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.
