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Learn To Conquer Social Media at the Facebook Mastery Summit

It is no surprise that Facebook is becoming the go-to resource for Small Businesses, Entrepreneurs and Consultants looking to promote their business, generate leads and sell products.  However, with all of the free and paid Facebook training out there…….how many people are actually seeing results from their efforts?

In this interview, Nick talks about his success in using Facebook for lead generation, building relationships and converting “fans” into paying clients. Nick also discusses his upcoming “Facebook Mastery Summit” that will be launching in March 2011

Meet Nick Unsworth

Nick Unsworth is a Social Media Pro who teaches entrepreneurs, small business owners, and service professionals how to build a tribe of raving fans, followers, and customers that will grow their brand and bottom line.  A little known fact about Nick is that he has a big ol’ tattoo on his chest that reads “Believe 2012″. You have to see it to believe it……Nick has an amazing personal story that includes many successes and failures.  Read more about Nicks story and to check out that sweet tattoo! It has been a pleasure getting to know Nick over the past year and I’m am sure that everyone that watches this interview and checks out his website will find a tremendous amount of value in what he has to offer!

1. Can you tell us about yourself and how you got into this world of social media?

Definitely, I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.  My evolution into internet marketing was a very eventful, wild and painful at times ride as I’m sure alot of entrepreneurs and people that are interested in this space have gone through.

When I was in college, I was into Network Marketing, and somehow did very well in it. But, I learned that that wasn’t the business model for me.  I moved into Real Estate which I always hated. From there, I started a business.  It was my first online business and it was in 2008. I built out this business, it was kind of like a not-for-profit and way to build out my branding in the real estate market here in town.

Long story short, built it out, learned alot, got the company to the first page of Google completely by accident. And the reason was because I hired a traditional advertising company. I hired 4 guys that each had 25 years of experience and they said if you want traffic to this website, we need to run TV commercials.  And, I looked at that and thought, really??  TV commercials??  How about this 15 page grass-roots marketing plan that I put together that had internet marketing and was just local grass-roots stuff that I had put together.  They literally looked at it, they didn’t even read through it and said absolutely not, you have to do TV commercials and that’s how you’re going to build this business.

At one point, we were really butting heads on it and at the time I was 26, I said, I am going to get out of my own way and let these professionals do what they do best and market this business.  Sure enough, I get into it and I not only lost everything I had, but I then racked up $50,000 in credit card debt because the whole thing just turned sideways because the TV commercials were insanely expensive.  It drove alot of traffic, but it wasn’t targeted.  Long story short, it got it ranked on Google, which is good in most cases, but it was local business.  And, without getting too much into detail, I ended up getting into a trademark situation because this big company out of Chicago had a similar name.  It was a disaster.

But, the takeaway, the reason I shared that story is because what ended up happening, and what is happening to alot of business right now, is that they are still doing the same things that they did 10 years ago. They are still doing radio and billboards and TV and all kinds of direct mail.  And, from all of those advertising mediums, they are not getting the ROI.

So, once that happened to me, I basically went out and I literally set out on an absolute warpath to figure out internet marketing. I knew there had to be a better way. So, from there, the reason I got to $50,000 in credit card debt is that I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars flying all over the country learning from every guru and speaker I could get my hands on learning.  I spent a good year of just learning.

It was a great experience, but the main thing is taking action. I didn’t realize that taking action was the key part, so I didn’t start taking action until about 2 years ago. I started building out my online properties, the blog, Facebook and all that good stuff. As soon as I got everything up and running, it was absolutely amazing how fast things happened.

Trevor: I was just about to ask you too.  What was the “WOW” moment for you?

The WOW moment was when I finally got the blog up. Even when I was taking action, I had a gig with a company where I was their social media guy and was developing a community. But, when I launched my own personal brand, that’s when everything completely changed.

You have to make a big decision whether you are going to go with a personal brand or whether you are going to build a saleable asset.  There are two different directions, but the advantage of the personal brand is that, I spent at the time $700.  I built a blog that also included my branded Twitter account and Facebook.  As soon as that went live, all I did was go back to the contacts I already had and told them I am starting an online business helping small business owners use the internet to get customers.

I mean, we are talking literally within 30 days, I had enough clients to pay my bills. When I made that jump, I was in real estate before, and I literally had a $3500 expense to pay my bills. I didn’t have any houses in the pipeline to sell, the real estate market in Connecticut sucked. I was spending all my time in internet marketing, so I was honestly financially, completely screwed. And, I made the decision to come out with the blog, to go that direction, to change my branding and to just commit and make the leap of faith in saying I’m going to do this.  I’m going to create literally $3500 or more so I can pay my bills that month.  And, once I made that decision in my head, went out there and did it, that was the most life changing 30 days of my life.  So, once that happened, I realized everything was real and things just compounded and snowballed and it’s been a real blessing since.

Trevor: And, one of the things that really stood out for me from what you just said is that you’ve been through the school of hard knocks as they say.  You’ve learned the hard lessons, no different that I have too, I have a very similar background in that you try everything and you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes.  So, it’s nice when you can start realizing what those things are that you can turn that around and turn it into a profitable business and really learn to love and enjoy what you do every day and it’s clear that you do that.

2. You actually led into the next question I had for you which is the idea of branding online. From a small business perspective, when we are talking about online marketing there is definitely alot of credibility that comes with speaking from your own voice. When it comes to small local businesses, what’s your thoughts on how to approach branding?  Whether it’s branding your business with your voice talking behind it or actually putting your face out there and using your own name on different platforms.

I am a huge advocate for speakers, coaches, entrepreneurs, even network marketers to use their personal brand with their face on it. In my opinion, based on the results I got, there is nothing that can compare to it.

It’s like, if you were to write a book on any topic, as soon as you write that book, you automatically have this unbelievable credibility.  And, as soon as you put yourself out there on a personal blog and it’s branded nicely, you have this instant credibility where people believe you know what you are talking about. So, starting any business, that helps.

For businesses, it’s a little different for a business. For larger businesses, it’s hard to put a face out there sometimes. But, for smaller businesses….even a restaurant….take the GM of a restaurant or the owner of a small restaurant.  Whatever the local business is, tying a face to the business is huge.  I mean, you think about on Facebook, interacting with people and they are on the Fan Page, and you have a logo.  And, the thumbnail is this tiny little logo and you have no idea who you are talking to. How do you have a conversation with someone when you can’t see the person on the other side?

I’ve had some companies where they didn’t want to have one person be the face, so they’d have two people managing company accounts.  But, having the face is critical.  In social media marketing it is absolutely critical. It can be one person, I’ve seen companies use 3 people. And, then, if you can take it a step further and actually get in front of a camera, there is nothing better than that.  Alot of businesses, that’s just about the last thing they want to do is get in front of a camera, so if that’s the case, a simple picture will do.

Trevor: No, I agree with you 100% too.  In my own personal experience I’ve seen big brands that put that personal voice behind it. Maybe they are not putting the social media guys face on their Twitter icon, but they are speaking from an authentic voice so that people know that they are actually talking to a person. There is something to that.  People like to know they are talking to people not a logo.

3. The biggest thing I wanted to talk to you about Nick, because you have established yourself in this area and things are just taking off for you on one particular platform and that is Facebook. Give us a bit of understanding of how you are using Facebook creatively and what it’s done for your own business.  And what are your overall philosophies on this topic?

To put some context behind why I am putting so much focus on Facebook.  I have worked with quite a few small business owners with my own business and I’ve tested out every strategy I could ever get my hands on from a guru or program.  At the end of the day, the ROI that I always see is always coming from Facebook.

So, now when you look at it, you only have so much time in the day, you can only do so many things, you can only wear so many hats.  So, for business owners, alot of times when I make a social media plan, I love Twitter and I love Linkedin and I love the whole incompasing strategy with a blog. But, at the end of the day, that’s not realistic. You have to have focus. So, we’ll take all those other parts and we’ll put them aside. You can accomplish everything you need within a Facebook Fan Page.

So, alot of the strategies I create, the highest maximum return on investment is on Facebook. For businesses, essentially, we are drilling down into Facebook and the big critical piece is the Fan Page.

The custom branded Fan Page, you have to have the profile image. The profile image is arguably the most important piece of real estate because once someone gets to that Fan Page, they may see that landing page but after they are “cookied” and they already see it.  Moving forward, they are only going to see the profile image on the side. So, the profile image has to have a call to action. You have to share what your unique selling proposition is. You have to, at the end of the day, answer one very important question. And, this is the marketing million dollar question that took me a while to learn and that is “What’s in it for me?“.  No one cares about anyone else, but what’s in it for themselves. When they land on your Fan Page, your blog, anywhere, you have to let them know what’s in it for them. So, the profile image, having that set up so that when they land there, they know what the value is for them, why they want to be there, why they want to hang out with you.  Are you giving away free information.  So, you want to build up that tribe of people on your page.

Just some of the cool things we are doing to actually engage and get fans, one thing I’m really fired up about is how to launch your own page. And, alot of people will put up a page and try to drive fans to it, add content and what have you.  If you make an experience out of launching your page, you can create incredible buzz. So, when you go to launch your page, or you currently have a page and you want to get alot more fans, you want to relaunch your page.  Custom brand it, do the profile picture, do the landing tab, do a contest if you can. It’s just critical that you tap into your network. They used to say the most successful people have the biggest networks and the same thing is true before we have the internet and with the internet.

So, the first step, once you have your Fan Page setup, is to email out to your contacts or use direct mail.  Create a fully encompassing approach to launching your page. And, I did say direct mail, and it’s only if you don’t have email.  Otherwise it’s not cost effective.

You want to launch that page and give them a reason. In your niche, is there something you can give away?  If you are a consultant, can you give them coaching? If you are a restaurant, can you give away two for one margaritas? Or, buy an entree get an entree free?  Once you get people to the page, you want to give them a compelling reason to talk about it.

When they click on the “LIKE” button, how are you going to get them to share it with their friends? Can you get them to upload photos? When I launch a page, if it’s possible and a client will let me, we do an actual physical Facebook launch event.

Trevor: So, really tying in the online and offline activation

Exactly.  Alot of people are launching an online web property so they forget about some of their traditional marketing.  And, if it’s a business, you have to embrace your current assets, your customers, your network, your friends. It’s critical to invite those people to a live event via email.  If you have to, use direct mail.  You want to get people talking and get people to invite for you.

4. You mentioned contests too Nick.  Your Facebook Fan Page has over 6000+ “LIKES” now. This contest that you ran recently was brilliant.  Can you share a bit about how you did that and what the results were.

This was one of my better contests. Basically, what I did was use a Facebook App called North Social.  It’s a company that has a number of cutting edge applications. It’s a pretty good deal for $20-$30 per month you get the ability to use any of their applications.  What it does for you is it creates a unique experience for the users that land on your page.

So, If I would have ran a contest where I gave away an iPad and it had a custom landing page that was nicely designed, that would have gotten me some good results. But, tying in this sweepstakes application, I was able to tie in a unique experience where they land on the page, it’s designed very nicely and they have to click the “LIKE” button for the opportunity to enter the contest. Then they enter their information for the contest, then they land on the thank you page where I gave them a free Facebook Advertising blueprint. So, really trying to maximize the value for them. So, the process was good and that’s half the battle.

The next thing is, how do you draw traffic to your own contest?  So, the big thing on that again was tapping into my own network, suggesting my page to friends.  But, one of the best strategies I’ve used to get fans and to drive traffic to my page is.  You want to partner with people that are in your industry.  They may look like competitiors on the surface or they may also be in complimentary industries. For example, I call them centers of influence.  If you were a mortgage broker, you are looking to write loans.  You can go out and find people that need loans….very challenging.  The smartest thing to do is go out and find real estate agents. Real estate agents sell a house a month.  You can then partner with 10 of them and they can send you business every month.

Same concept, when I rolled out this contest on my Facebook Fan Page, I reached out so some of my social media consultant friends and said I am rolling out this really cool contest, would you mind shooting out an update for me?  On this one, they are helping me, so I am asking them for their help.  So, getting them to put the word out, me putting the word out, also using some Facebook advertising created a tremendous amount of traffic.  And, once you get that amount of traffic and you have a really good offer, then I had really good engagement where the people were actually sharing the page to their friends.

It’s word of mouth, imaging your customers telling other people about your business. We want that to happen virally on Facebook. If you give them a compelling reason to share your page, and the reason I drove so much traffic to my page is that people were actually excited to share the contest with their friends. There were married couples where one of them enters the contest to win an iPad, and they want their husband to enter, they want their kids to enter because they want to win. So, in a 7 day period, I gained a little over 2000 fans.

Trevor: And, targeted fans at that. They are people that are genuinely interested in the topic that you talk about every single day. Nothing better than that!  And, you mentioned Facebook advertising in there and I don’t want you to tell this secret right now because I want lead well into my next question.

You have an event coming up right away, and there is a whole launch that is going to be a part of this process. And, I don’t want to give away too many secrets, but Nick told me about this tactic that he used involving Facebook advertising that drove tremendous amounts of traffic to his Facebook Fan Page. So, keep that secret to you Nick and we’ll reveal that during your launch!

5. Can you tell us a little bit about the Facebook Mastery Summit event you have coming up?

Over the past 18 months in running my business, I’ve been fortunate to work with tons of entrepreneurs, small business owners and my business evolved quickly where larger and larger brands sought out consulting. I’ve been fortunate to have some larger clients test some strategies.

Fast forward to now, I’ve been able to learn alot of the different strategies and the way I look at it is, I want to take the people that I learned from and the people that I respect in the industry and take what I’ve currently learned and package all that information to give to people that are interested in building their business with social media marketing.

The key thing is, this isn’t a big marketing ploy to jam a $1000 product down people’s throats. This is more about giving back, creating a situation where we have an affordable event, it’s all going to be virtual online.  It’s going to be 10-12 sessions of some of the best experts that I’ve been able to find and corral on Facebook Marketing.

We’ve got Mike Koenigs, the owner of Traffic Geyser, which is a great tool to get videos ranked on Google. Some of the experts are not the “Guru’s” out in the marketplace, but they are the people that are doing it for the large Fortune 100 brands.  One of those guys is Peter Heffring who owns a company called Expion. We have people that are going to be talking about how to manage social media, how to outsource, how to hire, how to do it yourself.  So, we are literally going to cover Facebook end to end and the entire point is we want to help people get the best strategies available so we can help you create a success story.

It’s over a 90 day period, there will be group coaching where we will be keeping in touch every month. But the process is, we want you to come on the event with us, then we want to see you go from 0 Fans to 1000+ Fans in 90 days. Or, if you currently have Fans, how to add an additional 1000 Fans.

It’s going to be cool where we’ll have guys like Trevor working with us and we are going to come together to build a tribe of people that are sharing ideas about how to be successful in social media.

Trevor: It sounds exciting and I know I’m looking forward to seeing all of the great stuff you have to come out with. I know you’ve had lots of experience in this area and the results speak for themselves. Maybe tell people how they can find out more about the Facebook Mastery Summit.

Absolutely, my Fan Page is http://facebook.com/NicksFanPage You can also just type in Nicks Fan Page and it will show up. We are going to be sharing some great strategies and videos for free and it’s going to be rolling out in March.  Keep up with Trevor as he’s going to be sharing some details about it leading up to the event.

Connect With Nick Unsworth

Website: http://nickunsworth.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/nickunsworth
Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/NicksFanPage

7 Shifts To Make Your Business Smarter, Faster And More Social

Every customer is a potential reporter, and every employee is a potential spokesperson. Business has changed more in the past three years than in the prior 30. But it’s not a threat, it’s an opportunity. The NOW Revolution shows you how. This book isn’t about how to “do” social media. Instead, it outlines how you can retool your organization to capitalize on real-time business. Learn the seven shifts that make your company faster, smarter, and more social, each explained with case studies, useful tips, and actionable implementation advice.

In this interview, I talk with Jay Baer, co-author of The Now Revolution.  We discuss Jay’s inspiration for writing the book, the importance of monitoring conversations online, the lasting effects of ignoring negative comments online, the importance of timely responses and who can benefit the most from reading this book.

Meet Jay Baer

Jay Baer is a tequila-loving, hype-free social media strategy consultant that works with major corporations and PR firms to harness the awesome power of the social Web. He’s founded 5 companies, and spent 15 years running digital marketing agencies. He’s worked with more than 700 brands since then, including 25 of the Fortune 1000. He’s a frequent social media conference speaker, and co-author of the forthcoming new book The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social.

1. What inspired you to write this book?

There is no shortage of content either blogs like mine at Convince & Convert or yours or anyone else’s out there helping companies tip toe through the social media minefield.  But, what Amber and I decided when we sat down was, there was alot of books out there on how to “do” social media, but there weren’t really any books (really none) on “what does social media mean for business” and “how does social media change companies”. The premise of the book is that business has changed fundamentally as a result of previous technological shifts.

When the telephone was invented, businesses had to change lots. When the web was invented, businesses had to change alot. When email became commonplace, businesses had to change alot. But, we really haven’t changed at all in our response to social media. We are still nibbling around the margins like “lets have a Twitter account” or “let’s have a Facebook page”. That’s not transformational, that’s just kind of messing around.

So, we wanted to write the playbook for businesses on how to really recognize that every one of your customers are now a potential reporter, every reporter is now a potential customer and that the world happens in a matter of seconds now instead of days or weeks. So, it’s not a “here’s how to do Twitter kind of a book.  It’s about corporate culture and how you hire different kinds of people and how you organize teams internally and communicate with different technologies, crisis management and success metrics.  It really is about changing your business forever as a result of how the world has shifted.

Trevor: The point you bring up about how “everyone is a reporter and every reporter is a potential customer”, that was definitely one of the points that really hit me.  I know I was reading through your free chapter and you talk about that concept that people are on the go, they’ve got smartphones now, they are taking photos, they are talking about their bad and good experiences. Alot of this comes back to listening.

2. What would you say to business owners, even professionals and consultants.  You know, for example, I hear alot of real estate agents that are looking to dabble in Facebook and they want to know how can I make money off of this? And, that’s not really the right approach, the first step is to listen. What are your thoughts on that?

Ya, I agree, the big picture is that I really believe we will look back at this snapshot in time and realize that social media is much better as a customer loyalty and retention tool than it is as a customer acquisition tool, just in general.  And, I think at some point we’ll realize that this idea of “let’s tweet to get you customers” is not really a good plan to begin with.

The smaller picture issue from an operational perspective is that tuning into the conversation, whatever that conversation might be, is an absolute must. Radian 6 has done alot of work in this area and they call it “answering the social telephone” and we use that paradigm in the book as well. Companies that choose to not participate in social media in any form or fashion really is similar to saying “we are going to disconnect the 1-800 number. If people are out there talking about your brand, you are really doing yourself and your company a disservice by not at least interacting with people at that base level when someone mentions you and you answer back.

We actually have an infographic in the book, there’s about 12 different infographics that we commissioned for the book and you can actually look at them all on the website, there are all in a Flickr gallery. One is called “The Humanization Highway“.  It’s the process that companies go through from ignoring, to basic listening, to more advanced listening, to engaging, to storytelling. It sort of goes through that process that companies go through as companies get more and more comfortable interacting with customers and prospects on the social web.

3. Unfortunately we hear more and more about the bad things online.  You know, horror stories of comments left by people and you actually have one that you mention in your presentation on your website and also in your free chapter about a hotel around your hometown (Flagstaff, AZ). I can’t remember exactly how it went but it was just a horrific comment left of TripAdvisor.com.

Ya, it was a hotel in Flagstaf, AZ, right around the corner from where I used to live, I just moved a couple of months ago to Indiana.  But, ya, it was literally a couple miles from my house. And the first review on TripAdvisor, the number one result that comes up, the title of the review is “I think I can feel death creeping up on me as I write this”.  In social media we call that a highly negative social media mention. It’s really bad and it’s been up there for 8 or 9 months I think and it’s never been answered or addressed by the owners of that hotel who clearly are still in that ignoring phase of “The Humanization Highway“.  And, I would venture to say that they have not generated any bookings from TripAdvisor.com since that review was posted.  Probably not a single booking at all because something like that that is so negative is really going to give you pause about staying at that hotel.

Trevor: Ya, it’s amazing the influence that something like that can have.  I know personally, and I’m sure that many people out there can say that they’ll go to a site like that if they are booking a trip to Mexico. You are going to a site like TripAdvisor to see what people are saying about the beds, the food, the drinks, the lifestyle and everything else.

Well, and the thing is that maybe the hotel really does suck?  That’s entirely possible.  But, at least if you are the owner or manager of that hotel you could go on the website and say “hey, we are really sorry about the experience you had”.  At least acknowledging you have issues is really all that most people are asking for. That’s the challenge that alot of corporations have right now. You talked about negativity and the chance that this whole social media thing will blow up in your face. But, the reality is this. Social media doesn’t create negativity, it just puts a magnifying glass to it.

If your product sucks, your company sucks, social media is where that suckiness manifests itself.  It’s not as if people are like “oh, you’re on Twitter, therefor we don’t like you”. That’s not the way it works at all.  In fact, social media is the ultimate canary in the coal mine.  It allows your company to understand where it’s operational deficiencies are in a way that nothing else can other than perhaps your call centre.

4. With examples like that one there or any other example that is similar to any negative response you might get online, what are your thoughts on the timeliness of responses?  I know, obviously that example has been out there for quite a while and for them to respond 6 months or a year later, it won’t have the same kind of impact as an instant response.

It certainly won’t to that person.  It won’t have that kind of impact to the person that wrote it, but it will have an impact for everybody from the point at which they respond forward. The challenge is you have different cultural mores for different venues.  The expected response time on Twitter is different than the expected response time on Yelp or YouTube. That makes it a bit of an operational challenge for alot of companies.  But even at, let’s say TripAdvisor, where I don’t think you typically expect a response in a few seconds (and in fact you can’t because even if you respond, TripAdvisor has to approve your response, it doesn’t just go live).  So, you are probably talking about 12 – 24 hrs, best case scenario, before you could respond through TripAdvisor.

But, even that compared to the long term expectations of companies is crazy, it’s frightening.  You know, if you sent a letter of complaint to a company, if you got an answer back in 3 weeks you’d be delighted.  If you send an email and you get a response the next day, you’d be be happy.  We have, as businesses to some degree, created our own Frankenstein here.  We have said we are going to respond to people on social media and now customers are starting to expect that level of instant engagement and it puts alot of operational pressures on companies that just aren’t used to it, they just don’t have the staff or the mechanism to do that.  And, that’s alot of what the book is about is how do you do that?  How do you operate in a world that is truly real time?  Whereas the history of business is anything but real time.

5. And, speaking of that, there are different dynamics between big businesses, corporations that have lots of resources and people that they can put on this, and the small business owner who is doing this on his own. He is doing the marketing, sweeping the floors, doing the sales, everything. Your book in particular, who would you say it’s targeted to?  Who can benefit the most from it? Or, is it really everybody?

Really everybody Trevor, and we did that quite intentionally.  We said we have two goals for this book.  One, we want this book to be valuable 5 years from now. So, it’s very intentionally not about what’s going on this very second, here’s what buttons to push on Facebook.  Obviously we talk about Facebook but it’s not a how-to guide because we want it to have some shelf life. Second, we want it to be a book that all audiences can identify with.  So, the case studies in the book, the examples that we use are almost across the board small and medium size businesses. We don’t have alot of examples in there about Ford or SouthWest or American Express or IBM.  Not that those companies aren’t doing a great job in social media, because many of them are.  But, it’s very difficult if you are a small business to say “I can see myself in a SouthWest Airlines example” and we didn’t want to get into that circumstance. We intentionally wrote the book to be approachable for a one person company, a ten person company, a hundred person company and we think big companies will take something out of it as well, but we didn’t write it for them.

Trevor: With regards to the value of engaging in social media from a small business perspective, I know one of the other people I’ve interviewed and done a webinar with is Greg Hounslow (WestJet – Emerging Media Advisor).  And, I don’t know if he coined this term (I’ll give him credit for now :), but he talks about a “Brandividual”.  Putting a face behind the company and the importance of being a real person.  This is just my own opinion, but I think that’s the real advantage a small business has over a big corporation, even though you see example of like Scott Monty (Ford) creating that presence for their company online.

I agree 1000%.  I mean, one of the things that social media is good at is making big companies feel small again. But, social media is a natural advantage for small companies because they are that much closer to the customer. They act more human because there is not all these layers of bureaucracy. Ultimately, social media is about people, not about logos.

6. Jay, I’m going to leave it at that, I know you are a busy guy and want to finish it off by asking you how people can find out more about your new book? I know I’m excited to read and I know other people are going to want it. And, I know you have a number of cool promotions around it as well where you are encouraging bloggers to reach out to you and help with the promotion of the book.  And, obviously, I’m sure you guys will be wildly successful with the book because the content you are putting out is valuable so, therefor, people are going to want to help you in return. So, where can people find out more.

The website for the book is http://nowrevolutionbook.com, also on Facebook at http://facebook.com/nowrevolution.  As you mentioned earlier, people can download the first chapter of the book for free. We’ve got all kinds of speaking engagements and a whole book tour planned for the first part of the year so hopefully we’ll see alot of folks out and about when we do that, it will be very exciting.

Trevor: And, you mentioned that you are out in this neck of the woods here in the near future, you have a Tweetup happening out here?

Yes, a Tweetup in Victoria, BC on the island on November 2nd, so looking forward to that.  And, actually, I am already talking to some folks in Vancouver about a book tour stop there and I’ll make sure we circle back with you and get you involved in that as well. Really excited about that, Vancouver is one of my favorite cities in the world so I can’t wait.

Connect With Jay Baer

Website: http://convinceandconvert.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/jaybaer
Book Website: http://nowrevolutionbook.com
Book Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nowrevolution
Infographic Flickr Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/54547179@N02/

What is Citizen Journalism?

Citizen Journalism, is the natural result of the fact that in today’s world, where it seems like everyone owns a smartphone, it has become easier than ever to share events with the world as they unfold right in front of your eyes.  People are syndicating content via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Ustream and with thousands of mobile applications that give us the tools to report on the news virtually anywhere, we are seeing a revolution in the way information is distributed to the masses.

Citizen journalism also known as “public”, “participatory”, “democratic”,”guerrilla” or “street journalism” is the concept of members of the public playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.

I have been involved in blogging (read: citizen journalism) now for a couple of years, but it has only been in the last year or so that I have realized the impact I can make simply as another person with a video camera and a smartphone. Yesterday was a perfect example of this as I was able to witness and capture an amazing event that I was thrilled to see end positively.

My Citizen Journalist Experience – The Burrard Bridge Jumper on Ustream

As I woke this morning and looked out my bedroom window at the Burrard Bridge in Vancouver, it was an unusual scene.  A normally bustling bridge on a Saturday morning was mysteriously quiet. In fact, there was no traffic on it, which led me to believe there must be some kind of protesting bike rally or a celebrity in town.  After a closer look, I realized that there was a man on the outside edge of the bridge with two police officers there trying to coax him to step over the ledge to safety.

Click to enlarge Twitter Search image of people using the keywords "Burrard Bridge"

I don’t know the background on the man or why he had resorted to this extreme act, but my first thought was that I hoped I didn’t see him jump off that bridge!!!  My second thought was, I need to capture this on video.  My third thought was, why just capture it on video to upload later when I could stream it live online.

So, with that thought in mind, with the assistance of a friend who is also a multimedia producer, we quickly setup two video cameras, captured photos with a digital SLR and I opened up the Ustream Broadcaster application on my new iPhone 4 to stream the video live online.

By streaming the video live online, I was able to capture this amazing and disturbing event as it unfolded right before my eyes.  And, I was able to share it with others that were talking about the incident online (click on Twitter Search image to the right).  Here’s some of the footage we captured during the 2hrs this man was hanging precariously off the edge of Burrard Bridge.

You can check out the video I captured as a Citizen Journalist via the Ustream Broadcaster iPhone on my Ustream channel.  Or, watch this shortened version that we put together to upload to YouTube.

Burrard Bridge Jumper – Vancouver, BC

The Negative Impact of Citizen Journalism

There is no doubt that social media can be an amazing tool that connects people around the world and allows us to share information in a way that has never been possible before.  Alternatively, social media has been shown to highlight things in this world that some people would rather not see.

Gang Rape Photos Uploaded To Facebook

A recent example of this is the disturbing story about a 16 yr old girl that was raped at a Pitt Meadows, BC rave party.  The event was captured in photos and video and distributed on Facebook. The police have since arrested the young man responsible for posting the content on his Facebook page, but have not been able to stop the mass distribution of this content since it has surfaced online.

An article recently written in the Vancouver Sun titled “Gang rape photos show how social media can unleash Pandora’s box of evil” focused on the thought that technology can have a dark side. And, that the evil associated with this incident has been spread further than would have been imaginable just 15 years ago.  The article goes on to state:

While a few laws have been put in place to deal with the Internet’s unparalleled ability to spread child pornography and invade privacy, it won’t be simple for governments and businesses to preserve Internet freedom while further protecting human decency.

It can’t be argued that Citizen Journalism and Social Media can have a dark side as this incident has clearly shown.  But, I would argue that for all of the negative impact that social media and the sharing of content has had on the world, there are equally as many positive world changing impacts that social media has had on society.

The Positive Impact Of Citizen Journalism

By no means am I trying to diminish the events that took place in Pitt Meadows, BC, but I think it’s important that we look at all side of how social media is impacting the world that we live in.  Here are just a few examples in the past few years that have shown the amazing power of social media and citizen journalism.

Obama Campaign

The US Presidential campaign orchestrated by Barack Obama was one that has shown how social media can rally the masses and empower people to influence change. Rather than resorting to traditional methods of reaching voters, Barack Obama and his team devised a plan to empower the people to help spread his word.  The Obama campaign is a shining example that shows the power of social media to influence social change.

The My Barack Obama is a platform that was created to join the online community of organizers who inevitibly helped elect President Obama and now work to bring real change on critical issues, including healthcare, education and energy reform.

China Earthquake – May 2008

On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan Province, a mountainous region in Western China, killing about 70,000 people and leaving over 18,000 missing. The earthquake was being reported on as it was happening….by people on the ground.  In fact, BBC got its first wind of the earthquake on Twitter.

The last time there was an earthquake like this in China…it took them 3 months to admit that it happened. This time, the government learned of the earthquake from its citizens. Within half a day, donation sites were up and money was pouring in from around the world.

Haiti Earthquake – January 2010

The devastating earthquake that impacted the small country of Haiti in January 2010 was another amazing example of how social media can help rally the masses together to help those in need.

With many of the official lines of communication down, user-generated content played an important role in spreading news about the Haiti earthquake. Social media partly made up for the lack of information from the affected area on what had happened and what was most needed.

Additionally, social media played a major factor in raising awareness of events focused around raising funds to assist the families affected by this devastating natural disaster.  One of many examples of this was an event that I was fortunate to participate in called YYC4Haiti.  YYC4Haiti was a fundraising event held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada that was coordinated and promoted via social media.  The event was a tremendous success that resulted in $35,000 raised ($70,000 after a Canadian federal government dollar-for-dollar match).

Iran Elections

Photo I sent out via Twitter during an Iranian Election Protest - Vancouver Public Library - June 2009

I am reminded how I played a bit-roll in another worldly event made “REAL” through Citizen Journalism and Social Media. While walking in Vancouver in June 2009, I came across a protest. This isn’t that unusual, there are many small protests in Vancouver.  But, while witnessing this particular one, I was compelled to communicate what I was seeing.

I to decided to “BE THE CHANGE”, as Ghandi used to ask of us.

I knew my little slice of perception was just a tiny bit of information in the stream. I mean, obviously the Iranians themselves were the leaders in the information exchange, but then the world responded, and united with the soul intent of RETWEETING, and passing along the truth. So I decided to add my bit of information to the stream. Because that is really the point. My bit of information, when compiled with everyone else’s bits of information become first Kilobytes, then Megobytes, Gigabytes, then Terrabytes and beyond. With this flow of information, we all gain power collectively, which benefits us collectively, even if we must be exposed to, and have the courage to, learn from the negative images that are sometimes carried along, caught up in this TORRENT of Information.

The Rise Of Social Media and Citizen Journalism

There are both good and bad aspects to the seemingly unlimited amounts of information we now have access to. Many people are fearful of this change in the way information is distributed and would argue that social media has given creeps, young or old, a platform to devastate the lives of others (as evident by the “Facebook Rape” incident). However, I hope that I have shown through the examples I listed in this article that social media can also have a profound impact on society in a positive way that has never been possible before.

The fact is, people need to be aware that anything posted on the internet is in the public domain and exists forever.  Therefor, educating the masses is critical going forward.  Regulation by governments and businesses is not going to solve any kind of “problem” with social media. It would only contribute to the mass rising of a new generation of people that are now accustomed to having near instant access to information that isn’t filtered by the media, government or business.

Citizen Journalism is causing a shift in way we see the world and will continue to grow as more and more people understand the impact they can have on the world one Tweet, Facebook post and YouTube video at a time.

Clay Shirky talks about “How Social Media Can Make History”

In researching this topic for this article, I came across a Ted Talk video by Clay Shirky titled “How Social Media Can Make History”.  Clay’s closing remarks really hammered home the idea that we are truly experiencing a revolution and we must adjust our way of thinking to accommodate this new world.  Here are his final words and the Ted Talk video:

The media landscape that we knew, as easy and conceptually as it was to deal with the idea that professionals broadcast messages to amateurs, is increasingly slipping away. In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap. In a world of media where the former audience are now increasingly full participants.  In that world, media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It is more and more a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups. And the choice we face, I mean anybody who has a message they want heard, anywhere in the world. Isn’t whether that’s the media environment we want to operate in, that’s the media environment we got. The question we all face now is, how can we make best use of this medium, even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it.

Information Revolution will Mature Thanks to Social Media and Citizen Journalism

The Information Revolution is a long time coming, building towards what they call in media production, The Big Reveal. It  began with our ability to perceive energy, or ideas into the space surrounded us. We then sought to share this information, so it then moved forward with language, then the  printing press, radio and television (commonly referred to as “traditional” media). Next, some major advances with the invention of computers which would quickly be tied together by phone lines so they could share information at the speed of light across the world. When ubiquitous recording devices and an explosion of bandwidth, and miniaturization of  hardware, recording and display devices appeared, serving to amplify our INFORMATION, into that torrent in which we are all now contributors to, even if our contributions are just bit parts.

Citizen Journalism and Social Media must be understood as the blessing that it is, and we must quickly come to terms with the fact that with good  comes a burden and a responsibility to not fear the change. Rather we must “Be The Change”.

Citizen Journalism Causing Change

YouTube Extends CitizenTube Concept With Local News Channel Deal

Citizen Journalists are the make up the vehicle that is driving our access to a massive amount of information via social media.  They have allowed for the flow of the Information maturing in this Information Revolution to reach an inflection point, a tipping point unmatched in human history. And for those of us who are, from time-to-time, blessed with a measure of awareness known for a fleeting moment of calm and clarity when we feel we have the right information, we are prepared to make wise choices. We have options. Good comes from this state of our individual minds, as to does it for our global mind, which is the very battle ground that will lead will (hopefully), lead our youth to learn from their mistakes on a global scale, just as they make them for the whole world to see –as was the case in The Facebook Rape.

Social Media and Citizen Journalism will ultimately be the vehicle for our betterment, if we can only prevent falling victim to fear, and avoid resorting to destruction this REVOLUTION. These fears come from both those who are the controllers of information and those who are effected by it. It once was that only the powerful few controlled the information, and the powerless many were forced to live with the consequences. Now, with this revolution, the information, for the first time, is being controlled by the many (the general population). The powerful few won’t want this to happen because they will loose their influence. The general population may not want it because they fear what they don’t understand. As with any new power, it must be understood to be used wisely, and this only will happen with time.

Disheartening things do happen, many things that we’d wish we have never seen. But, to me, this reveals only areas we can improve upon. If we can get past this threat, we will be poised to witness a GLOBAL BIG REVEAL, where the FLOODGATES of information that we document for ourselves will allow for our awareness of the issues of this human condition, both ripe with triumph and trauma so that the traumas that we averted today may happen more often. So that we are not only aware of the leaders we want to elect, and issues we want to support, but we can also directly impact the results of the elections, and the actions of our organized bodies. We can cause change. We do contribute to movements. We will grow in our ability govern ourselves more effectively, and incorruptibly when we are informed. This is the purpose of the Information Revolution for the greater good.

What are your thoughts on this subject?  Do you think social media is causing more harm than good in society today? How do you get your news…..from traditional media or social media? Do you contribute to the Steam of our awareness as a Citizen Journalist?

This article was written in collaboration with my business colleague, Mike Olaski.  Mike is a Strategist, Designer and Entrepreneur who designs and develops solutions for business and pleasure. He is currently focused on developing his own Multi-Media Website Communities utilizing WordPress, BuddyPress and several custom built WordPress Plugins and Themes.

His production company, Emjayoh Productions has produced projects from a Website Design and Development Company to niche community leaders like TheMasterCleanse.org based on The Lemonade Diet.

He is currently in production of a Make Money Online Community called “Passion Profits” which provides a system for creating wealth onlin  with website businesses through teaching people how to do earn a living wage by doing just about anything they love.

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

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

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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

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.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————–

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

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

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

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?

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/