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