Today’s Word: SOCIAL MEDIA | John Maxwell Team | A Minute With Maxwell

John C. Maxwell on Social Media and influence. Are you there yet?

via johnmaxwellteam.com

John Maxwell, one of the most renown teachers of leadership principles explains very succinctly the value of Social Media. He also explains that he 'has good people around him'. We believe in hiring professionals in whatever industry we need them, we hire a Realtor to buy/sell my homes, we hire Accountants and Lawyers. When it comes to social media marketing and websites do you hire professionals?

2012 Predictions: Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb.com

2012 Predictions

1. This year's Best BigCo, Amazon.com, will launch a media-focused social network. Kind of like what MySpace used to be. It will be to a place for you to socialize around your reading, listening and viewing activities.

2. Twitter's usage will begin to wane, due to squeezing from Facebook and Google . Maybe then Twitter will sell to Apple. Heck, predictions are no place for maybes. I predict Apple will buy Twitter!

3. Google's Chrome browser will make dramatic inroads into Microsoft's Internet Explorer, coming within 10-15% of it by the end of 2012. This will be due to mainstream people finally abandoning IE in droves. By the end of 2012, Chrome will have close to 30% of the market according to Net Applications (it currently has 17.6%) and IE will have just over 40% (it currently has 52.6%).

4. Facebook will have initial teething problems with its Timeline, but by end of 2012 it will be seen as a triumph - as millions of people begin to use Facebook over 2012 as their digital memory bank. I don't know if that's a brave (new world?) prediction or not, but right now there are a lot of skeptics about Timeline. So I'm firmly betting on Timeline being a big success for Facebook in 2012.

5. Music acts will start to truly tap into the power of the iTunes LP. Currently most iTunes LP releases are simply a PDF file with a bonus video if you're lucky. I predict that in 2012 many more bands and musicians will include multimedia in their digital albums and the braver ones will try to emulate Bjork and create stunning "app albums". This is a bit of a re-hash of my music prediction last year, but I really want to see widespread innovation in the digital album!

6. Bonus prediction: Bill Nguyen of Color fame will convince Silicon Valley VCs to part with $100 million, to fund an amazing new type of smart TV. It will have 4D, Internet telepathy and a revolutionary new sensing feature called Smell This®. RWW Editor-in-Chief Richard MacManus will thoughtfully blog that it "may be the next Google." The TV will flop before the ink is dry on the last VC cheque. A few months later, the futuristic telly will be re-branded as a way to consume Facebook frictionless sharing "on the big screen."

[p.s. I love Bill's spirit, I really do. I hope he does try for another New New Thing in 2012!]

Those are my predictions, now let me know yours :)

See Also

• 2012 Predictions, Mobile Edition: Dan Rowinski
• ReadWriteWeb's 2012 Staff Predictions (And What We Got Wrong in 2011)
• 2012 Predictions: Alicia Eler
• 2012 Predictions: Curt Hopkins

via readwriteweb.com

Predictions...what do you think of this list? Do you have some of your own to share?

Are you ready for Facebook's new Timeline? Mashable is sharing a good introduction.

via mashable.com

Facebook's new Timeline is being launched very soon so there will be lots of talk about the changes. Remember that they are equating this to a scrapbook of your life.

On your personal profile you will be able to literally see all the activity that you are allowing to be shared with Facebook and most likely the public.

We encourage you to check your privacy settings and use only one browser for Facebook. You private online activity should be performed in a different browser to ensure those items are not shared with Facebook.

From a professional perspective you'll want to share who you are and your value system to attract the clients that share the same.

It's going to be interesting to see the reactions to this via the Social Media sites on the Internet. Feel free to share your thoughts with us.

Facebook vs. Google: The battle for the future of the Web

via money.cnn.com

Great article by Miguel Helft and Jessi Hempel of @FortuneMagazine. Definitely worth the read for anyone interested in social media and the Internet.

The evolution of SEO [infographic] | Susan Beebe's Blog

via susanbeebe.com

Let us know if you need any help implementing good SEO practices.

Get the What Matters Now ebook (and spread it)

by SethGodin

We want to shake things up. More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It's designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year's resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team.

On this page you will find some links where you can find the ebook, along with a few of the books the contributing authors have written. (Download it here). All Squidoo royalties from this page go to charity...

The authors that have contributed to the freebook have written other books here is the list:

Click through to see the plexo

Choosing the Right Social Media Tools for Your Business [Video]

Staying on top of Social Media tools is a huge undertaking and I prefer to watch those that are leading the way and read their reviews. Then I choose which to test for myself. It's been said that "experience is the best teacher"; while I subscribe to the school of thought that "wisdom learns from other's experience".

All parents hope their child would be willing to learn from their experiences, that is after all why we walked both ways uphill to school barefoot. I do believe we can save a lot of time and money from learning who to follow and allow to influence our decisions. Mashable.com has proven to be an invaluable resource time and again as I keep up on whats happening in the wonderful world of Social Media.

Enjoy this video and article I found on the Mashable site. It is a daunting task to filter through and determine which Social Media tools are best suited for your business.



I encourage you to get started...pick one venue and build your web footprint!

Happy marketing!

Are you convinced of the need for Social Media?

Social Media....the buzz, the confusion, the variety and the Choice!

After spending over 20 years in the technology field, I decided to build my own website to promote my existing Gift & Incentive business online. Now everyone knows that the place to build retail businesses right now is online, correct?

In fact I was introduced to the S-Curve of technology - a theory by Harry S. Dent when I first began with an online business in 1999 and as predicted by this theory Internet shopping has passed the 10% mark in the past 10 years. Therefore, over the next ten years we are going to be witnesses to incredible growth.

With my product offering in the Gift & Incentive market and experience with website development from my full time job at a website solution company Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies, I decided to launch a website. Next came the marketing research...social marketing that is. I reviewed all the traditional marketing methods and put my plan together to begin with the less expensive social media arena.

After many, many hours I learned some incredible lessons about social networking and believe I was born for this time in history. Social marketing is nothing more than relationship building! This has always been and will always be the root of sales; customers are people that need to be respected, appreciated and provided with a value in order to part with their hard earned money.

There are incredible resources available to learn where and how to begin your path of creating a web footprint, regardless of your industry. I know the first thing I do when I meet a prospective client or source is to search them online to check their reputation. Have you checked yours? What does the first page of the searches tell you about your company?

Creating loyal customers is part and parcel of brand recognition, integrity and the relationship building. Customers purchase based on trust. I encourage you to do your homework, check out some of these resources and become proactive about your reputation. It won't consume you if you understand the big picture and know where to start and what to spend your time on.

I recommend reading this USA Today Article about More marketers use social networking to reach customers!

1) Chris Brogan is a NYT and WSJ best selling author for his book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. Chris is a ten year veteran of using social media and technology to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and makes media of all kinds at chrisbrogan.com.

Here is a link to one of Chris's articles; Starting Your Social Media Case

2) Seth Godin's latest book, Tribes, is a nationwide bestseller, appearing on the Amazon, New York Times, BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. It's about the most powerful form of marketing--leadership--and how anyone can now become a leader, creating movements that matter. The Miami Herald listed it among the best business books of 2008. Seth writes the most popular marketing blog in the world;
is the author of the bestselling marketing books of the last decade;
speaks to large groups on marketing, new media and what's next;
and is the founder of Squidoo.com, a fast-growing recommendation website.

Here is an excerpt from his blog; "Connecting people to people. Over and over again, that's what lasts online. Folks thought it was about technology and it's not."

3) Social Media training; that's right if you don't know where to begin, ask someone. Invest your money in someone that has done the research and let them shortcut your learning curve and teach you what works. Your future is in your hands! Feel free to contact me for direction and encouragement, it really is not difficult to maintain if you are setup correctly and ready to recognize that an hour a day online marketing is a fundamental part of business.

Wishing you all the success you are willing to work for!

OfficialWire: Four Tips For Effective Social Media Use

There is no question about it- social media are changing our lives. Here are four tips on the effective use of social media for individuals and companies

Social media loosely defines all types of communications channels where the contents are created and shared by the people. There are so many types of social media- blogs, flickr and other photo-sharing media, YouTube, LinkedIn, Multiply, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc. They have become so ingrained in people’s daily lives and in our society that they really are changing the way people communicate and even how they live their lives.

There are so many uses for social media, and individuals and companies decide how they can really benefit from them. Here are some of the things people should consider doing to maximize the full potential of social media:

Read full article by Lawrence Perry

Customer Acquisition and Retention Top Priorities - eMarketer

Social media big winner in marketing mix

Marketers’ top priorities for 2010 will be customer acquisition and retention, followed by thought leadership, according to a survey by virtual events provider Unisfair.

Six in 10 marketers polled said acquiring new customers would be critical in 2010, while 48% would focus on retaining current customers—a particularly important effort in the recession.

Read full articel on www.emarketer.com

The Real-Time Web: A Primer, Part 3

This is part 3 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

In part 1 and part 2, we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication, creates a new body of content, is real time, is public, and has an explicit social graph associated with it. A final characteristic of the real-time Web is that it carries with it an implicit model of federation.

A number of sources both generate and consume real-time streams. As a result, many of these new companies are becoming communication carriers, passing their users' real-time threads through their networks to other networks. This is more than simply being open (i.e. more than allowing data to be imported and exported). Just as in shipping and transportation and other communication industries before it (telephone, Internet packets, and email, to name a few), the real-time Web is developing a federated model of transmission whereby companies formally or tacitly agree to facilitate transmission and perform actions on behalf of end-users within the eco-system.

It's hard to say whether this model has arisen because of a conscious strategic effort to build a new industry, or because building a fully closed world would have required just too many resources, or because of a collective effort among business friends and acquaintances to develop open products and open interactions so that cool new things could be created. It's probably a combination of all three, but considering the history of the people at Twitter and FriendFeed (Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed's founders, is credited with coining Google's unofficial "Don't be evil" slogan), the open and cool factors are probably a big part of the equation.

Read the entire article on ReadWriteWeb

The Real-Time Web: A Primer, Part 2

This is part 2 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

In part 1 we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication and creates a new body of content. The immediacy of the Twitter channel is a third fundamental characteristic of the real-time Web and one of its prime currencies, not surprising given the name of the space. Because of demand within the eco-system, quite a bit of effort is being made on storing, slicing, dicing, and disseminating information as quickly as possible. The fundamental implication of this activity (without any explicit markers being laid down) is that the velocity of information within the Web data system has just increased by an order of magnitude.

Click to view the entire article by ReadWriteWeb

Social Media is where you'll find your customers

Businesses spend billions on marketing to reach customers. When I decided to launch my retail business online, I did the research. Where are people today? Online!! How do I reach these people - marketing! Therefore, people + internet = social media. Now wading through the numerous social networks to find and transition leads to customers is a little more complicated and time consuming, thats where over 20 years of business and technology experience comes in....stay tuned for The Social Marketing Touch! In the meantime, enjoy this video:

Using Twitter for Business

There is so much information out there on what is happening with social media/ especially twitter. Here is a resource as to what is happening with twitter and business. http://cli.gs/7r24JJ

Once you make the leap and start with twitter I highly recommend the most comprehensive Guide to Twitter I've found: http://cli.gs/MZyhLa

This link tells you who you are following that is not following you back and the opposite: http://friendorfollow.com/

Wishing you all the success you are willing to work for!

Embracing Your Inner Customer

Customer Service through Embracing Your Inner Customer

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