Are you one of those people who have given up on New Year’s resolutions?  If you are active on the Social Web, an annual review – and a few resolutions – can make a significant difference to your effectiveness.  Here’s my take on a few you should consider:

This Week’s (Year’s) Action Plan:

1. Review and update all of your profiles. Once a year isn’t so often to update your profiles.
2. Remove out-of-brand comments and photos from profiles.  They creep in from others, but impact your brand directly.
3. Disconnect and ‘Defriend’ connections who use the tools to fill your page with irrelevant and time-wasting comments.
4. Isolate your personal from your professional Social Media time: nothing wrong with playing Farmville – but this isn’t work, it is  entertainment, no different than sitting in front of the TV.
5. Figure out Twitter if you haven’t already. Hint: it’s about the relationship, not the broadcasts.
6. Think about doing a blog. If you’re not sure how to start, click here for a few ideas.
7. Link your profiles together to improve your personal productivity and spread your perspective further. For example, you can embed a blog within your LinkedIn profile, and wire in your Twitter feed at the same time.
8. Begin monitoring your social footprint. Use Google Alerts, and sign-up for the free version of Hootsuite.
9. Set some goals: If you’re going to spend time on this activity, it pays to think about what you will get for your efforts before you start.
10. Use Social Media to connect to people in the real world. A computer won’t buy from you or give a job – a real person will.
11. Participate in one relevant discussion group or online forum. Not only will it expand your network, it will provide context and connection to what is happening in your field.
12. Take advantage with what your organization is already doing in the Social Media world: Connect, comment, vote, blog, tweet and retweet.
13. Finally, stop doing what isn’t working and focus on what is.  (What might be working:  not getting traction, it’s taking too long, not enjoyable, not enough ROI)

Today’s Action Plan: Unlike most New Year’s Resolutions, this list isn’t actually that hard.  Why wait for a special invitation: choose one of these and take care of it today.

And here’s a question for you:  do you have any Social Media resolutions of your own?

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

How often do you crack open the instruction manual for the new TV, car, or piece of software? If you’re like most, the answer is never. Reading through an endless list of functions is both irrelevant, and incredibly dull. In other words, a colossal waste of time.

Why then, when it comes to social media “strategic plans”, the focus is too often on what each social media venue offers, instead of how social media fits into the processes and plans that currently exist?  In too many cases, social media is a solution in search of a problem.

Instead, a social media strategy should flip this equation around and think “backwards”: social media needs to make real world processes more efficient, more engaging, and less costly.  How can social media help the recruiting process? How can it be used for better lead generation and prospecting? How can it be used for more focused (and faster) product development? And so on.

This Week’s Action Plan: Consider the processes that you participate in. Instead of first thinking of the social media venue, can you use “backwards thinking” to improve the process itself using social media concepts?  When we take the emphasis off the tool, and emphasize the business, Backwards Thinking is really Fast Forward.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Have you ever been disappointed, frustrated, or annoyed with an experience with a person or organization? In today’s Social Media world, suffering in silence need not be your only option. You can Tweet, Blog, post to Facebook, create a YouTube video, write on a review site or even create your own complaint site. You can galvanize your network by sharing publicly – perhaps for the first time – the nature of your grievance. Especially when you’re in the right, you can wield your social network powerfully.

But should you?

Once your complaint is public, it can never be retracted: What if you were wrong? Or you didn’t have all the facts?

It’s true that many organizations have staff monitoring Social Media, and that many are empowered to head off crises, but still: once your complaint is out, it’s out. Before you hit the “submit” button, here are six questions that you should ask yourself first:

1. What is the point of your post: is it to accomplish something specific, or merely get some emotional satisfaction?
2. Are you sure of your facts?
3. Imagine that your manager reads your post – what would they think? And if it were your parents reading the post – what would they think?
4. Imagine your post appearing in the newspaper, or on a billboard next to your home. Are you comfortable with it?
5. Would your post provoke a legal response against you? Sometimes posts can cross the line: does yours?
6. Ten years from now, how might your post be interpreted by others? You don’t want the “tomorrow you” to appear small-minded and petty. (Thank you Google.)

This week’s action plan:  This week, test these questions whenever you have an important message to send. These questions are just as important for any communication transmitted across the social web.

Special note: As you may have guessed, I was recently disappointed by someone who did not keep their commitment. It was tempting to send a blistering note about them into the blogosphere, but cooler heads – and these six questions – prevailed.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

When the economy is tight, most organizations face a financial call-to-action: tighten your belts, manage costs, and cut-cut-cut. This seems reasonable – financial management will rationalize that revenues no longer support a “higher” level of expenditure, so either sales must increase, or expenses must cut.

But how are these cuts determined?  Too often, it is a question of expediency (easiest to cut), recency (latest programs), or politics (weakest sponsors’ programs get cut.)  A far better approach is to cut based on efficiency and effectiveness.

Instead of merely looking at the cost of a particular initiative, why not consider whether it was worth the time and money to do it in the first place? And whether, after X months (or years), it is pulling its weight? Cutting lazy investments frees resources for higher-value activities.

The best way to do this is to build evaluation in from the outset. What are the goals of the program? How will they be measured? What are the expected results: financial, marketing, operational, and otherwise? What are the downstream benefits? Understanding these upfront means mid-course corrections can be made along the way.  And it also means that when the call to cut happens, objective measurements can be introduced as criteria. In short, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

This concept is even more important in the area of social media. For whatever reason, the concepts of managing and measuring seem forgotten in the excitement of the latest tweet or blog posting.  They shouldn’t be.

This weeks action plan: Review your social media initiatives, and set the goals, measures, and expected results. Don’t get caught when the call to cut occurs.

Bonus idea: This same concept works on a personal level. Can you quantify the impact of each of your activities?  If not, spend the time setting goals, measures and expected results.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

How do you know if your idea is really popular? Asking around is one way. Doing a survey is another. But how about the popularity of your idea on a world-wide scale? While this might be a bit of a challenge, if you can boil it down to a few keywords, there is a way, and surprisingly, it’s free.

Google has a hidden tool that accesses all of the collected search data, and allows you to determine the popularity of any word or phrase. To test an idea’s popularity, go to
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal, and enter your keywords or keyword phrases. Not only will you see how many people searched for the term, but you’ll also see how the popularity has changed over time. Google provides all of this data for your search term, and also for hundreds of related ones.

This tool is particularly useful if you are looking to add more powerful keywords into your social media profile, web sites, or any online property. Or if you’re just curious to see how often people are searching for a concept similar to yours.

This week’s action plan: Gauging the popularity of keywords isn’t just useful online. If you are writing a report or proposal, powerful keywords make a more powerful document. The next time you write anything important, check a few key phrases in the Google keyword tool to see if there are other words that are similar – but would win the popularity contest.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

How powerful is your network? Or rather, how do you make your network even more powerful than it already is? Try these four strategies:

1) Go Wide: Get more people onto your network list. This is often done at networking events.

2) Go for Quality: Get “better”, more relevant people onto your list. This is done by spending time at more relevant events, and better “qualifying” the people before you add them.

3) Go Deep: Develop stronger relationships with each person. This is usually done by doing something of value for them, and/or spending time with them.

4) Go Smarter: Use better tools to actively manage your network. This is done by using Social Media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, as opposed to PC-only contact management software. (It is also done by becoming knowledgeable: reading books like Online PR and Social Media.)

This week’s action plan: We often have no problem with going wide, but the other three strategies require work. This week, choose one of the three and add it to your calendar.

Bonus idea: Too often we blindly accept Social Media connection requests. Improve the quality of your network by “weeding out” the deadwood, and not accepting every person who walks in the door.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

Do you have a nagging concern that all of the time you spend on Social Media is not giving you a good return on your time investment? If so, you’re probably right, and you’re not alone. Too many people (and businesses) waste time doing activities that yield very little, often for the sole reason that “everyone” is on Social Media, and therefore they should be too.

This assumption can be easily tested, and your time made far more productive, by following a few basic – and obvious – guidelines:

1) Survey your customers and prospects to see where they spend their time online. While it is true that prospects can be found “everywhere”, they likely will congregate on some sites more than others. In other words, if they’re not on YouTube, why spend your time there?

2) Ask them what they are doing while online. This information can provide clues for how you might interact with them in Social Media. Helping them do more of what they want to do is easier than getting them to do what they aren’t. For example, if they are looking for product support, then your blog might focus on this topic. If they are using Social Media for product research, you might sponsor a contest for users to submit product usage videos. If they are spending their time playing games, you might consider developing one, or paying for a “product placement” within a popular game.

3) Ask them for their ideas about what they might be interested in having you provide through Social Media. If they are looking for support, then you might create YouTube How-to videos, or a moderated customer support forum. If they are looking for deals, then you might start a Twitter feed with early notification of sales, or text messages with special discount codes.

4) Set specific objectives, then monitor and measure the impact of your Social Media time investment against them. This will help you translate “nagging concerns” into concrete information on which you can act.

The whole notion of Social Media is all about the conversation. To get a higher Social Media ROI, why not use the very medium to make sure that this happens?

This week’s action plan: Of course, these guidelines should be on your to-do list, but even more important is the converse: stop doing things that don’t yield results. It’s too easy to let the pipe dream of building followers, contacts, and connections distract you from the hard reality that some activities just aren’t worth doing.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

With so many Social Media sites out there, where should you spend your time? In the “olden days” of just a few short years ago, it was fairly simple: For business, spend time on LinkedIn. For personal, use Facebook (or in the “real” olden days, use MySpace). If you have videos, then go to YouTube.

Nowadays, the choices are far more complicated. There are many more Social Media venues out there. There are corporately-hosted discussion groups, industry forums, third-party blogs, and Twitter lists. And so on.

Here is the general answer: It doesn’t matter how many places there are, you should be wherever your target audience is. If they spend their time in a specific LinkedIn group, then that’s where you should be. If they follow a particular person on Twitter, then you should do that too. And if they aren’t on Social Media at all… then perhaps you shouldn’t be either.

This week’s action plan: Do a search in every social media venue that you know of (and on Google): look for the communities that are actively discussing your interests. Instead of just reading their posts, consider how you can become part of this community. Each valuable contribution earns you credibility in the eyes of your target audience. Unlike the world of real estate, location doesn’t matter: credibility and reputation does.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

For many of us, Social Media has become ubiquitous: we couldn’t imagine a day without Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube. For many companies, Social Media is at the core of their strategies. But what if the plug was pulled? What if the government, or a technical disaster, caused a shutdown that lasted a week – or three? Or what if whole segments of society decided to completely unplug? (There is a movement towards this.)

Even though internet penetration and Social Media adoption is past the tipping point, it is terribly fragile, with many dependencies required to keep it alive. What can you do to protect yourself, if the plug were pulled unexpectedly?

• Export your contacts from as many Social Media sites as you can, as a back-up. If you’re not sure how, search for ‘Export’ from help.
• Extract any valuable content – answers, thoughtful discussion posts, pictures, etc. – again as back-up.
• If you advertise, don’t just drive users to a website, but include information and a telephone call-to-action.
• Formulate a disaster plan for your office (and family), in case all communication is cut-off unexpectedly.

This week’s action plan: Do a disaster-plan dry run, by not accessing any Social Media for 72 hours. Like all “necessary” activities, it may be hard to give up, but you’ll find a way to cope.  When the three days are up, embed what you learn into your current routines and disaster plans.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com

You may not know it, but the game playing, ad-serving, stalker-friendly site called Facebook is poised to bust out of it’s walled garden and move into the “real world” in a very big way. And when it does, it will have profound implications for government, other businesses, and each of us as individuals.

Unless you were living in a cave for the last few years, you probably know all about Facebook. It’s an ad-supported social network that allows individuals to connect with friends, share photos, status, games, and support groups and organizations by “liking” them.

The first step in Facebook’s evolution occurred over the last year or so: they developed some clever code that allowed webmasters to put “Like” buttons throughout their site. By clicking on the embedded button, we each became complicit in a process that helped Facebook not just reach out to these other sites, but to actually embed this external content within Facebook itself. This isn’t a particularly bad thing – in fact, it is a win-win-win proposition, but it accomplishes a strategic goal for Facebook that isn’t apparent to most. More on this later.

The second step, also introduced over the last year or so, has been to offer site owners (and their users) another clever nugget of functionality: the ability for users to logon/register on third party sites with their Facebook ID’s. Again, a win-win-win proposition, and one that accomplishes a strategic goal: to develop a network of external sites who are comfortably dependent on Facebook, and whose developers feel very comfortable using Facebook-embedded code.

The final brick in the wall are Facebook “credits”. These have been virtual rewards in Facebook games, that when “spent”, can give the user extra capabilities or access. What we are starting to see, and will continue to see, is the migration of Facebook credits  from a virtual currency to a real one. The actual credits take on value within Facebook, as games and apps “give” credits to winners, or “give” credits for even more valuable personal information. The credits themselves are funded from game or app developers’ ad revenues. As an aside, Facebook credits are now even sold in Radio Shack stores. They have value.

But a currency is worthless unless it can be spent. This is where Facebook is clearly going. Consider this scenario: You go to your favorite web site to purchase some merchandise. Signing on with your Facebook ID, you pay for your purchase with Facebook credits. The merchant prefers this because Facebook charges less than the credit card companies to process the transaction. Think of it: hundreds of thousands of online merchants accepting credits instead of credit cards. Not only does Facebook make money on every transaction, but because credits are a “stored value” instrument, Facebook earns investment income from the value of credits held.

Is this scenario likely?  Consider these factors:

1. Website owners “trust” Facebook – a trust earned through the “like” button and the Login with Facebook functionality
2. Web developers are comfortable implementing Facebook code
3. Users trust Facebook, and because they will want to spend the credits they have earned.

More than these three factors, however, is a fourth: It’s in everyone’s commercial interest to have this happen as quickly as possible. For web merchants, it makes it easier and faster to transact, resulting in higher sales at a lower cost. Users will want to spend their credits they have earned, and Facebook opens a new channel of revenue: transaction fees.

What is even more exciting, at least from Facebook’s perspective, is that the web is just the beginning. Why be content with hundreds of thousands of web merchants, when there are millions of bricks and mortar businesses who would jump to lower transaction fees in a second. As Visa and MasterCard processing fees have risen substantially, there is a window of opportunity for an organization that’s big enough to offer an alternative. Facebook is. And of course, if these merchants are already accepting Facebook credits on their websites, it’s just a simple step to accept them in the real world.

But how might these payments be delivered? This is but a detail, but there are some obvious possibilities, such as a new “credit card”. What is more likely is that the payment will be delivered through the next generation of cellphones, with built-in Near Field Communications. Picture this: log into your Facebook Mobile App on your Smartphone; then “tap tap” the phone on a pad at the retailers, and the Facebook credits are transferred immediately to the retailer. Of course, the retailer can just “bank” the credits (less the transaction fee)… or they can recycle the credits within the Facebook ecosystem to pay for more advertising. Facebook might even cut them a deal.

The big question is what about the other social media sites? Which – if any – might have a vision this big? Unfortunately for the 525+ other sites, only Google might be up for the challenge…and even they might be found wanting. To survive, every other site will become a niche player, at best.

Will Facebook take over the world? Not in a traditional sense. But if this analysis is right, they will come close.

This week’s action item: How you can take advantage of some of Facebook’s technologies today, either as an individual, or for your organization?

An uncomfortable question: Do you have such a far-sighted strategy, either personally, or in your business?  Most don’t.   (What can you do about it?)

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com