Pamela Moore

Hello Pamela,

This is a really great question.  I know that the media and public see the current state of the economy as a negative right now.  There are a lot of people struggling and losing their homes, jobs, income, security and confidence. These things tend to make it all over the news.  We are inundated with talks of the economical collapses, and corporate and government shut downs which comes in the wake of decades of poor management of our countries resources.  This has definitely affected the local, corporate, as well as world, markets of today’s economies.
However, what most fail to see is; This [right now] is the single greatest time in our history to make the greatest economic change for the average person.  We are in a world of economic migration.  I believe, and most experts agree with me, the addition of the world wide web, social media, global economies and technological advances have offered up the greatest opportunities for the greatest number of people.
These innovations alone have had the greatest impact on my business.  For the first time in a really long time, American’s are recognizing that the social and economic principles of the industrial revolution no longer hold true or apply to the success and livelihood of today’s general population.  We are experiencing mass lay-offs and economic turmoil at the individual level.  The illusion of job security and the fringe comforts of a corporate retirement (pension, 401K, IRA or otherwise) are no longer the viable options we once believed them to be.  (Don’t Even Get Me Started on Social Security).
I am seeing that there are an increasing number of people who are just plain down and tired of following the path they were “taught” only to lose it all because they were playing a game that decided to change the rules along the way and didn’t bother to tell them.  These people are no longer looking for a “Plan B” they are desperately searching for a “Plan A”.  People are starting to ask all of the right questions; What do I do now to provide for myself and family?  Will I ever be able to afford retirement? What are my true options in this economy? Where do I find the solutions/ answers to my personal problems? How do I know who I can trust?
I think we can agree that these answers are not going to be found by looking to the government.  I also think we can agree that more and more of us are realizing that these answers cannot and should not be answered by the government.  They need to be handled and dove into at the personal and individual level.  What they are finding is that companies like mine are beginning to hear these questions and provide them with answers and solutions.
What I am seeing is that now more than ever, people are beginning to remember their history lessons. This country was founded on the simple, yet elegant and noble principle that every person has the God given right and is entitled to life, liberty and to the PURSUIT of happiness.
That pursuit of happiness is the trend shift I am seeing.  More and more people are taking it upon themselves to find their own happiness.  In my profession and what my company does, we encourage, incubate and facilitate these very same ideals.  We promote charity, prosperity and duty to self and others.  This is the real America our forefathers envisioned and died for.   They are the basic principles and tenets we as Americans lay claim to, and are the only real truths we have ever truly known.  They are the cement which unties us into one common mass, and society.
The economy has had some undoubtedly negative affects on the workers of Corporate America.  The social classes are converging into what is typically referred to as the “haves and have-nots”.   At least that is what the media will lead you to believe.  I like to believe that what we are really beginning to see is the convergence of two mental classes the “Do and Do-nots” This supports what I am seeing in my business and the impact that this economy has had on it.
I would say that what we are now seeing is a new wave of Independent Social Entrepreneurs.  We are seeing a shift in the mindset of many Americans who are realizing that there is not now nor ever has been anyone more reliable or responsible for your own future than you. They are realizing that by giving back/paying it forward, being part of the community and economy you truly become the driving force in your personal success.
I am very optimistic for the economy, my business, and what I do.  I have faith in mankind’s innate need for survival and tendencies towards good will.  I believe that we are only just now seeing the tip of the iceberg, and if the trends hold true, we will see some definite reformations at the grass-roots level of this countries economy in the very near future.

Selling Yourself: The Key to Successful Network Marketing

Written MLMDir.com

Posted By: Daniel Genchi
If you’ve been working your program for a while and just aren’t generating the results you need, it’s time to take a step back and analyze just what it is you’re trying to sell. If you’re sending out emails and e-zines and newsletters like all the others that hit email boxes on a regular basis, odds are you’re on the wrong track.

Marketing pieces that promise financials rewards, the freedom of owning your own business and ground floor opportunities, will not return interested prospects. The key to successful network marketing is actually much simpler. People do not like to be sold but they do like to buy and they will buy from people they like, trust and respect.

Now, sit down and think about that for a minute. Your potential prospects don’t really care about the products or the compensation plans. What they’re looking for is someone that they can go into business with.

Someone they can count on for motivation when the going gets rough and someone that has already done what they’re trying to do and has done it successfully. So, go back to the drawing board.

Think about who you are and what you can do for the people who decide to take advantage of your opportunity. Think about what the program has done for you and how you’ve made it work. Reflect upon your training and identify what you liked and what you didn’t.

Think about building relationships and lasting friendships, think about how rewarding it would be to help others like yourself move towards financial freedom. And then write it all down.

Make a list of things that you personally can offer to the people you recruit and bring into your business and then using that information, write your letter. Don’t make false promises or hype it up. People are ignoring those messages by the boatloads. Concentrate on sincerity and warmth. Think partnership.

Once you’ve written your letter and are ready to assemble your packet, it’s time to take a closer look at who your information says you are. We’re not talking about the words now; we’ve already fixed that problem.

The appearance of your information, however, sometimes says more about you than the actual print. Is your information presented professionally? Does it tell your prospects that you’re making money and thereby have it to spend or does it say you’re barely making it and trying to get by?

Are you having your materials printed professionally or simply making black and white copies? Are your envelopes personally addressed or do they look like standardized junk mail? Do your packets make prospects want to work with you?

If not, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Keeping all of the above in mind, make the necessary changes. Even if you’re not yet rolling in money, you’ve got to be able to make it look like you are.

Simply cutting back the number of packets you send out while making sure to maximize the ones that you can afford will immediately increase your actual return on investment while making your information the one that actually stands out in someone’s mailbox.

These tips are not rocket science and with a little time and a little more effort you will begin to the results. Pass your success on to your downline and in no time at all, you’ll be able to sit back and enjoy the rewards of owning your own successful network marketing business.

For more information on how to succeed in Network Marketing follow the link: http://dgenchi.magneticsponsoringonline.com/?c=Craigs+list
]]> http://dgenchi.wordpress.com/2010/08/20/178-keywords-how-to-succeed-network-marketing/feed/ 0 dgenchi http://dgenchi.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/can-right-brain-thinking-change-the-world/ http://dgenchi.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/can-right-brain-thinking-change-the-world/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:29:43 +0000 Daniel Genchi http://dgenchi.wordpress.com/?p=170 ]]>

Can Right Brained Thinking Change the World?

Published: VOA News.com Washington, D.C.   23 March 2009

Posted By: Daniel Genchi

Best-selling author and business analyst Daniel Pink believes that for the past several decades, western society has placed too high a value on so-called left-brainers: people like accountants, lawyers and economists who use the linear, logical functions that scientists have determined are controlled by the brain’s left hemisphere.

In his recent book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, Pink says society is learning to better appreciate the non-linear, creative work of right-brain thinkers such as artists, musicians, designers and storytellers. He argues that the left-brain abilities that used to matter the most simply aren’t working in today’s world.

“These left-brain abilities – the logical, linear, spreadsheet abilities – still matter, but they matter less, and it’s now the right-brain abilities: artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big-picture thinking. Those are now the abilities that matter most,” he says.

One of the reasons left-brain professionals are becoming vulnerable, says Pink, is that they easily can be replaced. Consequently, more and more professions like accounting, law and computer programming are being exported to cheaper workers overseas or are being performed by computers.

“So you now see tax preparation software doing the work of accountants. You see legal Web sites doing the work of certain kinds of lawyers,” Pink says.

Pink believes that in order to survive – and thrive – in today’s competitive world, workers have to offer something more, something that can’t be duplicated or automated.

He gives the example of engineering as a field that is becoming vulnerable. The engineers who are really flourishing, he says, can do the basic engineering, but they also have good communication skills. They have good inventive skills. They understand design. Maybe they’re multicultural; maybe they’re multilingual. They have a much more robust set of abilities.

“So the idea that you can succeed as an engineer today by simply being good at doing math problems is wrong,” Pink says.

Businesspeople benefit from artistic training

Pink, who analyzes business trends for major media networks in the United States and abroad, based much of his book on extensive interviews he conducted with people all across the world. He says he was surprised to discover how many of the successful people he interviewed – including those with left-brain oriented jobs – had backgrounds in the fine arts.

He says he realized that artistic training was actually doing these people a world of good in the business realm.

“They had a very good left brain, but they were dealing with people who had only a very good left brain, and no right brain, so they were able to become better leaders, better problem solvers, more impactful team members.”

While conducting his research, Pink came to another surprising conclusion: The old numerical index of brain power known as the intelligence quotient, or IQ, may not be the best indicator of a person’s ability to succeed:

“The people who perform at the highest levels are not simply people with high IQs,” Pink says. “IQ matters relatively little in overall career success.”

Both sides of children’s brains need nurturing

Pink believes that in order to become more competitive and successful, society must rediscover ways to develop and nourish right-brain thinking -starting with how we teach our children. He says the U.S. education system is “out of sync” with some of these ideas and with the world of business.

“If we really want to prepare kids for the workplace of the future, we got to make sure that we’re working the left side and the right side of their brains.”

Pink says he’s troubled that a country like the United States has sought merely to produce what he calls “armies of good test-takers,” who are little more than “vending machines for the correct answers.”

“That is a recipe for disaster,” he says.

Parents, teachers take message to heart

A lot of people have taken Pink’s message to heart. In the Northern Virginia city of Alexandria late last year, fans of A Whole New Mind – including parents, teachers and students from across the city – gathered at public libraries, coffeehouses and living rooms for an unusually large community reading event.

Melynda Wilcox, president of the Alexandria Parent-Teacher Association, helped organize the book discussions.

“We think overall we had about 500 people in the city who all read the book at the same time. The feedback has been just overwhelmingly positive,” she says. “People have really enjoyed reading the book.”

Wilcox said she read Pink’s book for the benefit of the reading groups she helped organize, but also as a concerned mother. Wilcox says reading the book even has changed how she looks at parenting.

“I realize how important it is for our kids to be empathetic, for our kids to have a sense of their future being more than just getting good grades or getting good SAT scores,” she says.

Francis Chase has been an art teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, for the past 19 years. He says reading Pink’s book inspired him to change certain elements of his teaching style.

“I used to do a generic lesson plan, where if I had 20 kids, I would try to reach the whole higher, lower and the middle [school],” he says. “Well now, if I have 20 kids, I do 20 different lesson plans.”

Chase adds that the “whole new way of thinking” promoted in Pink’s book is nothing new for people like him working in the art field.

“I’m just smiling and excited that the rest of the world is now catching up to what we’ve been doing for decades,” he says.

Whether the world “catches up” or not, Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind has sparked lively discussions across the land – not only about our remarkable brains, but about new and possibly better ways to cope with an increasingly complex world.

Article by: Jan Verhoeff

Posted By: Daniel Genchi

Everyone has twitter? Really? I’m shocked. Although it’s a readily available messenger (even from your phone) that gives all your peeps the message at once, I was really surprised when my son said, “Everyone has twitter.”

Then I realized, I don’t know very many adults in business who don’t HAVE twitter, and most of them use it frequently. Many of them don’t know what it is. So, to help those who have missed the latest birdie boat – Twitter is a unique kind of social marketing that allows you to post giblets of 140 characters each, adding flavor, traffic, and informative BUZZ to your website. The primary site doesn’t have to be related or relevant to your site – but if you’re not promoting your website there – you’ve MISSED the tweet boat. Return immediately to the doc and get it right!

Tweet Tip #1 -

Occasionally, say something valuable with no links attached. Your peeps want to know what’s going on in your life, of value – not how many carrot sticks you ate for lunch – without following the link.

Tweet Tip #2 -

Use HASH tags to identify specific kinds of tweets. Like a #TweetTip is a tip that encourages and motivates tweeters to use the program effectively. Use wisely – and please, don’t abuse them.

Tweet Tip #3 -

Use shorter than usual URL’s please. Find a quick URL snipper and cut that long URL into a manageable size unit with less than 30 characters. (Your peeps will love you.)

Tweet Tip #4 -

Encourage your readers to follow people who offer relevant data on their twitter, and suggest information through twitter.

Tweet Tip #5 -

Promote your article marketing with auto-tweets to your peeps from ezinearticles.com, so you can spend more of your valuable time writing articles.

Tweet Tip #6 -

Include your twitter ID on various posts to refer people to your account. Encourage them to follow you to find valuable information. (Be sure to produce.)

Tweet Tip #7 -

RT tweets you believe your followers would be interested in reading. Don’t over do it, your peeps may be following other peeps you follow too.

Are you ready to get onto the twitter power line and tweet your peeps?

I know it’s corny as all get out – but you really gotta do this!

5 Steps for Successful Social Media Marketing

Let’s say you’ve gotten the approval to get your company involved in social media marketing and are ready to launch your efforts. How will you define success?

This is an important question, because a large number of companies have jumped into social media without any clear business strategy. Before the financial meltdown of the last few weeks, some companies had the resources to experiment with social media without worrying about financial accountability. But now, most businesses must demonstrate an ROI on any new effort.

In fact, the lack of good metrics is cited as the biggest barrier to marketers’ adoption of social media. Particularly in this shaky financial climate, measuring impact is one of the definitive measures of a marketing strategy’s value. If you want to skip the blind experimentation, particularly in view of our current global financial crisis, we’ve assembled a list of 5 tips to help you start leveraging social media with minimal investment and with strong systems in place to measure success.

Step #1: Identify Your Target Market and Listen to Them

The first step to measuring success in social media marketing is proper scope. There are new social networks popping up each week. It’s a waste of resources to join every new social network only to find you have no time to manage them. Find out where your most active customers & influencers spend time online – then listen and take notes.

Here’s some tools you can use to tune into the conversation: Technorati, Google Blog Search, Ice Rocket, Bloglines, Twitter Search, AideRSS and  HubSpot’s HubFeed. More advanced social media monitoring tools include Radian6 and Techrigy.

Step #2: Get Involved in Conversations

The second step towards success is consistently utilizing social media to engage prospective customers. When you start listening to conversations, you might hear some things about your company that aren’t very complimentary. That’s ok. Your job now is to engage these customers and find a way to help. Be willing to acknowledge mistakes when they happen. Customers are surprisingly forgiving if a company engages in an honest and egoless manner.

If you’re one of the lucky companies who only has enthusiastic and happy customers, recognize their desire to interact with you and be generous with your time. Be open to engaging with them on their turf. They’ll reward your brand with greater enthusiasm – which is a message that spreads through social networks like wildfire, and solidifies your brand.

For instance, on Twitter both Starbucks and Whole Foods share customer comments, local specials, and ask customers what their favorite items are. It’s casual and open, yet subtly appeals to the attractiveness of the brand. Check out some of the brands on Twitter, and implement some of their conversation techniques.

Step #3: Give! Give! Give!

How involved is your team in communicating with prospective customers, influencers and current customers on social networking sites? How often are you publishing great content that helps your prospects do their jobs? How often do you blog, Tweet, post photos on Flickr, comment on other blogs, Podcast, upload videos, etc? The more content that you produce and publish on social media sites, the more traffic you can attract back to your website. If your site is designed well to convert visitors into leads, these activities will help you increase sales.

Step #4: Master the Tools of the Trade

“Social media strategy should tie to business and communication strategy, rather than being based on the available tools. But it is not possible to develop a social media strategy without at least having an understanding of the various tools that are available, their functionality and purposes, and the kinds of audiences and conversations for which they might be best suited.” – Joel Postman, Principal Socialized PR

It’s critical to tie your business strategy to your social media strategy. However, without a knowledge of what social media and social networking sites enable you to do, it’s hard to know how to do that. It’s important to establish a blog as your home base. Then, learn the capabilities of each site to help you interact. For example, Twitter provides an almost unfettered ability to connect with your prospective clients. But, it only allows you to type 140 characters at a time. So, maybe a video posted to youtube would be a better way to publish a “how-to”. Linkedin & Facebook let you see who your contacts know. But, facebook makes it much easier to connect with them. LinkedIn Answers is a much better place to answer business focussed questions than any other social network.

It’s important to learn how to use these sites in order to get business value out of your social media activity. Talk to an expert to determine where to spend your time to get the best return.

Step #5: Use Website Analytics Software to Measure Leads and Sales.

Many experts agree that social media will affect the next generation of search engine optimization techniques as search engines start to use the signals we collectively leave as we network and share media online. Even today, social media activity affects the success of many other inbound marketing techniques:

- Search engine ranking

- Social bookmarking activity

- Social networking connections

- Video/podcast views/listens

- Inbound links

- RSS subscriptions

- Comments on your blog

- Mentions of your brand

- Number of times people search for your brand

- Visitors (first-time and repeat)

- Leads & Customers!

The end goals is lead generation and sales. But, there are plenty of leading indicators as you ramp up your efforts.

Use tracking codes, a solid analytics package and closed loop marketing in order to track the visits, leads and sales that occurr as a result of your social media activities.

This article was co-authored by Peter Caputa IV from HubSpot & Ghennipher, a 10 year veteran of the Internet Marketing world. Ghennipher is an independent Social Media Marketing consultant and writes on Social Media’s effect on business. Subscribe to her blog here.

Photo by 4_EveR_YounG.

There are some truly great and thought provoking Social CRM posts out there that I believe to an excellent job of helping move the SCRM space and the discussions around it forward.  I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of those posts and REALLY encourage you read to read all of them.  I did include two of my posts in the list as well just because I think they are quite unique and really do help add some value and perspective to the SCRM space (hey I could have just listed of all my posts like some other people do right?).  I know there are a lot of great other SCRM posts out there as well so if you have one you want to share with the readers of this site the please leave it in the comments section.  This should be a great reading list for everyone over the weekend, we’re going to start talking about some interesting in depth topics again soon and I think the posts I’ve highlighted below will really help you you understand SCRM and some of the topics I want to address here in the future.  So here is my list of some must read Social CRM posts.

• The Social CRM Roadmap by Esteban Kolsky- a 5 part series that looks at what and how things are changing from CRM to SCRM.  Esteban goes pretty in depth in some of his concepts and ideas.
• 6 Degress of Social Interactions by Mitch Lieberman- A very interesting look at how a customer goes from being non-social to social via a gradual progressions.  Good food for thought and something you will see again shortly in an upcoming position paper.
• Definition of Social CRM by Paul Greenberg- Of course I had to include this seminal post by Paul which essentially explains what SCRM is.
• The CRM Iceberg and Social Software by Ross Mayfield- A really great post from around a year ago which talks about people as the new platform and the importance of both internal and external collaboration.  A longer post put very thought provoking and worth your time.
• The New Social Customer Advocate by Brian Vellmure- Brian asks some challenging questions around understanding and empower your social customer advocate.
• The “S” in Social CRM is Not About Social Media by Wim Rampen- I think the title of the post says it all.
• Enterprise 2.0 vs Social CRM, Fight or Tango? by Prem Kumar- A great post from around a year ago which talks about how E2.0 and SCRM need to work together in order to achieve an optimal result.
• Hop on the Social CRM Express by Denis Pombriant- A great post on the value of communities and the idea of “doing” Social CRM without the use of technology.
• What is the Real Value of Social CRM by me- I decided to include this post because I think it’s important.  I talk about where I see the real value of Social CRM.
• The Evolution of the Social CRM Process by me- I really wanted to include this one in here as well just because I haven’t really seen many other posts that try to apply an actual process around SCRM.  I’m not saying that what I put together is right or wrong but I do think it’s a good starting point for companies and hopefully something they can visualize (also check out this post by Laurence on a Business Framework for CRM and SCRM).
• Software Doesn’t Drive Relationships; People Do by Laurence Buchanan- Again, the title says it all

Again, if you have any other posts you think people need to read, leave links to them in the comments section.  If you have any feedback on the posts you read above then by all means please share it here and we can have a discussion about it.  Have a great weekend, see you back here Monday!

TAGS: best social crm articles, best social crm posts, must read scrm, must read social crm, scrm, Social CRM

A few months ago, I wrote, I Threw SEO to the Wind, on FuelYourBlogging.com. Upon your initial glance at the title you might guess that the article was about totally ignoring SEO and writing the type of content you want to write.  You’d be right, in part.

However, towards the end of the post, I revealed that I do in fact optimize my posts, I just do it a little differently from what an SEO expert might suggest.

Here’s a glance at how I optimize my posts:

I write first, SEO second

I generally write a post first, with my readers in mind. Sometimes I start with a working title and sometimes I don’t. I do this because I find that whenever I start trying to do the research first, I end up spending too much time looking for keywords that I might not even use and then by the time I’m done, I’ve lost the motivation to write.

So I write first, then I use Google’s Keyword Tool to see if I can find some keywords that both relate to what I’ve already written and also have a good number of searches.

Here’s a glance at the keyword search that I conducted for this post:

I reversed the Advertiser Competition so that the lowest competitive terms appear at the top.  I try to choose the keywords that have the smallest bar (lowest competition) but also have a decent amount of global monthly searches.

Keep in mind that “decent” is a relative term, I try to shoot for keywords with at least 500 global monthly search volume but, sometimes that’s not possible.  Notice that the keywords “seo for bloggers” has lower competition, but only 210 searches. However, “seo for blogger” has only slightly more competition, but with 1300 searches.  So which do you think I’d choose? (Hint: take a look at the title of this post then take a look at the link.)

It’s really important that your keywords appear in the title, but don’t force an awkward title.

Here’s what I do:

• I create a catchy title that makes sense to humans and then I use the keywords in the permalink instead of the title. So, that means you are seeing “SEO tips for bloggers” in my title, but if you take a look at the permalink, you’ll see ” SEO for blogger” the keyword with the higher amount of searches.

This is a good alternative to creating strange titles that no one wants to click on.

• I add relevant tags and make use of my categories — this is really helpful in pointing search engines towards posts.
• I go back and find areas throughout the text where I  can add or replace synonyms with the keywords.  But I don’t over do it, if it doesn’t sound natural, don’t do it.  It won’t make the post rank any better and it could potentially get penalized by Google. Aside from that, it will also really annoy readers.

To really get noticed in search engines, you need to write more than one post with those keywords.

Here’s another tip:

• Write a Series of posts that contains those keywords. You can do this over the span of several days or you can create an ongoing series that you will revisit every week. This will signal to search engines, that your blog regularly attends to those keywords and it will begin to send visitors to you in greater numbers.

I really recommend a weekly series that you set aside one day out of the week to dive deeper into.  The benefits go beyond SEO — they create consistency and suspense for your readers and keep them coming back to see what you’ll do next week.  A series will also reduce the thinking load — when it comes time to write, you already know what you’re going to talk about, making it easier to sit down and write that post.

• Consistently produce high quality content as often as you can and take cues from analytics. Even if you don’t do a good job of optimizing your content, you’ll still find that Google will often send visitors to your site via some strange long-tail keywords — you can take cues from that and actually start producing content based on those keywords, that is if they relate in a logical way to your niche and your blog’s focus. I particularly like this method, it’s given me new ideas that I hadn’t thought of and because I went ahead a produced a post, the next visitors that Google sent were able to actually find what they were looking for.

If all else fails, get help. If doing all of this creates too much stress or if you find that you get so distracted with research that it stifles your writing, you might want to consider using SEO Software, such as DIY SEO that can automate the process for you.

It really won’t benefit you or your blog to totally ignore SEO, but it shouldn’t rule or restrict your writing either.  That’s why it’s important to take a “write first, SEO second” approach and do what you can to optimize what you already have.

So how do you optimize your content? What tips do you have to add?

Last topic was about the time you spend on social media, and how you balance that with everything else you need to do, it included a brief survey, and I have to admit, I was surprised by the results. According to you, social media isn’t the big time drain that many fear it is (or will become).

Here is the response:

The highest percentage of you spend only 1 -2 hours per week on your Facebook fan page, with the next percentage down being almost equally split between spending slightly more (3 – 5 hours per week) and slightly less (less than 1 hour per week). Only 14.2% of respondents do not have a fan page. If you don’t it’s time to get one! Facebook has now passed Google in hits. Only 2.7% spend more than 15 hours per week on their fan page.

42% of respondents are not using Twitter, of the remainder, approximately 25% spend less than 1 hour per week, and approximately 19% spend 1 – 2 hours per week. Linkedin was the least popular site for business, with a whopping 47.9% saying they spend no time on the site.

The biggest surprise for me was how much time you devote to your company website: Over 10% of you spend over 10 hours per week on your website (with many of those spending over 15 hours!), although on the other end of the spectrum, 15% of you do not spend any time at all maintaining your website during a typical week.

Almost 60% of respondents feel that the time they are devoting to social media is about right, only 10% feel that it’s taking too much time away from other duties.

Even more important is that you do predict big growth in social media, with over 65% believing that they will increase their time on social media in the future.

Here are some of your thoughts (I am sorry I don’t have room to print all of them):

“Should you even use Facebook if you can’t put in the time? We had others posting things that had nothing to to with us but we didn’t know it for quite some time because we don’t update it very often. If you can’t use it right, ie put in the time, should you have it at all?” The answer: No.

“Getting the balance right seems to be very difficult as results from social media time are not always measurable. Although I take quite a lot of pleasure updating, tweeting, blogging etc I feel it sometimes interferes with other more important issues and seeking direct immediate contact with potential customers.”

“Twitter – I haven’t yet figured out why anyone would want to hear drivel from me every 3 min. I sure don’t want to hear what anyone else is doing or thinking every couple of minutes.” If you are tweeting every few minutes you are over using! There are varying opinions, however I don’t follow hyper twitterers, I don’t have that much time to follow, and I only want to see posts that provide me with real information or something of interest.

“I spend a couple hours a month coming up with “targets” for social media: ideas/recipes for blogs, our schedule of events, themes for posts, etc. It makes knowing what to write about much easier, and frees up time during the day for me to log-on and focus on interacting with our Friends. Since taking on this strategy, there’s been a huge upswing in our online activity!” Good strategy!

“The “Flock” browser makes a simple “one window” experience of all my social networking sites! Easy as email!” Thanks for the tip!

“Social media is a MUST in this day and age….anyone who doesn’t have a page is totally missing the boat.”

“Very difficult as we are a franchisable model looking to eventually move in to other markets, so we are busy networking and planting seeds in potential expansion areas. Additionally with social media technology changing so rapidly right now hard to take a breath and and relax! Maybe we need to develop a social media support group!…Hello my name is Mike and I am addicted to Social Networking!” Hang on Mike, someone’s probably working on it!

“I had not really worried about Facebook, especially since our website generates well over one million hits per year, but a social site could add that little bit of business which puts us over the top. The growth of Facebook has been phenomenal over the past year.”

“I find much social media too intrusive and overdone. Hearing from a company more than once a week invites deletion from dilution.” This is why it’s recommended that only 1 of 10 posts have anything to do with sales – SM is about connecting and conversation, not sales!

“More important, where does my customer go for information and buy my product? What does a fan club do… create a customer community that keeps that buying my brand instead of trying another wine? Twitter is so in the moment I’m not sure yet how to use this Then I need to match my customer demographics to usage of the following social media outlets.” Exactly, which is why I conduct customer surveys on social media usage for clients. Need one? Email me or call me at 707-933-0687 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              707-933-0687      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.”

“I think it’s a fad that will run its course and will revert to communication for teenagers or others who do not have serious work to do! Honestly, who cares what people had for lunch today?” I think time will prove this isn’t a fad – it’s technology, which keeps on marching forward…

“I run my business by myself and could use training on how to streamline the social media time sucker as now I don’t think I’m very proficient and don’t take full advantage of it.” I am happy to help / coach! Email me or call me at 707-933-0687 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              707-933-0687      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

“SM serves as a customer service for us. It is critical to monitor what people are saying about our food, service and over all dining experience. The time I spend on SM each week varies. The amount of time I spend each week monitoring boards/sites/reviews is in-valuable because it is our best opportunity to communicate directly with customers. This was a hard sell for me initially to the owners of the restaurant but, the results pay off every time I comment or respond to user feedback weather it’s good or bad!”

For the complete report, take the survey via the below link:

http://216.34.99.34/servlet/show/299975/5046//?logo=1

If you have already taken the survey and would like an updated report (the numbers may change as more people participate) simply click through, the survey software should remember you, simply hit submit again (it will not count your answers twice).

- Margie

From AJR,   March 2010

By Stephanie Gleason
Stephanie Gleason is an AJR editorial assistant.

Trending in journalism right now: #social media editors.

With more than 400 million active users, Facebook celebrated its sixth birthday in February. And while sites like NYTimes.com and CNN.com experienced a decline in the number of unique visitors last year, Twitter’s total increased by almost 300 percent. The future of journalism is uncertain, but clearly social networking is booming.

Social media’s prominence has led many news organizations to hire social media editors, full-time staff members–sometimes several full-time staff members–completely dedicated to the rapidly growing phenomenon.

In January, the Associated Press named 27-year-old Lauren McCullough to fill this role, joining the New York Times, the BBC and many others in creating such a position. There are 51 “main social-media editors at media outlets,” according to a list compiled by Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a self-described technology evangelist/skeptic. The list includes news organizations ranging from CNN to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to the Tampa Tribune.

McCullough, whose title is manager of social networks and news engagement, works with two other social media editors. McCullough is no stranger to social media: She says she was connected with “citizen journalism, as we used to call it” and social networks during her three years at the AP, first as an online coordinator and then as the social networks and special projects producer.

Although she characterizes her role as both emerging and evolving, McCullough says that the team’s fundamental task is monitoring what goes on in the digital world. This means, she says, “having a core set of people that are keeping an eye on various social networks and have an understanding of what’s being talked about, what’s trending, what’s hot and then, certainly, as rumors of news start to percolate on social networks, we’re making sure that AP is aware of it.”

The team looks for articles, tips and eyewitness reports to complement the work being done by AP reporters when news breaks, maintains AP accounts on Facebook and Twitter and trains reporters in how to use social networks in their journalism.

“From a journalistic perspective, we’re looking to engage with audiences and to create a conversation around the news,” she says. “We’re looking to bring news consumers into the process, and not just the AP process but to showcase excellent content from our members and customers.”

Steve Myers, the managing editor of Poynter Online, says social media editors do much more than promote their news organizations’ work. News outlets, he says, are “trying to have a single person with a personality interact with their audience and sort of solicit feedback and comments from them as well as promote their work. It’s definitely a two-way street.”

Sreenivasan says the social media editor “is a new breed of person in the newsroom who is able to bring immense value by harnessing all the content that the newsroom provides and help bring it eyeballs and traffic.” This “is crucial as a business decision, but it also makes for really good ways to help you listen for better stories, trends and ideas.”

And for some news organizations, this effort is yielding results. Robert Quigley, social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, says that social media are helping newspapers reach an audience, especially when major news erupts, that is traditionally hard for them to penetrate. “During Hurricane Ike in the fall of 2008, we set up a special account just for the hurricane called @trackingike. That weekend we drove over 300,000 visitors to our site from Twitter alone.”

During the shootings at Fort Hood last November, the paper’s dedicated Twitter account pushed tens of thousands of visitors to the Statesman’s site who likely wouldn’t have come otherwise, he says.

Apart from driving site traffic, Quigley sees value in the personal connection social media provide. “People who would not have paid attention to the newspaper otherwise feel like they’re a part of the newspaper,” he says. “They feel like they know a lot of our staff writers and reporters personally, because it’s such a personal medium. And that’s valuable.”

In order for news organizations to take advantage of that value, someone has to be engaging the audience on Facebook, teaching reporters best practices for Twitter and staying on top of emerging social networks and technologies.

At its best, Sreenivasan sees the role as both a “listener in chief” who is aware of what is being talked about and trending online, and as a “cheerleader in chief for social media. It’s a teaching function as well.”

Quigley, who previously was the Statesman’s Internet editor, says he spends a lot of time working with staffers on social networking, running newsroom seminars and issuing weekly newsletters. McCullough says that training is an ongoing project to make sure AP staff all over the world incorporate social networking into their journalism.

Pete Sweigard, who directs social media efforts at the Baltimore Sun along with community coordinators, says “it helps to have dedicated people to help with training and awareness of new things,” because otherwise it can be hard for reporters to pull away from the demands of putting out a newspaper and engage in social media.

Social media editors understand a culture that many who are new to social networking may not. Quigley points out that newspapers are not exactly in the vanguard as far as social networking is concerned. “We are very conscious that we are kind of intruders into social media, and for the news to be there, we need to be doing it right,” he says. “We need to be respectful of the medium and not just put links everywhere.”

Sreenivasan says, “What the editor does that the lay people don’t do is that they’re listening for what’s working and what’s not in social media.”

Having a staffer directing a social media effort is important because the way the audience comes to news stories online is changing, says Monty Cook, editor of the Baltimore Sun. Rather than heading straight for a homepage, readers “pick and choose stories to come into Web sites through outside linking… I do think you’re seeing the culture start to pivot in some way.”

While the new position may be crucial, a news outlet’s social media presence cannot rest completely on the social media editor. “I think it would be silly of a news organization to make it all about one person,” Sreenivasan says. “Everybody should be doing this. Everybody should be participating and engaged. This is new work that needs to be done.”

While the Sun has a dedicated team, it works with others in the newsroom on creating a voice online, and thinking about what audiences look for and what benefit social media have for a journalist. Last December, the Sun was named the newspaper with the best Twitter IQ in a report by the Bivings Group, an Internet communications firm. The Austin American-Statesman came in second.

Sreenivasan says social media in 2010 are at a stage similar to radio in 1912 and television in 1950. “That means there are a lot of opportunities for your news organization,” he says. “If your news organization is fixed on what it can and cannot do today, that’s a mistake. It would be as if you cemented all the roles in 1912. You wouldn’t have done that. You might make a mistake if you’d done that.”