, updating your status is an non-intrusive way of getting a gentle reminder out. Depending on their settings, your contacts will get a regular email with a summary of the status updates of their contacts. And they will see the updates on their LinkedIn homepage.

5. Linkedin – Group Discussions

Linkedin Groups are a great place to post relevant content that may be of interest the those in the group. Recently, there have been some changes made to Linkedin Groups that allows users to quickly peruse new content and vote either by “liking” or commenting on discussions they deem worthy of the group’s attention.

Of course, you want to make sure that whatever content and links you are providing with the Group Discussions are providing value rather than just spamming.

6. Onlywire.com – Automated Content and Bookmark Distribution

Onlywire allows creators and authors of online content to efficiently reach billions of readers globally. Its publishing list consists of the best-in-class social networking sites representing the web’s highest-density in terms of readership – the list includes Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Delicious, StumbleUpon and many others (40 active services).

Update: Since I recorded the above video, I discovered that Onlywire has a plugin that you can install on your self-hosted Wordpress site (required for Free use). The best feature about this plugin is that it has an option in the settings to automatically publish your articles to all of the platforms you sync with the service.  So, essentially, this one can fall under the “Automate” category.  However, in order to update your “Status” on selected platforms, you still have to manually use the “Bookmark & Share” button that you will drag into your Bookmarks Toolbar.

7. EzineArticles

Ezine Articles is an article marketing, publicity generating, pre-qualified traffic building, and article exposure service designed to get your expert articles in front of their content-hungry ezine publisher audience. Their searchable database of hundreds of thousands of quality original articles allows email newsletter publishers hungry for fresh content to find articles that they can use for inclusion within their next newsletter.

Previously fee-based, they are testing a new ad-supported model which means there is no charge to use their service during this test period and all new accounts get (10) article submissions to prove your level of article quality. If your first 10 article submissions meet or exceed their  posted editorial guidelines, they will review your membership account to be upgraded to their PLATINUM level of membership — that allows unlimited article submissions and priority approval speed.

Membership

8. The Unified Tribe

Tribes have been around since the beginning of time. But, in today’s socially connected world, it has never been easier to connect with like-minded people that are genuinely interested in helping each other.  The Unified Tribe is exactly that….People helping People with a major emphasis placed on the concept of reciprocity. The more you help other people promote and distribute their content, the more you will get back in return.

Once you are a member of The Unified Tribe ($67/Month), you can submit your own blog articles to the “Unified Feed” where others can then help you promote your content.  However, you first have to earn 5 reciprocity points.  Reciprocity points are earned by helping promote other member articles on Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook.

For anyone looking for an instant way to join a Tribe of like-minded people that are genuinely interested in helping you achieve your personal and business goals, you should definitely check out The Unified Tribe.  I have been using it for the approximately 3 weeks now and I have not only received significant value from a content distribution standpoint, but I have also had the pleasure of connecting with many of the other members and fellow bloggers via Skype where I have now built real relationships with them that make me want to help them out even more.

Bonus

This final tip falls more under the “content creation” category than it does under syndication, but I wanted to stress the value in conducting video interviews as a means to produce content for your blog.  Remember, I started this article say that one of the hardest parts in getting started with a blog is figuring out what to write about.  By doing video interviews (and then transcribing those interviews), you can easily create content for your blog without having to come up with new ideas all the time.

And, the great part is, the fact that you are helping promote someone else makes them inherently want to help you in return. Therefor, they will help you spread the word about your article which will expose your blog to a whole new audience that didn’t know you existed before.

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The video above is full of valuable information on why every individual and business needs to OWN Their Online Identity. In this video you will learn:

1. How to properly set up a number of social accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube and Flickr
2. How to register a domain name
3. How to set up a hosting account
4. How to set up a Wordpress website
5. How to pull all your social accounts into your new Wordpress website

In the end, you will walk away with your own website that I used to charge $3000+ for when I owned my own website development company!!

Downloads

SCB – Own Your Online Identity SCB – Password Template

Questions?

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave your comments below or email me directly at trevor@socialconnectblueprint.com

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