Those who frequent our blog platforms know we do our best to only share positive, helpful information. However, once in awhile a case study pops up out of no where that we can’t help but share. We can all learn from these situations.

I am not going to do some big ol’ synopsis of the drama that is behind and in front of this scenario. I don’t want to be involved, don’t want the drama in my day, life or business. I will keep it simple and simply share with you the screen capture of their Facebook page. The page and their comments speak for themselves.

I don’t know the history. I don’t want to know it. There are probably reasons they are so upset. However, there should never be a reason any brand behaves in such a way on the social networks. If you feel the need to tell your community off, take a breath, take a walk, turn off your computer. Don’t blast it on your page.

The bottom of this post shares a few of the most recent blog posts we have written, one of which includes how to delight your audience using social media. This bakery is certainly not delighting their fans. Sad, truly sad.

Tonight on our Twitter chat, #GetRealChat we will be talking about how to delight your social media community and audiences. Join us at 9pm et on Twitter if interested. It was already scheduled and conveniently aligns well with this unfortunate case study of what not to do.

I did not link the below image to their Facebook page or website. I do not want to support such behavior. I am certain you can find it via a simple Google, Bing, Twitter or Facebook search if you are stuck on seeing it for yourself. In less than one hour I have seen their Facebook likes increase by 3,000!

Scenario: Amy’s Baking Company was on the Kitchen Nightmares show. I didn’t see the episode but my understanding is it was pretty bad. The retaliation on the page has to do with the bad reviews on social media sites and other happenings on the show of which I do not want to get into here on this page.

What do you think of when you think of the word “delight?” Some may think of a huge ice cream cone. My 9 yr old son may think of a $50 gift card to his favorite online game or a super size Slurpee from 7-11.

Delight is in the heart of the receiver. What delights me, won’t necessarily delight you the same way.

According to Dictionary.com, the word delight is defined as “to please someone greatly.” Notice the key word of “greatly.” Delight does not equal status quo. It does not mean doing, writing, posting, tweeting, pinning, +1-ing the same exact thing every other business in your niche is doing.

Have you ever thought about how you can delight your audiences? When you are developing your marketing plans, editorial calendar, tweet content for the day or week are you thinking about the positive impacts it can have on the lives or businesses of the people reading them?

Even though we are all “delighted” differently, we do have some common needs when it comes to being delighted.

Most people want to:

Feel loved

Feel needed

Be valued

Be Smart

Feel cared for

Be fulfilled

Not feel stupid

Laugh

Feel emotion

Be inspired

Dream

Succeed

Do you know how to delight your audiences? Make them feel something that feels unique to what other brands are blasting at them. To do this you must know who your audience is. You must know how to delight them. You must know what delights them. Do they care more about laughing, learning, being empowered, feeling smart, achieving a specific goal? What is it they really want? What is their end game?

Download this worksheet to help you analyze and prioritize your audiences. It’s based on the Forrester Post Methodology and will help you begin to developed a social media framework that is focused on the goals and objectives of your audience.

12 Ways to Delight Your Social Media Community and Audiences

1. Be human. Humanize your brand. Don’t talk like a robot in 1995 corporate speak. Realize that your brand is everything about you from what you tweet to how you respond to comments on Facebook. Don’t hide your employees. Let them shine and be a living, breathing representation of who and what you are. Read more here-> “13 Characteristics of the Human Brand.”

2. Make them feel loved. Loved you ask? Why loved you may be giggling? Because at the core of our inner being is a need to feel simply needed. We want to feel loved, be loved. When someone visits your blog, Facebook page or other social network profile are you making them feel loved? Or is it all about you?

3. Capture their heart in the first 30 seconds. What are you doing to make their first 30 seconds on your platform delightful? If you can’t answer this question, you need to start here. First impressions are everything.

4. Slow down to speed up. You aren’t going to delight your audiences overnight or on the first day you launch your Twitter profile or Facebook page. Building and launching an integrated online platform takes time. Give yourself and your team the time to do it right. There are many brands out there doing it fast, trying to win the market with old tactics and spamming. Slow down and do it right and at the end of the game you’ll be the winner, guaranteed.

5. Think integration and architecture vs only fast wins. When we work with clients we help them build their brand and social foundation with a framework designed to delight their audience BEFORE launching. Many contact me or our agency, Marketing Nutz in a huge hurry to launch. They often say “build us a platform just like yours, fast.” What many don’t realize is our integrated online platforms have taken years to build. We didn’t just start with a marketing nut Twitter handle. We started with a business plan, social brand architecture, business models and an integrated strategy to take it all to market and achieve a positive ROI. We are far from launching our full vision though many think we’re just some crazy, tweeting marketing nuts.

We didn’t start by spamming offers, we started by doing social listening and learning as much as humanly possible about our target audiences, the social media communities and ecosystem as a whole. Integration takes time but the payoffs are exponential compared to those who want to build their social house overnight. There is no social media easy button. Roll up your sleeves and do this stuff right.

6. Inspire them to be better. Inspire your audiences to connect with you with a foundational goal of achieving their objectives. Inspire – Connect – Achieve! To do this you must know their objectives. To know their objectives you must know them. When you know your audience then you can know how you can help them be better. How can you help them learn? How can you help them go faster? Work smarter? Be smarter? Share more valuable information with their colleagues, clients, partners and friends? What matters to them? Figure it out and provide it.

7. Strike an emotional chord. Make them feel something. If you want to grab my attention on Twitter, make me laugh. Make me cry. Make me feel something, anything. When I have a super busy day and I am replying to tweets on Twitter I have no choice due to the amount of them and time constraints but to choose where and when I am going to respond. It is an easy choice for me. I respond to the people who grab my attention. The people who are nice, who make me feel good. The people who are genuine. The people who make me laugh. Pull an emotional chord. Don’t send snarky tweets trying to get attention. Most people can see right thru the snark and won’t respond. I ignore the trolls and the folks looking only for attention. Be genuine and offer something of emotional value.

8. Focus on relationships and the heartbeat of social media. The heartbeat of social media is people. People like you and me. People who laugh, cry, get mad, go crazy, get married, divorced, have kids, lose family members, win jobs, lose jobs, get promotions, win new clients, get new opportunities, have fun, play hard and work hard. Offer value to the people in your community with a goal of building real relationships. Offer value and knowledge. Be part of the thriving, lively beating heartbeat of social media.

9. Teach them. What knowledge can you share with them that will make them smarter? How can your knowledge drive real efficiency in their life or business? Share your best stuff, not just the junk you wrote two years ago that is over used and over sold. Check out this post, “Are You Sharing Your Best Stuff” for more information and ideas on this topic.

10. Make it easy to engage with you. People want to connect. They don’t want to be spammed at every opportunity you have to do such. Give them an opportunity to engage with you, your brand, and your team. Be available. Open up your comment stream on your blog. Enable people to engage with you on the social networks such as Facebook. Respond to tweets on Twitter in a short time period.

11. Focus on inbound marketing and organic attraction. If you create content that does the things listed above you will organically attract your right customers. Focus on offering value for the right audience, make it “findable” on the social networks and search engines and you will see results. Creating the right content that delights your audiences will organically attract them to you and your brand if implemented correctly. Of course there are many details and considerations to implementing an inbound marketing strategy that brings results. I can not possibly teach you everything you need to do for this in one simple blog post. I can share with you though that my number one tip is that you know your audience. Learn how to inspire, attract and connect with them as a top goal.

12. Listen. The most important thing you can do to better delight everyone who comes in contact with your brand is to listen to them. Listen with a goal to understand, not just think about the next thing you can shout back at them. Bottom line, listen more than you talk. You’ll be amazed how much you can learn about your audience when you shut up and listen. Try it!

What You Say?

Are you delighting your audiences as a top goal? If not, are you ready to do such? Ready to at least give it a try? What brands delight you the most? Why? What is it about them that delight you?

Heartbeat of Social Media Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “The Heartbeat of Social Media“. It includes a deep look at how communities work, what people are doing within them and how businesses can better understand how they can fit in, provide value and derive benefit as both a business as well as individual people.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be part of what makes the social network heartbeat healthy and alive!

“Why can’t we just skip the social media strategy stuff and create some buzz for this amazing offer we have?” I can’t count the number of times I have been asked this question by clients, students of our social media workshops, attendees at events where I speak, loyal blog readers & even neighbors!

Even though I know you want to hear me answer “yes,” to this question, I can’t. When I hear you ask this question, what I really hear is “we don’t want to invest in a real strategy or bother with executing a plan that will bring results. We want to instead execute tactics and random acts of marketing because we think they deliver instant results.”

Stop the Random Acts of Marketing!

Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) will destruct your ROI morsel by morsel, post by post. There is no way around it. RAMs may deliver instant gratification as you can cross tactics off your list as completed. However, they will not provide real business results that will help you sustain your business for the medium or long term.

Be very careful when prioritizing based upon instant gratification versus investing in social media strategies and tactics that drive real results. Far too many business leaders confuse random acts of social media and buzz with social business success.

Focusing only on creating buzz for your brand using social media will not help you nurture relationships, nor grow your business. Plus chances are if you are just starting out with social media you have nobody listening to your self proclaimed “awesome buzz” as you haven’t invested the time or resource to build community.

Community does not happen overnight. Winning the hearts of real people eager to listen to your messages, hear your brand stories, read your posts, and share your photos takes investment. Loyal brand evangelists and engaged community members are earned over time, not purchased over night.

Who Is Listening to Your Brand?

Who is on the other end of your yelling, noisy, screaming offers of sales & bargains? Do you know who is listening on the other end? Is anyone listening?

One of the first steps in creating a social media strategy for business is to understand your audience. You simply can not skip this step no matter how smart you are. It doesn’t matter how long you have been doing business, marketing, writing, social media or whatever it is you do.

Think about this for a minute…

Social media is about people.

Social media is about content.

Social media is about conversations.

Social media is about relationships.

Social media starts with people. How can you be successful in social media if you don’t know WHO it is you want to have a conversation with so you can nurture a relationship? How will you know what content you should write, tweet, post, pin and +1 on Google if you don’t know who you are writing for?

How can you optimize your blog, website and social media profiles for search if you don’t know who is searching and what words they are using. You must know what they want, how they want it and how they communicate about it to be relevant in their hearts and minds.

Who is your audience? How old are they? Do they have kids? Grandkids? Where do they live? Why do they live there? What brands do they like? Why do they like those brands? Why should they like your brand or care it exists?

Telling me you want to only create buzz, get right to tactics without a strategy is like telling me you want to go fishing without a boat or a fishing rod. Yes, you can fish on the side of the lake, but being married to a man who LOVES to fish, I can tell you he much prefers and usually catches better fish being in his boat in the gulf of Mexico or right smack dab in the middle of the lake.

Communities Create Markets:

I recently wrote this post about how communities create markets. In the graphic below you will see that the only way you can move your social communities filled with real human beings from the left side to the right side is if you know who they are.

You can’t move them to a loyal, paying customer and evangelist by shouting buzz and sales at them all day on Twitter and Facebook. You need to invest time in them, help them achieve their goals, help them solve problems, inspire them to do better, be better and live their life with empowerment. You can’t do any of these things if you don’t know who they are. There is simply no way around it.

Don’t Start With Tactics!

Download this Audience Analysis Worksheet to help you prioritize and analyze your audience. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology and will guide you through a series of questions that will help you segment and know your audience better.

The biggest mistake business leaders make when developing and executing their social media strategy is to start with the tactics and technology first before they know who their audience is.

You must know who your audience is, who you are and how you can help them solve problems. It’s only after you have this foundational knowledge that you can determine your social strategy and approach for building your social media plan.

The tactics and technology come last. Setting up a Facebook page or Twitter account is the easy part. It’s free and only takes a few minutes. It’s leveraging them with tact, smarts, and in an integrated approach focused on your audience and business goals as a top priority that will bring results.

There is no social media easy button. You must take time to research, listen, and understand your audience. A good social strategist often listens far more hours in a day than they do talk or spam social profiles. If you aren’t paying attention to who your audience is, what they are saying, how they are engaging and trying to understand deeply what exactly it is they need from you, I recommend you start today.

The heartbeat of social media is people. You can never go wrong by investing in human beings. Don’t waste another day on Twitter spamming, blasting noise. Make a commitment to be part of the beating heartbeat that helps the social ecosystem thrive with value, empowerment, relationships and more.

Your goal each day should be to inspire your audiences to connect with you with a goal of helping them achieve their goals. When you help them achieve their goals, you achieve yours by default. Inspire – Connect Achieve! Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be. Got it?

Heartbeat of Social Media Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “The Heartbeat of Social Media“. It includes a deep look at how communities work, what people are doing within them and how businesses can better understand how they can fit in, provide value and derive benefit as both a business as well as individual people.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be part of what makes the social network heartbeat healthy and alive!

The photo above was taken in our back yard which opens up to a lake and open space. We had the luxury of watching the courting of two Sandhill Cranes. We have since watched them raise their young chicks. We are enlightened by how they care for the young birds, and how they share their best stuff, always.

How does this relate to business you may be asking? Well, read on and you will see it relates in many ways.

You have a blog. You have a website. You may even have a content marketing plan and marketing strategy being executed.

My question for you today is this: Are you sharing your best stuff? Are you really, really sharing your best stuff?

I am seeing more and more business leaders, brands, bloggers, educators that are holding back on sharing the goods. Some are auto tweeting links to blog posts with out dated links or tools that expired over a year ago. Come on folks. This isn’t your best stuff.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to engage current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.
*Source: Wikipedia

The purpose of this post is not to teach you everything about content marketing. Doing such would not be possible in a single blog post anyway. You can review numerous resources at the bottom of this post that will help you learn more about what content marketing is and how to leverage for business results.

The purpose of this post is to encourage you to dig deep and answer the question “am I sharing my best stuff.” I hope that you can give yourself an honest answer. If you are not sharing your best stuff, then I hope you will be encouraged to do such.

Your audience wants to:

Be inspired

Be motivated

Be educated

Be enlightened

Feel empowered

Know something their competitors do not know

Learn how they can make a difference in their world, for their customers

Have access to the best information possible to make decisions

Here are 12 Tips To Determine if You are Sharing Your Best Stuff

1. Current. Is the content current? Bottom line if you are sharing and still promoting content that is two years old AND inaccurate, stop! Update your content and make it current to today, period.

2. Unique. Is your content unique? Does it offer something of value that is not already plastered on social media billboards, blogs and websites across the internet? Or does it offer something truly unique to you, your brand and your offering? Does it offer a unique way to solve a problem, learn a new skill or do something? What is unique about it? Are you sharing anything that offers unique value?

3. Helpful. Is the content going to help them in any regard? Are you helping them connect with others? Enlighten their thinking? Become more educated on a topic? Better their business or life in any regard?

4. Positive tone. Is your blog filled with rants and raves of all the things you hate or love? If the only time you feel inspired to blog is when something goes wrong with a brand you buy from or a bad client, then why complain about it on your business blog? Every blog post you write is leaving a brand impression with anyone who reads it. If all you do is complain, that is the brand personality you are building for your brand and yourself. Focus on providing content that is positive and enlightening. Yes, there is sometimes a need to share something negative to educate, but do it with caution and smarts. If you must blog about negative all the time, then consider starting a more personal blog to do such.

5. Purposeful. Does your content have a purpose. Is there a reason to write it, read it and learn from it? With every piece of content you should ask yourself, “what is my purpose of this content?” Does it provide value, meaningful, helpful, inspirational?

6. Solve a problem. Does the content help solve a problem or pain point your target audience has? Does it really solve the problem or does it just amplify the problem?

7. Does not include trickery. Do not trick your audience with inflated blog post titles, or never ending mazes to get to the content you advertise. If you tweet or promote in any regard a free white paper on a topic, then within a couple clicks they should be able to download the white paper. Don’t make them watch a video, click thru 10 pages and then find out they need to pay you $29 to get the white paper. Have some ethics and make it easy for them to get to what it was you advertised in the first place that led them to your blog or website.

8. Quality. Is the content written in high quality? Is it accurate? Is it informative? Are there grammatical errors? Is it something you would want to read and obtain value from doing such?

9. Share secrets. The truth is the many “secrets” you may think you have are not secrets at all. Share your best possible content. Of course you need to hold some back for your clients and to protect your intellectual property and “secret sauce.” However, I challenge you to share more “secrets” than you are today. I will guarantee the benefits of doing such will out weigh the risk if you just give it a try. We share some of our best stuff daily. The same tips I blog about, distribute via worksheets and more is the same content and strategies we use with clients.

10. Invest in your readers. Bottom line you can never go wrong by investing in people. Is your content investing in the brands and people visiting your blogs, websites, and social network profiles? Are you truly investing in them?

11. Good intentions. What are your intentions? Is your only goal to increase subscribers to your email list or to sell something? Or do you have a genuine goal to inspire, educate and empower. Keep your goals and objectives focused on providing value in every word you write, and your results will be exponential.

12. Inspire – Connect – Achieve! Inspire your audiences to connect with you and your brand. Help them achieve their goals and you will achieve yours by default. When all else fails and you do not know what to write about, write content that will inspire and help your readers, audience, clients, partners and target customer solve problems. Help them better their life or business and you both win!

Quit Holding Back

Why hold back? When you hold back and save only the best parts for yourself you may miss out on the greatest customer, partner or friend of a lifetime. Share what ya’ got, the good, the great and the awesome! I dare ya’!

Patience is one of the hardest things to have when it comes to building online communities. Many business leaders want to believe it’s as easy as creating a Facebook page, combined with asking (or begging) for likes and within days they’ll have an instant community.

The truth is that communities take time. Just like relationships are built on trust that is earned over time, communities are no different. The higher the patience, the greater the end results. Communities are made up of people coming from different backgrounds and education. They have different understandings and expectations what a community is and why they have joined your community.

Earning the trust of community members early on is critical. Community members start out in the “community” or “opportunity” zone and will move to loyal evangelists or paying customers over time, after trust is earned. Moving them from a “free” community member to a “paying” customer takes investment of time, sharing of information and patience.

Below are a few tips to help community leaders build loyal tribes of evangelists.

1. Be aware of the needs of new community members versus long standing members. New members have different needs than someone who has been a member of your community for a longer period of time. Be sensitive to their need for communication, introduction to other members and help getting acquainted with the norms of the group.

2. Set expectations and guidelines for all members in the community. Keep the guidelines positive but direct enough to provide the needed structure and safety for all.

3. Provide opportunities for members to converse openly. Invite them to special online or offline events. Encourage them to introduce themselves, share their needs from the community as well as what they can offer others.

4. Be available. If you are leading a community, make sure that you are simply available. You don’t need to be available 24/7. However, be available to answer questions, join conversations and help the community learn and grow. Make it clear when you are and are not available by setting proper expectations.

5. Be supportive of organic role development. If people in the community volunteer to take a leadership role for a specific area or task, openly invite, encourage and empower them to do such. Some of the best communities are self governed. If you as the leader of the community are the only one leading, it is likely to become a silo’d dictatorship versus a thriving, healthy community.

6. Be supportive of the OPC (other people’s communities.) One of the greatest benefits of community is the ability for community members to tap into the OPC. There is much power in bringing multiple communities together. Offer structure for these types of dialogs to happen and don’t be afraid you will lose community members by integrating the OPC. Be confident in and know the OPC will help you.

7. Set goals. Know what your goals and objectives are for the community. Take time to understand your audience and community members. Know what you want to get out of the community as well as what members want to achieve.

8. Share your best stuff. When it comes to offering value to the community, don’t hold back. Share your best tips, strategies and information you can that will help them. If you do this, others will do the same. A community of value is a community set to grow and succeed.

9. Be patient and acknowledge where in life cycle of community member growth the person is. Don’t expect new members to become loyal evangelists overnight. Give them time to build relationships, absorb information, learn, and feel comfortable with you and the other members.

10. Reward good behavior. Acknowledge when community members do really good things. If someone has been helping you with moderation, responding to questions then thank them publicly for such. Same goes for people sharing great information that provides value to others.

11. Offer unique information only available to the community. Don’t share the exact same posts to the community group you share on your public tweets, Facebook pages and Pinterest. Instead create unique content only available to members.

12. Inspire your audience to connect with you with a goal of helping them achieve their goals. If you focus on their goals, you will then achieve your goals by default. Inspire – connect – achieve. You can never go wrong by investing in real people.

13. Focus on the heartbeat of social media. The heartbeat of social media is you and me, it’s people. Focus on contributing to the healthy heartbeat of your communities as well as others. Don’t be the person spamming, trying to get more likes and follows. Instead, offer real value, invest in people. You’ll be amazed at the organic results with this small differentiation from what most are doing. Trust me, it works.

Heartbeat of Social Media Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “The Heartbeat of Social Media“. It includes a deep look at how communities work, what people are doing within them and how businesses can better understand how they can fit in, provide value and derive benefit as both a business as well as individual people.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be part of what makes the social network heartbeat healthy and alive!

Many business leaders under estimate the work required to develop good content marketing that drives real results. Many think it’s as easy as a simple blog post and you’re done. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Every piece of content you create should have a marketing plan to support it. Why invest in something if you don’t have a plan for how you are going to reap benefit from such?

Below are 16 Golden Rules for Content Marketing. I could write a much longer list of these. However, to keep things simple, we’ll stick to short and simple for now.

16 Golden Rules of Content Marketing for Real Results

1. Slow down to speed up. This is pretty straight forward. Take time to do the following things on this list before you invest in a copy writer. Content marketing is much bigger than a blog post or words on a page. Content marketing involves knowing your audience, setting goals, determining and executing marketing tactics to leverage the content to help you meet business goals and the list goes on. Take time to slow down so that you can speed up over time and continuously drive higher and higher return and efficiencies.

2. Build your content foundation. Think brand and message architecture versus random acts of messaging. Random Acts of Marketing will eat every last morsel of return for breakfast and lunch. Same goes for content marketing. Your brand architecture should include images, design and content. The content should be broken down into tiered messaging versus everything having equal value. For example, the highest tier would be your vision and mission statement where a product or service level message is several tiers lower. If you communicate with your audience not understanding these tiers and what they mean to your audience you will likely confuse them greatly.

If you are lacking at minimum a basic message and brand framework you will likely have a difficult time answering and/or following the rest of the tips on this list. If you having trouble knowing what to write about, how to integrate your content marketing then chances are you need to slow down to speed up and focus on your foundation before you execute additional random content marketing tactics.

3. Set goals. If you don’t know where you are going, you won’t know when you get there. Set goals that are SMART – Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound.

4. Know who you are. Know who you are and what value you offer your audience. Know what you mean to them. Know your strengths, weaknesses and how you differentiate from your competitors and replacement products or services.

5. Know what your audience wants. What do your customers, partners, clients, prospective customers, stakeholders and community want from you? How can you help them solve problems? What keeps them up at night? How can you offer them the highest value possible. Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences.

6. Know what ya’ got. What content do you have that you can leverage? Start by doing a content asset inventory. Identify all assets including but not limited to video, podcasts, written content, blog posts, whitepapers, and presentations. For each piece of content mark it as a status of “IN”, “OUT” or “UPDATE”. This basically means each piece of content is either going to be used, will not be used, or needs updated before it gets used externally. Download this content asset inventory worksheet to help you get started.

7. Embrace Imperfect Perfection. You must start somewhere. If you wait until everything is absolutely perfect you’ll never launch, or by the time you do it will be old news and not relevant. Focus on value to your audience over perfection.

8. Create once, use many. Focus on creating the framework mentioned in #2 above. When you invest in a solid foundation and create a “Message House” or “Message Bible” it enables you to create once and use many. This increases the ROI on all content. You start by developing a foundation from which you can build upon. From the foundational messaging and content you can tweak for different audiences, niches and campaigns as needed.

9. Integrate and avoid Random Acts of Marketing. Make it a goal to eliminate Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) wherever and whenver possible. The bast way to do this is to ensure content marketing is integrated with your business and marketing. Content should not be used as a band-aid to a bad sales or marketing week. Instead leverage it as a competitive weapon to inspire and connect with your audience. Focus on integrating content with every step of the sales and marketing funnel.

10. Be You. There is only one you, so be that person or that brand, period. Don’t copy your partners, customers or competitors. Build your own plan, brand and content marketing strategy. As I always say there is only one way to do social media, social business and content marketing, and that is the way that works for you and your business.

11. Stay fresh. Don’t get stuck in old ways. Stay up to date on industry trends, data, and news. Keeping your content fresh will help you stay relevant in the eyes of your most important audiences.

12. Try the cow. Think out of the box. The image to the right of this tip is a simple cow stuck on a fence. I have used this image in presentations, blog posts, ads and more with high return. It is one of the highest perfoming images of any we have used. Who “woulda thunk” a cow would work so well? Try it. You never know what results you may have. Your “cow” image may not be a cow. It may be a monkey, human being, plant or anything that makes people laugh or think different. My point here is to try something different.

13. Create a real conversion funnel. Don’t trick your audience into multiple opt-ins making them think they are getting something free when in reality you just want their email address so you can spam them. Focus on real value and a conversion funnel that quickly delivers them the content requested and helps you achieve the desired conversion over time.

14. Don’t over complicate it. Bottom line, you don’t need to over complicate content marketing. Focus on building your content and message foundation and brand, knowing your audience and the other things on this list. When you do such the content marketing becomes easier and easier.

15. Take them on a journey. If you are just starting out with a new venture, business, brand, campaign, research project or anything, take your readers along for the journey. Humble yourself and your brand. Let them know you are starting something new. Share with them the highs and lows. When you do this they become a closer part of your community. When you achieve success, they then feel as if they were part of building you, because they were. They will then celebrate the wins, achievements with you.

16. When in doubt inspire them. If you are new to all of this, the best thing you can do is to inspire your audiences as you work on the foundation of brand and message architecture. If you focus on inspiring your audiences to connect with you with a goal of helping them achieve their objectives, you will then achieve your objectives by default. Inspire – Connect – Achieve!

16 Content Marketing Golden Rules for Real Results from Pam Moore

Additional resources:

• Worksheet: Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology.
• Worksheet: Download our Content Marketing Asset Inventory Worksheet
• Slideshare Presentation: 16 Content Marketing Golden Rules for Real Results
• Blog Post: 25 Content Marketing Ideas for People Who Don’t Like to Write
• Blog Post: 28 Attributes of Good Content Marketing to Rock Your Social Business!
• Blog Post: Content marketing is not a new shiny object invented via social media
• Blog Post: 15 Reasons Random Acts of Marketing & Social Media Don’t Work (Marketing Nutz)
• Blog Post: You Can’t Fake Relevance in Social Media, Business & Life
• Blog Post: Is Your Content Worthy of a Like, Share, Pin, Retweet or Google +1? (includes definition of content marketing)
• Blog Post: Social Media Buzz, the False Perception of Social Media Success
• Blog Post: Are You Ignoring the Social Inspiration People Metrics?
• Blog Post: Inspiration Made Simple: Pick 3 Things
• Report/ Blog Post: Content and the new Marketing Equation (Brian Solis)
• Blog Post: The Definition of Social Business
• Website: Content Marketing Institut

The truth is your brand is all of these things and more. It’s what you tweet, post, pin, +1, Instagram and offer as a call to action. It’s what you write in emails, and what you don’t. It’s whether you talk about yourself all day on Facebook or if you offer real value.

Your brand is what you say, do and think. It’s what your employees do online and offline. It’s everything from your privacy policy, social media policy to the amount of spam email you send.

It’s how you manage crisis or how you don’t. It’s how well you listen and most importantly how quickly you respond when people request help or engage with you online or offline.

The Living, Breathing, Human Brand

The human brand is much like a living, breathing organism. It’s true definition is determined by those that love, like or even dislike you. A brand is made up of humans within your organization and finally defined by those outside your organization.

You can’t create a brand with a robot or algorithm. Yes, you can use data, analytics, research and more as inputs to develop your brand, it’s brand promise, core messages, vision and mission. Yet, it’s people that select the final colors and tagline. It’s humans who post the status updates. It’s humans who read them. It’s humans who click like, pin, post and share the content the humans in your organization write.

On average it takes a minimum of 6-7 brand touches for someone to remember your brand. You better make every touch count. It’s humans who decide if they like you or not, if they tell their friends good or bad things about you.

The sooner you can acknowledge the importance of becoming a human brand and the need to truly inspire and connect with your audiences, the sooner you will see results and progress as you integrate social media into the DNA of your organization.

Below are 13 characteristics of the human brand. I could write 100 of these because you can’t simply define a human nor a human brand in a short list of characteristics. However, here are 13 straight forward characteristics of human brands. If you are wondering what human brands do and think this is a good place to start.

This post is part of a series I am writing on the topic of brand humanization. Subscribe to the series, “Talk Human to Me” for updates, free webinars, brand worksheets, podcasts, tweet chats and more.

13 Characteristics of the Human Brand

1. Think like humans. You may be thinking that brands can’t think. Well, yes they can. Human brands have people on the inside that think like humans. They don’t think like a cash register or corporate building. They think about things that human beings do, eat, like and believe.

2. Care about humans. They care about the humans they engage with. They care if they are happy, sad, satisfied, frustrated, hungry or full. They care about their needs, wants, problems, desires and offering them real value, not just non-sense marketing tactics. It matters to them that they are cared for. They care about all the people in their ecosystem from customers to board of directors. They keep them at the front of all decisions.

3. Value relationships. Human brands value the people more than the dollar signs. They are not willing to trade a dollar for relationships gone bad. They know that investing in people is the only way and that relationships are both the cake and the icing of business and personal or professional success. You won’t see the human brand buying fake Twitter follower or Facebook fans. They value real human to human interaction and authentic relationships.

4. Listen to other humans. Human brands listen more than they talk. They speak when they need to speak but always have an ear to how their audience, clients, partners and stakeholders respond. They know their Google Analytics and other website data and analytics is a gold mine. They use the data to listen and learn about their audience, not only convert the transaction to a sale. You may find them listening more than talking when it comes to social media.

5. Talk like humans. Human brands don’t talk like robots or corporate collateral. They speak in language other humans read, listen to and understand.

6. Have a personality. What is your brand personality? Is it serious? Fun? Engaging? Inspiring? All of the above? Human brands have a personality that inspires and connects them with their audiences.

7. Show their “human”. Right in line with the personality, human brands aren’t afraid to let their human show. They laugh, giggle, sing, dance, talk, and may even get frustrated sometimes. They often let you see the people behind the avatars as they know they are their own best ambassador.

8. Make and own their mistakes. No human being is perfect and no brand is perfect because it is made up and defined by humans. Human brands are humble. They make mistakes just like you and me and they aren’t afraid to own it..

9. Are available. Are you available when your online or offline audience wants you to be? Do you respond to questions in a timely manner? Are you even available to answer questions? Or do you hide behind a corporate web form, fill your Twitter and Facebook stream with corporate speak? Human brands make themselves available. Even if they aren’t available 24/7 they let their audience know when they are available.

10. Know themselves. They know who they are and what they offer their customers, partners, online community and friends. They know their strengths, weaknesses and sweet spots. They know how to talk, listen and what makes them shine. They don’t guess what to post or pin as they engage in social with confidence and pride.

11. Know their audience. Just as they know themselves, they also know their audience. They know what their audience wants and how to provide it. They know how to inspire them, connect with them and help them achieve their goals. They know if they inspire, connect and help their audience achieve their goals that they will by default achieve their goals as well.

12. Agile. Human brands do not sit static, they evolve. Because they are always learning, listening more than talking, they are able to move with agility. They don’t have to jump on every shiny new object. They are able to jump with confidence at the right time. This offers them an extreme level of competitive differentiation. As those brands who are not in touch with their audience, who aren’t listening, and not focused on the goals and objectives of their audience have difficulty saying no to shiny objects as they’re always looking for the next best thing to magically bring them success. Human brands evolve with confidence and agility combined.

13. Invest in people. Human brands know they can never go wrong by investing in people. They invest in listening, learning, training, empowering, building teams and creating a culture that enables their brand to shine from the inside out. As Sandy Carter of IBM says, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” Even though I am a strong believer of strategy, I agree with her. Without investing in culture and the people both internal and external brands can’t be human.

What You Say?

Is your brand human? Do you wish it was more human? What about your brand is human? What is your favorite human brand? What is it that attracts them to you? Is it the way they talk, think, act, or simply everything about them?

Talk Human to Me Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “Talk Human to Me“. It includes a deep look at brand humanization and the power of the human brand.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training, worksheets and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be more human from the inside out within our lives and business.

Additional Resources:

• Worksheet: Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology.
• Whitepaper: Download 15 Tips to Zoom Your Brand Whitepaper
• Social Brand Humanization: Authenticity vs Transparency
• Talk Human to Me: 20 Tips to Humanize Your Brand
• KitchenAid: Bad Tweets Happen to Good Brands
• Are Your Employees Your Employees 24/7?
• Social Brands Can’t Be Perfect Because Human Beings Aren’t Perfect
• 20 Tips to Avoid Being a Social Brand Gone Wrong
• Social Trust Factor: 10 Tips to Establish Social Business Credibility
• How to Build a Social Brand That’s a Sweet Orange in a World of Bitter Apples

Today was my last day on an amazing business trip in Spain. I am in Madrid visiting a client, the British Council. I was invited to speak, train and consult with a group of amazing social business and digital marketing leaders.

I’ll be sharing more of the inspiration that poured from this event over the coming weeks as it’s just too good not to share!

The three words that quickly became the theme from the event were inspiration, passion and honesty. These words exuded naturally throughout the two day workshop and #SocialMediaTapas event.

As I watched the news unfold regarding the Boston Marathon bombings, and the China earthquake my heart broke. I was reminded of my many blessings and how much I have to be thankful for that money simply can’t buy. It was the first time I have been away from America during a crisis and it was difficult. My deepest prayers and heart go to all impacted by these tragedies.

Today, as I strolled the vibrant streets of Spain, I took the time to simply enjoy the moment. I didn’t check into Foursquare or snap mobile images to upload to Instagram and Facebook. Instead I just walked, watched, listened, engaged with the locals. I took in the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and experiences from everything and everyone around me.

I think back to just a few years ago when I left all the perks of a high paying 15 year career in corporate America to venture out to the world of social entrepreneurship. Wow, it’s been a crazy ride, but a ride I wouldn’t change for anything. You can learn more about my journey here “75 Things I Learned On My Journey to 100k Twitter Followers.”

Every obstacle that has come my way, every boulder jumped, every mountain climbed, has only made me, our business and our family stronger. It is these life experiences, good and bad, that build us and make me who I am and make you who you are.

We help clients from startups and entrepreneurs to Fortune 50 corporations. I have been in the shoes of our clients. I know their world and challenges because I lived it for 15 years. Every ounce of sweat, every tear and late night made me who I am. Those sacrifices also helped me learn and gave me experiences I can now use to help others. I can help them avoid challenges and jump over the obstacles with more agility.

Passion Stomps Writers Block

I’d had a bit of writers block the past month as I wasn’t giving myself enough time to let my mind rest and just “be me.” I knew I needed time to let my passion for life fill me up again so I could pour it out and share with others.

As I took the time “off” this afternoon hundreds of blog post ideas poured into mind. Although I was tempted to take out the iPhone to start jotting down notes for blog posts, I didn’t. I knew if I did I would immediately wind up on Twitter, Facebook, and who knows where else!? I stayed strong and kept the phone in pocket and simply kept dreaming, thinking and living.

The sun began to set, I was in complete peace. I am living my dream. There is nothing better than to know the work I do impacts the businesses and lives of others.

I know it is my passion for these things that has kept me going. I know it is focused passion that got me here this week with an amazing client who exudes a culture of focused passion from the inside out. I was honored to have the opportunity to pour all I had into them and for them. I received back more than words can describe.

The Focused Passion Within

Within me there is a desire and a passion to help others. To share knowledge to help people learn, grow and also fulfill their dreams. I have a dream and a goal to leverage the skills I have for the greater good.

I will measure success when one day I will spend 90%+ of my time on social good related initiatives. I know this chapter is what will get me there and it is one of the reasons I am so passionate about what I do. I know these are all stepping stones to the next journey, to the life that will never quit winding and delivering surprises, new friends and opportunities.

Let Your Passion Energize You

You must take time to let your passion energize you. Remember the reasons you started your business. What are the reasons you do what you do? When the going gets tough, focus on the passion, the reasons why. Don’t focus on the bits, bytes, blog posts, gadets, tweets, pins and check-ins.

When you feel you are losing your place in life, when you have more questions than answers, dig deep into the heart of what got you there to begin with. Quit asking yourself “how” you are going to get it all done.

Take time to breathe, experience and listen. Let the answers come to you. Let yourself be filled up with life so that you can pour it out to others and help fill them up too.

I look forward to the next month ahead. We have some amazing projects on deck and will be attending the IBM Smarter Commerce Event in May. If you are going to be there, hopefully we can connect and talk about your passions and your dreams in real life!

Though the next couple months are packed with client projects, tweet chats, blog posts, speaking panels / engagements and more, I am not going to let my life get so filled that I forget why I am living to begin with. I promise to turn off the “things” and focus on letting life experiences fuel my passions with focus. Can you do the same?

As I always say the heartbeat of social is you and me. If we don’t take time to nurture the heartbeat, it begins to lose it’s purpose and meaning. Take time to live, breathe and nurture your own heartbeat so you can do the same for others.

Slow down to speed up and let life and business come to you instead of always chasing it as fast as you can.

Heartbeat of Social Media Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “The Heartbeat of Social Media“. It includes a deep look at how communities work, what people are doing within them and how businesses can better understand how they can fit in, provide value and derive benefit as both a business as well as individual people.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be part of what makes the social network heartbeat healthy and alive!

I had a website built by some guy. It’s never worked.

We have a website, we just need you to help us get more sales.

My current website is fine. However, it doesn’t show up on Google and nobody knows we exist.

Our website is fine, it really is. I just need more customers.

We don’t have budget to invest in market research, business planning, strategy development, internal training or planning right now. We just need a website and Facebook page with lots of likes.

Can we meet to talk about a strategy to generate revenue for my business? I don’t have any money because I already spent it on the last agency that built my website, Facebook pages, printed collateral and new business cards.

Will you consider revenue share? We know our website is going to kick butt but we just don’t have any money right now. You can be a millionaire with us if you just help us for free right now!

This post is not for the social faint at heart. I am going to tell you what others want to tell you but don’t have the guts. It may not be what you want to hear. Yet it is likely what many of you NEED to hear.

The others in your social business and digital marketing ecosystem may have not told you what I am about to tell you because they wanted to sell you the website, coaching, training, Facebook pages, logo, video, Google Adwords setup or who knows what. Or maybe they haven’t told you because they don’t know how to fix it.

Your current social media efforts are not working because you started at the wrong place.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Change your thinking. Think digital social fabric, not website or Facebook page.

You need to quit thinking you “need a website.” The truth is you don’t. If you don’t know your audience, and don’t have a plan, the last thing you need to do right now is build a website that will be nothing more than a band-aid to a much bigger problem you may not know you have.

You can download our POST Audience Analysis Worksheet here. It will get you off to a good start in prioritizing and analyzing your audience.

Don’t even think about building a website if you can’t answer the majority of these questions:

• Who are you?
• What are you to your target audience?
• Who is your target audience?
• What are their demographics? Psychographics?
• What are their goals? What keeps them up at night?
• Why do you need a website?
• What do you want to achieve with it?
• What are your goals, objectives? What does success look like in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?
• What will you do to inspire, connect and engage your audience when they land on your website? What will you do to inspire them to stick around for longer than 30 seconds?
• What do you offer that the other 100 websites or businesses just like yours don’t already offer?
• Why should anyone care that your business exists? Why should they care your website exists?
• How will you nurture relationships?
• How will you communicate with them? What tone do they speak in?
• What social platforms are they hanging out on?
• Who do they hang out with?
• Why do they hang out on those platforms?
• When do they hang out on what social platform?
• How will you earn their trust, build credibility?

I could list 100 questions here but won’t. I think you get the point. We help our clients from entrepreneurs to Fortune 50, answer these questions every day with our social media and social business audits, social business and social media strategy development, consulting and execution services. I’m speaking from experience, not theory.

We often work more on the inside of organizations than we do on the digital outside because that is where most businesses need help. It’s important you start from the inside out. As Sandy Carter of IBM states, “culture eats strategy for lunch.” I agree with her statement 100% even though I am a lover and strong believer of strategy.

You are the Thread of the Social Fabric

What is the social web today? It is not a singular website, Facebook page, Twitter profile or Google + account.

It is not one singular blog post, tweet, status update, or pin. It is not one single experience but a series of experiences.

A series of conversations that weave a beautiful, relevant, vibrant, dynamic, breathing fabric that connects consumers, influencers, business leaders, moms, dads, entrepreneurs, teens, teachers, plumbers, gamers, programmers, geeks, fashion models, comedians, sailors, photographers, entrepreneurs and even grandma.

It connects them via threads of conversations, posts, pictures, pins, quotes, content, education, inspiration, laughs, prayers and even tears.

If you are not a positive contributing part of this intricately weaved social fabric the chances of you seeing any real return on your investment in your website or other digital assets are few and far between.

You need an integrated social business platform.

You need to develop an integrated business platform that will inspire, connect, entertain and attract your target customers to you. It must inspire, educate and engage them in a way that builds trust, nurtures relationships and makes them know you are relevant to their business and / or life.

I know it may not be what you want to hear from me when you fill out a web form on our website. We’ve had many business leaders asking for help making their current, broken platform work.

The truth is if your website is built on old technology, doesn’t have a user experience designed for your target audience it is often more cost efficient for us to start over than to clean up what you have. The reason is that your current digital platform is a mess. It was probably done by someone that didn’t understand or work under the constraints of what I describe in this post. They instead sold you on a random act of marketing, random act of social media or random act of website. It’s simply not how it works folks.

Avoid Random Acts of Marketing!

Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) will eat any morsel of a chance of ROI for lunch before you have time to open the fridge to see what your options are.

One of the biggest misconception is that you can just “do social media” and have overnight success. Many preach this and tout that you can just jump on Twitter or Facebook and you can be an overnight millionaire. While this may have happened for a few, it doesn’t happen for the majority. What these folks are really selling is quick fixes, band-aids and random acts of social media and marketing. I am not stating you shouldn’t hop on Twitter or Facebook. I am stating you should not expect overnight results.

If you do the double click on the folks preaching overnight success you will find many of them learned the hard way, though they may not tell you such. Many took years if not decades to finally make money online. Few of them have real business experience outside of their own internet marketing startup. Yes, they may be able to help you get where you need to go eventually based on tactics and a random set of deliverables. However, you need to know where you are going, first. This post is dedicated to those who of you who don’t know where you’re going and why you are going there in the first place.

If this post resonates with you, take a deep breath. It’s time you slow down to speed up. You may need to take a step back to take two steps forward. Quit listening to every self proclaimed “social media guru” selling you every Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + class and instead do what you know needs done.

It’s time you plan yer’ work and work yer’ plan as Granny would say! It’s time you get in the head of your target audience. It’s time to truly understand what it means to humanize your brand, story telling and your conversations.

The Language Is Changing

The social fabric is speaking a different language today than that of the days of corporate websites, collateral and traditional advertising. If you don’t learn the language you are going to be left behind in a big way. It IS the reason why your website is not working. So quit blaming it on the web developer you hired. He or she probably did what you told them to do. Stand up, take responsibility for your business and do what needs to be done, period!

If your current methods aren’t working, then fix them. We are happy to help you but we can’t help you unless you want to help yourself. Help me help you. Change your mindset and delete the notion of overnight success from your thinking.

Achieving real results is going to take commitment, research, analysis, late nights, and hard work. Quit cryin’ and do something about it. If you want help, call us. No, we can’t meet with you for free to help you plan your strategy and put a proposal the size of Texas together that you’ll try to go implement yourself. We can spot these “free lunch” seekers from a mile away ;)

For the brave and the strong we promise to work in the trenches with you. We will help you answer all of the above questions and more. We’ll help you develop and execute a strategy, plan, and integrated digital platform that will simply kick butt! If you don’t call us, call somebody. Your excuses are done. You can and will do this!

What You Say?

Did this post hit home for you? If it did, don’t be embarrassed. The first step is to acknowledge. The second is to take steps to change. If you have already been down this path, what tips can you offer to help others? If you are an agency or consultant, how often do you see this? If you had $1000 for every time you heard the questions would you also be on the warm beach with me?

Subscribe to our “Get a Grip on Social Media” newsletter for tips & tricks to get your business in shape for real social business!

Subscribe to our “Talk Human to Me” Series for tips on Brand Humanization and Nurturing Relationships

How many different ways can we say it before it finally sinks in as truth?

There is no easy button for social media.

There is no fast track.

There is no magic social media pill.

There is no magic carpet ride.

Facebook will not fix your broken business.

A social party is already happening in your honor, regardless if you’re there or not.

It’s not about the next big thing.

It’s not about you.

You must know your audience.

You must set goals.

You must integrate social into the DNA of your business.

You must deal with the skeletons in the closet, and fast!

You must focus on the needs of your audience.

You must help them solve their problems.

You need to create compelling content.

You need to get in the head of your target audience.

You need to inspire and connect with your audience.

You need to nurture relationships.

You need to read, understand and learn from your Google Analytics and Facebook insights.

Email is not dead yet. You can use it to nurture real relationships, not just spam prospects.

Social media is not a tool for you to blast your brand messages over and over. That is called spam.

Spam is not cool. It sucks. It makes you look like you suck when you do it.

You can not create “buzz” without a community and people to “buzz” for you.

The analogy of “buzz” has it’s origins in bees buzzing in a colony. If you don’t have a community, you don’t have a colony and therefore, have nobody to buzz with, for or about you.

I could write a book on the above same tips and truths. If I had $1,000 for every day I am required to speak them to business leaders, let’s just say I wouldn’t be writing this post. I would definitely be sitting on a warm beach somewhere with my toes in the sand and an umbrella drink in hand.

I speak the above words into the lives of business leaders we work with daily. Why? Because social business is hard to understand. It is hard for even the smartest people on the planet to understand that there is no easy button to social media or social business.

The Heartbeat of Social Media

There is only one button and that is people. The heartbeat of social media, social business, planning, integration, goals, objectives, measurement, content, ROI, ROR (return on relationships), marketing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, blogs, and more is you. It’s you and me and everyone else out there. It’s people. It’s human beings behind the avatars that keep the heart beating, not the spam links and self promotion, automated Twitter and Facebook accounts.

If you are struggling with how to “create buzz” for your next promotion, campaign or big sale, maybe you need to change your thinking. QUIT focusing on only the buzz, how loud you can shout and focus on who is listening to you.

Does anyone care what you have to say? Are you saying, tweeting, posting, Facebooking, pinning anything worth value? Is anyone listening on the other end? Is it bringing the people hearing it closer to you and your brand or pushing them away?

If you don’t focus on providing the most relevant content you possibly can and building community based on real relationships, the chance you are ever going to make it out of “buzz wanna be hell” is slim to none.

The heartbeat of social media is you and me. It’s people. It’s human. It’s humans talking together, working together, learning together, succeeding together, living life together.

There is no fast track to social buzz. There is only one track and that is the investment in the heartbeat, which is you and me.

You can never go wrong by investing in people, period.

If you clicked to this blog post thinking you were going to find the “easy button” I have likely let you down, maybe even ticked you off.

However, I encourage you to take a deep breath. Re-read this entire post but with an open mind. Try to take this entire post to heart, deep within your heart and brain. Do this with all your might and I guarantee you within a few days, weeks, months or maybe even years you will remember it.

You may continue searching the next two years for the easy button. You may call me names today. You may say I am just trying to complicate your life and business. However, I know I am right and you are wrong.

I know at some point in time you will remember this post and you will wish you would have listened to me. Why not do it now? Quit looking for the easy button. You will never find it. Take the same time and focus on the heartbeat of social media. Focus on how you can contribute to the positive beating heart of the social ecosystem. Try it and you might be simply blown away at your results… and possibly even the buzz you think you so desperately need today icon wink Social Media Easy Button… or Not!?

What You Say?

Are you looking for an easy button? Did you at one time seek it? Did you finally realize it does not exist? Do you need help in ending your search for it? How can you help others in the same boat you use to be in? Share your thoughts below in the comments. The sooner we can help those holding on to the journey to the “easy button” the better we will all be.

Heartbeat of Social Media Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “The Heartbeat of Social Media“. It includes a deep look at how communities work, what people are doing within them and how businesses can better understand how they can fit in, provide value and derive benefit as both a business as well as individual people.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be part of what makes the social network heartbeat healthy and alive!

• Worksheet: Download Content Inventory Worksheet to maximize to monetize your content!
• Worksheet: Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology.
• Blog Post & 51 Slide PowerPoint Deck: 34 Social Media Truths
• 75 Things I Learned on My Journey to 100,000 Twitter Followers
• 15 Things Every CEO, CMO, CIO, CTO Must Do Before Hopping on Twitter
• 10 Tips to Get the Twitter Conversation Started
• 21 Tips to Get Your Tweet On
• 55 Tips to Get Retweeted on Twitter
• 20 tips to Tame the Wild Social Media Beast
• Social Media is Not Rocket Science
• 15 Reasons Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) and Social Media Don’t Work
• 15 Social Media, Lies, Myths & Fairy Tales”

The number one question I hear when it comes to Twitter is “what do I talk about?”

Given that most people do NOT know what to talk about, many wind up either boring their social community to death or they turn them off because they default to talking about themselves.

Never fear. You do not need to default to tweeting like a self centered, babbling idiot.

Check out these 100 ideas to inspire, connect, entertain and delight your audiences. No, not every one of them is going to work for every tweeter and every audience. However, many of them will work for most people and most businesses.

As I always say “there is only one way to do social media, and that is the way that works for you and your business.” Listen to the advice others have for you, but determine priorities for investment of time, resource, conversation content based upon your objectives and goals.

Remember your number one goal is to inspire and connect with your audience. Help them achieve their goals and by default you will achieve yours. Inspire – connect – achieve! Don’t over complicate it.

100 Things to Tweet On Twitter Besides Yourself!

1. Tips to help your customers solve their business problems.

2. Tips to help your audience solve life problems.

3. Tips to help your audience, clients and friends live a better life.

4. Anything that shows you are human. Be real, engaging and talk like a human being, not a robot. Subscribe to our “Talk Human to Me” series for more tips on humanizing your brand.

5. Industry news.

6. News about your city, state, country or the world.

7. Content that will strike an emotion. Make them laugh, cry, and think. Made them feel something.

8. Links to videos, podcasts or other materials that inspire, connect and delight them.

9. Inspirational quotes. Did you know quotes are the #1 retweeted content on Twitter?

10. Quotes of famous authors, artists or business leaders.

11. to help people save money, time and resource. No, this does not mean you tweet coupons for your own business.

12. Information about a charity that needs help.

13. Photos of you doing something fun, inspiring or helpful to your community.

14. Photos of others doing something interesting. Remember, every tweet shouldn’t be about you!

15. Tips for how to get started with a new business or idea.

16. Tips for starting a business. If you are business owner, share your story, ups and downs.

17. Tips for how to use a product such as software, hardware, game or other.

18. Funny jokes.

19. Tips for local discounts or fun and unique things to do.

20. Adventures you experience while not working. Could include concerts, visits to the zoo, park, or even the neighbors house.

21. Photos of nature, sunsets or anything beautiful, funny, inspiring and entertaining.

22. Friendly reminders of important dates or holidays.

23. Holiday wishes.

24. Birthday wishes.

25. A simple hello, good morning or goodnight.

26. Thank someone for inspiring and delighting you.

27. Thank a favorite blogger, writer, thought leader, business, or artist for what they do.

28. Let someone know you appreciate them for simply being who they are.

29. Share tips from an event or presentation.

30. Share funny moments from a movie, sports game or event of any kind.

31. Information to help people avoid risk in business or life. This could include traffic avoidance, deadlines for state government requirements and the list goes on.

32. Share a song.

33. Start a conversation about anything other than yourself or your own business.

34. Ask a question that requires an answer other than yes or no.

35. Thank someone for commenting on your blog.

36. Ask a question to support a research project.

37. Conduct a poll.

38. Thank your community for following you.

39. Ask your community what they would like you to talk about.

40. Tweet pictures of your favorite food dish, restaurant or recipe.

41. Tell a story over a few tweets.

42. Ask for help.

43. Offer help to others.

44. Ask for tips for finding a product or service you want to buy.

45. Ask for opinions on a product or service you are considering buying.

46. Share your favorite content from other blogs and news media outlets.

47. Ask for tips of where to find good content that pertains to your industry, business or community.

48. Ask questions of others to learn about them.

49. Curate the best possible content you can find. Do NOT be afraid to share your top competitors content. Show confidence in who you are and what you do.

50. Let people know something interesting or funny that happens to you during the day.

51. Share a frustration, though do this with caution. I usually don’t recommend talking negatively excessively as it will turn many people off.

52. Do the mama test. Tweet like nobody is listenin’ except yo’ mama!

53. Share a new recipe.

54. Share tips on a hobby such as fishing, biking, skiing, rc cars and the list goes on.

55. Share your journey on reaching a goal such as weight loss, shedding a bad habit. By doing this you may inspire others as well as connect with people with the same interests.

56. Celebrations and milestones. Reach a big goal? Share it. As long as you are humble and share your good days, mediocre and even bad days your community will gladly celebrate with you as they will have helped build you!

57. Fun photos of an amusement park.

58. Photos of your business team enjoying life outside of the office.

59. Tips for others to take a break from work.

60. Tips for others to enjoy more life balance.

61. Connect and talk about many topics and meet new friends via a Twitter chat. You can join our chat, #GetRealChat, Tuesday nights at 9pm et.

62. Stock market or other financial tips.

63. Breaking news from national and world media outlets.

64. Progress toward goals and objectives in business and life.

65. Encouragement for a friend or colleague who you know needs inspired.

66. Retweets of other people’s awesome tweets and content.

67. Replies to others who tweet and talk to you.

68. Reviews, opinions and formal evaluations on products and services you have tried.

69. Check-in at your favorite restaurant or store via FourSquare or other geo application.

70. Weather tips if there is a storm in the area.

71. Statistics about products, services, industries or niches.

72. Data of any sort that can educate and teach others.

73. How to information and guides.

74. Maps or other helpful advice for tourists if you are in the tourism or hospitality business.

75. Welcome tweets when people check in to your business location.

76. Reply to people who tweet about your brand /business.

77. What you are thinking about. Tweet a deep thought daily tweet.

78. What you are dreaming about. Share your dreams and aspirations. Some may have the same dreams and you will be able to connect with them in a very unique way.

79. Customer services tweets to those who need help from your business.

80. Thank you messages to your customers for stopping in, purchasing something or simply being your customer.

81. Help other people achieve their goals. Share their content, promotions or charity fundraisers.

82. Be a connector.

83. Help people get answers to their questions.

84. Tweet and acknowledge similar interests. If you notice a new follower lives in a town you use to live in, let them know.

85. Compliment someone’s profile, bio or other information that inspires you.

86. Refer your followers to some of your favorite businesses, authors or colleagues.

87. Share something funny your kid or family member did that made you laugh. It might make others laugh too.

88. Share simple moments of life that share a part of you, show your human side but don’t come off as self centered.

89. Share a prediction.

90. Tweet a good Pinterest board.

91. Tweet a good Google+ community.

92. Tweet an engaging and inspiring group on LinkedIn.

93. Tweet a cool and inspiring Facebook business page, group or community.

94. Share a poll or focus group research which results will be shared with those who participate.

95. Share or start a poll.

96. Start or share a list on list.ly.

97. Teach others how to do something.

98. Help people simply do more, do less or simply be better.

99. Tweet this post so your friends can stop tweeting like self centered, babbling idiots.

100. You think of something. I have give you 99 ideas. You can at least come up with one and then add it in the comment section, can’t you? That way people won’t yell at me and say I only offered 99 tips when the blog title states 100! icon wink 100 Things to Tweet about on Twitter Besides Yourself!

What You Say?

Anything else I left off? What do you like to tweet about? What types of tweets do you like to read and engage with?

Heartbeat of Social Media Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “The Heartbeat of Social Media“. It includes a deep look at how communities work, what people are doing within them and how businesses can better understand how they can fit in, provide value and derive benefit as both a business as well as individual people.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be part of what makes the social network heartbeat healthy and alive!

Worksheet: Download Content Inventory Worksheet to maximize to monetize your content!

Worksheet: Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology.

I had a website built by some guy. It’s never worked.

We have a website, we just need you to help us get more sales.

My current website is fine. However, it doesn’t show up on Google and nobody knows we exist.

Our website is fine, it really is. I just need more customers.

We don’t have budget to invest in market research, business planning, strategy development, internal training or planning right now. We just need a website and Facebook page with lots of likes.

Can we meet to talk about a strategy to generate revenue for my business? I don’t have any money because I already spent it on the last agency that built my website, Facebook pages, printed collateral and new business cards.

Will you consider revenue share? We know our website is going to kick butt but we just don’t have any money right now. You can be a millionaire with us if you just help us for free right now!

This post is not for the social faint at heart. I am going to tell you what others want to tell you but don’t have the guts. It may not be what you want to hear. Yet it is likely what many of you NEED to hear.

The others in your social business and digital marketing ecosystem may have not told you what I am about to tell you because they wanted to sell you the website, coaching, training, Facebook pages, logo, video, Google Adwords setup or who knows what. Or maybe they haven’t told you because they don’t know how to fix it.

Your current social media efforts are not working because you started at the wrong place.

Planning to Fail is Failing to Plan.

Change your thinking. Think digital social fabric, not website or Facebook page.

You need to quit thinking you “need a website.” The truth is you don’t. If you don’t know your audience, and don’t have a plan, the last thing you need to do right now is build a website that will be nothing more than a band-aid to a much bigger problem you may not know you have.

You can download our POST Audience Analysis Worksheet here. It will get you off to a good start in prioritizing and analyzing your audience.

Don’t even think about building a website if you can’t answer the majority of these questions:

• Who are you?
• What are you to your target audience?
• Who is your target audience?
• What are their demographics? Psychographics?
• What are their goals? What keeps them up at night?
• Why do you need a website?
• What do you want to achieve with it?
• What are your goals, objectives? What does success look like in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?
• What will you do to inspire, connect and engage your audience when they land on your website? What will you do to inspire them to stick around for longer than 30 seconds?
• What do you offer that the other 100 websites or businesses just like yours don’t already offer?
• Why should anyone care that your business exists? Why should they care your website exists?
• How will you nurture relationships?
• How will you communicate with them? What tone do they speak in?
• What social platforms are they hanging out on?
• Who do they hang out with?
• Why do they hang out on those platforms?
• When do they hang out on what social platform?
• How will you earn their trust, build credibility?

I could list 100 questions here but won’t. I think you get the point. We help our clients from entrepreneurs to Fortune 50, answer these questions every day with our social media and social business audits, social business and social media strategy development, consulting and execution services. I’m speaking from experience, not theory.

We often work more on the inside of organizations than we do on the digital outside because that is where most businesses need help. It’s important you start from the inside out. As Sandy Carter of IBM states, “culture eats strategy for lunch.” I agree with her statement 100% even though I am a lover and strong believer of strategy.

You are the Thread of the Social Fabric

What is the social web today? It is not a singular website, Facebook page, Twitter profile or Google + account.

It is not one singular blog post, tweet, status update, or pin. It is not one single experience but a series of experiences.

A series of conversations that weave a beautiful, relevant, vibrant, dynamic, breathing fabric that connects consumers, influencers, business leaders, moms, dads, entrepreneurs, teens, teachers, plumbers, gamers, programmers, geeks, fashion models, comedians, sailors, photographers, entrepreneurs and even grandma.

It connects them via threads of conversations, posts, pictures, pins, quotes, content, education, inspiration, laughs, prayers and even tears.

If you are not a positive contributing part of this intricately weaved social fabric the chances of you seeing any real return on your investment in your website or other digital assets are few and far between.

You need an integrated social business platform.

You need to develop an integrated business platform that will inspire, connect, entertain and attract your target customers to you. It must inspire, educate and engage them in a way that builds trust, nurtures relationships and makes them know you are relevant to their business and / or life.

I know it may not be what you want to hear from me when you fill out a web form on our website. We’ve had many business leaders asking for help making their current, broken platform work.

The truth is if your website is built on old technology, doesn’t have a user experience designed for your target audience it is often more cost efficient for us to start over than to clean up what you have. The reason is that your current digital platform is a mess. It was probably done by someone that didn’t understand or work under the constraints of what I describe in this post. They instead sold you on a random act of marketing, random act of social media or random act of website. It’s simply not how it works folks.

Avoid Random Acts of Marketing!

Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) will eat any morsel of a chance of ROI for lunch before you have time to open the fridge to see what your options are.

One of the biggest misconception is that you can just “do social media” and have overnight success. Many preach this and tout that you can just jump on Twitter or Facebook and you can be an overnight millionaire. While this may have happened for a few, it doesn’t happen for the majority. What these folks are really selling is quick fixes, band-aids and random acts of social media and marketing. I am not stating you shouldn’t hop on Twitter or Facebook. I am stating you should not expect overnight results.

If you do the double click on the folks preaching overnight success you will find many of them learned the hard way, though they may not tell you such. Many took years if not decades to finally make money online. Few of them have real business experience outside of their own internet marketing startup. Yes, they may be able to help you get where you need to go eventually based on tactics and a random set of deliverables. However, you need to know where you are going, first. This post is dedicated to those who of you who don’t know where you’re going and why you are going there in the first place.

If this post resonates with you, take a deep breath. It’s time you slow down to speed up. You may need to take a step back to take two steps forward. Quit listening to every self proclaimed “social media guru” selling you every Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + class and instead do what you know needs done.

It’s time you plan yer’ work and work yer’ plan as Granny would say! It’s time you get in the head of your target audience. It’s time to truly understand what it means to humanize your brand, story telling and your conversations.

The Language Is Changing

The social fabric is speaking a different language today than that of the days of corporate websites, collateral and traditional advertising. If you don’t learn the language you are going to be left behind in a big way. It IS the reason why your website is not working. So quit blaming it on the web developer you hired. He or she probably did what you told them to do. Stand up, take responsibility for your business and do what needs to be done, period!

If your current methods aren’t working, then fix them. We are happy to help you but we can’t help you unless you want to help yourself. Help me help you. Change your mindset and delete the notion of overnight success from your thinking.

Achieving real results is going to take commitment, research, analysis, late nights, and hard work. Quit cryin’ and do something about it. If you want help, call us. No, we can’t meet with you for free to help you plan your strategy and put a proposal the size of Texas together that you’ll try to go implement yourself. We can spot these “free lunch” seekers from a mile away icon wink No, I Won’t Build You a Website If You Don’t Know Your Audience!

For the brave and the strong we promise to work in the trenches with you. We will help you answer all of the above questions and more. We’ll help you develop and execute a strategy, plan, and integrated digital platform that will simply kick butt! If you don’t call us, call somebody. Your excuses are done. You can and will do this!

What You Say?

Did this post hit home for you? If it did, don’t be embarrassed. The first step is to acknowledge. The second is to take steps to change. If you have already been down this path, what tips can you offer to help others? If you are an agency or consultant, how often do you see this? If you had $1000 for every time you heard the questions would you also be on the warm beach with me?

Dear Google, I do not understand you. Why do you end life for Feedburner and now Reader. Why do you have G+ cover images the size of Texas yet you are investing in self driving cars?

I understand that the usage of Google Reader may be going down. However, what about your loyal geeks that still love it? I remember Feedburner was suppose to go away, yet it’s still working.

The question is Google, do you know who you are? Do you know what your customers want? Are you providing them what they want and need? Do you care what we want? Or is your goal to make it as difficult as possible for the local large and small businesses to show up on your search?

Why is it I just moved to a new developing area near Orlando, Fl and find many businesses are not on Google search? I am not just referencing only small, broke companies but very large chains, big brands.

If these companies do have a presence on Google most of their websites are not integrated, a working map is hard to find. Yet I can go to Facebook and easily find their menus, website urls, local theaters with movie times, and easily see which of my friends checked in or rated them. It’s all just a click or two away on Facebook yet I spent literally 15 minutes searching for a large chain store and a movie theater on Google. This is not good for obvious reasons.

The new local review built into G+ is cool… IF my friends were on G+. However, only my online geeky friends are on G+ and most of them don’t live near me so are not reviewing the local businesses I want to visit and need a referral.

Google, in my humble opinion you have an identity & strategy problem. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know if you do either. Your current actions are not making me think you do. Yes, you may have an integrated strategy that is going to “blow me down Popeye”. However, I am not seeing it.

I use your apps, though not all of them. I love the new Google maps app that speaks to me and is so ever kind even if I make a wrong turn. Her voice is better than any competing app I have used. However, I fear putting too many eggs in your basket as one day you will just take them away with a three month notice.

We have seen excellent result from almost day one of integrating Google+ into our online strategy. However, it is not solely because of G+. It is the fact we have an integrated strategy inclusive of content, goals, objectives, understanding of our audience, how we can connect with them and how we can make Google work for our needs.

My concern is that many businesses do not have the same knowledge. I am seeing many small businesses start to “throw in the towel.” It is becoming too difficult for them and they simply can’t afford to maintain what it takes to rank well on Google. Their budgets are tight, and they are torn between providing content that inspires and connects with their audience that they can easily post on Facebook or taking time to figure out Google, again and again.

Obviously I think they need to do all of the above. However, I am tired of selling them on the fact and don’t do it anymore. If a business doesn’t want to implement an integrated strategy we likely don’t work with them.

Yet it is the businesses who are not doing this that I worry about. It’s also what makes me worry about your future. As where will those businesses go? Facebook? They are already on Facebook. Facebook is working for many and as I mentioned above it’s where I found my neighborhood movie theater, restaurants and more when moving to a new developing part of Orlando, Florida.

Yes, I still love you. I still will use your apps. I just question who you are that I love. It is a confusing feeling. I want to love you, I really do. However, it is the trust that is weakening. I fear you don’t have good plans to take care of my clients in a way that they come first, not your desire to stomp Facebook.

Yes, I know you have an integrated strategy for mobile and that killing Reader is part of such. However, what about those of us who like to read our blogs on an iPad, Macbook pro or even those crazies who yes, still use a PC loaded with Windows 8. Sorry, Google but they are still top readers on my blog. Remember, my friends, colleagues, clients, partners, and community read my blog and they are not all on G+. They will NOT go to G+ or an Android device to read my blog.

I recently lived in a very large neighborhood in Tampa, Fl. It had a high tech savvy demographic. Everything the members of the community did was on Facebook. We had Facebook groups with members in the thousands. Why should these people move from Facebook to your G+ communities? They already have their little leagues groups, online neighborhood yard sales, business referral network, all tightly connected on Facebook. Everyone is there. I can literally count on one hand the number of people in this neighborhood that are on G+. The neighbors that are on G+ are geeks like me, will read this post and likely find it difficult to prove me wrong.

As I always say, eventually you must find a way to get people “there.” What are you going to do to truly attract the businesses and people beyond something you think they “have” to do to show up on search?

So, as you are making your plans in the coming months and years I do hope you will remember who we are. I hope you will help remind us who you are and that we can have a better relationship with more known than not known future together.

Thanks to @MarkSchaefer for starting this conversation on Facebook this morning. I then continued the conversation by posting a few questions to my personal Facebook business page and those participating asked if I could take it to a more public forum for broader discussion.

What are your thoughts?

Many of us have recently thought social media and business leaders were finally starting to “get” the importance of real relationships with human beings. However, unfortunately there seems to be a new wave of cheaters, influence score addicted self proclaimed “gurus” that are willing to risk their reputation, integrity, ethics, trust, clients and relationships for a few hundred or tens of thousands fake Facebook fans.

The worst part is these are the same people who are tweeting and preaching the importance of authenticity, relationships, and how to build and be a human social brand.

A few of them are even trusted by some of the world’s most respected brands. It is the definition of failure and a sign of true insecurity in my humble opinion. More of my thoughts on this topic will come in a separate post as this one is specifically written to help you identify if a Facebook page is loaded with real fans or is being gamed by an influence, short fix craving cheater.

It’s pretty easy to check if a Twitter account has fake follwers. You can go to Status People Fake Follower checker and get instant statistics on any Twitter account, including yours. Below is a quick screen capture of the results from Status People for a Twitter account. The account is that of a CEO for popular Twitter measurement tool. On the company website they tout the success of their CEO in building community and that he/she has over 100k Twitter followers. Well, according to Status People, they are fake as fake can get. This lost instant credibility for me and is likely not a tool I will recommend nor take into the accounts and business of our clients. Quite unfortunate.

Note: If you have a large Twitter following, Status people only analyzes a portion of them. The statistics are not perfect.

So how do you determine if a Facebook page has fake fans? While not quite as simple, you can still put multiple data elements together to make a pretty good judgement call on the authenticity of their proclaimed community.

In late 2012, Facebook started to crack down on Fake fans and accounts. Many business pages lost a good portion of their fans if in fact they were fake. Facebook claimed that 8.7% of accounts were at that time fake or undesirable.

Too good to be true? Yes, it sure is!

Have you ever looked at a Facebook page of someone who recently launched a blog or business? You check out their Facebook page and find that they have tens of thousands of fans in just a short time.

At first you may think to yourself, wow, this person must really know how to rock social media and build community.

However, as you dig deeper and do the double click you see that the engagement is nonexistent, even if they have thousands of fans. You click on some of the “likes” they have received on recent posts and it’s obvious they are from a country foreign to them. It’s also obvious the likes are from fake accounts.

The social trust factor you had when first clicking on their page is pretty much out the door. You do the double click around their page, blog stats and realize they are bogus, cheaters, and buying their fans, period.

The chance that you are going to trust them to help your business is now becoming slim to none. If they’re willing to cheat at something as simple as a Facebook fan, what else will they game for themselves or a buck to make from you and your business?

These cheaters think they can game the system. They hope that you will not do the double click on what’s behind the black curtain. They hope you will just see the high number of Facebook fans and that you will have instant trust for them. They hope that you will now opt in to their email list and comment on their posts. If they are really successful at fooling you, you might even share the content or their page with your friends and colleagues.

Building a community takes time and investment. Purchasing fake fans is cheating, unethical and wrong. Oh and by the way, it’s also in direct violation with Facebook terms and conditions.

The best and only way to see real success in social business and life is by investing in people. By this I am referring to real people, real relationships with human beings, not robots! I am not referring to fake accounts, fake followers or gamed strategies.

A lie has speed, but truth has endurance. ~Edgar J. Mohn

3 Ways to Identify if a Facebook Page has Fake Fans

1. Verify source city / location and age of their fans. With this step you are checking if it is possible their Facebook likes are coming from a foreign country for which they have purchased fans. This can be done via paid services through agencies who offer such.

a. Click on the number of likes on the page via the big box underneath the Facebook page cover photo. You may need to click the arrow to show the box if they have ordered the number of likes to be shown lower in the list.

b. Assess the results.

Next you will then see a page which highlights the following information:

• Most popular week.
• Most popular city.
• Most popular age group.

Is the popular city their city or a city they do business in? Or is it a far away country? Do they do business in that country? Do they have a large following in that country? Or is it a foreign country which they do not do business in, do not have a valid following from and likely purchased fans?

What is the most popular age of the fans? Are they 18-24 yr olds? Are they 35-44 years of age or older? Or a different age category? Does the age match their target demographic? Does it make sense this age group would be so engaged with their content and services?

2. How many people are talking about them on Facebook? If they have 35,000 fans/likes but only 50 are talking about them, well you have a red flag. Are they posting content daily? If yes, either a.) they suck at engaging their fans or b.) their fans are not real so they can’t engage.

Below I posted a couple examples from Facebook pages. The first is from my own personal business page. The second is from a page that could potentially have fake likes. Note that my page with only 25% of the fans of the other page has more people talking about it. A proof point that it is not about having a large number of fans if they are fake or not engaging with you and your content.

3. Who is “liking” their daily posts and content.

This one is super easy to check. Just do a quick scan of the content they are posting. How many likes are they getting? Is there an equal distribution of likes? Or are there tons of likes on one day and zero engagement on other posts. Yes, it could be the posts were more engaging or they just rocked Facebook edge rank that day. However, you should be able to see any trends as you scroll the page.

Click on the number of likes link under any post that seems to have a substantial number of likes. It will then take you to a page where you can see the profiles of the likes. Click on a few of them. Are they real accounts? Or are they fake? Do they appear to be from a same foreign country for which their most popular city is in the Facebook insights? If yes, you have another red flag and they may be paying for those likes.

4. When Did Their Fans Become Fans?

On most pages you can see the monthly activity within the timeline. Did they jump from 1,000 fans to 20,000 fans in one month? If yes, they may have had a very successful campaign, became an overnight success online and offline. This is all possible. However, if the data analysis above shows red flags and they show an unrealistic jump in the first few months of launching a page or in any given single month, the chances they are fakers just increased.

The Whole is Greater Than The Pieces

You can’t really assess if an account has fake fans from only one data element. It’s important to give people and brands the benefit of the doubt. Look at several data elements. If all four of the above data elements don’t look right you may have a faker on your hands. It’s up to you what you want to do from this point and if you trust them with your customers, data and business success.

Be Human!

Remember relationships happen between real people, between two human beings. Real communities are made up of real people, not robots. Robots do not read, engage, get inspired, laugh, contribute or own a credit card. Building a brand, business or community based upon fake numbers is unethical and in the long run will get you no where.

Invest in real content that helps your audience, employees, customers, partners and greater community solve problems. Inspire them to do better, be better. Focus on their goals and objectives. You can never go wrong by investing in people, period. Investment in robots will get you quick gains that are fake. They will not help build your business for the long term.

What You Say?

What are your thoughts when you come across a business page who has fake followers? What happens to the trust you had for the organization? Do you think it shows a sign of integrity, good ethics? Would you trust the business? What if you trusted them and really liked them before finding this out? Will it make you think differently of them?

I’ll be writing up a few more posts on this topic to get to the heart of the matter, digging into why people decide to cheat when in reality it’s buying them nothing but robots.

Please comment below and let’s help make a difference in the social ecosystem. Let’s encourage people to come clean on this behavior, to stop faking it and trying to fake us out. We should ask, expect and demand more. It is a silent elephant in the room that needs to be pushed out, period.

Talk Human to Me Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “Talk Human to Me“. It includes a deep look at brand humanization and the power of the human brand.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training, worksheets and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be more human from the inside out within our lives and business.

Worksheet: Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology.

Here’s what we know:

1. Cover images are now super size. When I say super size I mean super size! Google claims we can upload cover images with a max size of 2120 x 1192. When doing this images will be displayed in 16:9 ratio.

You can see the cover image we quickly threw together below. It took us 5+ attempts to get the recommended image size to successfully upload. It kept getting hung up and freezing.

While I like the big cover, it’s a bit too big for my taste. I am a meat and content person so now I simply have to scroll more to see the juicy content I am seeking. I see where they’re going and am a big believer in visual marketing. I’m just not sold 100% the cover image needed to be this big. Thoughts?

2. The about tab is now split into sections for your story, places and links. Google claims this will make it easier up to update? Hmmm… not sold on this one. While it does include a splash of color above each section, it’s still a “so what” feature to me.

3. New link on left (tab) to the Google+ sidebar for your local reviews. This assumes you’d rather post your preferences, opinions & reviews on Google+ versus other popular and competitive sites like Yelp, Urban Spoon & even Foursquare.

With a couple searches it’s clear my local friends are still not actively using Google nor providing reviews so this proves not useful to me as a consumer or business owner seeking services and products. Chances are unfortunately this will likely wind up part of search and yet one more thing brands have to worry about getting populated and integrated with their Google platform. Most of us saw this coming.

4 Privacy: Google claims you can still choose who sees what including what fields in the new “about” section. You can limit to specific circles, open publicly or only yourself can view.

5. Global Rollout Timing: They note these changes are rolling out gradually so if you don’t see the changes on your Google Plus page, hopefully you will soon.

Image 1: Here is a super quick cover image I threw together. After approximately 5 attempts it finally worked using Google’s recommended max size of 2120 x 1192.

Image 2: The new about section with the tabs. Haven’t prioritized to update this content in awhile. On the list icon wink Google+ Gets a Refresh: Super Size Cover Image, Local Review Tab & More

Image 3: Local review page. These are the organic results I received when I typed in my local area including “Lake Nona, FL.” It auto populated and added “Orlando, Florida” since Lake Nona is not yet an official city.

What are your thoughts?

Do you like the new big cover image? Or is it too big? Do you see value in the new about sections? Will you or do you already use the local reviews and check-ins feature? Will this update inspire you to post more reviews on Google local? Do you think this is really an update or Google still playing catch up to Facebook and other networks?

In honor of the original poet, rapper & brilliant writer, I thought it was a perfect day to repost one of my favorite blog posts I have ever written. This was originally published December, 2010 on my personal business blog when I had just left a 15+ year career in corporate America to venture into the world of entrepreneurship. I often went to Dr Seuss for inspiration.

The words on this post literally flew out of my brain onto the keyboard the day I wrote them. We were in the middle of a move downsizing into a smaller home to follow the entrepreneur dream. Little did I know at the time this was an article that would put us on the map, help us get syndicated on sites across the globe and the list goes on.

So my key message to you today… when the going gets tough, the tough pull out a dash of faith, prayer and a Dr Seuss quote! ;)

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The older I get the more I realize how smart my mother & Dr. Suess are!

Yes, Dr. Suess may have some crazy rhymes and guys drawn in his books. However, if you look at the core of his thoughts and words, the man was brilliant. I think he can teach us some nice lessons in regard to social media.

1. “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
-Authenticity and transparency in social media is the green in the green eggs and ham. I like realness Sam I am! Don’t be somebody different offline than you are on Twitter and Facebook. There is one you.

2. “Be who you are and say what you feel because those that matter don’t mind and those that mind don’t matter!” ~ Dr. Suess
Quit worrying 24/7 about what everyone thinks of you. Build your plan, work your plan and get out there! Yes you will need to manage your brand, reputation and image online. However, make it real!

3. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” — Dr. Seuss
-Are you laid off, fired from corporate or plain just quit? Out of a job, quit cryin’. It’s a blessing. Get on with your life and build your life in your own way!

4. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss
-You’re in love with the Twitter bird and you know it! If you’re dreamin’ of him, it’s a fact.

5. “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” — Dr. Seuss
-If this isn’t the truth! Take charge of your life. Go, people go! Think of the communities you can build, the business you can win and the people you can connect with if you only try! Quit following in your competitors footsteps. Make your own path and make it happen!

6. “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” -Dr Suess
-This one makes me think of how complicated we make social media. The newbie questions of what’s a retweet, what’s a tweet vs a twit and the list goes on. The best advice I give people is “just do it!” The answers are simple if you only engage. — Dr. Seuss

7. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” -Dr Suess
-Just because you have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, it doesn’t make you any better than the guy who is new to Twitter and has 8. You were there once too. That person is a person and in reality probably smarter than you!

8. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”-Dr Suess
-Listen and learn. Read, engage, watch your mentors, learn from them. You’ll soon learn and build your own track.

9. “We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” -Dr Sues
-I love this one! Reminds me of all the awesome people I have met on Twitter. Late nights, early morning, I love my Tweet buddies. I have met people from around the world. We all have a bit of quirky weirdness in our walk. Let it quirk and you’ll find other quirkers!

10. “Being crazy isn’t enough.” -Dr Suess
-Being a crazy bird isn’t enough. Yes, have humor. However, you need to add value. Inspire, educate and engage with your audience. Don’t just blast craziness! Don’t approach social media like a crazy bird out of the crazy cage. Yes, you may be excited you learned how to tweet, but put some sense into those 140 characters!

11. “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!” -Dr Suess
-Social media is filled with humor. Just look around. Do a search on Twitter for the term “get more followers” and you’ll see just how many funny crazies there are who think they are making progress spamming. Embrace the humor of social media folks.

12. “I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent!”-Dr Suess
-Stick to your words and make your words stick!

13. “Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!” -Dr Suess
–Think bigger than the tweet, faster than a zoom and what you can do if you reached for the moon! Be different. Be bold. Stand out from the crowd.

14. “In my world, everyone’s a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies!” -Dr Suess
-This one reminds me of the people who think social media is free, that social media alone is going to save their business. Get over it folks! Social media is far from free. It doesn’t enable you to eat rainbows and it sure as heck does not poop butterflies. It poops bad ROI and negative brand equity if you don’t manage it and plan. Build your plan and work your plan!

15. “How did it get so late so soon?” -Dr Suess
-Happens to me every night on Twitter. I am just getting into it and I pass out on the laptop. If only there were more hours in the day. My how time flies when you’re having fun!

And I will close with my all time favorite Dr. Suess quote:

“You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!”

Go get-r-done peeps!

*Important Note: The above quotes are either from Dr. Seuss or inspired by Dr Seuss.

For those twitter peeps who like to tweet urls, well your tweets are going to get shorter.

Starting today, any tweet that includes a url will now be reduced by 2 characters. This takes it to 118 characters, or 117 for https links.

This was first announced to the Twitter development community by Twitter in December. It’s just now being implemented and goes live today.

Such change is a result of Twitter’s t.co link wrapper. Since it extends the maximum length of a link wrapped by t.co from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs & from 21 to 23 characters for https lengths you now have less tweet landscape to work with.

For those new to Twitter or who don’t tweet a lot, it may not seem like a lot to you. However, for those who have been around the Twitter block you know 2 characters can change a tweet considering we only have 140 total characters to work with anyway! Anyone who knows me, the woman of many words, characters and tweets, I am not too happy with this change.

All applications that leverage the t.co wrapped lengths will now have to accomodate the new lengths.

When Twitter users post a link within a tweet, Twitter automatically wraps the link in their own proprietary wrapper (t.co). This happens even if another url shortener is used such as bit.ly and others. Twitter supports this method as they believe it helps keep the Twitter ecosystem safe and helps avoid computer viruses. There is obviously key benefits to them being able to track all urls for watching trends and enabling future monetization on such data in the future.

Do you think this change will impact how and what you tweet? Do you use the t.co shortener or a different one? Why do you use the shortener you use?

My opinion… I wish they would figure out how to give us two characters versus take them away. What’s your 2 cents?

What do I talk about?

How do I know how much is too much?

What do I share?

What if my competition is watching me?

What if my boss is listening?

What if our board of directors is watching us?

Do people really want to know what I ate for lunch?

No, not all people want to know what you ate for lunch. Some may but most don’t. Depending on how connected you are with your community they may be interested in what you eat, where you go for breakfast.

However, fortunately, they aren’t going to determine if they follow you, like you or buy from you based upon if you ate a croissant or an egg sandwich.

If you take a look at the questions above, the root of them is “how much do I share and with who?”

To understand this, let’s first dig into the definition of authenticity and transparency.

Authenticity

authentic — adj
1. not false or copied; genuine; real: an authentic antique.
2. having the origin supported by unquestionable evidence authenticated; verified: an authentic document ofo the Middle ages; an authentic work of the old master.
3. entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with known facts or experience; reliable; trustworthy

Transparency

transparency — adj
1. easily detected or seen thru.
2. readily understood.
3. characterized by visibility or accessibility of information, especially concerning business practices.

Transparency is how much you share and authenticity is the truth of your words and actions.

The biggest mistake people make when it comes to building their social brand is blurring these two words. They often end up in a social brand cycle where they never feel comfortable sharing so they sound like corporate speak 24/7. Or they may do the opposite and share everything including where they buy their toilet paper!

Many confuse transparency with authenticity and think that if they don’t share the same thing with everyone then they are not authentic or real. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Authenticity does not require same level of transparency with every relationship.

The truth is you will and should have different relationships with different people. Relationships are human to human and are not based on cookie cutter conversations or content frameworks.

It is this uniqueness that makes relationships so special and unique. It’s the type and varying level of information shared between two human beings that builds trust and enables us to nurture real relationships. Relationships that bring both personal and professional benefit.

Because we have unique relationship with each person, doesn’t mean it’s a fake or that either one of us is not being authentic. We all connect in different ways.

We share different details about our brands, our personal lives with one another, different layers of transparency depending on who we are, industry norms, who is in our community and most importantly who the recipient / person is on the other end. How much we share may very well determine over time how the relationship is nurtured, how close it becomes and the benefits achieved.

Know Yourself. Know Your Audience.

To understand this and truly inspire and connect with the people within your communities, you must both know yourself as well as your audience.

Who is in your community? Who is your audience and why they should give a rip about what you have to say. What do they need, want? What keeps them up at night? What problems do they have in business and life? Where do they hang out online and offline? What do they talk about? What tones are they talking in? Why are they hanging out where they hang out? What do they want you to talk about?

To connect with them you must also know who you are, what you have to offer them and how you can help them solve problems? Becoming a human brand isn’t going to happen overnight. It demands investment in time, resources, people, planning and nurturing of real and authentic relationships.

Check out this article I recently wrote “Talk Human to Me: 20 Tips to Humanize Your Brand” which offers brands new to such concepts an introductory understanding of what they’re in for.

Transparency Varies by Brand and By Person.

The answers to these questions above will help determine what you are comfortable sharing. I always tell our clients that we can’t determine for them what authenticity means or how transparent they should be. We can guide them to the answers.

However, each brand and person has unique dials and thresholds for authenticity and transparency. What you are comfortable with sharing, the next person isn’t. How your audience will react to what you share also differs by brand and persona.

Therefore, this is why you must know yourself and know your audience. There is no way around it. You can never go wrong by investing in people, period.

Don’t Complain That the Word Authenticity Is Overrated

Although the word authenticity may be over used in the social ecosystem, it is still highly mis-understood. It’s a foundation for social business success. I don’t care if you are tired of hearing about it.

The truth is most brands don’t understand what it is or what they should share when online. They are confusing these two words every day. The more we can talk about these topics openly and help one another, the more we will all grow and learn.

I encourage you to be a healthy part of the ecosystem, not one that complains and rants about if a word should be used or not.

What You Say?

Do you struggle with how much of what to share on the social networks? Before now did you truly understand the difference between authenticity and transparency? Has your organization seen success by digging deep into who and what you are? Taking time to develop a plan and get to know your audience?

Talk Human to Me Series

This blog post is part of a series titled “Talk Human to Me“. It includes a deep look at brand humanization and the power of the human brand.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training, worksheets and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be more human from the inside out within our lives and business.

Your customers are human. Your partners are human. Your employees are human. Even your social media fans and followers are human.

So answer this question… why are you talking to them like they are a robot who wants to read your corporate speak? Why are you afraid to let your human show? Why do you keep trying to win them over with stupid stunt marketing and upside down tricks?

Your audience wants to see you, hear you and understand you. They want you to inspire them to connect and engage with you. They want you to help them achieve their goals and objectives. They want relevant content and conversation that makes them think. They want inspired to do different, do better and be better.

So tell me, are you doing these things? Are you even thinking about these things? Or are you too focused on yourself? Too focused on your own campaigns or developing the next big thing that you forgot why you were doing it all to begin with?

Humanizing your brand is a requirement, not an option if you want to survive in business today. Yes, you can put brand humanization on hold. However, every day you lose is a day you could be building relationships, nurturing friendships, establishing and earning the respect of powerful brand evangelists who will shout from a mountain top how wonderful you and your brand are.

Don’t wait. The time is now. Here are 20 tips to help you humanize your brand starting today. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to do these things. Start now and start somewhere. Perfection is the enemy of good. Embrace imperfect perfection.

This is the third in a series I am writing on the topic of brand humanization. Subscribe to the series, “Talk Human to Me” for updates, free webinars, brand worksheets, podcasts, tweet chats and more.

1. Start from the inside out.

I recently participated in a Lowe’s Social Business event as a keynote and breakout speaker. They invited internal business leaders to participate in two days intense days of training, collaboration and out of the box thinking.

It was enlightening to see how they are approaching social business from the inside out. It starts with their CEO and feeds like a wildfire throughout the organization. There is something different about the way their team works together, shares information with a goal of truly helping one another. You must know who you are and what you are before you can know how you can inspire and connect with your target audiences.

As Clarissa Felts from Lowe’s said, “social didn’t transform our culture, it revealed it.” Wow, I just love that quote. Good job Lowes. Your culture shines and it was a pleasure working with your team.

Sandy Carter of IBM, who also participated in the event preaches, “strategy eats culture for lunch.” I simply love this and even though I am a lover of strategy, I a do agree with her.

2. Start from the outside in.

At the same time you start with internal culture, building your social business from the inside out, you must also start with a focus on your customer, audience, community and stakeholders. Who are they? What do they need and want? What keeps them up at night? How can you help them achieve their goals? Where are they hanging out online? What conversations are they having? How can you have a relevant conversation with them that brings them value?

Check out this Audience Analysis Worksheet based upon the POST Methodology for tips in prioritizing your time on social networks based upon your audience needs and goals.

3. Think like a human. Focus on relationships.

You must get out of the old school thinking of only email blasts, traditional advertising. Think about the conversations, the content and the way you can build relationships with real human beings. If you think like a corporate engine or cog in the wheel you are going to have a hard time connecting as a human being.

Relationships are the life raft of the never ending social network technology changes. If you focus on the relationships your audience will follow you wherever you go, despite how the social landscape changes. This is because they are not connecting with you as a Twitter handle or brand name, but instead as a human being or group of human beings.

4. Have a personality.

Knowing who you are is obviously key to having a brand personality. If you don’t know what your brand personality is then you better figure it out. Who are you? What are you? Are you serious? Are you funny? Are you a combination of both? What is the tone of your conversations? Tone of your educational material.

Social media is going to open everything up for everyone to see. If you have one personality online and another when a customer calls your support center, it is going to become quite apparent. Nail this in the early stages and it will become an asset to you forever.

5. Show up (in other words, be available.)

Regardless if you are communicating with your customers, partners and audience online or offline simply be available. Don’t setup the latest social network profile unless you plan to actually show up. Show up more than once a week or once a day.

Don’t show up to just brag about your latest reward won, promotion or blog post. Instead show up with a goal to inspire and connect with your audience with an underlying goal of helping them achieve their objectives. Be proactive and responsive with the interest of your audience and fans at the heart of all.

6. Speak in your customers language.

Delete the corporate mumbo jumbo speak. Social media is not a billboard for your 1995 corporate collateral. Speak in a tone, words and rhythm your customers, partners and social community can understand. Use language that inspires them and connects them to you and your brand.

7. Stop the interruption marketing.

Social media is not broadcast entertainment. You audience is going to see your self fulfilling broadcast as an interruption to their discussion. Build the relationships and earn the right to communicate with them.

Share information that brings them value, not just helps you increase your blog traffic. The best social businesses listen more than they talk. Listen, watch and learn from the conversations you see and hear online. You’ll then know better how to engage in a way that brings value.

8. Invest in people.

This goes for both internal and external. If you have people in your organization that don’t understand social media and how becoming a social business relates to them and their job, then by all means educate them on such. Invest in educating your top executives down to the lowest level employee you have. Make them aware of what you are doing and WHY.

Invest in the people who are in your social communities. What do you know about them? Do you see them as “likes” and “followers”? Or do you see them as human beings you could be building relationships with? Do you believe they matter? If not, you should. You can never go wrong by investing in people, period.

9. Put some thought behind how the corner office get online.

We help brands of all sizes get their corner office online. It is not a once size fits all. Do not think you can simply throw up a Twitter handle and a new executive Twitter bio and overnight your executive team will be rockin’ Twitter. It takes time, effort and a strategy for each and every individual who gets online and is going to represent your brand.

Do your customers really want to see your CEO tweeting 24 hours a day? Be careful of the automation. Less is more.

Help your executive team build their own personal persona, find content they can share that brings value to their audience while sharing a bit of themselves at the same time. Help them identify hobbies, quotes, favorite authors and other simple ways they can inspire and connect with those who follow them. If you need help with this and are struggling with creating executive brand personas or integrating them into your strategy externally call us, we can help.

10. Show us your community manager.

If you have a community manager or a team of community managers representing your brand let us know who they are. Show us their faces. Tell us what their personal profiles are if they are online themselves and are comfortable doing such. The more we can connect with the people of your brand the easier it will be to build relationships.

11. Encourage your audience to be human.

If you only speak in corporate speak your audience will either turn you off or will begin to speak the same way to you. How many times have you seen a brand only speak corporate? When you look at their Twitter or Facebook conversations, they are far from human. Because the brand isn’t sharing their human side, their community isn’t either. Encourage your audience to engage, laugh, be funny. Let them share opinions even if they differ from yours.

12. Strike an emotional chord.

Emotional brands are the brands that are building real relationships in the social ecosystem. Make me laugh. Make me cry or make me mad. Do something that makes me think different, be different. Inspire me to do more, be more and leverage you, your team or your products and services to do such. The more you can connect with your audience, the better you will be at understanding what emotional chords will work best with them.

13. Be real. Take them on a journey as you grow and learn.

Don’t fake it until you make it. There is only one you so be that person, that brand. If you are new to Twitter or Facebook, don’t hop on and act like you are the world’s best expert. Instead share your humble self. Share your story as you learn social media. Let your audience know if it’s the first promotion you have ever done on Facebook or Twitter. Let them know if it’s your first Tweet chat or Twitter party. If you take your audience along for the ride as you grow, they will celebrate the wins with you as they were a reason you are there. They helped build you. They will then be emotionally invested in your success without even knowing it.

14. Practice what you preach.

If you preach quality over quantity all day, then by all means don’t tweet 24 / 7 via automation. If you tweet and talk about relationships then don’t let your Twitter feed be filled with only automation and then “thank you’s” thanking people for tweeting you. Take the time to look at people’s profiles and have a real conversation. Be who you say you are. Do what you say you are going to do.

15. Develop an editorial calendar that leverages different mediums.

Every good human brand needs an editorial calendar. Keep it balanced with content that is about your industry, your business and most importantly about how you can help your audience. Include tips, methodologies, programs, via blog posts, videos, podcasts. Vary the message, delivery and the medium. Keep them on the edge of their seat wanting more. An editorial calendar will help you keep the conversation going over time versus having a one hit wonder blog post that doesn’t have an ROI.

16. Share photos and videos of your team being human.

This is one of the best ways to become a human brand. Share the moments that you are human. If you have a company party or picnic, take some photos and share them. If your team goes on a team building mission or hike, let your audience know ahead of time they are going. Ask them who they think will win the contest. Share the fun and serious moments your team has offline working to help your clients meet their goals. If you have a team meeting, share a couple photos of the team brainstorming at the white board or enjoying themselves with a bag of candy or popcorn. You’ll be amazed at how these simple little shares of your personal side will help build relationship with the people in your community. Try it, it works!

17. Don’t let your Klout, Kred, Peer Index or other influence score determine how you engage.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is when companies focus too much on the influence score. If a company comes to us and says they want us to help raise their influence score, we know it’s a red flag. While it may be good to keep an eye on these scores they are not a sole representation of your influence. The scores can easily be gamed and are simply a number. I know many executives who have a low score who are far more influential than the self proclaimed social media expert down the road with a high score. Focus on the things above before your scores. If you do the right things with a focus on your audience, your scores are going to increase organically.

18. Encourage your employees to be social.

As mentioned above culture beats out strategy. If you don’t have social business in the bones and veins, from the inside it’s going to be difficult to encourage your employees to be social.

Many businesses who feel frozen with social business as it relates to their employees have a culture problem, not a social media problem. It’s important that over time your audience is able to connect with the real people in your business, even via the social networks.

Think of this as it relates to traditional relationships that start offline. They are between one human being to another. One sales rep to a business leader. One executive to another. Social media is no different. Invest in your team, training, policies and infrastructure that enable your employees to be successful when engaging online.

19. Social media policy.

I can’t stress enough how important this is. Many business leaders think a social media policy is too restrictive. Or they may think they never will have a problem. Your social media policy is more than rules or governance. It is your risk mitigator. It is your life raft should you have a social media or marketing crisis. Any business crisis is going to go straight online and possibly viral within minutes these days regardless if you are on the social networks or not. Just ask KitchenAid or AppleBees. When you look t these two companies and their social media crisis that arose it is clear which one handled it better.

20. Have a plan.

I can’t write a blog post about something as important as humanizing your brand without reminding you how important it is to have a plan. Set goals, objectives and tactics to get there. Know how you are going to measure results. Know what your key performance indicators are and what success looks like to you now, tomorrow, a year from now and three years from now. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

What You Say?

Did this post motivate you to better humanize your business? Does your business truly connect with people? Or are you guilty of corporate speak? If you have already been thru this process and have made strides toward becoming a social business with humanization at the core, what tips can you provide for others?

Is there really such a thing? Is there a magical hour or invisible line in the sand that separates an employee from the words they say, the things they do and the impact they have on a brand?

If a human being (i.e., an employee) is associated with a brand, is it possible to truly separate them from the brand just because it hits 5:00 pm and the employee “clocks out” or because they add a disclaimer to their tweets?

The truth is that there is no separation. As soon as you or your employees associate yourself or themselves with a brand, that association has been made. Just because they state their tweets or their social media posts are their own doesn’t mean people reading, hearing or seeing them won’t associate the brand to them. To believe this as such is simply ignorant.

Every employee within your company is a walking billboard of your brand. If you don’t like what they say, do, tweet, think, post, pin, video tape or sing about your brand, then you better start on the inside out and fix it.

Check out the video below from Scott Stratten who I think hits the nail on the head with this much needed discussion. He also includes several case studies that prove the point in a bold way.

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Join us this Tuesday night at 9pm et on #GetRealChat for a discussion on the reality of the 24/7 employee and the impact on brands.

One of the greatest challenges brands and human beings face when starting, surviving and thriving on the road to becoming a social business is reputation management and the marriage of personal and business brands.

When is the last time you saw a perfect human being? Someone who never said the wrong thing? Never was late? Never made someone sad? Never wrote an email with a typo? I am yet to meet a perfect human being and my guess is your answer is the same.

So why is it we expect brands to be perfect? The truth is it is impossible for brands to be perfect. Why you ask? Because they are made up of human beings who are far from perfect.

It’s like baking a cake. It is not possible to bake a cake that looks exactly the same as the cake you made yesterday. Yes, we can use a recipe. We can use the best ingredients and tips from granny for a guaranteed yummy cake. However, if your granny is anything like my granny, it is impossible to perfect her recipe no matter how hard I try.

Embrace Imperfect Perfection

The first thing business leaders must do is embrace imperfect perfection. Embrace the fact that your organization is made up of real human beings. Human beings that will never be perfect. Human beings who have good, bad, sad, funny and not so good days. Days that are challenging, exciting and crazy, sometimes all of these things at once. Your audience, followers, community, partners, stakeholders, friends, colleagues, board members also have these same kind of days.

The better you can implement, leverage, embrace and engage the human aspects of your greatest social business assets, your employees, the greater your success will be.

Social Media is About Relationships

Yes, social media is about tools, tech, apps and all the fun geeky stuff. However, at the core of social media and social business is both art and science. We must learn to balance both the art and science for results. To ignore the human element, the ability to connect as real people, real human beings, is ignoring the foundation for why social media exists. If your efforts in social media are not helping the human beings within your organization build relationships with other real human beings, then you are missing out on the greatest benefit of all.

Yes, you can tweet, Facebook and pin as a logo. However, at some point you must humanize your brand in a way that enables real relationships to be built with real people. People that your target audiences, stakeholders and online friends can see, hear, touch and smell in real life. It is the human connections that will fuel brand awareness, establish trust, increase brand loyalty, and eventually positively impact your bottom line.

Are You Investing In Your Greatest Social Business Assets?

You get out of social media what you put into it. This doesn’t just go for external. You must invest in the internal walls of your business for success. Don’t be so afraid of making a mistake that you hide the human aspect of your business.

Let your people be people. Let your leaders have a voice. If they don’t know, live and breathe your brand promise, then teach them, inspire them to do such.

Your brand is going to shine from the inside out regardless if you plan to let it do so or not.

Take the time to implement a social media policy that reflects the human nature of your business. Don’t just throw social media tools at a community manager who doesn’t understand your business, your market, your competition. It’s like throwing them to the crazy tweeting social wolves and is a recipe for disaster for you and your brand.

Social Business Happens From the Inside Out

Becoming a social business doesn’t happen on a Facebook page. It doesn’t happen from a million retweets or a video gone viral. As much as you may want to think your success will be fueled by your “next big thing,” the truth is it won’t! It’s going to take time, commitment and isn’t going to happen overnight.

Chances are you will fall down more than you stand up in the beginning. However, as you train your team, implement processes and connect with your audience as a human they will help you stand. It’s the relationships that will keep you going. The relationships that start with the human beings already within your business walls.

Success as a social business starts from the inside out. It starts with who you are, what you are, what you do, what you say. It depends on what you believe, if you do what you say you will do.

Invest in the people, process, infrastructure, technology, training that enables you to be successful from the inside out. Yes, you need policies to protect your brand. You need customer service procedures, escalation paths and communication frameworks to enable your audiences to be serviced properly via the social media channels. It will take you years, not days to truly integrate social media into the DNA of your business. It will be forever changing. Why you ask me? Because your business is made up of people. People change and that is good.

The only guarantee in social business is change. Get uncomfortable being uncomfortable. Accept and embrace the fact you have a business made up of humans and you will be just fine! Trust me, avoiding it won’t get you anywhere. Perfection is enemy of good. Make imperfection your best friend.

What You Say?

What are your thoughts? Does your organization embrace the human element of social business? Do you tweet only as a logo? Do you have a social media policy that enables your employees to engage in real dialog as a representation of your organization? What brands do you believe are best at being human? What can we learn from them?

So you have finally said “yes.” It feels almost like as big of a commitment as the day that special someone said “I do!”.

You honestly never thought this day would come. You thought that crazy lil’ blue bird was a fad. Something that would fly away and you could move on with your day job.

Nope, that lil’ blue bird is still live and kickin’! Crazy thing is you are starting to see the power of the blue bird and it’s friends. You are seeing people you never thought would jump on Twitter, love it. You are seeing other CEOs, CMOs and even your best friend nurturing relationships. Some of them even have Hootsuite on their iPhone. Worst part is they know how to use it, and you don’t!

No worries. We got you covered! Here are the top 15 things you must do before you hop on Twitter.

15 Things Every CEO, CMO, CTO & CIO Must Do Before Hopping on Twitter

1. Have a plan. This post is going to assume that your company has already developed a social media plan inclusive of goals and objectives and that you “jumping on Twitter” is part of that plan. I highly discourage you as a CEO or CMO to jump on Twitter as only a random act of marketing. Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) will eat every last morsel of social ROI for breakfast, so be careful. I have written plenty of blog posts on this topic, some of which are linked at the bottom of this post.

2. Slow down to speed up. The last thing you want to do is rush on to Twitter without a plan or knowledge of how to properly use and engage your audience. Embrace imperfect perfection but take time to know where you are going and why. If your company does not have a social media policy, social media plan and nobody else in your office is tweeting, you may want to take the time to implement some basics before jumping in heads first. You only get one chance to make a first impression.

3. Balance social media tech with art of engagement. Chances are you have at least a little bit of geek in you. Even a small % of geek is going to want to go all in on the tech. Yes, you must eventually learn the tools and technology of social media. However, the art of proper engagement is just as much if not more important. So, don’t jump in head first thinking you know it all just because you know how to send a tweet. Take time to know your audience, develop your brand strategy, implement a content plan and follow the steps on this list prior to kicking your Twitter efforts into high gear.

4. Review your social media policy and PR crisis plan. If you do not have a social media policy, I would add the development of such to the priority list. Your policy should include at minimum guidelines for Twitter user name selection, ownership of Twitter handles, possibly PR crisis management, escalation procedures and more. We can help you write one for your organization if you need help and / or don’t know where to start.

5. Setup a test account. You don’t have to tell anyone you do this. Use your home email and your nick name. This will give you a chance to play with it a bit and get a feel for it. If you are brand new to Twitter, don’t spend too much time on this as you may get overwhelmed. However, if you are a geek at heart and like to play with tech, then this may be a great way to get your birdie feet wet in the social waves.

6. Choose a user name. Select a user name that describes you. Depending on your social media policy your Twitter account may or may not be the property of your company. Depending on your social media policy and guidelines for Twitter account names you may need to adhere to them.

7. Select your profile photograph (avatar.) You will need a photograph of yourself to use as your avatar. Do NOT use the default egg that Twitter sets as default when you setup your account. If you do this everyone will know you are a newbie. You also may not get many followers as many people will not follow “eggs.” Use a recent photo. Do not use a photo from your High School graduation or a photo your son added big fake muscles via Adobe Photoshop. We all want to see the real you, muscles or no muscles!

8. Complete your Twitter bio and profile information. Fill in your Twitter bio, location and url. Don’t wait until the day you are ready to tweet to do this. Take the time to coordinate with your CMO and hopefully marketing team. If your social media team has their act together they should have already done this for you and hopefully given you the opportunity to approve the content.

9. Develop a personal brand strategy. You need to develop your own personal brand strategy and architecture. It may sound crazy if this is your first time doing such. However, I can’t stress enough how important this step is. You must know who you are, what you are and what you have to offer your followers and community. Your personal brand should represent who you are while also supporting your organization’s overall brand architecture. You need to decide how personal you want to get with your followers. What and how much do you want to share about your personal life, hobbies etc. We consult with businesses of all sizes and their leaders on personal brand strategies and plans. If you need help with this step, please call us. We can help guide you through the selection of the right answers to the questions above and help you develop a personal brand architecture that represents you and makes your organization proud!

10. Develop a content plan. Your content plan should include content that is both personal and professional. Your marketing and social media team should be able to help you with professional content to properly represent your business. Ask them for a copy of the editorial calendar and key themes they are using for content. If they don’t have this information then tell them they should work on it pronto. Engaging in social media inclusive of Twitter without a plan is a recipe for disaster.

In regard to personal content, start with a list of your hobbies, interests, favorite sports, and anything else you would feel comfortable sharing with the world. Brainstorm your favorite activities. Select the top 3-5 activities and then start a spreadsheet or other document noting the types of content you could write about. This could include favorite workouts such as P90x, favorite gym workout or spin classes, favorite books, favorite authors or even weekly golf outings. Or maybe you are a foodie and like to cook. People love to see and learn about food on the social networks so sharing favorite dishes or links to recipe could help you could connect with other folks who have similar interests.

You will be amazed at the return on investment for content development if you take the time in this area. Social media really is one big conversation.

Bonus Tip: Quotes are the #1 retweeted content on Twitter. One easy way to start providing inspiration in your Twitter stream is to tweet quotes from your favorite authors or business leaders. Be sure to add #quotes to the end of your tweet so those looking for tweets will find it!

11. Think value! Ask yourself this question… “how can I add the most value to my following?” Your goal should be to add as much value to the conversation as possible! Think of it in the same way you do your business. As a CEO, CMO, CIO, CTO or CXO of any sort you probably have a goal to provide as much value as you possibly can to your stakeholders, partners, team members, shareholders and customers. Social media is no different. The more value you provide, the higher your return will be, period. Don’t over complicate it.

12. Get real with your time investment. You must be realistic with how much time you have to invest in social media including Twitter. Do you have five, ten, or fifteen minutes per day? The amount of time you have over a given week will guide where and how you spend your time. If you need help with a plan to best leverage your time, call us. We can help you maximize every minute spent.

13. Do a quick skill set analysis. You don’t know what you don’t know, period. Just because you don’t know how to Tweet doesn’t make you’re a dumb bird! Trust me, even without knowledge of Twitter you are still smarter than half the tweeting fools out there! Be honest with your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to learning social media, the art of engagement and how to bring the most value to your audience and your business. If you have gaps and need training then identify them and obtain the necessary training. Hire a social media coach or consultant to help you. We help many executives learn social media and help them ramp quickly so they can better lead their teams and obtain the highest possible ROI from their efforts.

14. Listen and learn. The best way to learn how Twitter works is to tweet. The second best way is to watch other people tweet. This is why I recommended in step #5 to setup a test account. Test accounts are a great way to both tweet and watch people tweet without jeopardizing your own brand or being embarrassed about making a mistake. When you start watching, listening and learning pay close attention to the tone of conversations, language used, technology used etc. The more you watch and listen the more all of the above will make sense to you.

15. Say this out loud 3 times… “I am not afraid to Tweet!” Know that everyone makes mistakes. You are not the first and definitely lot the last executive to “hop on Twitter.” There will be plenty more right behind you who have the same apprehensions you do. The more you accept that everything is not going to happen overnight, the quicker you will succeed. Jump in head first but with your head on. Don’t jump in head first and leave your common sense on the deck. Jump in with a plan and a safety net inclusive of a social media policy, content plan and a Plan B should things go wrong.

What You Say?

Are you new to Twitter? Have you been holding off on jumping on Twitter? If yes, what is holding you back? Did these tips help motivate you to get started? What other questions do you have? If you are an executive who has already “been there and done that,” what advice can you offer others who are just starting out?

Take Action & Get a Grip on Social Media:

This is part of the series titled “How to Get a Grip on Social Media.” The series will include a free newsletter, webinars, whitepapers, tips and best practices to get a handle on your business and social media.

Subscribe to stay updated and be the first to be invited to upcoming events including free webinars.

• Worksheet: Download Content Inventory Worksheet to maximize to monetize your content!
• Worksheet: Download our POST audience analysis worksheet to help you identify and prioritize your top audiences. It is based upon the Forrester POST methodology.
• Blog Post & 51 Slide PowerPoint Deck: 34 Social Media Truths
• CEO Social Mindset: 15 tips for a Healthy Social business Mindset
• 10 Tips to Get the Twitter Conversation Started
• 21 Tips to Get Your Tweet On
• 55 Tips to Get Retweeted on Twitter
• 20 tips to Tame the Wild Social Media Beast
• Social Media is Not Rocket Science
• 15 Reasons Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) and Social Media Don’t Work
• 15 Social Media, Lies, Myths & Fairy Tales”
• 15 Must Know Tips to Rock Your New Facebook Timeline Business Page

Have you ever had one of those days where someone you didn’t know touched your heart? It could have been as simple as a smile, opening the door for you, helping you load groceries into the car, picking up your keys after you dropped them or even running after you in the parking lot as you left something in a store while shopping?

The recent Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Newtown, CT reminded us all once again how fragile life is, how we are all much better, happier, and safer working together and helping one another than we are alone. My heart goes out to the parents and families of all impacted by the terrible event. I am a parent of two young boys and can’t imagine the heart ache they must be feeling. My prayers of peace are with them all.

Why does it take a such a tragedy to bring people together, to remind people of the blessings they have that money can’t buy? The truth is, it shouldn’t take a tragedy to remind us how important love and kindness are, and that a simple smile can make someones day.

The blessings money can’t buy…

I am one who does not take the little nor big blessings for granted. I remind myself daily of the many things money can’t buy.

As I emotionally worked through the Newtown shock last week, it really hit me. What is missing in this world is LOVE. People simply need to feel loved. It’s human nature to desire to feel needed, cared for and that someone simply gives a rip that we exist.

Often times we complicate what can be so simple. We don’t need a tragedy or a big charity event to give love. We can show love via Random Acts of Love (RALs) every day of our life. We can rake our neighbors leaves, scrape the snow off a friend’s sidewalk, pick up the tab for the car ahead of us at the fast food drive-thru or simply pray with a stranger who is crying or yelling at a family member in Wal-Mart.

Random Acts of Love even at Wal-Mart

A couple weeks ago a lady almost ran over me and my son in the parking lot of a local Wal-Mart. Instead of marching over to her car to yell at her, I took a deep breath and explained to my son that we were not going to respond in a way that would make a situation worse. I kindly asked her if she was okay. She immediately started crying. She told me it was the worst day she ever had. She had a root canal earlier in the day, was fighting with her boyfriend and noticed that she almost ran us over but didn’t know what to do.

She apologized and with tears running down her face, asked if I would forgive her. I told her I had already forgiven her before I walked over. I told her I would pray for her and hoped that she had a better day.

She then told me that I made her day. She said that what I did was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in a long time, that “I cared.” Wow, how sad was that? Her and I were both in the Wal-Mart parking lot crying.

She touched my heart that day in a way that I would have never felt had I not given her the benefit of the doubt and reached out to her with a simple act of kindness and love.

So What is #GoGiveLuv?

#GoGiveLuv is a movement kicking off today (12/21/12) the day the Mayans predict the world is going to end. Instead of worrying about if the world is going to end, we are going to focus on giving love. It doesn’t have to be formal. It doesn’t have to involve a big donation or even a big charity. All it takes is your heart. Your heart giving love to someone who least expects it.

#GoGiveLuv will enable us all to share the Random Acts Of Love (RALs) we receive, give or experience virtually. You can share the experience of the smile you put on a child’s face in the parking lot, the park or a charity event.

Imagine having a place online you can go when having a bad day that brings you to happy tears because of the love you see, read, feel and hear because of others sharing their experience of such. Imagine a blog you can read to cheer you up or share a story of your own that will someday prevent someone from committing suicide.

In the simple nature of this movement, we are launching before we are officially ready. We are launching with a simple hashtag on Twitter. We have a Sees.aw board thanks to Robert Moore, already displaying beautiful visual display of the tweets and associated images. We’ll eventually have a blog and more where you can share your stories, photos and more. You can join our Facebook page here, although we have hardly had time to get a simple logo loaded.

Today, Tomorrow, Next Week & Next Year!

All you need to do is #GoGiveLuv to someone in your life today.

The hashtag #GoGiveLuv will enable those giving and receiving these Random Acts of Love (RALs) to share such experiences for the benefit that the love may carry forward to others online who also need the love. You can share your experience via tweets and images using the hashtag, #GoGiveLuv.

The vision is that we encourage people to deliver these RALs every day, not just on a day of tragedy. Starting today it will be an all year long, 24/7 Twitter stream you can view with stories of love and kindness. A visual display you can experience with people being touched from both giving and receiving.

There are many people already excited about this movement so we may very well wind up with an official celebration day, local events, or who knows what. It’s really up to the community and those giving the RALs and what to be part of this movement. It’s not about me, not about you, or the hashtag or logo. It’s about what we can do to change this world one Random Act of Love at a time.

I have copied a video below from Simon Jordan that you can watch for more information on this movement. Simon saw a late night Facebook post from me earlier this week sharing the idea as a brainstorm opportunity with my Facebook friends. The next morning he already had a video developed and launched. Wow, this is the kind of love I am talking about folks. The kind that people take into their own hands as they want to share the love with others, just because.

Be The Love!

There is enough bad, angry, mean, rude, yelling complaining, hating in this world. Choose life. Choose friendship. Choose sunshine. Choose love. It’s that simple.

All you need to do is #GoGiveLuv!

Join the #GoGiveLuv Movement

If you want to help support the #GoGiveLuv movement simply comment in this thread or join our Facebook community. We’ll get back to you soon and we’ll all figure out as a community where we take this. I am so excited to see where the amazing people of this world take this.

You can check out the Hashtag report from this Tuesday night when we first shared the idea with our #GetRealChat community here “#GoGiveLuv” transcript.

#GoGiveLuv Sees.Aw Board

#GoGiveLuv Facebook Page

#GoGiveLuv on Twitter

When building an online persona and brand usually we start with the most basic aspects including over arching brand, logo, colors, core messages etc. All of these are foundational to success. We develop our plan, develop our platform, create and launch our brand presence, integrate social with our business goals and start the social media engagement. However, after a few months goes by we realize nobody is buying from us. Nobody is opting in to our email lists. What has happened? Why don’t they want to further engage with our brand? Do they not trust us? Do they not think that we could bring them value?

Do you lack the trust factor?

There could be many different reasons why your communities are reluctant to engage with you. One of the most common reasons is that they don’t trust you. You have all the pretty colors, bells and whistles for your online presence but you lack credibility. You lack the trust factor.

In real life and offline relationships, trust is built via word of mouth, client and partner referrals. One person talks to another person who knows good and bad about you. You earn a reputation for being who you are and the quality and service you deliver. You may have a solid reputation and trust factor offline but are finding it difficult to establish such online.

If this is the case for you, don’t you fret! This could be for many reasons. It could be you are practically starting over with online relationships. If most of your offline contacts, partners, colleagues and friends are not yet online, then yes you are starting over to some degree. However, you can also leverage your relationships offline to bring credibility online.

Building trust doesn’t happen overnight. However, there are some simple things you can do even if you are just starting out to increase credibility and the trust factor.

10 Tips to Establish Credibility and Trust

1. Establish authority.
First and foremost you must establish authority. Your must know your stuff. Faking it online will not get you far. Social media is far different than handing someone a business card. In the social realm it’s easy to validate who you are, where you have worked, what references you have, who your clients are, who your contacts are within only a few clicks. Your content on all social platforms must scream results. It must be obvious you know your stuff. We need more than one bullet and short paragraph that tells readers you are an expert at whatever it is you do. Give credit to your sources and never take other people’s work as your own. Back up your claims with social proof such as blog content, references, client testimonials, client logos, guest blog posts and more.

2. Social proof.
Yes, even though you may have spent far too much money on that beautiful Twitter background, custom Facebook page and blogsite, you still need to prove to me who and what you are. This isn’t as hard as what it sounds. Don’t ignore this step. Instead make this one of the first things you do when you hop online. Take time to update this content at least once a month. Good examples of social proof include testimonials, customer references, partner references, kudos from other thought leaders, examples of work completed, links to work completed, guest blogs you have contributed to, links to blogs where you and your content has been cited, white papers, ebooks, and the list goes on. Social proof should be instantly available within one or less clicks on your site. I should not have to dig, double and triple click to find it. Make it pop out at me from the front page please!

However, be careful here. You must have the work experience and proven results to back it up. 10,000 purchased Twitter followers is not real social proof. I’d rather see 500 that were earned by providing relevant and valuable content.

3. Walk the walk.
Everything about your online persona, website, blog and social profiles must not only talk the talk but your actions must walk the walk of whatever you say you do. If you claim to be the best social media and advertising agency this side of Texas and know how to deliver results, then your own website and online persona should not look like a fifth grader developed it. Fix the fonts, fix the colors, fix the content.

Take the time to do what you say you are so good at doing! It’s like a dietician that is 150 lbs overweight telling you that they don’t worry about being healthy themselves that they focus only on you. Any good agency, agent, salesrep, blogger, copywriter, consultant, business services provider should be doing themselves what they say they can do for you. “Eat your own dogfood” is what we use to say in the big iron corporate days of the dot bomb era in high tech.

Delete the jargon and talk in real words that establish you as a walking testimonial of what you can do for clients! If you don’t take time to fix your own identity, online persona, brand, website, content, sales processes, business process why should anyone else believe you can do it for them? You are your own best social proof and will be amazed at the number of clients you will get if you start doing this!

4. Be consistent in both life and business.
The days of separating online and offline personas are over and done. You can’t be one person offline and a better, different person online. You are one business, one team, one person regardless if you are online or offline. If you are a one man or one woman business consultant this is even more important. Who you are on Friday night at the bar is the same person you are on Monday morning. Your offline behavior reflects your online success. Be who you are as you are only one person. However, my point is don’t fake it. There is only one you so be that person. Hopefully that person is honest, sincere, real, open, and communicates well with people both online and offline.

5. Hang with the right peeps.
If you hang out with 9 brokes, chances are you are going to be the 10th! Hang out with people you learn from, people who build you, empower you and make you a better person. Avoid the people who kick you down, criticize you and overall envy your success. Be sure you hang with the people who are going places. Establish real relationships and work together. Take time to know and research the people you hang out with. Don’t just trust everyone on first tweet. Just as you need to establish trust with your community, expect the same of those you bring into your inner circle.

6. You had me at first tweet.”
I hear this a lot from many businesses who eventually become our clients. What you tweet matters. Don’t be negative Nelly all day. Give your Twitter and Facebook readers good nuggets of information that help them, inspire them and enable them to get to know you better. We have numerous clients who we have met from one single tweet that inspired or educated them. Don’t minimize the power of inspiring people to engage with you and your brand and start the first stages of trusting you even in 140 character increments known as tweets!

7. Take time for relationships.
I see many businesses and consultants get too caught up in the science of social media that they forget the most important aspect, the art. I am not talking about art as in brand and colors. Instead focus on the art as in relationships and conversation. The tools of social media can be learned by almost anybody. It’s the art of engagement that will differentiate you from the masses. If you are finding it hard to build real relationships online then chances are you are not taking the time to get to know someone. Take time to truly connect with others. Ask them questions. Comment on their blog posts. Reach out to folks you feel comfortable with and build a relationship.

There are new pockets of peeps, partners, crowd sourced blog communities and potential real life friends popping up every day. Get to know some of the folks in the communities. Start your own communities.

8. Build a platform that invites conversation.
If your platform reads like a billboard or corporate collateral from the 1980′s then chances are you are not going to inspire much conversation. Ensure that everything from your content to blog share buttons, commenting systems, opt-in forms, contact forms, colors, and lanugage are all inviting. If you are not getting the engagement you need, then ask a trusted 3rd party to do an assessment for you. Ask them specific questions about how your content makes them feel. Ask them where and how they would engage with you on our social platforms. Unless you invite folks to engage with you and your brand, chances are they won’t. There is definitely not a lack of other businesses successful at doing such that are going to steal their mindshare from you.

9. It’s not about you!
As much as you want to think that your Twitter profile, tweet stream, Facebook business page and blog are all about you, they aren’t. Yes, you can use these platforms to establish authority, build community and trust, it is not a walking billboard of YOU. Your online personas should scream helpfulness, content that inspires, conversation that engages. Talk to your communities in voices they like to communicate, not in web speak. Ask them what they want if you don’t know. Take time to know your audience, partners, clients and more. The better you understand your audiences, the better you will be able to help them. The more you help them, the more they will trust you via your actions.

10. Author content.
Chances are you are in business because you know something. You hopefully know something that is going to help a business or individual otherwise you probably won’t be in business long. Make certain you establish your own content. I am a big believer in sharing and curating awesome content I find across the web with my communities. However, I am also a believer in creating my own content. It is through your own content that people get to know YOU! It’s where you can establish trust, thought leadership, expertise, relationships. Businesses and individuals that are not creating content are missing out on incredible opportunities to connect with people in a way that brings them close to you and your brand.

11. Be honest.
I added this one as a bonus mostly because it should be common sense. If you have an issue with a product, service, software, network, Twitter feed, Facebook post, blog post or other just be honest and acknowledge the issue. Hiding from it is not going to do anything that will bring benefit to you or your business. Don’t under estimate the power of your community and relationships. They are much more resilient when the relationship is built on trust and credibility.

Bottom line, if you lose my trust, you lose me.

I could write a book on this topic and probably should. However, a blog post has to end somewhere. There is no price tag we can put on trust. It is simply invaluable. Take the time to not only be a person people want to trust but ensure your online persona helps you establish such.

Your Turn

Do you struggle with establishing trust in your markets or online? Did this article help you? Or are you a pro who has tips you can share with others? Let’s all help one another as feedback from others is a great way to learn on these types of topics.

35 Social Media Truths

This is part of a series on social business titled “35 Social Media Truths“. It is part of a keynote presentation I gave at Rochester Institute of Technology. If you want to hear more, sign up for the 35 Social Media Truths Newsletter and you will receive all 35 of them over a period of time. Included will be different mediums such as video, blog posts and more.

For those of us who eat, sleep and breathe this stuff we can see the good, bad and ugly with our eyes closed. We see the cracks, the dents, the holes and the blossoms. We can see the social diamond in the rough or the shiny object that is really a fake rock needing thrown back in the pile.

I am fortunate to have the gift of often seeing things before they happen in business, seeing trends before they emerge. I see bubbles before they burst. I see brands start to decline before they explode. I see Twitter pages filled with spam headed for brand deterioration. I see brands wasting thousands on social media because they have no real plan to integrate nor know the first thing about their audience and target markets.

This post has two specific messages to two specific audiences. First is to the folks teachin’ and preachin. The second is to you.

The social ecosystem has nuts of all sizes.

The social ecosystem is filled with everything from newbies, seasoned brands and marketers to internet marketing junkies and even snake oil scammers who pretend they are all of the above.

There are trusted leaders, self proclaimed gurus and everything in between teaching and preaching. They may be offering webcasts, webinars, selling training courses, leading brands or simply tweeting tips all day.

There are the 15 and 20 year internet marketer veterans who are overnight expert business executives and coaches ready to help you integrate social into your corporation or small business. Of course knowing how to get Facebook fans and Twitter followers makes one an overnight professional at building successful businesses, right!?

Yes, some of these folks may know what they are doing. However, there are many who can’t run their own business, let alone yours.

Chances are you follow some of these same folks. You hang on to their words, guidance, and tips so that you may too someday be like them and have thousands of followers, fans and comments on your blog.

Don’t swallow the magic social media pills.

Be careful who you follow, listen to and what actions you take based on such. There is no short cut, magic pill or secret formula to success in social business and integrating social media into your business. Yes, there are best practices but you can not avoid needing to know your audience and how you can inspire and connect with them to help them achieve their goals if you want real results.

This post is not intended to provide a blueprint for developing a social media plan. Social media is not rocket science and we do not need to over complicate such. My blog is loaded with helpful tips, strategies, tactics and templates to help you do all of the above. If you are stuck call us, we can help.

For those teachin and preachin’

Practice what you preach.

If you tweet and preach constantly the importance of being human, engaging, building relationships and being human then you yourself need to be human.

Look in the tweet mirror. Is your social media behavior and actions you are teaching really teaching people to be human? Or are you teaching them to be robots that engage 24/7 without a plan other than to raise their Klout or Kred score?

Tweeting and posting automated messages to Facebook 24/7 non-stop even on Holidays, while on vacation, in the hospital or at your child’s dance recital or entire soccer game is not human.

Being human means being real. It means connecting as human beings. It means not auto scheduling posts 7 days a week 24 hours a day.

There is only one way to do social media and that is the way that works for you and your business. I am not one to judge what others are doing as I do not know your business. However, based on what I am seeing many leaders preach and teach, their actions are blatantly opposite of their preachin’ and teachin’!

If this message hits home with you then you know who you are. You know your message is different than your actions.

Are you building relationships or an influence score?

I challenge you to look deep within. Is what you are doing really working? Are you working more on relationships or on your social influence score? If it’s not an influence score then why do you tweet the same things every three days? Where is the human in your voice, tone, schedule, and life?

Your community wants you to be human! Maybe they want you to enjoy your kids choir concert or science fair without an iPhone in your hand. Your community needs the inspiration you receive and feed back to them after you truly shut off. When you focus on being a #Handsfreemama or #Handsfreefamily you come back with more to give all those who are sitting waiting on your every word.

You live only one life!

You only live one life. Your clients and their family and friends only live one life. Quit teaching them to waste it all away tweeting. They may just automate the inspiration, the human nature right out of it. They may miss the best moments of connecting in real life, looking someone in the eye and the moments that happen only once in a life time.

For everybody else

There is only one way to do social media and that is the way that works for you and your business.

Take what you learn from folks and digest it. Listen to their words, digest it. However, most importantly figure out what it means to you. Figure out what it means to your audience, your customers, your community. What does it mean to you? Your family? Your friends? Your business? Your life?

I challenge you to take a step back and also look in the tweeting and Facebook mirror. Are you turning into a robot? Or are you being human? Are you spending more time scheduling tweets than you are sending them real-time?

If your gut is telling you that you are losing touch with your softer side, that you are losing touch with your community, customers, family and friends, then chances are high that you are.

It’s not too late. Put the automation on the shelf. Use it when you need to, but balance the automation with real conversation and human to human interaction.

Yes, social media takes time. It takes work. The greatest benefits in the long run are not going to come to those with only the highest influence scores or an internet marketer who fooled thousands into thinking it does. The benefits will come in the form of real relationships. Relationships that were birthed and nurtured all hours of the day, real time and with real people, not bots.

Dare to take your relationships deeper than they have been before. Take a tweet offline to a face to face meeting or a phone call. Talk to the people you have had on the list to talk to for a year.

Get real on who and what you are.

Be human, period. The heartbeat of social media is you and me.

If we lose who we are, what we are and our “humanness” isn’t it all for nothin’!?

What You Say?

Are you being human or a robot? There really is only one answer. There is not a “kind of human, kind of robot.” You are either human or you’re not.

Join the Conversation #GetRealChat

We are excited to dig deep into this conversations over the coming weeks and months with our #GetRealChat community. We meet weekly via Twitter at 9pm et.

Here are three near term opportunities for you to engage with me, other industry leaders and a wonderful community of folks who are living life as human beings.

12/4/12: Webinar sponsored by SAP, hosted by Business to Community. I’ll be speaking on the power and future of social communities in 2013. Register NOW!

12/4/12 9pm et: #GetRealChat - Margot Heiligman from SAP is special guest on #GetRealChat. Will be continuing discussion from webinar earlier in day. We’ll be digging deep into relationships and power of conversations.

12/11/12 9pm et: #GetRealChat – Special guests David Cooperstein from Forrester Research and Tami Cannizzaro of IBM -”Marketing Revolution: What CMOs Need to Know Now!”

Heartbeat of Social Media Series

This blog post is part of a new series titled “The Heartbeat of Social Media“. It will include a deep look at how communities work, what people are doing within them and how businesses can better understand how they can fit in, provide value and derive benefit as both a business as well as individual people.

Subscribe to the series for updates and access to special videos, webinar training and more. Would love to hear your input and have you participate in discussions and debates as we challenge each other to be part of what makes the social network heartbeat healthy and alive in 2012!