Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) are mean little monsters. They crawl in through open cracks in marketing plans and take advantage of people who feel overwhelmed and are desperate for results. They thrive off of lack of planning, short budgets and over stressed teams.
We should not be trying to control communities or the human beings within them. It is more about communicating and engaging WITH other human beings versus communicating TO them.
Are you energizing and breathing life into your online communities or are you zapping their energy and taking it away? Are you making it easy for them to feel connected, find the information they need so they can zoom their business and life?
One of the biggest challenges many marketing and business leaders face is learning to separate fact from fiction. Being able to separate the myths, lies and fairy tales from the truth is a first step to achieving real business results.
Each day you have a choice. You can either own the day or you can let it own you. Each day you have a choice. You can either own the day or you can let it own you.
Buzz without bucks will not pay your team salaries, the office rent or the monthly subscriptions for all of those social media tools you are using to create all that fancy buzz. Creating buzz without a plan to achieve results is equivalent to creating buzz in a social media vacuum where you just suck up the opportunity of success in a loud funnel of noise and mess. The question is are you generating buzz that leads to bucks?
WHY are you spending so much time online? Are you investing time online for the right reasons? Is your time invested delivering the results you want? It is getting you closer to your life and business goals? Or is it taking you away from them? Are you spending less time with family even when you have made life choices to spend more time with them. However, is it your digital lifestyle that robs your most precious time?
We all know the social web is filled with a lot of fud and questionable information. Sometimes it is hard to make your way through the promises, tweets, differing opinions and more.
Do you lack the trust factor? Establishing trust and authority are critical to achieve business results online. Build an integrated platform that inspires, invites conversation and nurtures relationship.
Do you wish you could get your CEO on Twitter? Want to get your c-suite, stakeholders and team members to jump on the social networks? It's critical to have a plan with goals and objectives, and a plan to get their buy-in before pushing them to the social networks.
Relationships are the life raft to social media, technology and business change. Putting all of your social, technology and / or business eggs in a social network basket you don’t own is high risk. The truth is that instead of worrying so much about the technology, bits and bytes we should be focused on relationships.
How do you leverage social media to build, nurture, grow and sustain meaningful, connected and powerful communities? Building communities requires trust, investment in time, resource and development and disemmenation of content that inspires and connects humans in meaningful ways.
Learning the difference between authenticity and transparency is key to building relationships and earning trust via social media marketing.
Smart brands are already tapping into the human power of their employees to increase brand awareness and market reach, create and curate content, engage with target audiences, listen to conversations and even help recruit top talent!
Becoming a social business is a journey, not a destination. Integrating social media, new technologies and methodologies is as much about mindset as it is about the tools and technology.
Many brands avoid embracing social media and online marketing because of the fear associated with risk to the brand. They think that if they avoid social media all together that the risk can be avoided. This assumption couldn't be further from the truth.
For small business, startups, entrepreneurs, and even "corporatepreneurs" within larger organizations, knowing the right levers to pull to gain competitive advantage can make all the difference in winning or losing.
The heartbeat of social media is humans. The goal for businesses and the people within them is not to "do social" but to be social. Even "being social" is often not enough. We must be socially relevant. The best way to be relevant is to connect as humans, to inspire and connect in a way that nurtures meaningful and authentic relationships that endure the technology and platform changes that are thrown at us constantly.
The only guarantee in social business is change. Marketers and business leaders must embrace new technologies, processes and ways of empowering brand evangelists.
You envisioned a blog rockin' with amazing content, engagement, community and of course new business leads.
