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December 6, 2011 By 52 Comments

No, you don’t need a stupid social media policy

No, you don’t need a stupid social media policy

Social media in the workplace is (still) a popular topic of discussion. While those of us living in our marketing/tech bubbles see social media as just everyday communication, there are still many large organizations that are struggling to figure out how to use it, how to leverage it for business advantages, and how to minimize risk.

Based on what I’ve observed, there is a popular notion related to social media floating around among consultants that really bugs me. When discussing social media in the workplace and in business communication, the battle cry seems to be “you need a social media policy!”

No, you don’t.

A social media policy sounds like a good idea on paper but let’s look at the message it sends. First of all, let’s agree that social media is not some weird, magical new thing that requires it’s own set of rules. It’s not. Social media is communication. Technology has changed in ways that allows communication to become more transparent, scalable, and flexible. However, at it’s core it’s still just communication.

Next, let’s agree that our employees are not stupid. As business owners and managers, I’m going to assume that we want to hire smart people that know what they are doing.

Finally, let’s agree to trust our employees. Again, I’m going to take another leap of faith and assume that we want to hire people that we trust. Sound fair?

If all this is true, then why do we feel the need to regulate and hamstring what our employees do on social media?

I, for one, love it when my team members show their personalities on Twitter, write insightful and opinionated blogs, and talk to our clients on Facebook. I trust my employees. I hire smart people. I enjoy what they bring to our team and encourage them to be visible and active online.

“But what about regulations and stuff, Reynolds! Your company is all fluffy marketing and shiny things but I have to worry about compliance and blah blah blah!”

Ok, so what? Is this a social media problem? No. This is a company culture issue. If you hire smart people with common sense and train them adequately to understand what their outcomes are, do you really need a social media policy? Or would you rather set them free to be creative and authentic?

And if you don’t trust your employees, then why are they working for you?

Please stop over-regulating, over-policing, and over-policy-izing your employees. If you trust them, you may just be pleasantly surprised.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
July 15, 2011 By 2 Comments

Google+ profiles are for people, not businesses

Google+ profiles are for people, not businesses

I’ve been enjoying Google+ recently and have written a few blog posts about it, as well as put together a short introduction video. However, as expected, I started seeing one of my pet peeves within days of using the service: profiles being set up as a business, not a person.

Google has clearly explained in this post that Google+ profiles are for people, not businesses. In fact, they are explaining that they will shut down your profile if it’s mis-used:

“Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

In a previous post about Facebook, I explained that profiles are for people. Yet, for some reason, many businesses can’t resist using social profiles as a business. Not only is this violating the Google+ terms of service, it’s also just bad social media etiquette. Let’s not forget that people want to do business with other people. Brands are great, but a brand should not eclipse the people behind it.

Getting your Google account shut down has even scarier ramifications if you are using AdWords, since this would affect your ability to advertise on Google. Be sure to wait for Google’s official business service to launch later this year. In the meantime, enjoy using Google+ as a person.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , , ,
July 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

What your business can learn from the Mormon Church

For those who may not be aware, I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Other less formal labels for this denomination include “LDS” and “Mormon.” My faith is a source of great happiness in my life and I am always happy to answer questions about it. However, this post is not about religion, so I would ask that if you have any religious questions about the LDS faith, please contact me directly and I will be happy to discuss.

The LDS Church is one of the largest religions in the world. It has over 14 million members and is the second-fastest growing church in the U.S., according to the National Council of Churches. Other statistics on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be found in the LDS Newsroom.

All spiritual debates aside, it’s easy to see that the LDS Church is doing something right. What are the Mormons doing that has lead to such dramatic and steady growth and how can it apply to your business?

Strong systems

The Mormon church is extremely systematic about everything from building churches and temples to teaching sunday school. If you go to a Mormon church anywhere in the world, you will find that they all follow the same meeting agendas, the same processes, and even teach the same lessons. If you attend a church meeting one Sunday in Indianapolis and then attend a meeting the following Sunday in California, it will be very familiar and you will be be able to stay on the same lesson plan. If the Mormon Church wants to form a new congregation, it follows a proven system for setting up the meetinghouse and can very quickly set in motion a process to get it up and running (complete with local clergy) very quickly and with very few issues. This saves time and money.

In a similar fashion, your business can benefit from strong systems that allow you to execute tasks and projects quickly and consistently. If you have proven systems for sales, marketing, product delivery, and customer service, your business will run much more efficiently and enjoy faster growth. If you’re unfamiliar with creating business systems, check out The E-Myth (affiliate link).

Member empowerment

The LDS Church makes it a high priority to encourage members to share their faith with others. In fact, one of the three main components of the mission of the church is “to proclaim the gospel.” Church members are encouraged to talk about their faith, share information with others, and speak openly about religion. This creates a culture that empowers all members to become “marketers” for the church. They are encouraged to follow their enthusiasm for their faith and make it a part of their everyday lives and communications. As a result, almost every member of the LDS church is prepared and eager to be a polite but ardent evangelist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Your business can also turn employees into evangelists. If you continuously encourage your employees to talk about your company with others, share your brand, and openly talk about their jobs, your company will enjoy greater name recognition and awareness. This will result in more leads and potential customers. Empower your team to use tools like social media to inform the public what your company is all about.

Training

The Mormon Church has a phenomenal training program for its 52,000+ missionaries around the world (who are volunteers, by the way). Before serving, a missionary must spend anywhere from three weeks to three months in a training program that helps them utilize systems, processes, and procedures for reaching prospective new members. Every missionary goes through the exact same proven training process. If some part of the process is improved, it is rolled out to every missionary in the world. The Mormon Church is very serious about proper training and equips its missionaries with the systems and support they need to be successful.

Does your business provide sales training? If not, it might be worth considering. Proper sales training gets all your sales people on the same page, gives them a system to follow, and provides ongoing coaching. My favorite sales system is the Sandler system. If you’re in the Indianapolis area, I recommend Trustpointe or Lushin.

Rapid embracing of technology

Technology evolves at an frenzied pace and it can sometimes be difficult to keep up. However, the Mormon Church sees almost every form of new technology as an opportunity to grow the church’s brand and message. You’ll find that the church has a presence on just about every major social network in use today and even organizes messaging among specific focus areas, including newsroom communications, and member training just to name a few. The church has an incredibly strong SEO strategy which brings lots of relevant traffic to its websites. Additionally, the Mormon Church facilitates messaging through the use of apps, blogs, video, mobile, podcasts, and email. The church even has web portals and apps that allow all members of a congregation to instantly download directories and leadership information directly to their phones in order to facilitate easy communication between members. Most church buildings also now have wireless Internet access in order to encourage members to make use of these technologies as learning aids.

Your business can also benefit by embracing new technologies. If you look at each new form of technology as an opportunity to share your message, your brand will travel faster and your business will grow. Just as the Mormon Church does, carefully study each new tool or technology that evolves, decide how it can strengthen your brand messaging, and then deliberately integrate it into your business.

Partnerships

The Mormon Church does not see other religions as competition. Instead, church leaders throughout the world work with leaders of other faiths to serve and provide humanitarian relief. Some notable examples include Indian Ocean tsunami relief efforts in which the Mormon Church partnered with Islamic leaders and the church’s partnership with the Catholic Church to bring aid to Niger. Other less-dramatic events include interfaith concerts and other social events.

In a similar fashion, your business can also grow faster by leveraging partnerships. Instead of viewing other businesses in your space as competitors, try reaching out to them and looking for ways to work together. Not every prospect will choose to work with you and some may choose your competition (just as some people will choose another religion over Mormonism). However, if you have a positive working relationship with your competitors, you can create opportunities to refer to each other and network constructively, which raises the level of respect for everyone.

Conclusion

The Mormon Church continues to grow quickly and recruits new members very rapidly. With new churches and temples being built all the time, it’s obvious that the methods in and practices of the church lead to growth and success. So what can your business learn from the Mormon Church? By creating systems, embracing new technology, utilizing sales training, creating partnerships, and empowering your employees, you can have a business that enjoys similar growth and success.

Filed Under: Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
June 30, 2011 By 1 Comment

You have to care

Many times when I do speaking and training about social media, I see excitement and enthusiasm from the people I talk to. I like that. I really like that. It makes me really happy to see people getting excited about using new communication tools and methods.

Sometimes, however, I also encounter people who are just the opposite. They whine, they complain, they say “I don’t have time” or “I don’t want to try to keep up with all that stuff” and they defeat themselves before even trying.

I don’t know how many times I can say this: social media is not a chore. It’s not about “learning Twitter” or “getting LinkedIn.”

Social media should be fun. Social communication is about extending your platform to reach new constituents. It’s about magnifying your message. It’s about giving a voice to your passion.

You have passion for what you do? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you have something worthwhile to say? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you care about your customers, members, or constituents? Then you’ll be “good” at social media.

The key is, though, you really do have to care.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,
October 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The secret to effective time management in social media

I give regular presentations and training sessions on social media, online marketing, and technology-related topics. My audiences include business owners, professionals, and non-profit teams. 100% of the time I get this question or some variation of it:

“How much time do you spend on this stuff?”

Variations include:

“How do you find the time for all this?”
“How many hours a week do you spend online?”
“How much time do I need to spend on social media?”

My favorite is:

“When do you actually work?”

If I sense that my audience is truly looking for some practical “runway-level” tips on time management with online marketing, I will talk about automation, batched activity, block scheduling, and so on.

However, sometimes I will give a much simpler answer:

“Love what you do.”

That’s it. If you love what you do, you won’t ever have to ask how to find the time to talk about it. Social media is about communication with other people. If you love what you do, I mean truly love what you do with a passion, then talking about it with others will be effortless and natural. It won’t be forced and pushy; it will be honest and passionate and your business will grow naturally as a result.

You won’t have to “find the time” to be active in social media. It will become a natural extension of what you already do. You will be excited to have a new set of tools to expand your network and participate with a learners mind.

The bad news is, if you don’t love what do this message will be uncomfortable for you. It might prompt you to question why you do what you do. It might make you think about change.

The good news is, what you do with your life is up to you.

So what is the secret to effective time management in social media? You could try block scheduling and other fancy things. Or you could simply love what you do.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
September 26, 2010 By 4 Comments

Marketing and Technology Review at AMTA National Convention 2010

I had the pleasure of attending the AMTA National Convention in Minneapolis last week. I really look forward to this event every year and seeing so many familiar friends was a wonderful experience.

As usual, I paid close attention how marketing and technology was utilized during the convention. Here are some observations.

AMTA National Website

First off, the new AMTA website looks really good. It was launched a few weeks ago and aesthetically, it is light years ahead of the old website. I am particularly pleased with the softer tone of the design and the more modern branding.

However, the structure of the website is still not very search-engine friendly. The deep links into the content are not very keyword-rich and a lot of opportunity for SEO juice is being lost in its current state. A simple update to the Content Management System that creates the page links could fix it.

I was also disappointed in some of the navigation choices on the website, such as the “Contact Us” item being placed all the way at the bottom of the website. Form fields are also placed in staggered format rather than stacked, which makes them harder to use for some users.

I was happy to see the massage locator service placed prominently on the home page but I was a little unclear about how it was supposed to be used. As someone who knows massage, I understand that I could type in “trigger point” or “craniosacral” into the “Find” box. However, as a consumer, it seems that it would be a little confusing. I think adding a little bit of additional text or perhaps a pop-up box with some examples could help make it easier to use.

Overall, the new AMTA National website it is a great improvement but there is still some work than can be done from a structural level.

Social Media Session at Chapter Leadership Training

Next, I attended Chapter Leadership training on Wednesday. I chose to check out the Social Media session taught by Maj-Lis Nash. I was curious to see what sort of information on social media was being taught to chapter volunteers. Maj-Lis was a good presenter, clear speaker, and a nice person. However, I had some disagreements with what she presented.

First off, the session title was “Social Media” (actually it was called “Social Networking” but that’s old school) but the session was 100% on Facebook. I felt that was a bit misleading.

Next, Maj-Lis recommended that chapters create a policy that requires board members to acquire written permission from the President or 1st VP before posting anything on the chapter’s page/group. In my opinion, this is a sure way to stifle activity. Part of her suggested social media policy for chapters also prohibited board members from engaging on confrontational discussions online. Though I see how these types of conversations can go terribly wrong when mis-managed, sometimes a confrontational discussion can be respectful and useful. I would favor responsible transparency over a policy that keeps all uncomfortable conversations behind closed doors.

Next, she recommended that chapters set up a group rather than a fan page. I disagree with this since fan pages have a number of advantages over groups and are more appropriate for associations and chapters.

Additionally, Maj-Lis spent some time bashing email marketing and saying that people don’t really read emails. Again… I disagree completely. When done effectively, email is one of the most powerful ways to communicate with members. It’s true that spammy emails don’t get opened but it’s irresponsible to make a grand generalization that people don’t read emails.

Some deeper tactics were also left out, such as blogging, linking social activity to websites with automated tools, etc. However, since we only had 45 minutes, I can understand not having too much time to cover it all. I just wish the session title was more accurate. I would have called it “Basics of Facebook” or something like that. Maj-Lis was a good presenter but I would love to respectfully discuss our points of disagreement in more detail sometime.

Exhibit Hall

I took a quick tour through the exhibit hall and was a little disappointed this year. It was smaller than it has been at past conventions and did not offer as much variety. I did see some familiar faces and introduced myself to some Facebook friends that I had not yet met in person.

I did notice that a lot of the people working at their booths were sitting down and not engaging with the crowd. If you’re paying for booth space and your goal is to sell product and acquire new customers, then at least one person needs to be standing up and greeting passers-by at all times. I saw a lot of booth workers sitting down, talking to each other in closed conversations, and working on their laptops. This sort of activity discourages prospective customers from talking to you.

I did have a great time meeting Ryan Hoyme of Massage Nerd fame at the exhibit hall. Ryan is a video specialist and he shot a quick video of me promoting the RISE campaign for the Massage Therapy Foundation. Thanks, Ryan!

Convention Updates for Attendees

On a general note, I was disappointed to see that AMTA was printing out daily (full-page glossy color) info sheets throughout the week and made this the primary method of distributing schedule information. I checked the AMTA website and did not see any sort of detailed information, however. Here are some ideas for AMTA that could be very useful for next year’s convention:

  • A daily email sent to convention attendees with the day’s schedule information and updates on it. This would have been really convenient to pull up on an iPhone or Blackberry (of which there were many).
  • Post a detailed, updated schedule on the AMTA website with times, locations, maps, and any other useful information. Unless I missed it, the schedule of events online online did not contain room numbers.
  • Use AMTA’s Twitter account for daily schedule information. It would have been really easy to schedule it all out in advance with HootSuite. In all fairness, AMTA was using the Twitter account throughout the convention but I think it could have gone a bit deeper.
  • An option to sign up for daily text alerts with event details and scheduling. Tatango offers a great, affordable way to do this.
  • Offer an AMTA iPhone app with convention info on it. During the rest of the year, an app could also be used to integrate with the Massage Locator service. What a great way this would be to build AMTA’s brand and strengthen consumer loyalty to AMTA therapists. About 80% of the people I talked to at convention had an iPhone. Hint hint…
  • Create a more convention-specific Twitter hashtag before the event to build buzz. The only hashtag in use when I arrived was #AMTA so I created #AMTAConv and it caught on quickly. Thanks to AMTA for using it, as well! This helped me (and others) group convention-specific tweets in one place. If AMTA were to start using this hashtag a few weeks before the convention (and advertising on the AMTA website), it would help market the event, as well.

Let me stress that I was happy to see AMTA making some use of technology during convention and there were some good things happening. However, I would love to see the tips above implemented next year and perhaps save some of the members’ money by not printing as much.

Connections and Friendships

As always, the highlight of the convention was connecting with fellow members… some old friends, some new. I loved hanging out with my Indiana board, as well as all the other chapters I’ve had the pleasure of working with and socializing with. I also finally got to meet one of my favorite massage marketing bloggers, Allissa Haines. Her stuff is really good and any therapist who is not subscribing to her blog is missing some great business and marketing advice. Seriously, go subscribe now. Yes, right now.

AMTA is making progress when it comes to the use of marketing and technology but I think there are still some simple things that can be done to improve the effectiveness of how the leadership communicates with members and stakeholders. I look forward to seeing how things go in Portland next year. I can’t wait to see everyone there again for another great AMTA National convention.

What were your observations? Please post them below!

Filed Under: Design, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
July 10, 2010 By 3 Comments

Resume or productivity footprint?

What is the standard procedure when applying for a job? You inquire about openings and the first thing you are told is “send us your resume”, right? Is this relevant anymore?

I would argue that resumes are antiquated, lifeless leftovers from a time before rich online communications. A resume is just a simple document outlining where you’ve worked before, what you did there, and how well you can embellish.

We have tools today that are so much better than a resume. The first place I go to research a prospective employee is LinkedIn. This will show me recommendations from others, previous work, communication skills, and connections.

I can do a simple Google search and find out a great deal about someone’s previous work. I would much rather read a candidate’s blog than a boring resume. A blog will tell me how well that person writes, what that person is passionate about, and what that person knows. I’m interested in what he or she posts on Twitter and why he or she finds it important. I look for a personal website that collects previous work and showcases it in a rich, living medium.

We all have a productivity footprint, which is a collection of all the work we have done, words we have published, and profiles we have created online. This productivity footprint tells me so much more about a person than a resume.

This is why I don’t really look at resumes. When someone inquires about a job at my company, I am more interested in that person’s productivity footprint than a lifeless document.

What do you think? Should we stop using resumes?

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,
June 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Personal Branding with Social Media E-Book

Personal branding is becoming more important today as people are becoming more interested in relationships and personal communication. Sales professionals, job-seekers, and professionals in a variety of industries are finding that how they relate to people and how they are perceived in the marketplace on a personal level makes a huge difference in how successful they are.

Social media is enabling us to strengthen our personal brands like never before. In order to address this, I’ve written an e-book to help others understand the dynamics of personal branding using social media and how to take advantage of social tools to strengthen their personal brands.

The e-book is free and you are encouraged to share it with others. If you have any personal stories you would like to include, please feel free to contact me and I would love to include your notes.

The e-book can be downloaded here:

Personal Branding with Social Media (PDF)

As always, comments and feedback are welcome.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
April 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Money, time, or magic?

I talk to a lot of business owners who are looking for ways to grow their businesses. It seems that everybody wants to be more successful and is eager for advice on how to do it.

However, I’m surprised at how many of these business owners are looking for magic.

Magic can come in many forms. How about a Facebook fan page? That will bring lots of new customers, right? How about showing up at the occasional networking meeting and exchanging a few business cards? This will lead to lots of great prospects, right? Maybe launching a great new website will do the trick… people will come buy things, right?

I personally don’t put much faith in magic. I prefer to invest either money or time.

When people do one small thing (usually something trendy and related to technology) and expect it to grow their businesses overnight with minimal effort, they are investing in magic. A beautiful new website is a great investment, but it takes time and/or money to make it effective and bring traffic to it. Social media may be a good fit for your business but it typically takes an investment of time to make it really effective.

Some examples of investing money to grow your business:

  • Paying a qualified SEO firm to run a search marketing campaign for you
  • Hiring a ghost blogger to write quality content that grows your tribe and SEO visibility
  • Paying a star employee to run your marketing
  • Paying a qualified website design firm to create a website that encourages conversions and sales

Some examples of investing time include:

  • Scheduling time to consistently post optimized blogs to your website
  • Maintaining a regular, strategic presence on social media with specific goals in mind
  • Investing time into your network by consistently giving quality referrals to others
  • Writing educational articles for your email newsletter and sticking to a schedule

It takes either money or time to grow your business. Sometimes it takes both. Those who are looking for magic may end up disappointed.

Where are you making your investment?

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
March 26, 2010 By 2 Comments

Associations: Is it time to eliminate the newsletter?

As we all know, paper is getting less relevant. Many associations are scrambling to “go green” with their newsletters in an effort to reduce costs and make use of electronic means of delivery. Kudos for this!

However, what most associations are doing is simply emailing out a PDF version of the newsletter they used to print. While this does save money and takes advantage of modern electronic tools, there is a problem with this approach: it assumes that members want to consume information the same way they always have.

We need to abandon our old thinking of just “going green” with our newsletters because all this does is keeps us clinging to the idea that our communication needs to come out on an infrequent, scheduled basis as one big chunk of content called a “newsletter”.

Ask anyone today if they read newspapers or newsletters anymore and chances are they will acknowledge that they don’t have the time or the interest in reading a large publication full of content that they have to filter and digest.

Today’s association members consume information differently. While they typically will not read a multi-page newsletter (paper or electronic), they will notice bite-sized chunks of communication that can be consumed in 2 minutes or less. Examples of communication like this include: articles posted to the association website, a single-article email, blogs, Facebook posts, Twitter posts, LinkedIn discussions, SMS, YouTube videos, RSS, and community comments. Today’s association websites must replace the newsletter by truly becoming information hubs that also encourage social commenting.

Associations must offer choices, as well. There are so many ways to consume information today that in order to reach as many people as possible, we need to create a system that includes many different tools and touch points.

In order to evolve, associations must acknowledge this shift in information consumption and abandon the old idea of the “newsletter”. It takes a new kind of communications strategy to reach members today.

Isn’t it time to eliminate the newsletter?

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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