The quality of what you do…the title above takes you to a post by Simon U Ford telling you a bit more about the journey into Social Traffic and the importance of quality... My comments are below feel free to leave yours!
Comment : Hey Simon... just as you teach "words are everything," they are too when you make contact with someone online. You are so correct when you say “You’ll just know” when asked the quality question in relation to followers or friend requests. Using the correct intonations in your words, portraying your reason for wanting to make contact and showing that you have spent time to find out about the person you are introducing yourself too all go a long way to getting off on the right foot. Before taking you’re “Cracking the Code” course I was too approaching these venues more like a numbers game friending anyone who wanted to be my friend until they did something to offend me... but I was opening them up potentially to all my friends with out even vetting them. I do thing a lot differently now. Learning about how to use business pages and syndicate Notes to get my messages out to a broader audience has really helped... Can’t wait for the final Face Book training videos to be released so I can really get stuck into using all the functionality intelligently and with purpose.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Choose a show .. and relax with a cup of your favorite....
coffee .. or a green tea !! Maybee you were there for WOODSTOCK
...when the internet was just a dream in someones head and we
still queued at pay phones to call home.. well that's where
most of the team are coming from . Who would have thought that
we would be having weekly meetings with up to 50 people at
one time from all over the globe on the internet..or getting
into groups and starting Radio Shows! Well here we are ... ENJOY
my friends and leave your cup in the sink at the end of the show
..I`ll get them later !!
...when the internet was just a dream in someones head and we
still queued at pay phones to call home.. well that's where
most of the team are coming from . Who would have thought that
we would be having weekly meetings with up to 50 people at
one time from all over the globe on the internet..or getting
into groups and starting Radio Shows! Well here we are ... ENJOY
my friends and leave your cup in the sink at the end of the show
..I`ll get them later !!
Who says the web is full of teanagers ..!!!
This young at heart group of middle aged entrepreneurs
got together doing a social media course and have now
put together their own team SOCIAL MEDIA BOOMERS and
a radio show telling everything about what they have
learned .. Next week they are recruiting more Social
Media Boomers who are up for a challenge to come with
them while they do their FACEBOOK launch ... There are
prizes to be WON!! Social media courses and books and
all you have to do is participate .. Follow great
instruction and learn!! What could be easier or more
rewarding? Sign onto GFC (the Google friend connects
widget for Followers on the leftof the page)this week and we will contact
you with details... Watch this video to.. meet the team!!
Friday, August 28, 2009
What are some of the benefits to Social Media Marketing and some of the steps you have to take
Three steps to marketing using Social media
I think firstly there are different horses for different courses.
An existing company with a long standing established brand,new
to the online space would need to approach it slightly differently
from a new company launching a product online... so different
strategies would need to be implemented, but at the end of the
day it comes down to getting educated
1) Established businesses need to listen first. They may have a
completely different idea of what their brand is than their customer
base. Mini for example thought hey were selling a neat little run
around that was cheap to run and easy to park. They spent millions
trying to compete in the new car market place.
After they listened to the bogs, tweets and forums they discovered
that Mini owners see themselves as members of an elite community
that belongs together they are far more likely to recommend the
car to their friends and family... a customer community who would
evangelize to the masses.
They decided to move their marketing investment to an online strategy
to target mini owners rather than the general prospective car buyers
engaging mini owner groups. They ran mini owners rallies and then
populated the photos from the events through flickr across blogs and
sharing platform to the public in general as well as the owners
building a real Buzz.
2) Next having found your customers... engage in conversation with
them. Start a company blog and twitter account inviting customers
and staff to comment, and learn from them. Some of the greatest
innovations in our society today have been born from the public’s
feedback on problems they need solution to “I wish it could do
this too!”. Nike or was it Adidas ? found out about a problem
with the glue on a batch of training shoes from comments online.
It immediately sent a notice offering an exchange before it became
a problem.
You obviously need to assign a staff member to do this type of work
for you...to maintain blogs and watch whats happening... they will
need to be highly trained in all types and facets of Social Media
... where do you even find someone like that?
3) Once you are talking to your customers through you company blogs
and updating them of new posts through twitter or face book (where
you can also build a business page) you can start to feed out new
products , specials promotions using fun engaging videos that they
will want to share with their friends.. they may even go viral
like the "Blendtec’s" video where they blended an " I Phone" then
engaged their audience to suggest what they should blend next !
These videos lead back to your bogs company websites or specific
sales funnel for the particular campaign you are running.
So those three short steps again .....
Get educated.... on how to listen, participate and engage you
costumers or prospects to becoming your own sales force the sales
force driven by word of mouth, referrals and testimonials
Get educated... Find a Mentor, someone who understands this space
and hang onto their coat tails …. But hang on tight cos this ride
into the Social Media space is moving at a thousand miles an hour
and it takes effort and commitment to stay on top of it... if you
do you will surely reap the rewards.
Get educated … find a course (as mentioned above) that is
structured, manageable and with measurable results, do it yourself
so you understand it and then put your entire marketing department
through it so your whole team can participate in maintaining your
Brand identity and be part of the ongoing conversation that is
Social Media.
I think firstly there are different horses for different courses.
An existing company with a long standing established brand,new
to the online space would need to approach it slightly differently
from a new company launching a product online... so different
strategies would need to be implemented, but at the end of the
day it comes down to getting educated
1) Established businesses need to listen first. They may have a
completely different idea of what their brand is than their customer
base. Mini for example thought hey were selling a neat little run
around that was cheap to run and easy to park. They spent millions
trying to compete in the new car market place.
After they listened to the bogs, tweets and forums they discovered
that Mini owners see themselves as members of an elite community
that belongs together they are far more likely to recommend the
car to their friends and family... a customer community who would
evangelize to the masses.
They decided to move their marketing investment to an online strategy
to target mini owners rather than the general prospective car buyers
engaging mini owner groups. They ran mini owners rallies and then
populated the photos from the events through flickr across blogs and
sharing platform to the public in general as well as the owners
building a real Buzz.
2) Next having found your customers... engage in conversation with
them. Start a company blog and twitter account inviting customers
and staff to comment, and learn from them. Some of the greatest
innovations in our society today have been born from the public’s
feedback on problems they need solution to “I wish it could do
this too!”. Nike or was it Adidas ? found out about a problem
with the glue on a batch of training shoes from comments online.
It immediately sent a notice offering an exchange before it became
a problem.
You obviously need to assign a staff member to do this type of work
for you...to maintain blogs and watch whats happening... they will
need to be highly trained in all types and facets of Social Media
... where do you even find someone like that?
3) Once you are talking to your customers through you company blogs
and updating them of new posts through twitter or face book (where
you can also build a business page) you can start to feed out new
products , specials promotions using fun engaging videos that they
will want to share with their friends.. they may even go viral
like the "Blendtec’s" video where they blended an " I Phone" then
engaged their audience to suggest what they should blend next !
These videos lead back to your bogs company websites or specific
sales funnel for the particular campaign you are running.
So those three short steps again .....
Get educated.... on how to listen, participate and engage you
costumers or prospects to becoming your own sales force the sales
force driven by word of mouth, referrals and testimonials
Get educated... Find a Mentor, someone who understands this space
and hang onto their coat tails …. But hang on tight cos this ride
into the Social Media space is moving at a thousand miles an hour
and it takes effort and commitment to stay on top of it... if you
do you will surely reap the rewards.
Get educated … find a course (as mentioned above) that is
structured, manageable and with measurable results, do it yourself
so you understand it and then put your entire marketing department
through it so your whole team can participate in maintaining your
Brand identity and be part of the ongoing conversation that is
Social Media.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Facebook for business - Social traffic
Coming soon more amazing revelations about the power of Facebook for your business marketing...how could you ignore an audience like this...
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Wisdom comes from knowing what to overlook... This... you should not.
I used to use the internet just for E-mail and played around in Google, searching for Pizza specials. All those blogs and tweets seemed so senseless, random, unstructured, who wants to know what so and so thought about this and that. I now know that it wasn’t unstructured. I was just not yet educated to comprehend what it was all about.
I’ve had a pretty varied background working construction, hospitality; I even sold double glazing and water purifiers as a kid. Throughout my life the main thing that stands out is whatever product or service you are involved in, it is not just delivering excellence. There are lots of excellent painters, lots of great chefs, its gaining respect and building trust with your clients. You use the painter your friend recommended and go to the restaurant your friend gave rave reviews about.Why? because you trust their judgment, you have a bond with them through having built a quality relationship.
Social Media is the same. Only now the arena has expanded. Your potential client base is global, and you can’t dress yourself up as something you are not, everything you do online leaves a data trail.
Social Media is about being authentic, delivering value to people who are interested in what you are offering without insisting on a return or payback. It is about paying it forward. It is the ‘law of attraction’, the ‘learn by teaching’, and the ‘receive by giving’ of the online world.
In the industries I have worked in the lunchtime conversation revolved around fast cars, sports and beer. I needed some stimulation. I started to look online but there is so much noise. Where do you look? Each search led somewhere different, so I’d find something interesting, and bookmark it. My bookmark lists became hundreds long with no categories, no structure and it would be quicker to re-search what I was looking for than try to find the bookmark.
A friend if mine Simon Ford had been working in this space for a number of years using money from one of his other successful start ups to scour the internet and source the best training available in the world. He was being trained by the masters but soon found they all had a limit to their knowledge. There were many questions they just couldn't answer. A man on a mission he dug in, joined forums of the developers of the many of the Web 2.0 applications and employed researchers, writers and programmers from across the globe to crack the code, remain on the crest of the wave, to build an online application and training platform to disseminate this information to a global audience.
Through this training I learned to segment my unstructured lists, syndicate the content I had found or produced and share it with the world. People who liked what I was sharing would tell me by voting with a thumbs up and comments. I’d see the same people commenting on my bookmarks and suddenly the penny dropped……This is how I meet people who are into the same stuff as I am, people I can discuss my thoughts and ideas with !
Simon Ford started to publish and syndicate, good, recent, relevant content, teaching people how to use all these online Web2.0 tools and moreover how to use them in a practical way to benefit their life… business, social and personal. People listened. These people were drawn together through their thirst for knowledge which was being quenched by the content consistently being delivered in Simon’s blogs. It was natural to jump at the chance to read his first book on the subject “Social Traffic” (the book) when it was released and then join an online forum to discuss the strategies within it. Once these conversations started it became evident that the people who were committed enough to grab this opportunity were also at a level of understanding to collaborate with each other, and build into teams around the content they were sharing.
These people did not find it by mistake. They were looking for it.
They had a need, filled initially by this content but out of this content grew discussion, collaboration and a meeting of minds with the same goal in view. A community of people hungry for knowledge about this ever evolving phenomenon of social Media. They have now over a short time evolved into a Powerful force in the Global Arena of Social Media. "Social Traffic.Inc"
Once myself and a few hundred people had read the book and started their journey, what was to happen next? Do we all go back to our jobs thinking... well that was good but what do I do with this knowledge. I know what is out there but, how do I use this for my business on my own. The book invites those who are still getting value, into the Social Traffic training course.
Continuing with this video centric training course we pulled apart each application and strategy used in online media today. Dissected them to find their place in our collaborative team structure. We worked through each part of the course with practical application of its content and with the mentorship from someone within "Social Traffic.inc" who had already mastered that subject. We can’t all be experts at all of it, we will leave that to Simon! but found that if throughout the course we threw ourselves into each aspect of Social Media with a collective mindset, working together, helping and supporting each other we could use these strategies for a common goal.
You can see through our “Beating Google Campaign” the power of the collective. Within just over a week we dislodged seven Google developer Videos about Google Friend Connect (their product) on YouTube (Google Owned) using their algorithms, to position Simon’s Fords training video on Google Friend Connect, the future of the internet and the way we do business... at No.1, with a little over 700 page views. We have held that position for months now.
Through doing this course doors are opening for me everywhere I look. Every business has a website or is trying to build one, but they are all busy, so very busy, and don’t know where to start, or how to go about it. A Website is valuable, but can also be very costly. An online presence on Web2.0 social media platforms, in open forums, blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc is priceless and costs you only your time. The time to learn how to use these tools and understand how this is the only way, going forward you will be able to connect with a generation who is growing up getting their news on their mobile phones, finding the best pizza in town by how many people voted on it in the last 3 hours.
We have entered an age of information overload where knowing how to find and filter what is useful from what is not, then sharing that information has become not only an art but a necessary part of every business’s strategy, if they want to remain trading in this fast moving society.
Social Media has become an industry of its own, highly sought after, built and populated by thought leaders who recognize the signs and can see the future of where the internet and the foundation of global communication and collaboration is going. There are no half measures. Climb on Board, or get left behind.
I used to use the internet just for E-mail and played around in Google, searching for Pizza specials. All those blogs and tweets seemed so senseless, random, unstructured, who wants to know what so and so thought about this and that. I now know that it wasn’t unstructured. I was just not yet educated to comprehend what it was all about.
I’ve had a pretty varied background working construction, hospitality; I even sold double glazing and water purifiers as a kid. Throughout my life the main thing that stands out is whatever product or service you are involved in, it is not just delivering excellence. There are lots of excellent painters, lots of great chefs, its gaining respect and building trust with your clients. You use the painter your friend recommended and go to the restaurant your friend gave rave reviews about.Why? because you trust their judgment, you have a bond with them through having built a quality relationship.
Social Media is the same. Only now the arena has expanded. Your potential client base is global, and you can’t dress yourself up as something you are not, everything you do online leaves a data trail.
Social Media is about being authentic, delivering value to people who are interested in what you are offering without insisting on a return or payback. It is about paying it forward. It is the ‘law of attraction’, the ‘learn by teaching’, and the ‘receive by giving’ of the online world.
In the industries I have worked in the lunchtime conversation revolved around fast cars, sports and beer. I needed some stimulation. I started to look online but there is so much noise. Where do you look? Each search led somewhere different, so I’d find something interesting, and bookmark it. My bookmark lists became hundreds long with no categories, no structure and it would be quicker to re-search what I was looking for than try to find the bookmark.
A friend if mine Simon Ford had been working in this space for a number of years using money from one of his other successful start ups to scour the internet and source the best training available in the world. He was being trained by the masters but soon found they all had a limit to their knowledge. There were many questions they just couldn't answer. A man on a mission he dug in, joined forums of the developers of the many of the Web 2.0 applications and employed researchers, writers and programmers from across the globe to crack the code, remain on the crest of the wave, to build an online application and training platform to disseminate this information to a global audience.
Through this training I learned to segment my unstructured lists, syndicate the content I had found or produced and share it with the world. People who liked what I was sharing would tell me by voting with a thumbs up and comments. I’d see the same people commenting on my bookmarks and suddenly the penny dropped……This is how I meet people who are into the same stuff as I am, people I can discuss my thoughts and ideas with !
Simon Ford started to publish and syndicate, good, recent, relevant content, teaching people how to use all these online Web2.0 tools and moreover how to use them in a practical way to benefit their life… business, social and personal. People listened. These people were drawn together through their thirst for knowledge which was being quenched by the content consistently being delivered in Simon’s blogs. It was natural to jump at the chance to read his first book on the subject “Social Traffic” (the book) when it was released and then join an online forum to discuss the strategies within it. Once these conversations started it became evident that the people who were committed enough to grab this opportunity were also at a level of understanding to collaborate with each other, and build into teams around the content they were sharing.
These people did not find it by mistake. They were looking for it.
They had a need, filled initially by this content but out of this content grew discussion, collaboration and a meeting of minds with the same goal in view. A community of people hungry for knowledge about this ever evolving phenomenon of social Media. They have now over a short time evolved into a Powerful force in the Global Arena of Social Media. "Social Traffic.Inc"
Once myself and a few hundred people had read the book and started their journey, what was to happen next? Do we all go back to our jobs thinking... well that was good but what do I do with this knowledge. I know what is out there but, how do I use this for my business on my own. The book invites those who are still getting value, into the Social Traffic training course.
Continuing with this video centric training course we pulled apart each application and strategy used in online media today. Dissected them to find their place in our collaborative team structure. We worked through each part of the course with practical application of its content and with the mentorship from someone within "Social Traffic.inc" who had already mastered that subject. We can’t all be experts at all of it, we will leave that to Simon! but found that if throughout the course we threw ourselves into each aspect of Social Media with a collective mindset, working together, helping and supporting each other we could use these strategies for a common goal.
You can see through our “Beating Google Campaign” the power of the collective. Within just over a week we dislodged seven Google developer Videos about Google Friend Connect (their product) on YouTube (Google Owned) using their algorithms, to position Simon’s Fords training video on Google Friend Connect, the future of the internet and the way we do business... at No.1, with a little over 700 page views. We have held that position for months now.
Through doing this course doors are opening for me everywhere I look. Every business has a website or is trying to build one, but they are all busy, so very busy, and don’t know where to start, or how to go about it. A Website is valuable, but can also be very costly. An online presence on Web2.0 social media platforms, in open forums, blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc is priceless and costs you only your time. The time to learn how to use these tools and understand how this is the only way, going forward you will be able to connect with a generation who is growing up getting their news on their mobile phones, finding the best pizza in town by how many people voted on it in the last 3 hours.
We have entered an age of information overload where knowing how to find and filter what is useful from what is not, then sharing that information has become not only an art but a necessary part of every business’s strategy, if they want to remain trading in this fast moving society.
Social Media has become an industry of its own, highly sought after, built and populated by thought leaders who recognize the signs and can see the future of where the internet and the foundation of global communication and collaboration is going. There are no half measures. Climb on Board, or get left behind.
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