Who Should You Follow On Twitter?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Should You Follow on Twitter?[1]

There’s a lot of talk about how to find Twitter followers. Though, you may have noticed, the conversation is typically about how to get people to follow you to help increase your reach, build awareness and make new contacts. But what if you’re a small business owner just now entering the world of Twitter? Who should you be following right out of the gate to help you get involved quickly and make the most out of your time on Twitter?

1. Your Customers

Depending on your niche, many of your customers may already be on Twitter. By identifying these people early, you’ll be able to jump right into listening to what’s important to them and interacting with them on a regular basis. You can find current customers on Twitter by searching by their e-mail address (if you have it) or by asking them to share their Twitter handle with you during surveys, purchases and any in-store interaction.

Because we go to Twitter to talk to and interact with the brands we like, customers may be really excited to meet you on their favorite social network. To help you find prospective customers, you can use Twitter Advanced Search to find people talking about your business or important keywords near a certain location, or use any of the local Twitter search engines like LocalFollow and or Nearby Tweets.

2. Your Competitors

Finding your competitors on Twitter shouldn’t be too hard, assuming you already know who they are. You can take advantage of Twitter’s search function to scope them out by company name, owner/employee names and/or their e-mail addresses. You may also want to check out their websites (business and personal) to see if they’re promoting their Twitter accounts (or any other social media accounts) via their home page or company newsletter.

When it comes to following competitors, I’d recommend following them through a private Twitter List unless you have a friendly working relationship with them. By following them on the sly, you’ll be able to keep tabs on their marketing strategies, see how they’re interacting with consumers and even find holes in their Twitter strategy that you can capitalize on.

3. Local Media Outlets

As a small business owner, you always want to be on the lookout for ways to win media coverage and earn local buzz. And the first step of that process means getting on the radar of the folks who report on your neighborhood and/or industry so they remember your name when it comes time to write a story. To help track down these valuable contacts, there are a number of sites at your disposal:

• Use a Twitter directory site like Twellow or Listorious and search for tags like “reporter,” “writer” or “media” to find people that cover your industry.
• Use MuckRack to track down reporters who cover the ‘beat’ you’re in. If you live in Chicago, you can find reporters in the Metro Chicago beat to see what types of stories they cover, discover who may be most interested in your angle, or just follow the entire list.
• Make a note of the local press you’ve already received, the places your competitors have received coverage, and the outlets you hope to appear in one day. Then track them down on Twitter by using their websites or Twitter Search.

4. Industry Trendsetters

I mentioned this a bit in my 5 Types of Influencers on the Web post, but your industry trendsetters are the early adopters and the voices in your industry that people listen to. By following them, you help yourself get on their radar. But more than that, they help you stay on top of what’s going on. You may learn some valuable tidbits, find content worthy of sharing with your network, and build complementary relationships with these people. To find them, take a look at whose content is getting the most retweets (RTs) in your network, who people seem to be listening to, and the names that most often take office hours on Twitter. These are your industry-specific trendsetters and the people you want to follow.

5. People Who Amuse You

It’s not all work. You also want to find people on Twitter who brighten up your day by sharing the best content, the best stories and the best tidbits about themselves. By finding these genuinely interesting people, whether or not they’re relevant to your work network, you’ll find human and spice-of-life type content that you can share with your network. For example, maybe it’s your favorite comedian on Twitter, maybe it’s FakeAPStyleBook or DrunkHulk. You want to be more than useful to your audience; you also want to help brighten their day.

When I help clients build up new Twitter accounts, above are five types of Twitter users that I help them find and immediately follow. Who else should small business owners be following on Twitter?

How To Integrate Emailmarketing, SEO, and Social Media

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How To Integrate Email Marketing, SEO and Social Media[1]

Social media is changing how businesses find customers and how customers engage with brands. There are many reasons to believe that it will eventually overtake email marketing, but I’m a firm believer that it’s here to stay.

In fact, I believe email marketing combine with search (SEO) and social media will the best strategy moving forward.

However; let me get a few things straight. First, email is the original social network. Second, you need email to open social network account and get alerts.

And third, search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) will continue to index and aggregate social network data not to mention most social network has their own internal search engine as well.

It sounds like there is a lot of cross-over between the three, so how should you use these three tactics to help you strategize your marketing efforts?

It’s hard to realize how these tactics can impact your business without some basic understanding of the big three. Let’s look at how each works and what you can do to get the most bang for your marketing bucks.

The Big Three #1 – Email Marketing

Why email – Today it’s hard to find someone without an email account and majority of account holders have had it for a while (I still check my hotmail from 14 years ago) thus letting it go is not likely for most.

Account holders may reduce the time they spent on email but it doesn’t have the abandon rate (Facebook, Twitter) like majority of the social networks.

Almost all basic business communications are done via email not via social networks.  The perception is that it’s more secure, private and user friendly (centralized contacts, integrates with calendar, easily accessible via mobile devices).

Simply put, people will use what’s easy to achieve the same goal – to get work done and to communicate.

Another benefit of email is that it’s a direct private channel of communication to alert customers on new product offerings or promotions. At the same time, customers can use e-mail to provide feedback and ask questions.

Done right, you will be kept away from the spam folder and earn a permanent spot on the white list.

This is why great email marketers tend to focus on delivering high value content at the right time, with the proper frequency using attractive subjective lines that encourage clicks and forwards.

Building your email list should still be all marketers’ top priority. Give people a reason to subscribe and to remain subscribed is the ongoing art and science of email marketing.

The Big Three #2 – Search Engine Marketing

Why SEO – This one should be a no brainer. What is the first thing you do when you’re looking to buy a product? If you do your homework you would first Google it.

This applies to almost anybody looking to learn more about a company, a product or how to do something.

Often times, people don’t even question the search results because it’s just easier to trust Google’s rankings and feel good about the decisions you’ve made based on what was found.

It’s no surprise that 79% of United States hiring managers and job recruiters search online information about job applicants according to a recent research commissioned by Microsoft.

This is why smart businesses (and individuals) are putting more emphasis on content marketing and shifting their mindset to operate more like a media company.

They understand search engine is catered to “people” and people want relevant, valuable content that’s going to move them a step closer to identify the information they’re searching for.

The key is to create great content around what your customers are interested in when looking for your product; such as how things work (the outcome of your product or services), step-by-step guides or research reports that reveals product comparisons.

Then tie these high quality content with relevant keywords and over time you’ll likely to move higher through the non-paid “organic” rankings. And today you can SEO anything from websites, blog posts, videos, images, podcasts you name it.

SEO is one of the key marketing arsenals especially for retailers, direct marketers and authors.

The latest Internet Retailer Survey (some sample data below) clearly shows a growing interest and investment in search to drive more online sales. It’s not a matter of why, but how.

There is simply too much information and too little time. Search engine is our instant gratification to today’s ADD (Attention-Deficit Disorder) society.

The Big Three #3 – Social Media

Why Social – If search engine is a way for people to find information, then social media is a way for people to find conversations and be part of them.

It adds the credibility fuel to the fire of trust since social media is basically word-of-mouth. Instead of just believing in what you read from company websites or reviews you found online, you can talk to people you trust or listen to experts you follow.

Similar to search, you can get people to your site with social media, and it’s a great tool to tell customer stories, demonstrate expertise, and stack up your social proof to win business from competitors.

The goal is to connect with customers on an ongoing basis to further understand their needs, wants and concerns.

This will help you to build strong, lasting and engaging relationships with your customers for future business as well as referral opportunities by getting people to share your products on social networks to bring in traffic and find new customers.

And since social media is word-of-mouth, it’s your brand’s reputation on the line. Your digital reputation is your first impression and perception is reality.

How The Big Three Can Work Together

Although you can choose to only do one or two of the three, but to get the most out of your marketing investments, you should consider doing all three.

Here are a few ideas to consider on how to leverage the big three:

1) Create Once, Recycle Many- Focus on content not just promotions and sales, it’s about facilitating people through the sales cycle.  People usually don’t buy base on just one piece of data think of it as adding “trust points” to people’s decision to buy.

If prospects consumed a great piece of educational content on your landing page, that’s one point.  If they read some great reviews about your product from a third party site, that’s another point.

If there is more positive comments than negative ones about your brand in social networks, that’s another point.

The goal is to accumulate enough trust so prospects feel good about why they’ve made the decision over you than others.

You want to invest your time and money on creating the best blog content, how-to articles, educational videos, whitepapers or anything that will get your audience to bookmark, download and share.

Then make sure you optimize the content for search engine with the proper keywords and deliver them to the right people in your target channel via email and social networks.

For example let’s say you have a really good article on how to do something (try not to involve your product first, focus on solving the problem then introduce your product later when appropriate), you can package it in a downloadable PDF put it on a landing page that’s highly optimize for SEO.

Then abstract the summary from the content for your email newsletter so you can send your subscribers to that very same landing page, a typical web marketing campaign.

But let’s take it a step further by turning that piece of content into a video (using screen capture tools like Camtasia, or with a webcam or FlipVideo) and upload it to YouTube, Ustream or Vimeo to drive traffic back to your landing page.

Then post the video on your blog, tweet it out via Twitter, send it to relevant groups on LinkedIn or submitted to social network sites like Technorati, Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon. Continue to produce great content and after 3-6 month you can recycle that piece of content with some updates and do it again.

2) Streamline with Process – Think about how your customers consume information and respond to connections.

It’s NOT jamming the information down their throat like traditional one-way push advertising but allowing them to discover and get permission to establish a relationship.

Talk to your customers, ask them what they read, who influence them and why? Understand what they don’t care about (don’t be surprise if it’s a lot of what you do) is just as important as what they care (a lot of what you should know).

If you make the wrong assumption it will bring you the false conclusion which will impact on how you strategize your campaign.

For example if you know your customer reads certain blogs regularly, should you advertise on their site or is it better to build a relationship with the blogger?

Once you’ve made your decision, focus on identifying the path to your web properties.

Take out a piece of paper and map out that path and create a process to streamline every possible step that your customer may take so you can funnel them via your sales pipeline.

Remember, not everyone consumes media the same way, some people like to read while others prefer to watch videos or listen to a podcast.

It’s important to have as many media options as possible available to maximize engagement opportunities.

3) Target, Track and Repeat – Without the right data you won’t know where to focus your marketing efforts and no accountability in your actions.

What happens after your prospect conducts a search?

What actions were taken after consuming your content?

Was it shared on Facebook or forwarded to a colleague?

The biggest benefit from tracking your email, search and social media analytics is that you will be able to tie them all together and figure out your ROI.

You’ll know where your site visitors are coming from, which email links they clicked on and what gets shared so you can make adjustments to improve conversion rates.

Why continue to do something that doesn’t work?

You need to know so you can keep doing what works and stop doing what doesn’t. Perhaps Facebook is not the best social network to target your audience or is it because your marketing messages aren’t resonating with them?

Marketers must aggregate customer behavior information to build a holistic view of the customer.

This means analyzing quantitative data to measure and monitor customer-related metrics such as customer attrition rate, customer retention rate, number of products purchased, repeat purchases, likelihood to recommend, etc.

When you have the right customer insights, you’re in a position to address customer needs, improve processes (to shorten the sales cycle), and to maintain a strong connection for an opportunity to turn customers into fans and fans to brand evangelists.

Do Your Homework, Fish Where Fish Are

Before you start, you should learn where your customers are at, the tools they use and why.  This allows you to make better informed decisions and build a framework for your assumptions before you jump in. You can find some valuable research data from the internet and here are two examples I’ve found.

15 Ways To Market Your Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15 Ways To Market Your Blog Effectively[1]

Writing remarkable content is half the battle. When you start a new blog, it’s not exactly one of those: If you build it they will (automatically) come situations.

It’s the worst feeling when you write this amazing content and nobody comes to visit, read, share and comment. So how do you get your content viewed and shared by your community? What are some quick tips that you can implement NOW to drive traffic back to your blog both online and offline?

Here’s a short list. I hope you’ll add yours in the comments.

.    Promote it on your website. If your blog domain is separate from your main website, make sure that you inter-link the two. You’d think this is common sense but you would be surprised how many people I’ve seen skip this step. Furthermore, it’s a good idea to create your blog on a subdomain. It’s good branding and it’s good for seo. For example, our main company site is diversesolutions.com.

.    Link to it in your email signature. Every email is an opportunity to market your blog to someone new. Period.

.    Consistency matters. The more frequently you post relevant and useful content, the more you incentive you offer readers incentive to keep coming back and share that content with other people in their network.

.    Promote your RSS feed prominently. Your subscription options should be displayed prominently and above the fold. If I can’t find your subscription link, I’m not very likely to come back. I visited one blog whose content I thoroughly enjoyed but whose feed I couldn’t find (it was at the bottom, near the footer). Can you believe it? Neither could I.

.    Comment on other blogs. When your blog is new, this is one of the quickest ways to get noticed and bring new readers to your site. Take some time to comment on at least 5-10 blogs per day (or as often as they post new content).

.    Enable the right (social) sharing options. Outspoken Media has a great post on this. Basically, if you want people to share your blog via their networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), make it easy for them to do so. GetSocial and Sharebar are two great social sharing plugins. Can you think of any others?

.    Promote your url everywhere. Link to it in your Twitter profile, your Facebook profile, you LinkedIn profile and any other social network that allows you to upload a link to your blog. You never know when someone’s gonna leave a comment and say: “Hey, I found you through [insert social network name here].” P.S. Don’t forget to put your url on your business cards too.

.    Participate in a live twitter chat like #blogchat. It’s a great way to connect with new people, build relationships and find and share new content. Don’t hi-jack the chat with a bunch of self-promotional tweets (that’s a quick sure-fire way to get hated by the community). Danny Brown calls this being a “Twat Pirate” (it’s a great post). Focus on being helpful first. Share other people’s connect and then people will connect with your own.

.    Share your content on Facebook. I used Networked Blogs for this. Whenever I publish a new blog post, it auto-posts to my Facebook Profile and Page. Although Facebook isn’t my primary Go-To network, I find that several people comment via my post updates there and “Like” the content there when they find it’s a good read. They won’t always comment directly on the blog, but their interactions tell me they’re reading it and sharing it with their own networks.

.    Share your content on LinkedIn. You can do this in two ways: 1.) use the bloglink app to share your blog via LinkedIn, or 2.) use the Status Update link to share a link to your most recent post with your network.

 .    Exchange links on blogrolls with bloggers you know. My friend Jim Connolly just added me to his blogroll (right-hand side). When I’m looking for fresh new content to read I often skim through people’s blogrolls in search of new content. If I’m doing it, I know others are doing the same.

.    Make your content sticky. Basically, a sticky blog grabs readers’ attention and makes them yearn for more. Also, a sticky blog or post tends to result in tons of comments and retweets (always good exposure). You do this in a ton of different ways: series posts, list posts, How To series, etc. The goal is to get people coming back for more.

.    Submit your blog to all of the top directories. TopRank has a great updated list of submission urls for RSS and blog directories that you can submit your blog or RSS feed to.

.    Do an interview series. Stacey Soleil and I did this through our podcast. Becky Johns did a wonderful job on hers through her Influencer Series. Copyblogger is doing this through their new Internet Marketing for Smart People Radio series. What you need to think about is, “how can I make this interesting (and helpful) to keep people coming back for more?”

.    Promote your site when you speak at events. There’s tons of ways you can promote your content both online and offline. These are just a few that came to mind. People spend a lot of time and energy researching and writing content for their blog and not enough time promoting it (which is just as important).

Prof. C.J.M. Beniers

NL Zoetermeer

20-11-2011

© Copyright 2011

About Professor C.J.M. Beniers


Prof. C.J.M. Beniers is a well known authority in the field of modern and international communication techniques. He developed the Six-Component-Model. This model enables companies, institutions and politicians to communicate and negotiate with counterparts from all over the world successfully. His career began as international manager at Philips and later he earned his doctorate as professor in communication. He has more than 35 years experience as manager and management trainer. Thus he knows both sides – theory and praxis – very well. As scientist, Prof. Beniers conducts frequently research in the field of intercultural communication. The results of his interesting research can be found in news articles, free pod casts, audio books and his E-books such as “Bridging The Cultural Gap.” Here, modern managers learn how to prepare for business meetings with people from different cultures; they acquire the techniques and tools to handle situations in times of crises successfully, master intercultural barriers, country-specific communication patterns, looking into personal cultural values & systems. Knowing all this, men can prevent cultural misunderstandings and misinterpretations – not only in business but also in private life.

Contact:


Prof. C.J.M. Beniers

Amaliaplaats 2
2713 BJ Zoetermeer

The Netherlands

Telefone: +31 (0) 79 – 3 19  03 81

Mobile:  +31 (0) 6 2 061 8494

Email: info@beniers-consultancy.com

http://www.beniers-consultancy.com

Ten Ways To Handle A Social Media Plunder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten Ways To Handle A Social Media Blunder[1]

 SACRAMENTO – This past February, a Red Cross employee tweeted something though Hootsuite about beer and getting slizzerd. The tweet accidentally ended up on the Red Cross twitter account and read: “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch Beer…when we drink we do it right #GettingSlizzerd.”

Tweeting you’re having a beer doesn’t seem wrong, but it’s not something you’d expect from Red Cross especially when there are hurricanes and other natural disasters happening.

This could have been a social media nightmare, except the Red Cross had a plan. They stepped in quickly and owned the mistake. They were able to cover it up with humorous follow up tweet that read: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet, but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

From there Dogfish got involved. They responded with “@dogfish beer fans, donate 2 @redcross 2 day. Tweet with #gettingslizzerd. Donate here.”

The rogue beer tweet went from bad to an impromptu fundraising campaign in a matter of hours. But not all social media blunders end that well.

THE RIGHT AND WRONG WAY TO DEAL WITH SOCIAL MEDIA BLUNDERS

Social media blunders happen all the time, but there are good and bad ways to dealing with them. Josh Morgan, Vice President of Edelman Digital, and Lori Bertelli, Public Relations Manager of Augustine Ideas, spoke at the Sacramento Social Media Club last week and shared some of the scarier sides of social media and how a little mistake can snowball into a nightmare.

One of these had do with a PR agency pitch to a blogger. The agency pitched a story on the Kardashians and pantyhose. The blogger wasn’t interested – and that would have been fine, except one of the VPs of the PR agency hit “replied all” with his follow up message.

“The message said ‘That [bleep...].’ It went not only to his internal company, but it went to the blogger. That blogger had 164,000 twitter followers,” said Lori Bertelli.

Bertelli says the blogger did go back to the VP and let him know what he had done. Instead of apologizing, he proceeded to tell her how wrong she was. This resulted in a posting to all her twitter followers. From there, it went viral.

“The lesson learned is he could have stopped it. The agency could have handled it better. It turned into a nightmare because she let it go and now everyone knows about it,” said Bertelli.

Companies and individuals make these kinds of mistakes all the time. This VP wasn’t the first person to accidentally hit “reply all” or send an email to the wrong person – and he won’t be the last. Mistakes happen, but with social media, mistakes like these are amplified instantly.

Morgan says an example of this was something that happened to Chrysler recently.

Last winter Chrysler launched their “Born in Detroit” ad campaign that was narrated by Eminem. It kicked off during the Super Bowl and was well received. But on March 9, a tweet was sent out that read: “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to [bleep] drive.”

This text might have been considered humorous to the tweeter’s close friends, but it quickly turned into a PR horror story because the person who tweeted it worked for the media agency.

“[Imagine] the new media agency you work for does work for Chrysler. You happen to have access to the Chrysler twitter account with 1.5 million followers that you apparently checked before you sent that out. So Chrysler who has just spent $35 million telling everybody they were born from the fires of the Motor City just used that same hash tag to tell them they can’t drive,” Morgan said.

Even though the tweet was deleted minutes after it was posted, an automobile blogger (jalopnik.com) had already grabbed a screen shot of the tweet – and stuck it up on their website.

Chrysler didn’t wait around for the tweet to get out of control. Within hours they had a response on their official blog using #motorcity in the title. Morgan says they were smart to do this. Not only did they admit the mistake happened, but this way if people did a search using the Motor City hash tag, the response to the tweet would come up as well.

“In the meantime, the person who had done it already had been fired. But Chrysler went out of their way to let them know that they didn’t fire them. The agency they had hired fired them. And then Chrysler fired the agency,” Morgan said. “But I think what’s interesting here is that Chrysler didn’t try to hide from the tweet itself. They owned, admitted, and tried to connect themselves to it so the response could be with it.”

But the nightmare wasn’t over yet. That night a discussion started among social networks questioning whether it was right to fire someone because they made a mistake – especially with the economy so depressed in Detroit.

Chrysler didn’t ignore this either. Instead of letting the social media rumors get away from them, they took control of the discussion by posting a long response explaining why they fired them. Plus, they used a well-known automobile reporter who wrote for the Detroit Free Press for 25 years before coming to Chrysler to write the response.

“The point he [the writer] made was that the campaign Chrysler kicked off about being made from the fires of Detroit wasn’t just a sales gimmick for them. It was serious. They were indelibly tied with the city and everything they did for their brand and everything they said was tied to the city. So when someone said this about the city, even if the person hadn’t worked for Chrysler, they still would have been mad at them,” Morgan said.

NOT HIDING FROM A SOCIAL MEDIA MISTAKE COULD SAVE YOU

In Chrysler’s case, they embraced this crisis and used it as a way to refine and talk about what their brand represent and what was important to them. Southwest did something similar when they were faced with a social media nightmare in February 2010.

“Director Kevin Smith was sitting on the airplane. He’s a larger fellow. He was actually asked by the airline to leave the airplane,” said Bertelli. “Being that he is a popular person, he tweeted to his million followers that he’s angry, and it started a firestorm.”

The tweet went viral and made the news, but Southwest didn’t try to hide what happened. They apologized and did not get defensive on what was a highly emotional topic. But what helped them was that they already had an active social media following to help them spread the word and get their voice across.

“What they did right. They got involved right away,” Bertelli said. “They tried to handle the issue knowing they were going to take some hits.”

In Southwest’s case, the tweet ended up becoming a general airline issue and didn’t damage the brand. But sometimes, bad news and mistakes travel too fast, and if companies don’t respond quickly and correctly, they could cause irreparable damage to the brand.

TOP 10 WAYS TO SURVIVE A SOCIAL MEDIA BLUNDER 

Morgan and Bertelli says here are steps you can take to help minimize the damage if you are faced with a social media nighmare:

1. Before you say anything on social media, take into account everyone who could be in your audience, not just the people you know for sure are in your audience. Remember, not everybody thinks exactly the same way you do.

2. Before you open up any type of social media forum, have a policy in place that lets people know that certain types of speech aren’t going to be tolerated and that the platform is being moderated.

3. If you find yourself getting emotionally involved in something online, take a step back. Don’t let commenters get you riled up as you could end up saying something that you regret.

4. Think about who is doing your social media postings. An intern may be comfortable using Facebook and Twitter, but are they the right person to be representing your brand online? It is easier to teach someone who knows your brand/business about social media than it is to teach someone who only knows social media about your company.

5. Set up multiple administrators on all social media accounts just in case you can’t get in touch with someone when you need to – or they leave the company.

6. Make it easy to do the right thing when you are setting up your policies.

7. Own a mistake and do it quickly. Don’t try to hide from it. It’s not going away.

8. Have a friend or an editor check things out. It might seem funny to you, but it may not be to everyone.

9. Understand that you can’t control social media. Instead, be ready to react and take ownership when something does happen.

10. Don’t be insulting or come off defensive. All it takes is one bad post to create a social media nightmare.

Seven Steps To A Killer Social Media Plan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven steps to a killer social media plan[1]

I believe that any business with a decent product or service can build a global social media presence, and monetize it, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom. But you need to know what to do and how to do it. And most people in business really only have the vaguest notion of what is involved.

The simplistic view of social media is that you join sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You create a profile. You find people you know and invite them to connect with you or follow you. Over time your participation grows. You follow and connect with more people that interest you. And you develop your own following. Eventually you build relationships and trust, some of which results in new business.

That’s absolutely fine, as far as it goes. It can also be enjoyable, even addictive. But it isn’t exactly a strategy to take you to market leadership in your niche using social media.

So with this article I want to share with you an overview of what I’ve learned about preparing for social media success in your business. This has come about as a result of several months invested in developing an in-depth social media roadmap, supported by detailed written materials, a series of exercises and a number of interactive planning tools for the aspiring market leaders in my Eureka program.

Can you define the term “Social Media”?

The explosive growth over the past few years of online marketing in general and social media in particular has attracted the attention of millions of businesses. It’s dawning on more and more businesses leaders that social media is likely to be one of the most important changes that has ever come about in business.

Millions of businesses know they need to embrace it. But many still can’t explain the meaning of the term, and few know how to develop a meaningful social media strategy, or have any real idea of what’s involved.

It turns out that nearly 70% of the 600-plus respondents in a 2009 survey were unsure of the meaning of social media. But nearly every respondent felt that social media would somehow revolutionise the world. They felt that they should know the meaning of the term, but didn’t, and in some ways they also feared social media because they didn’t understand it’s implications or whether it would even threaten their existence.

This parallels the reactions that occurred when railways, telephones, cars and aircraft first started to proliferate. People instinctively understood that these new technologies would change the world, but they also feared them because they knew they would change the status quo. They also had no idea how it would impact on them; what part, if any, they would play in the process; or what sacrifices they’d have to make to accommodate these new advances. And that’s exactly where social media stands today.

My own journey

As an early participant in several of the better social networks, I learned what they were about. Along the way I read a lot, put ideas I learned into practice and accumulated considerable knowledge, data and experience.

Among other things, early in 2009 I managed to achieve the largest following on Twitter in the UK for a non-media celebrity. And in March 2010 I was ranked the UK’s No.1 marketer out of 42,559 UK advertising and marketing professionals on LinkedIn, based on recommendations. So I think I can say I have a reasonably solid grounding in social media.

Bit by bit I observed and analysed how the top social networking sites worked; watched them grow exponentially as people increasingly got involved; and have witnessed a fair amount of feature convergence as the sites themselves began to understand what people can, and want, to do using social media, and as they borrowed good ideas from each other.

Above all I was looking for a way to build a solid step-by-step social media strategy that would serve any business well. Participants in my program need to exactly know what to do, when to do it and why. So bit by bit I’ve been assembling an in-depth social media roadmap based on a logical series of steps that can be used to create create a worthwhile social media presence and community.

Step 1: Understanding

The first step in the process is to understand what Social Media is. I like David Meerman Scott’s 61-word explanation of social media marketing:

You can buy attention (advertising)
You can beg for attention from the media (PR)
You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales)

Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page.

This explanation makes it clear that social media is much more than mere participation in social networking sites. It requires you to become a publisher of written, audio and/or video content. You then need to build a community around that content.

Step 2: Familiarisation

The second step is to become familiar with the essentials of each social media element. That requires you to get to know, understand and experience all of the following: Social networking; publishing; photo sharing; audio; video; microblogging; livecasting; virtual worlds; gaming; rss; aggregators; search; mobile marketing; interpersonal communication technologies and an ever-growing array of productivity applications.

As you become familiar with each element in the social media ecosystem, it’s worth taking time to consider the possible applications for each element in your business.

Step 3: Hands-on exploration and assessment

Once you understand the purpose of each social media element, I’d advise you to embark on some hands-on exploration of some of the better known tools in each category. This first hand familiarity will allow you to broadly assess the available social media tools, and determine which of them potentially fit in with what you do.

Participants in my program are asked to undertake a series of specific exploration exercises, followed by the completion of a scorecard for each of the tools they experience.

Step 4: Discover your social media niche

Enlightened by these first-hand experiences, your fourth step is to assess your strengths and weaknesses relative to each social media category, and also identify the opportunities and threats.

Once this SWOT analysis has been completed and the results summarised, it should be possible to identify the right social media niche for your business to focus on. This will be where you can play to your strengths and start building a community around the people who share the same interests as you.

Your community may be local, regional or national. Or it may be global.

Step 5: Plan for your social media success

With your niche decided, the fifth step is to build a solid set of foundations for your future social media success. To operate successfully in the social media ecosystem you have to view yourself as a publisher of content relating to your areas of interest or expertise.

Audience: You therefore have to identify which audience or market niche you will be serving and with whom you will be developing an interactive relationship. Achieving a clear definition of your audience is crucial to your success.

Doing so requires you to understand their behaviours; attitudes; values; beliefs; needs and preferences. You need to assemble demographic data and discover any common interests or goals.

You also need to identify the small number of individuals within each group who have a knack for influencing what the other members of the group say, believe and do. Knowing who these influencers and promoters are will add tremendous viral value to your eventual offering.

By carrying out this research you can establish the common characteristics that will allow you to interact with four or five clearly defined audience personas.

Competition: Once you have a clear idea of your proposed content and the likely characteristics of your audience, you need to assess your competition. This requires you to ask some important questions. For example:

Who else is already catering to the same audience? In what ways are they doing so? What tools do they use? What is the quality of their content? How many people are part of their community? How much interaction occurs on their site(s)? What is the quality of that interaction? What are the compelling advantages of your concept over theirs? What additional compelling advantages could you offer?

Concept: By now you should have gathered enough information to start building a value proposition that describes how your intended audience will benefit from your content. Your content in turn will relate to the products or services you offer; the additional expertise you bring; and the things that will encourage your audience to contribute.

As you go through this exercise, you may well find that you have several workable concepts, each with its own distinct audience personas. In each case you have to define your concept, thinking in terms of the needs of your potential community rather than the needs of your business.

Based on your research you will now need to convert your concept into a 100-150 word concept statement that you can share with almost anyone in less than two minutes.

Sample content: You can then start expanding the details of your offering, perhaps even producing some sample content to demonstrate to your potential audience the flavour and feel of your finished offering, and highlighting the advantages you’ll be offering over your competition.

Audience input: I recommend that you then invite a reasonable sized sampling of your potential audience to assist you in the process of refining, developing and positioning your offering. In tapping into their collective wisdom, I have to point out that you will only gain and maintain their attention if you can demonstrate your sincerity in communicating with them, and of course by incorporating their feedback in what you do.

Sales viability: As a business engaging in social media you should always be mindful of the sales viability of your concept. This is where you need to carefully consider which revenue model or models to adopt.

You can sell products, services or information; advertising and sponsorship; earn commissions on your site’s role in selling transactions carried out by others; offer subscriptions; operate a “Freemium” model where you offer certain content free but you also offer premium versions at additional cost; or you can offer software as a cloud-based service, of which there are many well known examples.

It’s often possible to offer several of these revenue models simultaneously.

At the end of this planning process you’ll know what audience to target; have an appealing concept that’s been tested and refined with their help; an understanding of who you’ll be competing with; a number of compelling advantages to offer … and one or more revenue generation models.

Step 6: Evaluate and organise your existing resources

The sixth step is to evaluate and organise your resources. This requires you to evaluate the social media awareness of your entire team; tap into their collective wisdom and experience; and engage them in your social media plans.

From there you should be able to pinpoint your social media starting point, i.e. The strategies you should deploy at the outset of your social media journey.

The right strategies at the outset are likely to vary enormously from one situation to another depending on how far you’ve already travelled down the social media road; your level of competence in doing so; the social media skills of different people within your team; and the final destination you hope to reach.

Step 7: Creating your social media implementation plan

Having completed the first six steps in the process you can now take the seventh step, which is to create your social media implementation plan.

Your implementation plan should be realistic because it’s not practical to simultaneously introduce hundreds of tools from the social media ecosystem into the daily operations of your business. The introduction of even a dozen tools could be disruptive, so it’s important to pace yourself.

While human nature often compels us to try lots of different alternatives as fast as we can, it is better to think in terms of adding one new tool every month.

That will give you the time and space you need to promote each new tool to your employees, prospects and customers, and evaluate how effective you have been in implementing each tool. As the year progresses you can also evaluate how well the tools complement each other … and you can measure the effect on your revenues and profits.

If it becomes evident that adjustments are required, you’ll be able to do make them as you go along. The key is to remain flexible and experimental.

The implementation process

With your planning completed, you need to start the all-important implementation process and roll-out.

That implementation process will involve such things as:

Building your online destinations using websites, blogs, forums and wikis.

Building trust, visibility and engagement using elements like RSS; SEO; email; social networks; search engine marketing; mobile marketing and measurement

Deepening your engagement using elements like photo sharing; audio sharing; video sharing; and interpersonal communication.

These topics go well beyond the scope of this post and will be covered in future articles.

So, as you can see, there’s a whole lot more to preparing for global social media success than merely joining Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And preparing for success itself is only the first part of the process.

The process described here is covered in explicit detail as part of the Eureka program for aspiring market leaders. You can view the curriculum here.

Finally, please rate the article and comment on what you’ve learned from it. What actions will you now take as a result? Please also share any ideas and tips that you think will assist anyone in their planning for social media success.

Suzuki As Independent As Ever, VW Discovering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suzuki As Independent As Ever, VW Discovering[1]

When the mighty Volkswagen Group acquired 19.9 percent of Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp. in late 2009, it looked like the start of a well-conceived, entirely complimentary auto-industry tie-up: Suzuki, barely known in many regions yet an expert in developing inexpensive subcompact cars, would help VW penetrate third-world markets, particularly India, where Suzuki has a dominant position. Volkswagen could learn about how to make cars more inexpensively and leverage some of Suzuki’s existing low-cost production bases. And VW’s strong presence in China could help Suzuki gain a foothold in that fast-developing market, while VW shared its technology with the smaller company, too.

Volkswagen paid $2.5 billion for its initial stake in Suzuki, but it was widely believed that was only the beginning of what would amount to an eventual takeover, or at least VW quickly moving to acquire a controlling 33-percent interest in its new Japanese partner. Apart from the other advantages of sidling up to Suzuki, if Volkswagen absorbed the automaker, Suzuki’s nearly 3 million units of global production could help accelerate VW to its goal of becoming the world’s largest automaker by 2018.

Maybe it was too good to be true. Or maybe it was the infamous “culture clash” that has made a shipwreck of so many other trans-national automotive alliances. Whatever the case, the two companies had barely begun to work together when they discovered they didn’t like working together. A year after VW’s investment (Suzuki at the same time spent $1.1 billion to buy 2.5 percent of Volkswagen),

Ferdinand Piech, chairman of VW’s management board, expressed displeasure that little of tangible value had yet come of the relationship. Tense words about the alliance came from both parties.

By this summer, the companies’ differences were expressed by Suzuki president Osamu Suzuki, who publicly bristled when VW management implied it could impose its will on the automaker. The 80-year-old Suzuki also wrote a blog that said in no uncertain terms his company had no intention in becoming subservient to VW. He added that he hadn’t seen anything of Volkswagen’s vaunted technology that was compelling enough to try to adopt immediately. The relationship has deteriorated from there, with VW charging Suzuki had infringed on the companies’ contract when it agreed to buy diesel engines – a VW pride – from Italy’s Fiat. Little more than a week ago, Osamu Suzuki called the partnership with VW a “ball and chain,” and openly spoke of Suzuki’s desire to dissolve the relationship. The company added that it intended to divest its Volkswagen stake if the agreement is dissolved, while VW maintained it does not intend to sell its nearly 20-percent holding in Suzuki.

Maybe this high-stakes dust-up could have been predicted. Suzuki is a car company accustomed to doing things its own way, reflecting the personality of its hands-on and independent president, Osamu Suzuki. Volkswagen apparently expected to tell Suzuki – the company and the president – how things would go. Suzuki apparently had no intention of it going that way.

Unconventional Thinking, Unconventional Company

The year is 1979. Japan’sSuzuki Motor Corporation is about to unveil a revolutionary new small car. Revolutionary in the sense it is to be an ultra-cheap, 550-cc minicar, selling for a bargain-basement ¥500,000 (at the time about $2,275) a price point no manufacturer had breached before. How to bring the price down? “How about we do away with the spare tire?” asks Osamu Suzuki, the project leader at a strategy meeting. The development team is dumbfounded. But the boss is ready with an even more radical solution. “What if we took out the engine?”

Obsessed with trimming the fat, as he sees it, Suzuki decrees: “Let’s try to build a vehicle for the same cost as one without an engine.” The result is the Alto, a tiny, get-you-around “kei” car which Suzuki, again bucking the system, sells in one grade, and for one price, all over Japan. While its relentlessly utilitarian design might not look like much today, the Alto, which was also purposely targeted at women drivers, was a big contemporary hit in Japan and through many generations. The Alto badge is still alive.

The success of the Alto propelled Osamu Suzuki to the presidency of the company and the intense, cost-down way it was developed still comprises part of Suzuki’s corporate psyche. Nobody else does small, basic cars – globally – like Suzuki. That’s one reason why the Volkswagen Group bought a 19.9% stake in the company in 2010, with one eye on controlling the market for new, small cars in India and other emerging markets. Others also flocked to Suzuki to tap into its small-car expertise. General Motors Co. is the best-known, but Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., Mazda Motor Corp. and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.’s Subaru all have sharing deals for today’s 660-cc kei cars in Japan with Suzuki. Fiat Auto in Europe and Maruti in India are two other significant names to leverage Suzuki’s formidable tiny-car know-how.

Low-Key, But With Surprises

Suzuki, suffice to say, is not your typical Japanese company. Somewhat reticent and at times mysterious, Suzuki, surprisingly, is Japan’s fourth-largest automaker after Toyota, Nissan and Honda and number nine in the world by production volume (building some 2.9 million units a year). It’s consistently profitable and for the latest fiscal year that ended in March, Suzuki posted a sizeable 56.2% jump in profits compared with 2010: ¥45.2 billion (some $553 million), although still some way off on its ¥80.2 billion haul for 2007-08.

There again, you’d never know. Suzuki maintains a low profile and operates with almost Masonic secrecy. Based out of Japan’s central Kansai area (not far from Toyota), Suzuki also has that typical local trait of knowing the value of a dollar and for years effectively was a one-man company, with the ever-characterful, razor-sharp Osamu Suzuki, now 81, occupying the company’s top chair as president. Yes, Suzuki might run a tight ship – but it’s also a company that pulls a few surprises. It was the first to target the vast Indian market back in the ‘80s and after years of basic, cheerless cars, Suzuki suddenly reversed course and launched two extraordinarily high-quality generations of the Swift compact car in 2005 and 2010. Those Swifts sadly have never figured in the U.S. market, but did wonders for raising Suzuki’s profile, especially in Europe.

Suzuki also moved slightly out of character to introduce the Kizashi sporty midsize sedan to market; it’s acquired a reputation for a fine ride and sweet handling – a kind of BMW-baiter despite the unassuming 2.4-liter 4-cylinder as its only engine choice. Suzuki then launched the Kizashi in Japan to special order only, while not spending a cent on advertising or promotion. As some might say: go figure. Many automakers in Japan spend big on fancy showrooms, but Suzuki prefers the simple, no-frills approach, sensible given that the bulk of its domestic sales are geared towards the inexpensive, high-volume minicars. The tactic seems to work just fine, handily saving the company millions.



Doing It Their Way

It is believed that Suzuki’s long time connection with GM, which began in 1981, was relatively stress-free because GM largely left Suzuki to its own devices and various model-sharing programs were limited to modest, econocar models such as the Geo Metro in the U.S. and Opel Agilia in Europe. No big waves from either partner.

The situation seems different with VW. It seems Wolfsburg had in mind the kind of relationship that Ford enjoyed with Mazda for many years, one in which the larger company gradually took over the smaller (weaker) operation, eventually assuming full control. That does not appear to be the kind of scenario Suzuki in any way had in mind with VW. Suzuki is still a scrappy company, a wily operator that continues to think outside the box. Uniquely, Suzuki also has its motorcycle, ATV and marine businesses as buffers to auto-industry gyrations – and is as determined as ever to have its own way of doing things. While it’s often seen to struggle in the U.S. market, Suzuki still is an outfit where from which one should expect the unexpected. There aren’t many companies like Suzuki around anymore, as VW is learning.

4 Steps To Start A Conversation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Steps to Start a Conversation[1]

How important is it to know how to start a conversation? Do a web search on the topic, ask friends or colleagues, and you will find out that most people have little idea how to do it, and are in fact petrified by the idea, mainly because they don’t want to face the kind of social rejection that is a possibility when trying to start a conversation.

Nonetheless, we are dealing with essential communication skills, ones that have the potential to make the difference in your life, both socially and professionally.

Try to keep in mind how often you have been standoffish in a crowd, how often you have given the false impression that you’re uninterested in getting to know others, until one person dares to approach you and start a conversation. Ten minutes later you can’t shut up, and you have a new friend or two.

We offer the following four steps to help you be that more daring person who will approach others and start a conversation that will continue on its own momentum.

 

Step 1: Use inviting body language
Body language can be natural, incidental or deliberate, but in any case, it is often the easiest language to read and understand. Before saying anything verbally, you have the opportunity to break the ice with body language to gives others the visual indication that you’re a friendly, inviting person.

This kind of body language includes simple things like an appropriate smile, and not closing yourself off with crossed arms or the low rumble of a scowl. Another way to seem more friendly when trying to start a conversation includes modulating your tone of voice and the pace at which you speak; a relaxed, self-confident voice is far more inviting than speaking quickly as though in a nervous panic, releasing a bored sigh, or saying your initial hello in a dull, disinterested tone.

That being said, people often appear standoffish; your job is to figure out whether or not they actually mean it. You may find out the hard way that they do mean it, or you could unlock another person’s shyness by challenging their seemingly defiant body language.

Step 2: Open with an open-ended question
We’ll never know how many potentially great conversations began with the question “How are you?” because they were dead from that moment on, typically brought to a quick end with the answer “Fine.” They die for a very simple reason: They started on the wrong foot. Questions that are very familiar to us elicit our most common responses. They make no demands on us to pause long enough to think about an answer; instead, we respond like a reflex. If you doubt us, ask yourself how many times you’ve been asked a question like “how are you?” and actually considered it?

Thus, at this step, your aim should be to pose a question that elicits a response longer than one or two words. What you ask may depend to some degree on your level of familiarity with the person you’re talking to — something to keep in mind while reading the following examples:

“What was the best part of your weekend?” beats “Did you have a good weekend?”

“What are your experiences living in this area?” beats “How long have you lived around here?”

“Tell me about your wife and your family” beats “Are you married?”

Step 3: Reword their answer into a new question
Good storytellers are not the same as good conversationalists. Storytellers monopolize a conversation, which can be either good or bad, while good conversationalists listen to others when they speak and ask the right questions when the opportunity arises.

To that end, you can keep this conversation rolling not by changing the subject or asking a new follow-up question. Rather, do so by rewording their answer into a new question, even if you know that you’re not really saying anything new. It won’t appear that way; instead, you give the impression that you’re listening, that you empathize and that you have a general rapport with this person — all key aspects of a good conversationalist. By doing so, you preempt the inclination to respond with unsolicited advice or a one-up story (things that can kill a conversation quickly), and you will allow the other person to delve deeper into the topic.

Step 4: Pass on control of the conversation
Up until now, you have attempted to steer and control the conversation without appearing overeager. At this point, you should have positioned the other person as the primary talker in the conversation and yourself as the listener. The wider benefit of this positioning is fairly simple: That person will more likely recall the conversation as an enjoyable one if they did more of the talking.
Human Nature 101 teaches us that, whether we’re fully aware of it or not, we are our own favorite topic. Coming in at a close second is whatever other topic we happen to be discussing at the moment.

Thus, provided you have them talking, you shouldn’t have to work so hard to maintain the flow of conversation.

Are You Falling For These Common Communication Myths?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you falling for these common communication myths?[1]

 Many executives I work with on communication issues have difficulties because they have believed some or all of these myths. As we work in challenging the myths, and start better practices, communications gets better. After today you should be able to recognize them in your communication.

Myth # 1. “I don’t have time for communication.”

Many leaders perceive communication takes too much of their precious time. The problem is that if you don’t take time to communicate, problems will multiply. You and your team will be more efficient, deal better with change, and have better relationships if you take the time to communicate.

In reality, NOT investing the time in effective business communication is very costly. The time you spend in communication will create more time for you in the long-run by ensuring understanding, focus, and efficiency.

Myth # 2. “If I don’t talk about it, it will go away.”

Do you tend to avoid difficult issues? In many of the businesses I work with there are “big elephants” sitting around everywhere. Everybody knows they are there, but nobody talks about them. The problem with avoidance is that problems compound, and people make all kinds of interpretations (right or wrong). It’s better to deal with reality.

In reality, our brains are made to try to solve puzzles. If the right information is not given, people will invent their own information and form their own judgements. Therefore, it’s much better to “take the bull by the horns” and bring the conversations into the open.

Myth # 3. “I already talked about this.”

Many leaders confuse talking with communication. Just because you are talking does not mean you are communicating. It does not necessarily means either that your listeners are understanding. In fact, a common complaint I hear is that someone talks too much and does not say anything.

To know if you are really communicating, think about these critical components:

• Flexibility: Adjust your message to the needs of your audience. Don’t just share “data.” You need to share what is relevant to the moment and the people involved. You need to give what they need, not what you love to talk about. It’s about them, not about you.
• Engagement: Get the interest and attention of your people by engaging them. A dialogue is always more effective than a monologue. You need to listen at least as much as you talk. Take emotions into consideration too.
• Truthfulness: You have to be honest and consistent if you want people to listen, respect, and understand. Yes, as a leader there are confidential issues you can’t share. But you don’t have to lie about situations either. It’s better to say you are sharing what you can share at the moment, than to say nobody is going to be layoff when you know that next week you have to let people go. Tell as much of the truth as you can and help people see how their efforts contribute to the business.
• Efficiency: Think of the most direct and concise way you can deliver your message. Also consider what will be the best channel, or combination of channels, for delivering the information e.i. e-mail, face-to-face, individual, group, voice-message, etc.

 

Remember. . .

These 3 myths about communication originate from wrong assumptions. Don’t confuse assumptions with facts. Don’t fall prey of common myths. Instead, take time to communicate, bring up difficult issues for dialogue, and make sure you are communicating, not just talking. You will see how much effective your communication will be.

Share your thoughts

Are you letting these 3 myths rule your communications?

How do you make sure you are communicating effectively?

Seven Things To Do Before You Start Your Business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven Things to Do Before You Start Your Business[1]

 You’ve got a business idea that you think will be a sensation and you’re eager to break out on your own. But where do you start? The process of getting your business up and running may not be as difficult as you think. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of what it will take to start cashing in on your great idea.

1. Make sure your business concept is something that will keep your interest in the long run.

”You have to have a degree of passion if you are going to start a business,” said Thomas Shinick, professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. and president and CEO of Corporate Development Partners, a management consulting firm. “There is tons of information out there about scouting the right location and obtaining the proper business licenses for your startup business, but if it is not something you truly care about, it is going to sink. I’ve seen too many people simply take over a business because it was available to buy, not because it was something they necessarily dreamed of doing. You’ll be sacrificing a lot of time to get your business off the ground. Make sure it is something you want to invest your time in pursuing.”

2. Educate yourself. “Take courses online or at a university and look into courses offered through your chamber of commerce and the Small Business Administration,” Shinick said. “If you can, work part time in the industry so that you get a feel for the business.”

3. Write a business plan to help move things forward. “A lot of people might argue that you don’t need a business plan, but putting things down on paper validates your idea,” Shinick said. “It will help you obtain the capital you need and will show that you have thought your idea through.”

4. Assemble a board of advisers to talk things out. “Include professors, accountants, attorneys and bankers,” Shinick said. “This will provide you with people to bounce your ideas off of and add credibility when you move forward with your plan. Investors like to see that you have fleshed your idea out.”

5. Get an accountant on board early in the process. “I had a full-time job as I considered starting my own business in 2009, but I did a lot of groundwork before I started, and bringing on an accountant was an important step,” said Sarah Burningham, owner of Little Bird, a New York-based public relations, marketing and branding firm. “People didn’t understand why I would consult an accountant before I left my job or made any money with my new venture, but it helped me understand what I needed to do to make this work from a profit standpoint and the ins and outs of state, federal and local taxes.”

6. Understand how you will acquire customers. “Depending on the type of business you are starting, foot traffic and word of mouth is very important at the beginning,” said Stewart Wall, CEO of New York-based Signpost, an online local marketing service.

Determine how you will build an online presence with social networks such as Twitter and Yelp. “Have those in place before you start,” Stewart said.

Every business has a fixed cost regardless of how many customers they have, so it is important to have a plan to acquire new customers quickly and keep the existing ones if you are taking over a business, he said.

7. Gather demographic data and explore the neighborhood where you want to locate your business. “Don’t just lease space because you go by there every day and think, ‘Oh, that’s a great location,’” said Devon Wolfe, managing director of Americas strategy and analytics service for Pitney Bowes Business Insight, a Troy, N.Y.-based division of Pitney Bowes that provides customer relationship data and analytics. “Even being on the wrong side of the street can have an impact on your business success. Visit the site on different days and at different times of the day,” Wolfe said.

As Social Media Grow, So Does First Amendment Appreciation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As social media grow, so does First Amendment appreciation

Each year, on Constitution Day, students and teachers celebrate the most fundamental laws of our republic. This year, they should celebrate Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and all other social media children of the digital age.

Why? Because, it turns out, social media are good for the Constitution. Specifically, social media are good for the First Amendment, the lead item of the Bill of Rights, etched into our national history in 1791:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The Future of the First Amendment, a new study being released today by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, concludes that today’s social media fads are good for that 220-year-old law.

As researcher Ken Dautrich puts it: “There is a clear, positive relationship between student usage of social media to get news and information and greater support for free expression rights.”

The University of Connecticut professor has done four major national surveys of high school students on First Amendment issues and has co-written The Future of the First Amendment: Digital Media, Civic Education and Free Expression Rights in the Nations’ High Schools. This spring, he surveyed 12,090 high school students and 900 high school teachers for the latest survey.

The findings are exciting.

Fully 91 percent of students who use social networking to get news and information on a daily basis believe people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. But only 77 percent of those who never use social networks to get news agree that unpopular opinions should be allowed.

These sorts of surveys are good at establishing connections, but not as good at explaining what causes what. Does social media make you a First Amendment lover? Or do First Amendment lovers just use more social media? I think it’s both.

Students using their cell phones to text, tweet, blog and Google are finding out more about the world — like this year’s Arab Spring — as well as the connection between social media and freedom.

Since young people represent the future of American public opinion, they are the real overseers of the future of the First Amendment.

That’s why we survey their attitudes.

This year, not all the news is good. While more students now understand that government can’t censor the media in this country, nearly 40 percent of them still don’t understand that. While more students say they think about the First Amendment, most of them still don’t.

And there is still plenty to teach about how responsibility comes along with all these rights.

Even so, when the numbers start to move in the right direction, it’s cause for celebration.

Are young people learning as much about freedom via texting than they are via teaching? Maybe. To their credit, teachers say they think there needs to be a lot more digital media literacy education in schools. I agree.

The dawning of a new digital age in communications has dramatically changed how we consume news and information. Students are adapting to these new tools faster than adults, using them for networking and news, and now, to better appreciate freedom.

Maybe we can learn something from them.

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  • 15 Ways To Market Your Blog
  • Ten Ways To Handle A Social Media Plunder
  • Seven Steps To A Killer Social Media Plan
  • Suzuki As Independent As Ever, VW Discovering
  • What Are Your Social Media Goals?
  • Social Media Marketing Analytics (Part 1)
  • Why China won’t conquer the world
  • 4 Steps To Start A Conversation
  • Are You Falling For These Common Communication Myths?
  • Seven Things To Do Before You Start Your Business
  • As Social Media Grow, So Does First Amendment Appreciation
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