I wanted to attend the event since the first time I heard about it a few years back. And then, Twitter happened!

Here’s what happened:

I was surfing Twitter on a Sunday afternoon and saw this tweet:

I got excited, entered the contest and completely forgot I entered. Waiting for my class to start, my iPhone went off and I saw this tweet:

And of course, my response…

The Event

The #one4one event was hosted at Real Sports Bar and Grill named “North America’s Best Sports Bar” by ESPN Mobile. If you haven’t been, it’s a 25,000 square-foot space, just under 200 screens and a two-storey HD screen of awesome-ness.

Cracking jokes with players and being around them was an amazing experience. From the players to commentators to management, everyone was down to earth. Personally, it was amazing to meet the players and see them interact with fans. One regret: couldn’t get a pick with Barbosa…next time!

A big shout out to @BigThinkerJon for the ticket hook up. Props to @TeamUpFndn and @RealSports to host a wicked event that made my night! Thank you!!

Self reflection is one thing I want to do more in 2011. One thing I’m exploring is change.

There are times where you feel like what you’re doing now is what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. Recently, I was thinking about how people change ever so slightly each day; whether it’s changing how you spend your time including the way you carry yourself, who you spend my time with, what you surround yourself with, what you read, etc.

After looking back at the year, I realized three major changes I’ve noticed now looking back at my experiences within the past year:

1) My perspective on learning has shifted. When consuming content, there are many ways to go about it. I noticed that I went from reading content that was “interesting” to a mindset of reading content as I needed it; a “just-in-time” mindset.  This kind of mindset has allowed me to be much more efficient with my time. Going through Mashable and Techcrunch is critical but in terms of opinion pieces, do I really need to read ten or more 1000+ word articles a day on social media? No, not really. Instead, I have become more solution focused; what’s the obstacle, what’s the solution and what’s the information I need to bridge the gap.

The change: focus on a problem and find solutions to address it specifically. Less irrelevant content and faster time to find a solution.

2) Changes in leadership style. As I became even more involved with SIFE Ryerson, my leadership style has changed dramatically. TRUSTING the people you work with allows you to focus on what’s important and helps them go through their own trials and tribulations. I’m not saying that it’s ideal to leave people and let them crash and burn. But I’m suggesting that there is only so much hand holding that’s helpful to their long-term professional career.

The most important change that has allowed me to be more productive while helping others increase their productivity is to step in to answer specific questions and overcome obstacles then, move out of the way to keep the momentum flowing. A perfectionist outlook to criticize details can really slow down progress.

The change: let people make their own mistakes. It’s important people learn to succeed. And if they fail, they need to understand why they failed, what they could have done better next time and learn how to get up to go at it again. Success doesn’t come without failure.

3) My friends = Me. A paraphrase of an old saying, “The average income of your 5 close friends is your income,” in my opinion is still relevant. If you are around individuals who are adventurous, spontaneous and take risks, sooner or later you become more adventurous, spontaneous and take more risks. There is definitely a line between being peer pressured by your friends vs. being inspired by your friends to enhance the quality of your life.

The people I surround myself are important to me. If I surround myself with people who aren’t doing new and exciting things or just don’t have that burning desire to add value to the world around them, I drop them.

I’m fortunate to have interesting people doing awesome things (what’s up SIFE Ryerson?!). Outside of Ryerson, Toronto’s start up community is really helpful! From attending events like Startup Weekend and Democamps to reaching out to successful entrepreneurs for advice, it’s amazing to have that support.

The change: start surrounding myself with people who have similar goals as myself and are ambitious as me, if not more. For me, it helps to keep my “fire lit” and pushes me my limit!

The motivating component of change, for me at least, is that it doesn’t need to have a definitive end date. The three changes are the beginning of a progressing change over time. It’s not possible to just change deep-rooted behaviours such as leadership styles overnight. It takes time, exploration and small “failures” along the way (failure are the blog posts alone!).

As I’m writing this post, I realize that I’m spending more time unlearning inefficient habits than implementing new, sound habits and strategies.

Over To You:

What are some of the changes you would like to see? What are you doing to make those changes happen? My goal with this blog is to be as transparent as I can be and I would love your honest input :)

That’s how I would define the first week of August. Yet, this week was one of the most productive for me in 2010. Let me explain:

My weekly objectives were accomplished, each day felt smooth and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the quality of work produced. But the realization came when I did my weekly review. What did I really accomplish this week?

You see, the problem was that the short term tasks and deadlines didn’t match the long term objectives. For example, if a new website is being built, articles are almost pointless if wireframes aren’t being created. Looking back at it from this vantage point makes sense but when there are meetings, emails, Twitter mentions, etc flying by, it’s easy to get steered away from that.

Focus is key

By losing focus of the long term objective and taking action with short term tasks, there will be a lot of time wasted or worst, you’ll be stuck in the hamster wheel without even knowing you’re in their in the first place.

For your social media initiatives, sure you can keep messaging random posts here and there. But when is it time for tweaks, improvements and noticeable changes?

Getting off the hamster wheel

It’s very easy to keep pumping out meaningless tasks that you’ve assigned yourself. But how long can you just afford to be another “Mr. Me Too” in your market? What are you going to do differently?

Here are a couple ways to unshackle yourself from the vicious cycle:

Weekly reviews – the value of an effective feedback loop is invaluable. People from your marketing team can give you feedback but in my opinion, there are two groups that can provide even impactful observations:

• People outside of the marketing team – talk to the accountant and ask what he thinks about the latest updates on the Twitter feed. If that person doesn’t care, you’ll get a “it looks good.” But if there’s a colleague that is truly interested, that person will give insights on subtle language that can be misinterpreted and other comments that can be valuable.
• Ask colleagues in the industry – there perspectives vary as they aren’t part of the company’s culture. They aren’t aware of the voice, tone and perception your company plans to portray vs. the end result which is live on social media outposts like Twitter.

Watch other brands. How are brands currently innovating? We all have ideas but it’s important to see how innovation is being done currently. There are two groups you want to keep an eye on:

• Your competitors: what are they doing which are earning them results? What are they doing where they’re falling flat on their face? Watching their updates unravel and monitoring reactions will give you a better idea of what’s working and what isn’t.
• Other industries:  If you’re a Realtor, check out how Sprinkles is selling muffins. Or if you’re a restaurant, see how Lululemon is keeping their fans engaged. Give yourself opportunities to make connections and promote think differently. After seeing ideas from other industries, you will learn strategies and concepts that can make slight differences that will pay dividends.

My one word of advice is take action. You may have heard this before but are you actually monitoring others in private lists? Are you asking others for help?

This was a real breakthrough for me because there are times where I’m heads down and don’t consider anything outside of my mind space. Learn from my experience and don’t let it happen to your social media initiatives and the damage it can potentially do for you brand.

Question: have you ever caught in the hamster wheel? When did you realize and what did you do about it?

So, here’s what I did: I held an interview with Steve (just before his holidays btw, thanks Steve!) to outline how CBC Radio3 carved out and defined a niche, how they deal with the tug of war between openness vs. control, his thoughts on levels of engagement, etc.

The Meat and Potatoes

Here is the interview with Steve from CBC Radio 3:

Here are a few highlights of the interview:

19:00 – how CBC Radio3 deals with having control while having an open environment for users

26:06 – Why cold, hard market research may be complete BS to finding and carving a niche. This one really took me by surprise!

29:00 – The three lessons Steve has learned as he’s grown and built CBC Radio 3. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole interview, listen to this :)

If you’re interested in building an online community, I would really suggest going to CBCRadio3.com and he what Steve and his team have built. There are many smaller pieces that make the bigger picture and if you’re serious about building an online community, I would study the work CBC Radio is doing on the website as well as its outposts such as Twitter.

What do you think about CBC Radio3 as a community? What was your biggest takeaway that you’re going to implement?

PS: If you’re Canadian music isn’t that bad, eh? Lol.

I was having a conversation with a small business owner recently and we got to talking about Twitter. A question that stuck out in my head was, “How do I increase my followers?” I gave a few tips but decided to dig deeper. I quickly scanned their website…I couldn’t even tell they had a Twitter account!

You’re missing out!

If you’re hiding the links to  your social networks like a Twitter profile or a Facebook fan page, your market will not find you. Simple as that.

There are many ways you can drive traffic to your social networks from third parties like blogs to driving traffic from offline marketing. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when getting more of your online visitors to connect with you on social networks:

- Dominantly position on the website/blog. A few optimal placement for your social media networks for social media links are: top navigation bar, sidebar, footer. I would suggest placing it to a maximum of two times or it starts looking cheesy.

- Encourage your fans to share content. Leveraging tools such as the TweetMeMe button, the Facebook “Like” button, and sharing plugins like Sociable gives your fans to share your high quality content to the social network of their choice.

- Submit to Twitter directories for more visibility. Add your Twitter profile to Twitter directories like WeFollow.

- It takes time to gain traction. Don’t expect hundreds of thousands of fans racing to your Twitter page, unless you do something cool and unique (re: Old Spice). Placing your links strategically on your website, starting conversations with your fans and having sharing tools locked and loaded is a great start.

With more sharing, insightful content and great conversations online, more fans will be able to find you and connect with you online.

Do you have social media icons on your site? Do you feel it helped gain visibility?

• When they post updates, the language used in the post is as if they’re seeking approval. Immediately, their audience is turned off because they can sense the uncertainty in their voice and overall approach.
• They don’t post any updates. Period.

With these types of outcomes, it hurts the brand than doing any good. If your brand is experiencing either of the above results, make sure you’re not a victim to the 5 Warning Signs of a Weak Social Media Strategy.

Leveraging Your Knowledge to Your Advantage

As the social media manager, you are the brand ambassador online. The updates posted online directly reflect how the brand is perceived in the market. From the tone to the emotions of individual posts, your audience has those characteristics attached to the brand that is being built.

There is an overlooked advantage: your knowledge of the products and services of the business in addition to the culture of your workplace. By being knowledgeable and being around colleagues, I have noticed that the quality and the response from updates are noticeably better.

Spice Up Your Content

Here are ways to freshen up your content updates:

• Show emotion. When there’s an exciting update that all of your colleagues are going crazy over, share your excitement! Share pictures, share videos and show how happy you are. Of course you don’t want to show-off but do it in a way where you celebrate with finesse. A little controversy can create some great discussion as well.
• Share insider updates (without crossing legal boundaries. This can create surprising levels of engagement. Updates that create buzz are: improvements on products, heartwarming testimonials, attending cool industry events, being a part of a charity event, etc.
• Act as a Resource. If there’s a recent study that would be beneficial to a follower who’s asking a question on Twitter, link to it. If you saw a tutorial that will help solve a common problem, link to it. By linking to links that are valuable to your audience, you become valuable in their perspective. Another benefit is that click throughs will steadily increase as you are “teaching” your followers to click on your links.

Your audience wants to bask in the glory of your business’s success; let them be part of it!

How do you get your market to engage with your business online?

Photo Credit: McAzadi

Amber MacArthur published her book Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business. One of the things I love about Amber’s book is that she uses a lot of examples to explain concepts throughout her book; this puts a lot concepts you’ve learned into perspective. One of my favourite chapters of the book was Chapter 5 (pg. 88) because it talks about the importance of a social media foundation within an company and best practices.

I felt that this book is going to be valuable to you as a subscriber to this blog so I reached out to Amber. Below is an interview on Power Friending and how you can execute based on the concepts from her book.

Here are few points Amber touches on in the interview:

• Quick tips on how to manage social media in 30 minutes a day
• What to post on your social media networks
• Why ROI isn’t the only metric but ROE
• A tool that can help save time when managing social media

Here’s how you can WIN a copy of Power Friending!!

1. Retweet article.
2. Answer this question in the comment section below: what can brands, big or small, do differently to connect with their rockstar fans through social media?

I will choose a winner on Wednesday, June 23. The person with the best answer on what brands can do differently with their social media initiatives will win a copy of Power Friending. I’m  hoping you got value from the interview with Amber Mac. My main objective with the interview and this blog is to not just think about how totally awesome social media and why you should be using it, but how you can implement it into your marketing strategy.

Setting up social media outposts on platforms like Twitter and Facebook isn’t exactly grunt work. The challenge that many brands face is maintaining those outposts and creating growth of these social media platforms to gain traction and catch their market’s eye.

Here are 3 keys that will promote growth with your social media strategy:

1) Is Your Market Talking $@#! About You?

You know you’re in a social media presentation when you hear the words “authenticity”, “care” and “listen”. But because these words have been so played out, but I want to share what it means from an operational perspective. It starts with setting up search phrases that are relevant to your brand. These words include your brand’s name, competitors name, product/service name, etc.

The shocking part: most people stop there!! Once you have these alerts up, listen to what people are saying about these keywords. Are the posts mostly positive? Are they negative? Do they need help with troubleshooting? Once you get a better idea of the sentiment towards the keywords, response when appropriate.

Some appropriate times are people post:

- How frickin awesome your product/service is
- How frickin crappy your product/service is.
- How your competitors are doing a bad job and the chance for you to scoop in for the sale
- Questions about your product/service/marketplace

The list goes on and on but there are many opportunities to chime in while adding value.

2) Proactive vs. Reactive

There are many cases where being proactive rather than reactive prove that your brand is human and not just another logo (PS: use humans whenever you can; your audience is accustomed to the species).

At #NXNEi this year, I had the privilege of listening to Scott Belsky from Behance. One of my biggest takeaways from his presentation was the “window of non-stimulation”. Create a list of 3-5 items that are most valuable to you. Invest 2 hours a day on deep research and thought on these focused topics.

If you’re stumped on what to share with your followers on Twitter or your fan page which is getting sour, do research on what others in your space are doing to keep their audience engaged. Being in the mindset of focusing on say 5 main objectives, it allows for a clearer mind space and ultimately, more creative ideas.

Being proactive is also necessary to be that Purple Cow. You don’t want to become a “Mr. Me Too” and post the same content and style that all your competitors are posting in. Being proactive to find interests of your audience before your competitors, for example, can lead to highly attractive content or a new, highly profitable product/service.

3) Push It to the Limit

One of the biggest fears of managers is the possibility that an employee decides to lash out on the company and posts something inappropriate on the brand’s social media platforms. As managers, you may feel that you are losing control giving too much power to your employees managing the social networks and communities. In Charlene Li’s Open Leadership, Charlene proves that by giving up control, you’re actually building higher levels of trust with employees within your company.

There has to be a culture of growth within your team and within your organization. If an employee shivers in nervousness even thinking about doing something creative for your social media efforts or any component of your business, the end result of the Facebook fan page or Twitter stream is going to be boooooring!

Set boundaries, as Charlene Li calls them “sandbox convenants”, but don’t make it concrete. Trust employees to come up with creative solutions and I’m confident your clients will thank you for the thought and care behind upcoming campaigns.

Don’t expect exponential growth from day 1. There is a lot of trial and error that goes into the success of your social media initiatives. Stimulate growth for your social media outposts by listening to what your market is saying, being proactive and pushing the limits.

Photo credit: ul_Marga

FIFA World Cup creates an energy around the world that excites and inspires. This year’s South African competition will be different than any other year. There is one main reason why this year’s FIFA is going to be bigger than ever: we’re more connected.

The 2006 FIFA World Cup brought people together. We shared our excitement when we saw people at work, texted them, connected through Facebook, sent emails, etc. This was the year Twitter was founded so there weren’t that much noise there.

Sharing and Celebrating Together

Now, every part of watching and enjoying the game is integrated to what we’re doing online. When we’re watching massive events like the Super Bowl, for example, we are talking days if not weeks in advance about the event. Sharing where we’ll be, what team we’re cheering for, etc. It’s a build up and it only gets more and more exciting as the day gets closer.

Sponsors and their Reach

As FIFA attempts to build its own following on Facebook and Twitter, they will get a lot of help from their sponsors to influence FIFA’s following exponentially. With corporations like Coca Cola, Adidas, Sony, Visa, Budweiser, McDonalds, etc, promotions on their online properties can dramatically impact reach of FIFA and also enhance the overall experience of watching the matches.

To put things in perspective, Coca Cola alone has 26,000 followers on Twitter and 5.7 million fans on Facebook. There is a lot to be said about the impact the corporations associated with the FIFA World Cup can have.

Our Social Media Addiction

Retrevo recently conducted a study on the use of social media to the point of addiction. Considering that we are trying to keep up with the matches from around the world, time zones play a role. 32% of people under age 25 check/update Facebook or Twitter; 21% over the age of 25 do the same.

A separate research from Neilsen reports insights on how people are going to keep up with the sport:

• As much as 23% of Americans and 11% of Canadians say they will  keep up with the World Cup through their mobile phones.
• The volume of people from South American countries is noteworthy. While only 10% of Argentines are going to be using their mobile phones to keep updated on the World Cup, Brazilians are twice as likely(21%) to do so. Venezuela has the most dominant use with 27%.

As a smartphone owner (iPhone FTW! …except when Tweetdeck crashes), I have caught myself eagerly checking updates and stats. With the madness around FIFA, usage is going to be more frequent overflowing with enthusiasm or expressing disappointment for their team.

But Is FIFA Ready?

As of the day this article was published, there are a lot of signs that FIFA is not ready to handle this overwhelming responsibility of sharing information with the world and doing it via official information hubs on different platforms. @AdamVincenzini from “The Comms Corner” argues that FIFA is not taking the right steps to fully optimize their site or their outposts to manage a successful social media campaign. You can read more here.

…Is Twitter Ready? *gulp*

On Wednesday, June 9, Twitter crashed throughout the day. On a regular day when the most exciting thing going on is a gridlock in downtown Toronto, we freak out with comments that sound as if cocaine addicts who didn’t get their fix (just saying).

When the world is anxiously watching two teams fight it out, the one thing we want by our side is Twitter. If the fail whale summons itself, people will start itching to get back on and press F5 like madmen (apparently, it doesn’t matter how hard you press but it just won’t work. I tried).

Hold on to your Hats Folks!

“Football is the world’s biggest sport, so the world will practically stop for the month of the World Cup,” Matt Stone, head of new media for world soccer’s governing body FIFA, told CNN. As soon as the World Cup starts, there’s going to be an overwhelming amount of tweets, likes, YouTube video, blog posts, diggs, etc. “Within minutes of the World Cup starting, we will certainly see thousands and thousands of uploads about the World Cup.” YouTube’s sports manager Andrew Bangs.

How will you be following FIFA? I’m excited, are you?!

Gary said something along the lines of “For every relationship, give 80% and get 20%.”

Giving Before You Get

There are a lot of “sayings” you hear in social media articles, podcasts and conferences. You have heard them before: “you have to listen, you have to care, etc.” That sounds nice but WHAT DOES THAT FRICKIN MEAN?

To break it down, here are a few ways you can “give” to your following:

• Insightful blog posts: there is so an increasing focus on “getting a Twitter” and just blasting crap out there that the power of blogs are being overlooked. Your blog is an awesome source to build a platform and be able to add value for your readers.
• @Replies: On Twitter, there are many conversations that are already going on about your business, your competitors and your market…psst…JUMP IN TO THE CONVERSATION! There are many opportunities where it’s easy to start conversations. Best place to start is by taking advantage of the Twitter’s search function.Brainstorm a basic list of 5 main relevant keywords which are topics that you can discuss competently; start small and start replying to a few posts a day. As a heads up, there are people who will ignore you and others will be enthusiastic.
• Retweet: Mousa Ackall wrote in a Business to Business Marketing News article, “a retweet is the sincerest form of flattery.” When there is interesting content tweeted, retweet it to share with your followers. You will get the attention of the person you retweeted and get on their radar. A way to use this strategically is by retweeting your raving fans and give them props for finding an insightful article or coming up with something cool; they’ll love it :)
• Reply to Your Audience: I’m very surprised to see when people spend a solid 5-10 minutes writing an interesting, thoughtful comment on a blog and the author doesn’t bother to engage with them; to me that’s not cool. If a person is taking the time to digest, summarize and add value to your blog (without being spammy of course), give the dude or gal some respect and reply.

  But this goes further than the blog. Facebook fan pages are an awesome place for people to comment on how amazing your business is. There are comments where you can’t reply as they are not asking a question or simply agreeing with you. What you need to reply to, in my opinion, are comments sharing their perspectives, comments that add to the content of the article and most importantly, questions regarding the actual post. I have seen many basic questions left with no responses on Facebook fan pages; I see these as lost opportunities.

Getting Your Slice

Above are some of the ways you can give but what do you “get” for your investment in time? Here are the most valuable benefits:

• Content gets shared: when you build relationships with others, they are much more likely to retweet, “like” on Facebook and email content to their colleagues and friends. Your content gets more visibility and gets more people talking.
• Content gets more comments: when the content is built around what your market wants, the same people who were “just visiting” will step up to the plate and start commenting. It’s a challenge that many blogs face, including mine, but it does take some time.
• People start reaching out to you and your business: with retweets, replies and “likes”, there is social proof that is built up. This social proof is a huge advantage when forwarding content to prospects and clients.

What we’re really talking about is one big thing: building relationships. Once you add value to your following and build up credibility, your efforts will help achieve objectives.

What have your experiences been with “giving” by creating content? Has it paid off?