Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Do you have accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and wonder what all the fuss is about? It seems a big time waster to you, but since everyone is talking about Social Media, how can they all be wrong? 

 
They can’t all be wrong. And the statistics can’t be wrong either.  To quote statistics from Socialnomics:

1 out of 8 couple who married last year met through some form of Social Media. 96% of Generation Y are on at least one social network. Facebook added 100n million users in less than 9 months. Even more shocking, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 4^th largest in the world!  78% of consumers trust peer reviews of products more than advertisements (only 14%). 

Is it all just a fad? No, this change in marketing represents a fundamental change in the way we communicate with each other. It is about listening first, about giving first, and about selling second. It is about building trust and awareness. It is about putting info out there about who you are, what your services are, what your products are, and knowing that the interested buyers will find you.  The world has changed dramatically from a static advertising modality to a form of interactive conversation- a dialogue, a discussion, a friendship. In short, it is about relationship.

Social media is a very new term from the last few years, but it has quickly become part of our culture and part of our language. In a nutshell, social media is made up of internet and mobile media tools for sharing information among people. This new environment is generally known as web 2.0, delineated by the fact that it is interactive.

Some examples of early social media sites were MySpace, Wikipedia (which means Quick, from Hawaiian), and Craigslist; and then followed by sites used for bookmarking, such as: Technorati, Digg, Delicious, and Yelp. But it is only in the last few years that the “biggies” were born- Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. These are the sites with the huge punch.

There are interesting stories behind the development of these three big sites. You Tube, the huge video-sharing engine, started off as an elite site for those that could afford to create videos. But it has, to everyone’s surprise, become an extremely accessible site. As a matter of fact, it is now the second largest search engine in the world!

The development of Twitter is a strange story. It was started as a site to dispatch communication for taxi drivers. Now, it is a monster site- a powerful marketing tool, when used correctly. And it was Harvard students who created Facebook (which grew by a phenomenal 422% in 2009). Their intent was to use Facebook exclusively for themselves!

These three big sites are primarily where a business should focus its initial marketing energy. When brainstorming strategy for social media marketing, it is good to remember that Twitter is the way to quickly connect with your customers and to announce alerts, gifts, coupons, etc. Facebook holds a larger news stream so you can add videos, photos, and much more in the way of information about your company or products, and your brand.

YouTube is just plain fun, and exciting. The right video can sweep around the globe. The most recent powerful example being the story of Susan Boyle, from Britain’s Got Talent. Within minutes of the broadcast of this singer’s performance, emails and tweets were chasing around the world. Someone put the video up of her on YouTube and it became and amazing overnight sensation. As did she. The power of YouTube indeed!

Here are a few great links for more information: First, here is a nice easy Youtube video explaining social media. Second, here is the link to one of the hottest videos on Social media last year.

Social media is here to stay, and everyone now knows it. The rush to get onboard has been exciting, and yet, the most exciting piece is how it changes all the time. Who knows what will come next?

A wise friend posted this weekend, in Twitter, “Treat
your business as your #1 customer.” Now, I’m not sure if that is Mia’s original
thought, but it was quite timely for me.

Once a quarter, Esther Fleming and I set aside a weekend
to work on our businesses.  We call them,
If I Only Had A Weekend (IIOHAW). Our time during these IIOHAWs has been spent
praying, fasting, and focusing on our businesses. We come to the weekend
prepared to give advice, encouragement, and complete attention to each other
and our respective businesses.

This weekend was very special as we each are saying goodbye
to a client. This gap in our businesses has given us a clearer purpose for
meeting and strategizing. So, we spent a lot of time looking for direction,
being clear about action steps, and identifying our motives. This may be hard
to grasp, but neither one of us wants to run a business for the sake of running
a business. We want the passion we had when we first started our businesses, me 9-years ago and Esther 5-years ago. We spent quite a bit of time this weekend
falling in love with our businesses again.

For me, I can say that I like things plainly defined. I
want to look at a map and understand exactly where I’m to go next. So, I went
back to my life map I created earlier this year. It sits in a prominent spot in
my office (on the wall above my monitor). In the center of my life map is a
picture of the world with God spelled out in the middle of it. For me, taking
my business back to the beginning means reconnecting with my faith. This is what
this IIOHAW afforded me. On the first day, I organized my office, my thoughts,
and created my plan. On the second day: I sat quietly in meditation and prayer,
I revised my business budget (cutting costs and adding expenses for training),
I created the beginnings of a marketing strategy (get out of the office once a
week for business development), and I just did a lot of soul searching. On the
third day, I finalized my budget (I still have a few cuts to make, but it is
pretty much done), and I finalized my marketing strategy by creating a plan
with activities listed for the week and month. I am excited about what I’ve
created with the help of Esther. We have even added an accountability component
this upcoming quarter, to meet weekly for 15 minutes to talk about our progress
in keeping with our plans.

When was the last time you stopped to survey the health
of your business? Is it still on track? Do you need to take a weekend to refresh
yourself on your mission? Take it! Do whatever you need to in order to build
(or rebuild) what your heart desires!

 

Every summer for a week, I take my mom and two youngest
nieces to the Wilderness Presidential Resort for a summer get-away. We stay in
a trailer, grocery shop every day, swim, eat out every night, and just have a
great time. It is fun, but not very relaxing as there is ALWAYS something to
do.

This year is the first one where I’ve been completely
disconnected from the internet. The Wilderness is isolated as cell reception
isn’t the best, and the only wifi is at the reservation lodge at the very
entrance of the park. There’s absolutely no opportunity for someone like me
with two busy little girls and one impatient mom to stop playing and check FB,
Twitter, and god forbid check email.

Also, this year we tried something new, we did activities
off property. The most memorable for my nieces may have been the lunch theatre
performance of The Little Mermaid. However, for me and my mom, it was the
Trolley Tour of downtown Fredericksburg, VA. My mom was completely fascinated
by the civil war history as told by our trolley tour guide. He showed us battle
scenes that have lived over the course of 140 some years. It was absolutely overwhelming
to hear stories about actual battles, and to walk through the battlefields
where men gave their lives in a war that nearly divided the country.

It gave me a new appreciation and deepened my fascination
with this horrific war fought, in part, to afford me the freedom I have today.
It amazed me to see a slave auction block still standing in the central part of town.
Would you allow your child to play on this?

So, while we are a united nation
there will always be signs of our divisions.