When I was 11 years old, living in rural Alabama, one hot summer I joined a local football team.  The school where I was attending at the time didn’t have a football program, but a nearby school did, and a couple of my friends convinced me to join them in playing football.

My good friend and I were on the ‘midget’ football team, and my friend’s two older brothers were on the ‘pee wee’ football team.  To be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of playing football for a school where I knew no one.  But my friend wanted to play, and my dad encouraged me too, so I sheepishly agreed.

On the first day, we were lined up and the coaches did a series of drills designed to help them figure out what our skills were.  Who could throw, who could catch, who could run, etc.  I noticed how all the other players were kidding with each other and the coaches.  These were all kids that attended this school together, so they were already friends.  Everyone knew everyone else, and being an introvert, that made me realize that I had no business being there.  No one knew who I was, and as the coaches lined us up for drills, a sense of dread came over me.  What was going to happen when it was my turn to catch a pass from the coach?  Of course I was going to drop the ball, because I was nervous as hell, and then everyone was going to stop and say “Who is THAT kid?  The one that can’t catch?”

Yeah it’s funny how a kid, especially an introverted kid that didn’t want to be there, can overreact.

So I watched as the line in front of me got shorter and shorter.  We were lined up and the person at the front of the line would run down the field, and the coach would throw them a pass.  Four kids in front of me, then three, then two.  Funny thing is, I wasn’t worried about dropping the pass, I was worried that the coach wouldn’t know who I was (how could he?), and that he’d tell me I didn’t belong there because I didn’t go to that school.  So by the time the kid in front of me ran out to catch his pass and it was just seconds away from being ‘my turn’, I was almost scared to death.  All the worst-case scenarios ran through my mind; The coach wouldn’t know who I was.  I would drop the ball and everyone would laugh at me.  The coach would laugh at me.  Who knew.

The coach watched the kid in front of me catch his pass, he clapped and shouted encouragement to him.  Then he turned and grabbed another football, and turned to look at me.  This was it.

Then he did something I will never forget; He looked at me, smiled slightly, and said ‘Ok Mack….go get it!’.  And he winked at me!  The man winked at me!  At that moment, all the irrational fears of an introverted 11 year-old kid in a football practice he didn’t really want to be at, immediately disappeared.

I ran a route that would have made Jerry Rice cheer, and if that coach had thrown that ball 10 feet over my head it wouldn’t have mattered because I still would have caught that ball.  When that coach smiled and winked at me, he was saying ‘You can do this!’.  And I immediately knew I could.

“So Mack” you ask, “what the hell does this have to do with social media?”

I think the lesson is to remember that you sometimes need to lower the bar to encourage interaction.  It could be on your blog, your community site, Twitter, where ever.

Believe it or not, there really ARE people out there that have never left a comment on a blog.  AND some of them are a bit intimidated at the idea.

Laugh all you want, but many of us have been there ourselves at one point.  And maybe it’s because I am an introvert, but I always keep these people in mind when I create content.  Look at my last post about social media rockstars.  I’ll be the first to admit that it’s probably not the most mentally taxing post you will ever read.  But that post  (hopefully) was very easy to leave a comment on.  It got several comments here, and many RTs on Twitter.

The idea is to occasionally (at least), create content that’s very easy for people to interact with.  Making your content more accessible. Because the more people that interact with your content, the better the experience for you, and everyone else.

Try lowering the participation bar, and see what happens.  Try saying “Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!”

That just might be the ‘wink’ of encouragement they were waiting for…

Pic via Flickr user pdubs.94

It’s a label that’s like nails on a chalkboard to many people, but one we can’t seem to escape.

The ‘Social Media Rockstar’.

Who is this person?  How do we determine who a ‘rockstar’ is in this space?

Unfortunately, we too often give this label to people that really don’t deserve it.  Too many people look at things like the number of Twitter followers, or Facebook fans, and deem the people that have high numbers to be the ‘rockstars’.  Sometimes these people are indeed among the smartest in this space, but other times, they are simply people that have learned to ‘game’ the system better than the rest of us.

So how do we identify the real ‘leaders’ in this space?  Who are the real rockstars?  Even that is open to intense debate, but if we could talk to the true social media rockstar, here is what I think they would say:

1 – I am human.  I don’t automate my communications, I relate to people as other people.  I value each and every interaction, and understand that the more interactions I have, the smarter I become.

2 – I am humble.  One time I had a person that IS considered a rockstar in this space confide to me that “I seriously hate it when people call me a ‘rockstar'”, and when I asked why, they said “Because I am afraid that someone will believe them.”

3 – I think indirectly.  The people that TRULY excel in leveraging social media as tools to connect with other people get this.   They don’t think ‘What do I get from this?’, they think “What value will my actions create for others?”  This is one of the most misunderstood elements of social media in the business context.  You can’t monetize your social media efforts until you first create value for the people you are trying to reach.

4 – I am a people person.  I love connecting with people, and always have, no matter why tools I use.  I am social with or without the use of social tools.

5 – I find and surround myself with people that are smarter than I am.  This ties back to being humble, but I understand that I can learn something from almost everyone.  And I assume that everyone can teach me something.  The end result is that I am smarter, and can create more value for my network.

6 – I am actually social.  I really use Twitter to talk to people.  I actually reply to readers that comment on my blog.  I make the time to stay connected, even when I don’t have it.

7 – I know I am not a rockstar.  Seriously, being a social media rockstar is about as significant as being the 3rd best hockey player in Ecuador.

What other traits do the real social media rockstars have?

A couple of years ago Ann Handley, the Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs, snagged the @MarketingProfs name on Twitter and started making fabulous use of the site to connect with and engage MP’s members.  Everyone knew that if they had a question or issue with MP, that Ann was the person they could reach out to.

Since that time, several people on MP’s staff have followed Ann’s lead and joined Twitter.  I would guess the virtual company has at least a dozen employees using Twitter every day to connect with its members, and they are a fabulous case study for leveraging Twitter as a channel to connect with customers.

But let’s play ‘What If’ for a moment.  What if a year or two, when Ann was really starting to develop a following on Twitter and as becoming the ‘face’ of Marketing Profs on Twitter, what if she had left the company?  She would not only be leaving MP, but she would be taking MP’s presence on Twitter with her.  Suddenly Marketing Profs would have lost a channel that was becoming a valuable way for them to connect with customers.

Here’s another scenario: Let’s say your company over the last year has been outsourcing all of your social media efforts to an agency, or a strategist, and that person has become the online ‘face’ for your company on social sites.  What if that person is suddenly hired by a larger company, or if that agency suddenly folds?  Suddenly, your entire social media presence will disappear.

Now I understand that many companies are in both of these positions.  You may have one person that really ‘gets’ social media, that volunteered to dip their toes in the SM waters for the company, and now 6 months later has really created a strong social media presence for your company.  Or maybe you decided months ago that you definitely DID want to use social media, but just didn’t have the resources, and needed to outsource your efforts.

But even if your company is in these positions, you can’t completely isolate yourself and your employees from what is happening with social media.  If only one person can handle your social media efforts fine, but if nothing else, have them give you a weekly/monthly report/training session on how they are using social media.  If you are outsourcing your social media efforts, make sure that the consultant or agency handling your efforts keeps you as involved as possible in what they are doing.  For example I offer outsourcing to clients, but we do it on a tiered basis, meaning I handle almost everything at the start of the project, we are splitting the work by the middle, then by the end they are handling almost all the content creation, and are ready to take over for themselves.  But even at the start of the process when I am handling everything, the client is kept aware of everything I am doing, so they know what’s happening.

The bottom line is that if you put 100% of your social media efforts in the hands of one person or an outside group, if that person/group leaves, you are screwed.  If nothing else, when the social media efforts from that one employee starts to bear fruit, start having that employee train other employees on how to use social media.  Ann was smart enough to tell the MP staff that she was really starting to get some traction with @MarketingProfs on Twitter, and Marketing Profs was smart enough to listen, and now the company has a vibrant network of employees on Twitter, instead of just Ann.

So don’t put all your social media eggs in one person’s basket!

Pic via Flickr user andy_carter

As promised, here are the results from my recent survey on how companies are using social media.  Over 200 of you responded to this survey,  and thank you SO much for doing so!  I’ll be digging into the results and takeaways a bit more over the coming weeks, but for today I wanted to give you a broad overview of what we learned.  Here are some of the key takeaways from the 230 of you that responded to the survey:

89.6% of your companies are currently using social media.

The most effective tool for your companies is Twitter, according to 35.7% of respondents.

The biggest problem concerning social media your companies have encountered is being able to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

First, here are the sizes of the companies that responded:

As you can see, most of the companies that responded were smaller businesses.  That may also play into the responses given to this question about how much their company spends on social media:

The most popular response to the question about your company’s current social media budget was Less than $1,000, which was selected by 35.7% of respondents.  This makes sense, as most of the respondents appear to be small businesses.  What I found fascinating is that 15.2% of respondents said they had NO budget for social media!  Of course 13.5% also said they weren’t sure what their company’s budget for social media was.

Now I think the responses to these next three questions do contribute to each other to a degree, and I’ll delve into this more starting on Thursday.  But for now, I’ll let you mull over the results for yourself:

When it came to which social media tool has worked best for your companies, the Big Three of Twitter(35.7%), Blogs(21.3%) and Facebook18.7%) led the way, but I was a bit surprised to see that the 4th most popular tool (at 3.9%) was message boards and forums focused on your company’s industry.

Now for a biggie; The biggest issue or problem your companies are having with social media:

Let me break down the numbers for each response:

Not sure how to measure the effectiveness of our efforts – 33%

Can’t get customers interacting with us – 19.8%

Can’t devote time to social media – 15.7%

Don’t know where to spend our time/focus our efforts – 10.7%

We don’t know how to budget for it in terms of people or money – 9.1%

Can’t see how social media is helping our business – 7.1%

We don’t know what tools to use, there are so many! – 3.6%

We can’t handle more customer complaints – 1%

I won’t get into my takeaways or conclusions of these results till the next post, but it will give you something to think about for now.

Finally, I asked the companies that do NOT current have a social media strategy, to explain why not, here’s the responses to that question:

Note that 62.1% of the respondents to this question said their company IS using social media, but does NOT have a social media strategy in place to guide their efforts (insert nails on chalkboard HERE).  This is a key stat that I want to really drill down into and see what else is happening with these people.  What is their biggest problem with social media?  Which tool are they using the most?  I’ll get into much of that in my next post.

Finally, 9.1% of respondents said they outsource some or all of their social media efforts, and the form of promotion that companies are spending the most money on besides social media is online advertising (27.4%), followed by print (15.7%), direct mail (11.7%), television advertising (4.8%), radio advertising (2.2%) and bringing up the rear, billboard advertising at 0.9%.  The most popular answer to this question was ‘Other’ at 37.4%, and if I had to do it again I would have added SEO as another option.

So thanks again to all of you that participated, this was my first social media survey, and I was very pleased with the level of response.  BTW I created a short PDF on Handling Negative Comments for this survey, and gave respondents a sneak peek at it a couple of weeks ago, but if you would like to download a copy, you can find it here.

So please let me know what you think of these results, via here in the comments, or by emailing me.  And BTW if you responded to the survey that you are having difficulty with your social media efforts, whether it’s figuring out what to use, how to get a strategy in place, or just to figure out if social media can actually help your company, please email me and I’d love to talk to your company about how I can help you get your social media efforts on track!

One of the findings in my social media survey from last week was that 18% of the respondents said they were a sole proprietorship.  So this raises the question; If you work for yourself, do you still need a strategy for your social media usage?

Absolutely!

In fact I would argue that it’s even MORE important for individuals to have a social media strategy than it is for companies.  Mainly because if you’re an individual, it is SO easy to let time get away from you (which kills productivity), if you don’t have a plan.

And if you do have a social media strategy, perhaps now is a good time as we head into the Holiday Season, to create a social media strategy if you don’t have one, and if you do have one, to re-evaluate your existing efforts.  That way you can hit the ground running as 2010 arrives!

First, ask yourself why you are using social media.  Be honest here, and really think about what you want to accomplish by being on all these social sites.  What is your MAIN goal for using social media?  If you’re in business for yourself, the likely answer is that you want to get more business.  So there it is, your strategy for using social media is to get more business.

Now comes the important part; Which tactics will you use?  This is where you need to put your time spent on Twitter and Facebook and your blog, on trial.  Do you spend 2 hours a day on Twitter?  Are you constantly checking Facebook?  This again is where you need to be brutally honest with yourself and evaluate if these sites are where you need to be spending your time if you want to execute your social media strategy of getting more business.

Do you spend 2 hours a day on Twitter?  Then you need to be seeing business benefits from that time spent, in order to justify spending that time there.  And this is where Twitter in particular, can fool you.  Let’s say you write a blog post about a topic, say social media consultants.  That topic will probably get you a TON of retweets on Twitter, and a flood of traffic to your post.

At the end of the day you can look at your blog’s analytics, cross your arms and smile big at the nice spike in traffic that resulted.  But if your primary customer base is B2B companies in the Pharma industry, how does getting a lot of RTs on Twitter about a post on social media consultants, really help you?  This is where you need to be careful about Twitter and other social sites.  It’s enticing as hell to see your content being shared via social sites.  To see the RTs pile on and traffic flow in to your blog.

But at the end of the day, if that content doesn’t reach the people that you want to do business with, then ultimately that time spent was personal time using social media, not professional.  This is why you need to put your existing social media usage on trial.  Look long and hard at how you use these social sites currently, and decide if the benefits you are seeing are personal, or professional.  There’s nothing wrong with using social media as a way to…be social.  But if you are spending 3 hours a day on Twitter and Facebook in an effort to grow your business, and are only seeing personal benefits, then you need to either alter dramatically how you use these sites to grow your business, or stop altogether.

Start today by assigning goals to your social media usage.  Goals that help you achieve your ultimate goal for social media of getting more business.  Let’s say you like to spend an hour a day on Twitter as part of your existing social media strategy.  That’s fine, but make sure that you have some way to measure the effectiveness of that hour spent on Twitter.  Here are some ideas specifically for Twitter:

1 – X% increase a month in referrals from Twitter

2 – X number of DMs from current and potential customers

3 – X number of redemptions of special Twitter codes

And set goals for all the existing social media site you are using to drive your business.  Track your results, make changes in goals if necessary, and stop spending time with a particular tactic if it’s not working.

The bottom line is if you are an individual, you need to have a social media strategy just as much as a company does.  Look at where you are spending your time now, and honestly evaluate if that time is best spent with that site.  If you haven’t already, set goals for your existing social media usage, so that time will be put to best use.

If you’re an individual using social media to grow your business, do you have a strategy in place?