Just wanted to share this short brilliant talk about leadership and community management by Dere Sivers. A few lessons to learn for the community managers:

• You have to make it easy for people to follow you
• You have to become “equal”  with people who follow you and know how to transfer the sentiment.
• You have to remember that followers attract more followers – not the leader.

I hope you enjoyed this video and have a great Easter everyone!

I am not that much into religion, but was having some thoughts about social media community and it’s Teletubbic vibe or the goodness surrounding it. It brought me to this idea that goodness is very transferable and viral in it’s nature, therefore I’ve decided  to analyze what do social media people have in common with priests and what they could learn from this honourable profession.

We listen

Well we know that social media is all about good listening. Social media people are a bit like the priests in their confessionals, waiting for the users to acknowledge the “sins” about their need and wants, that they could “help” them with the brilliant content, products or services. I think one from the many things we could learn from the priests is that listening is not one way process  – you have to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers.

We preach

Well, I’m just being honest with myself – I love to preach. I bet that there quite a few social media professionals who feels the same way. The blogosphere is an ideal place for that; it’s like a big church where you can push your ideas to so many different audiences. The one thing to remember though, you have always to remember the purpose of your preachment – it’s not about you it’s about what your audience can take from your lecture.

We build communities

Religion is all about community building and transferring the values and beliefs to the community. It sound a lot like what community managers are trying to do for their clients – transferring the emotion, values and belief of the brands to the community. Social media citizens have to remember that building the real functioning community takes a lot of time, work and patience.

We work for a better cause

Ok, I’m under no illusions that blogosphere and social media enthusiast don’t want to earn money, but the thing I like about social media that you can add value for yourself by creating some added value for someone else as well. Everyone is doing what they are doing with some intention – the church leader wants to become a Pope one day as a social media professional wants to reach the new highs in his/her environment, but an important point to remember is how not to forget the main cause – to create value in order to get value.

In the introduction post, I’ve wrote about selling as a communication technique which doesn’t receive enough attention in social media. This week I want to elaborate on my opinion. In order to do that we have to go back to basic concepts of selling. According to marketing guru Kotler, these are the main roles of the sales force: Prospecting, Communicating, Selling, Servicing, Information gathering, Allocating. All of these roles could be performed in social media environment, but today I will start with the analysis of Prospecting. Read the full story

I was stumbling trough Youtube videos the other day and found this quite interesting and a bit weird video. My first reaction was – WTF? No disrespect for people’s initiatives to create an interesting promotion video/greeting – but it just made me smile. Even though it is a really weird video, I bet people who got it was really pleased with it, because it is so personal, honest and humble. If your are creative, fun and original sometimes a simple Thank You is more than enough to show your appreciation to your customers. The simple truth.

I’ve just read this brilliant quite personal story by Peter Bregman on Harvard Business Review “Why Friends Matter at Work and in Life“ . The author analyzes a few interesting researches how friendships affect your business and everyday life. I love the authors points taken out of the research:

• If you’re looking for a job you’d better have friends. The number-one way people find new jobs is referrals by friends.
• Once you’re on the job, having a best friend at work is a strong predictor of success.
• Friendships in high school were a strong predictor of increased wages in adulthood — to the tune of 2% per person who considered you a close friend.
• Want to stay in that job you have? Then you’d better have friends.

In my opinion the real friendships are of vital importance factor in Social Media and community building. I know that this topic of friendship has been discussed over and over again but there is a big difference in having “fans” and having at least a few very good “friends” in the community you are building, mainly because of there reasons indentified by Peter :

• Friends can refer your business to their friends
• Friends can  stand up for your business and brand values and send the right message to their friends
• Friends can help to grow your business by heavily engaging in your social media activities (commenting, sharing and etc.)

So are you here to make friends?

Welcome to my new series of posts “Social Media Strategies” where I will try to clear up some taboos about social media strategies, tools and other buzz words of our social life which sometimes unnecessary confuse us in this industry. Today I will discuss the content strategy and the changing role of content strategist.

Content Strategy

I think it is always a good idea to look from the consumer’s perspective and answer the questions which drive the strategy. I’ve been browsing through my daily reads and thinking why I am reading the posts I am reading and I came up with a very simple answer: I am reading it because:

• The content adds knowledge (adds value) or entertains me;
• The content is supplied by trusted source;
• The content is accessible to me.

Adding value and the art of Curating

In order to add value the content strategist has to think like a scientist:

• Has to recognise the problem why he/she is doing the project and foresee the possible outcomes in order to monitor them. The content strategist has to understand the target audience and analyse what are the main objectives of the brand (provide knowledge or entertainment) and how does the company want to affect this target audience (stimulate action or spread brand awareness).
• Has to do the research and find a gap in the market. It is one of the most challenging tasks today – finding something new, interesting and engaging to write about and that is a problem that the most bloggers face at some point if they haven’t got a clear content strategy, but that’s Read the full story

I’ve been browsing through the lists of top social media case studies and I thought I am going to share  some of the top sites with you:

Casestudiesonline.com by Tod Maffin

A List of Social Media Marketing Examples by (http://www.beingpeterkim.com)

Social media case studies by  (http://theparallaxview.com/)

Social Brand Index by (http://www.socialbrandindex.com)

WOMMA’s Case Study Library by (http://www.womma.org/)

The Association Social Media Wiki’s List by (http://www.associationsocialmedia.com/)

Blog Well Case Studies by (http://gaspedal.com/)

Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki by (John Cass)

300+ Cases & Examples of Social Media Marketing by (http://blog.monty.de/)

30 SEO, Social Media & Marketing Case Studies that Prove the ROI of it All by (http://www.seoptimise.com/)

110 Ways Retailers are Using Social Media Marketing by (http://www.getelastic.com)

A Collection of 50+ Enterprise 2.0 Case Studies and Examples by (http://www.jmorganmarketing.com/)

Case Study Crunch by Red Cube Marketing by (http://redcubemarketing-blog.com)

26 Social Media Marketing Examples by (http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com)

35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media in Action by (http://mashable.com)

The Big Money Facebook 50 by  (http://www.thebigmoney.com)

5 fantastic digital branding campaigns from 2009 by (http://www.imediaconnection.com)

India Social – Case Studies by  (http://www.indiasocial.in)

I will update this post from time to time so if you have any other relevant links to add to this list, just post them as a comment. Thanks!

Social media is maturing. As many companies have successfully integrated social media in their communication/business strategies and as many more are planning to do so in very near future, it is no longer perceived as the risky investment but more as a necessity in order to keep a competitive edge in the market and maintain the dialogue with consumers. It actually seems that social media adoption is becoming a quality standard of a transparent, customer centric and accessible company. Actually, just like adoption of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies has been representing very similar values for over 30 years now. It is quite interesting to compare these two trends and possibly build on the existing knowledge of CSR management when planning social media strategies as they ultimately both are driven by very similar ideas of building competitive advantage through transparency, advocacy, stakeholder’s engagement, adding value to the communities and the empowerment of communities.

A lot of large corporations have been enjoying the benefits of CSR strategy, but that’s the problem of CSR as it is often perceived as concept suitable only for larger organizations, because of the extra costs attached to these activities. Social media is changing this situation. It has reduced the cost of communication and provided an opportunity to every company to manage/address its stakeholders more efficiently. Read the full story

The world of social media is maturing. People have adopted the new means of communication, companies are experimenting with the new business tools, but how the heart of the media industry is adopting to a new social landscape? Well it is quite strange, but not so well. I will try briefly to overview what I found in my research analysing social media adoption in 10 Top Media Agencies and some of the best practises.

Full document on Scribd

Sources: Campaign “Top 50 Media agencies” + Netprospex “Top 50 Brands in Social Media”

The key points from research: Read the full story

It is not a surprise that so many  have been asking for more quick and easy tips to building and promoting your Facebook Pages – they are more popular than ever at the moment!

For example, on my radio show, The Social Media Chef, a few weeks back we focused on Facebook Pages and the comments were through the roof.  The next week I continued on the topic of Facebook Pages with yet another mountain of comments.

As this seems to be one of the hottest topics right now, I wanted to share some more tips that you can easily apply to your Facebook Page to make it even better, more attractive and full of “Likes.”

Here are my top 5 Tips to Better Facebook Pages:

1.  Get Your Custom Facebook Page URL:  If you haven’t done this yet, it is free and wonderful.  Simply go to facebook.com/usernameand follow the instructions.  Make sure to choose a URL that is catchy, easy to remember and fits your brand!

2. Get Your Friends Behind You:  This enables you to get a diverse bunch of “Likes” to your page.  Find your key supporters in your Facebook network and either send them a personal message or call them to request that they invite all of their friends to connect with your page.  If you are timid don’t be shy, this is done everyday by brands large and small.

3.  Ask for the “Like”:  What I mean by this is anywhere that you can supply content to your Facebook page, you should be asking for the reader to “Like” your page.  For example on your Info tab within your page, there should be plenty of requests to “Like” the page built into your copy.  Also, post a link to the group on your own profile and ask your friends to “Like” it.

4.  Make Sure Your Web Address is Visible:  Not only should you add EVERY website you own in your Info tab (including your social media links), but also add it to the main picture you have associated with the group.  Remember, this is one of the first places people look – and it is easy to see and visit!

5.  Add a Free Facebook Application to Enhance Your Page:  There are many of these out there, with some of my favorites being Social RSS, Clobby and Poll Daddy.  Simply search through these on the Applications section and try them out!

And there you have it – another 5 tips to create better Facebook Pages!