by admin on January 7, 2010
I am one of those goal-oriented people that gets excited thinking about my goals, and actually reads about how to set goals and how to achieve them. I know, you hate me. You think I’m an optimist who lives in the clouds. That’s okay, just because I like to listen to motivational speeches sometimes and read personal development blogs/books, doesn’t make me an idealist. Anyway, new years bring new goals, and since I had a lot of great things happen to me in 2009, I want to share with you all my goals for this year.
Career
- Help RezHub.com become a leader in online travel booking. This is my day job, and it has become my baby. I want to see this website succeed so badly, and I think 2010 is going to be a huge year for this company.
- Get 3 new clients per month for Presence Media. We got 10 in three months, so I figure sticking with that formula would be a realistic goal for 2010. Presence Media is the internet marketing business my buddy Tim and I started last year. We help small businesses market their product and services on social networks and their websites.
Financial
- Reduce our debt by one-third. We have about $60k right now, so hopefully we can pay off $20k this year!
- Build a larger emergency fund. We own a house and are hoping to conceive a child this year, so I want a large cushion just in case something bad happens.
Spiritual
- Read throug the Bible in one year. This one is so cliche, but I really want to do it this year!
- Join a small group at our church. We’ve been attending since last June, and we’re ready to get plugged in. We just need to pick one and start going!
Physical
- I want to run two 15k’s this year. The Gate River Run in Jacksonville, FL is a huge 15k and such a pretty jog. I did it two years ago, but I was also 15 pounds lighter, but I can do it again.
- Be 210 pounds by June. I am about 227 now. 17 pounds shouldn’t be tough, but it’s always the smaller amounts of weight that are harder to get rid of and keep off.
Personal
- Read 2 books per month. I will try to read one fiction and one non-fiction per month. I am starting with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It’s a bear to start with, but I’ll do something much shorter and less thought provoking after that. After I read every book, I am going to give away two copies on my Twitter profile.
- Pray twice a week with Lindzee. This is a spiritual one too, but it’s also personal/relational. I want to be the spiritual leader more in her life, and I think this is an easy way to start.
by admin on December 1, 2009
I was just reading this article by Jason Falls about the rise and fall of social media, and even though social media purists like me hate to read or hear it, he is right. The first thing that I learned when I started venturing out to find my own clients for social media marketing and consulting was that the bottom line is the bottom line. Ultimately, businesses will only invest time and money into a new marketing strategy if they think it’s going to bring people in the door or sell more product on their website. They don’t care about all of the intangibles that you think of as the ten commandments for social media. They ultimately just want results. And if they don’t get results, they don’t want you.
We live in a results driven society, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Could you imagine what this country would be like if we didn’t care about the end result? Our quality of life would be drastically less than it is now. Here are a few things that I’ve learned in my first year of bidding on social media marketing work.
Brand Awareness Is Not the Goal
Building brand awareness is important, and as a purist, I think that engaging with your customers on a personal level and getting viral exposure on Facebook and Twitter are great ways to build your brand awareness, but small businesses aren’t interested in social media marketing for brand awareness. It’s a nice side dish, but it’s not the main course. They want to know if it’s going to help them increase sales.
Small Businesses Want To Reduce Marketing Costs
They are interested in social media marketing because they think it will reduce marketing costs. I’ve had a harsh reality check with myself about what my service are worth, because ultimately the marketplace will dictate what I am worth to a company. Social media can and will reduce marketing costs if it’s done right. You still need to invest some money in the beginning to gain exposure and gain a large following. I always recommend Facebook ads to beef up fan count, because it’s relatively cheap and highly targeted if done right.
Brand Preservation is Important
I have found that many franchisees of large brands are interested in social media marketing and the franchisor gives them the flexibility to engage in this type of marketing, but they still need to preserve certain aspects of the brand. When helping a business with a mature brand, it’s important to respect the brand and make sure their social media presence complements their overall branding strategy.
Having said all of this, social media marketing won’t work unless you believe in the its core principles. It must be a conversation, it must be engaging, it must be interesting and interactive, and it must bring value to your customers, or they won’t care about it. It’ll be no different than a billboard to them. But that is why a small business owner hires someone like me. They know that I know how to do it right, they just don’t want to hear about all of the fairy tales and butterflies of social media. They want to know the bottom line, and social media can and does deliver the bottom line if you do it right.
by admin on November 30, 2009
I’ve had a Google Wave account for about a month now, but I hadn’t put any time into figuring out how to integrate it into my everyday life. My philosophy is that technology should fit you, not the other way around. But many times, we try to figure out how to adapt to a new technology rather than how to adapt or integrate a new technology into us. This year, my friend and I started a social media and interactive marketing business. We help small businesses put together a social media marketing campaign to build brand awareness and ultimately increase sales by bringing more customers in the door or to their website. We’re still growing and we treat it like a part-time gig right now, but we have eight clients, and even with just eight clients, it’s tough to coordinate who should be doing what for which client. We started playing with Google Wave, and we quickly found that it would be a great tool for managing projects for clients. This is what we did:
Set Up Separate Waves For Each Client
We opened a separate wave for each client. This allows us to post events coming up, tasks that need to be done, and questions or comments about the marketing strategy for the client. Google Wave has a great feature which allows you to comment on anything within the wave, so if I asked 4 separate questions in the wave, my partner could go into the wave and comment underneath each question so there was no confusion as to what question he was answering. Did I mention this can all be done in real time?
Only keep important conversations
Google Wave is like e-mail meeting instant messenger. It stores your data like an e-mail, but it looks like a running conversation on instant messenger. If you treat it like a conversation, you’ll end up with a bunch of garbled mess and the important information gets lost. Of course, you can simply treat it like a running conversation, but I am speaking in terms of using it as a project management tool. We have conversations in it, but we delete the noise and keep only the information that is important to the overall marketing strategy of the client.
Include your client
If your client is on Google Wave, share the wave with them. Sharing the wave with others is another great feature of Google Wave. Your client can see your progress, make corrections to your ideas if they don’t mesh well with their corporate brand, and include their own input on your ideas and thoughts.
Share whatever you want
You can share text files, photos, and videos. Again, it’s a great organization tool, because all of your files can be stored in one place for you and your client to reference and download at any time.
There are endless possibilities with how you can use Google Wave to improve your personal or professional life, but for me, it works best in my professional life. Maybe once the kinks are worked out and Wave becomes more mainstream, I’ll consider using it for personal conversations, but for now it makes more sense to use it as a project management tool.
