10 Reasons to Use Social Media

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Les Adkins

So it’s 2013 and Social Media is everywhere. I have even started a daily tip on Twitter @mysylbert Apologies for the shameless plug but I had a goal of 2000+ followers in 90 days which has turned into a little longer so I need all the help I can get. Thanks for the follow if you are so inclined.

Working with businesses here in the US and Internationally I hear this statement a lot “Well we are using Social Media but we are not seeing the results we would like to see”, which keeps me in business by the way, but I always ask the question WHY? Why are they using social media and you would be surprised at the number of directors and CEO’s of large well-known companies that can’t answer that question. So below I have decided to state the Top 10 Reasons to Use Social Media (in my humble opinion). For business or for individuals.

10. To Get Noticed: Whether you are a business or an individual and you want to get your name out there the best way to do this is through Social Media. Search Engines love Social Media.

9. Marketing: There has been a lot written and said about Social Media Marketing and although you should never look at Social Media as a new Marketing channel (it doesn’t work) you should enhance your marketing through Social Media. “Content is the Fire, Social Media is the Gasoline” Jay Baer

8. Real Time News: Now you have the ability to have real-time news with video from around the world without having a large group of paid journalists and travel expenses. (and I studied journalism-so journalists don’t hate). Anyone with a smart phone can report the news. Look at all the news related items coming out of the Middle East, US and literally every major country in the world. The ability to get news right away has never been more easy than through social media.

7. Relationships: Finding long-lost friends and family. Reconnecting with old school friends or work colleagues. We live in an age where, if they are on social media, you can reconnect with them and develop close ties again or just keep in touch. This is great for sales and also if you are looking for a job.

6. Innovation: I believe this is one of the biggest breakthroughs that social media has allowed companies, that use it correctly, to accomplish. You can now innovate your products and services by asking the users what they want and adapting to their wants and needs rather than guessing or holding expensive focus groups.

5. Collaboration: Business, Science. News and Education are just a few of the industries who are now using social media to collaborate with others on projects that normally might have been done in a vacuum. Two minds are greater than one, with social media you can now have dozens, hundreds, thousands or more all working toward a common cause or project.

4. Sales: If your sales team is not using Social Media to gain new leads and find new business then you are missing out on a great opportunity. Social Media allows you to find new business opportunities, who the decision maker is, and what companies are looking for. If you don’t believe me Google Social Media Sales. “You can really get to know his or her needs through social listening. It’s a great way to research a market and initiate conversation leading to a sale.” Janet Fouts

3. Finding the Right Talent: Although there are a lot of people in the job market it is still hard for companies to find the right people that will move their organization forward. With social media you can search in specialty groups and also have a broader reach when you need to fill a position. Finding the right person for the job is right at the tip of your digital fingers.

2. Information: Causes, Companies and people in general have always wanted to get information out to their peers, prospects, and the general public. We always tell anyone we are working with that the information has to add value to their audience. This works for businesses, organizations and everyone who is putting out information. Including my blog. But now with one click you can send out information to millions of people around the world. Just be careful that it is the right information. (Your audience will decide this for you).

And drummmm rollllll please!!!!!

1. To Stay In Business: Socialnomics and Infographics have stated that 40% of Fortune 500 companies will no longer be in business in 10 years. This is due to their inability to adapt to the new consumer, business or audience. So whether you are a business, church, nonprofit or individual you need to be using social media if you want to still be relevant and viable in the next 10 years.

Les Adkins is the CEO of Orange SMS Consulting and an International Social Business Strategist, speaker, consultant and author. Bringing strategy and whole brain thinking to creative campaigns and social media through his work. Please follow @mysylbert and connect on LinkedIn Join us on FB and Google+ as well.

Social Media Bubble?

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Les Adkins

So why are we talking about the “Social Media Bubble”? Because Warren Buffett got into the fray and made this statement while at a conference in New Delhi, India.

“It’s extremely difficult to value social-networking-site companies…Most of them will be overpriced. Some will be huge winners, which will make up for the rest.”

So what Warren Buffett is talking about is his investment strategy not the end of Social Media which some in the blogosphere have been touting of late.

I will refer you back to an old post of mine that talks in detail about the: Social Media Bubble Fact or Fiction

I came across a LinkedIn Post that stated “RIP Social Media”. Well after reading the comment and blog (See Original Blog Here) My own conclusion is that Social Media Marketing maybe slowing down but not Social Media.

So here is what I think and others agree that Social Media is about engagement with customers, prospects, employees and people with like interests. The companies that use Social Media to engage will be the victors the ones that try to market before building Trust will be the losers.

Les Adkins CEO of Orange-SMS

Co-Founder of TalkTube (coming soon)

top image provided by jcreationz

Why are you still not using Social Media?

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Les Adkins

So according to David Nour (Relationship Economics)

Social media is not a fad! It is changing the fundamental manner in which we engage and influence our target market. The more you learn about this evolving technology, the more you realize the power and promise of social media as a platform for mass collaboration – with prospects and customers, employees, and suppliers.

I was reading The Economist December 18th, 2010 (forgive me it was the print edition) and found a little statement that made some sense to me. Investors are now investing in startups that are geared toward social media and social currency.

Social Media companies are like Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare. Social Currency companies are like Groupon, Gilt Groupe (a luxury-goods seller), and Zynga (a social-gaming firm). Companies like Kaneva are combining the two. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith in their Book Trust Agent define a type of social currency as social capital,

….social capital is different than other kinds of capital. When people come together and share a meal, they not only end up fed, they also become tighter as a group. The mere act of gathering means that they will exchange things- stories, favors, and laughs- and will grow richer as a result. It may sound touchy feely, but these things have real value. And we don’t just mean that they keep you warm on a cold winter night, either; we mean they have real value, as in “you can take it to the bank” value. …..Just think of your favorite television cop drama and how often the phrase “you owe me a favor”, is uttered. These things are real.

So what does this mean for you? We see that social media and social currency startups are getting investors and that social capital is real and that there are companies using both to make real HARD COLD CASH. Oh and that this whole thing is not a fad.

SO WHY ARE YOU STILL NOT USING SOCIAL MEDIA?

There are books, webinars and companies out there that are all offering help for both large and small organizations. Marketing companies have even gotten in the mix as well as PR companies. Every one is trying it so why aren’t you?

The world as we know it is changing. Look at Egypt, Jordan, and Tanzania. These are extreme examples or are they. The younger generations are demanding change. Your customers are going to be demanding change (if they aren’t already) in the way you work with them and the way you sell your product or service to them. And what about your employees ( the few you have left)?

There are many blogs and articles discussing this topic but soon the topic will stop being “Why Are you not using Social Media” and start being “Companies that are failing due to the inability of them to change the way they are doing business”.

Moral of the story – It is not too late to start and there are many resources to help you get started. There are some posers out there as well so be careful but if they are talking about social media strategy, social currency or building social capital then they are probably on the right track.

Don’t be the one or one’s left behind in 2011. You know that we may still be here in 2012 so what are you doing to make sure that you remain one of the lucky ones still in business?

Les Adkins, CEO Orange SMS

100 Day Project

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Les Adkins

So we are 7 days into the 100 day project. Thought I would share with everyone what we are doing. We are attempting to change the way network marketers grow their network online.

There is a whole new generation who for some reason has not heard of Network Marketing or MLM. This is probably a good thing on the one hand, due to my generations experience of pyramid schemes and pushy network marketers inviting us to dinner to ambush us with an Amway presentation. Sorry Amway. The hypothesis is that using Social Media you can grow your network in a positive way by becoming a trust agent and then inviting them to join your network in a non-threatening, non-pushy way. Promising a minimal result based on a certain set of instructions based on a Social Media Strategy. If you work harder you can get a better result and so on.

Did you know that (and I apologize I don’t know where the data came from but a couple of people have confirmed it, and I’m sure that I could look it up but I am tired and yes trying to get this out before bed) if the people who lost their homes had an additional $500 to $1000 a month they would have saved their homes from foreclosure.

I have seen what network marketing can do and a guru in network marketing who has created 7 millionaires in his organization is partnering on this project with me.

So in short we are taking a small group of individuals from different network marketing groups and giving them a social media strategy and then we will tell the world what we found out.

If you are a network marketer and would like to join this group please leave a comment and an email and phone number for us to contact you. The deadline for entry into this focus group is Friday, July 9, 2010.

Next blog we will discuss the so-called Social Media Bubble. Fact or Fiction?

CEO and Founder Orange SMS

So ask yourself have you found your Community?

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Les Adkins

So does this look familiar? It is of course what you see when you come to the Social Media Solutions page. So why is it in this blog this week? Well let’s look at the last question “have you found your Community?” Social Media should be about “Adding Value to Your Life”

We want to ask for your help. We are creating an Online Business Community that is geared around “adding value to your life”, MySylbert. Yes it has advertisements, but more importantly it also will have content from different blogs, business magazines, specialty magazines, businesses and people like you sharing information that will help others in their daily lives. Whether that be business or personal. It is a place for you to connect to businesses, people and opportunity.

We truly want your help in creating this community so we have put up the basics for our soft launch and we want the people who read this page to tell us what you want and how you want to use MySylbert. Click on the logo and then please create a profile and then let’s start the conversation. This is an ongoing project that will continuously change as we create the community that you need and want.

People who are online gravitate toward the communities that they find interest in, and also that they can find the information they need and also where they feel connected. We are asking for your help in letting us know why you belong to the communities you belong to and what drew you there.

MySylbert will strive to be the bridge between the business community and the people; whether that be employees, prospects, customers or just people looking to network. It’s all about the conversation. People will do business with companies that do business the way they want to do business. You may have heard me say this before but it breaks down to businesses actually communicating with their employees, customers, prospects and shareholders. And even more important, listening to what their employees, customers, prospects and shareholders have to say and doing something about it.

It seems like there is a great divide these days. Those people who are on Facebook and those that are on LinkedIn. Both are very valuable and we are trying to find a way to bridge the two.

We are not asking that you leave your current communities we are just asking you to help us create a place where businesses and people can connect in a valuable way that adds value to the lives of both the people, and the people running and working in the businesses.

This is our beta so help us create a strong business community that gives you what you need. In order for this community to be successful we need your help. Thank you in advance for your help and remember we are waiting for you to continue building this community.

Les Adkins, CEO Orange SMS and founder of MySylbert

What is Relational Onboarding?

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Les Adkins

Relational Onboarding is not your traditional onboarding of an employee. I was talking to a friend in DC the other day and she just started a new job. I asked her what they did to get her oriented to the organization. Now before I tell you what she told me I need to let you know what else this organization does. They are a Business Consulting firm who has a division that does Social Media Marketing and Strategies for businesses. They help organizations with Social Media. So why is this important? Well now let me tell you her answer to the question of how they oriented her to the organization. She said they gave her a bunch of manuals, some webisodes and had her look at their website. This is how they handled the onboarding. She was relieved when she finally got to start working on a project.

The reason I told you about them helping organizations with Social Media is that companies all over the world are starting to had Social Media services for their clients. But not everyone really understands what those services should entail. Any Social Media Strategy should include not only customers, business development and branding but also internal communications and onboarding. Organizations should look at Social Media as an integration of doing things differently through out the entire organization.

Gen Y or Gen WE as they prefer to be called, oh and by the way they hate being called the Millenials, are entering the workforce in large numbers this year. They come from a world that has labeled them “digital natives“. This group has very different priorities when looking for work and choosing an employer. They are very interested in developing relationships with the company they pick and the people who are in that company, including the Executive leadership. Why should you care? Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce and Gen WE is coming in at record numbers. They will take the place of all those key employees and they bring with them the skills needed to attract the new consumer or client.

Relational Onboarding may be defined as helping new hires to become connected with both the formal and informal networks within an organization for the purpose of relationship building, expertise location, knowledge sharing and cultural assimilation. Social networking technologies provide the platform around which such programs may be built, and social network analysis may help to identify the characteristics of well-networked top performers for the purpose of behavior modeling and informal network integration enabled by the technology. Georgia Pacific is moving forward with great strides to create a 3D game environment to help their new hires learn the culture, the company information, and connect with key individuals to their success. Yes it is an actual game like you would play on Wii or Xbox.

Relational Onboarding does several things for an organization. It helps them to:

Shorten ramp up time
Reduce first year turnover
Raise offer acceptance
Increase long-term retention

A recent study of Select Mind/Intellisurvey revealed that, enterprise wide, focusing on connectivity and creating corporate networks can increase productivity by approximately 10% and retention by nearly 9%.

Organizations understand the value of onboarding and it’s effects on the bottom line but existing onboarding programs fail because they are informational or administrative.

The fix is that organizations need to change the way they think about onboarding and learn to see it as an invaluable opportunity to make lasting relationships with their employees by helping their employees make meaningful relationships with each other.

By taking a relational approach to onboarding, companies can help their new employees to connect with their personal networks, learn the corporate culture, and gain knowledge important to their success.

The key to effective Relational Onboarding is to have everyone; executives and leadership invest in maintaining social relationships throughout the organization and create an environment with an expectation of collaboration.

This takes some time to map out those successful high performer networks but the organizations that take the time to put the process, tools and technology in place, to keep the new employees connected to real people, will reap the benefits.

Les Adkins, CEO Orange-SMS (Social Media Solutions)

www.orange-sms.com

16 Examples of Huge Brands Using Twitter for Business

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Les Adkins

In honor of the Lunch and Learn tomorrow at ROAM. Thought I would share this great blog from Ann Smarty that gives real life examples of Twitter being used for business by some big names. Check out all the links to see the twitter accounts, great examples. If they are using Twitter shouldn’t you be???

Les Adkins @mysylbert

CEO of SMS (Social Media Solutions)

All Twitter benefits and (potential) spheres of usage are yet to be explored. However it is great to see some of huge companies already taking advantage of the tool:

To update customers of the company deals and coupon codes:

1. Dell has created a number of Twitter profiles, each meant for different types of deals (e.g. DellOutlet posts recent refurbished Dell computer offers).

2. Starbucks posts new offers and also participates in threaded discussions of these offers with their Twitter-followers.

* To offer an alternative customer support option:

3. JetBlue offers Twitter-based customer service (notice, they even provide the customer support employee’s name currently on duty).

4. ComCast offers a friendly Twitter customer support; what I personally like about their profile is the real person photo instead of the company logo.

5. TheHomeDepot “moonlights on Twitter to help their customers.”

To get closer to customers:

6. Via their Twitter profile Southwest Airlines run non-official, entertaining discussions with their customers.

7. Whole Foods Market asks what their clients like to read and watch, recommends new food podcasts and invites them to the company upcoming events.

8. HRBlock runs ask-and-answer sessions with their customers.

9. Best Buy has built a Community to communicate with their customers and friends.

To react to customers’ feedback:

10. Popeyes answers their clients’ feedback in an entertaining tone and also updates their Twitter listeners of the current deals and discounts.

To offer an alternative subscription option:

11. ATTNews updates their Twitter-followers of the news published at the site.

12. Forrester Research posts updates of their site recent discussions.

To post company news:

13. BreakingPoint posts updates of the company and industry news and also discusses it with their Twitter-listeners.

14. Ford posted the company internal news (the account seems abandoned).

Update: here are some cool Ford Twitter accounts you can check out:

(thanks to @ScottMonty, Global Digital Communications for
Ford Motor Company, for pointing the accounts out to me)

15. Samsung has created a Twitter account dedicated to mobile phones and posts both the company (US department) and product news there.

To promote the corporate blog:

16. Kodak Chief Blogger both posts the company blog updates and discusses them with the company customers.
Written By:

Ann Smarty | @seosmarty

Ann Smarty is the Director of Media at Search & Social where she serves as the Editor of Search Engine Journal. Ann’s expertise in blogging and tools serve as a base for her writing, tutorials and her guest blogging project, MyGuestBlog.

Business Now Owns their Audience through Social Networks, not Traditional Paid Ads

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Les Adkins

Business Now Owns their Audience through Social Networks, not Traditional Paid Ads

Apr 8th, 2010 | By suzanne | Category: Social Networking

Duh! Business marketing teams are switching from paid ads to social networking advertising in 2010 to gain more control because… they can. It’s obvious. Read on …

Marketers shelled out more than $1.2 billion on social networking advertising last year, and that figure will only rise – to $1.3 billion this year – as advertisers aim to leverage their existing social media infrastructure in 2010, according to a new report from eMarketer.

In its social media outlook, the research firm found that advertisers plan to devote their social media resources this year on maintaining their social networks rather than growing them through paid ads. Many marketers made the investments last year in creating fan pages on Facebook, running ads on MySpace and developing the overall strategy for social media, said Debra Williamson, the eMarketer senior analyst who wrote the report. Now, they’ll look to nurture those audiences.

This shift points to a broader philosophical change, as marketers create their own audiences, rather than rent them. Brands want to invest money in building out audiences rather than just renting through TV, radio and magazines (the old way.) Example … Pepsi pulled out of the Super Bowl after 23 years to develop its own audience through its Pepsi Refresh Project online.

Really? Yes!

Marketers are looking for better ways to quantify and measure social messaging that surrounds their brands is a summary of what Williamson said. “Whenever you do a paid online campaign, you guess or estimate how many impressions you are going to get, and now they are trying to figure out how much earned media they’ll get,” she said.

Marketers are eager to apply metrics to Facebook posts, Twitter comments, viral marketing and others times and areas when and where people share or interact with a brand online, even if it’s as simple as a consumer replying to another consumer with a brand recommendation. A number of firms track and analyze earned media, such as Listen Logic, Converseon and Networked Insights.

Brands also want to understand how social media effects the rest of a marketing plan.

“They’re realizing you don’t have to track every single metric, but you should track the ones that make sense for your business,” Williamson said. “If you want to use social network marketing for branding, then you’re going to follow different metrics in terms of whether they are looking at your fan page or passing along to friends. But if you’re looking to do a promotion, such as downloading a coupon and getting a discount at a store, then the metrics are getting better to understand that, too.”

When marketers do spend money on social media this year, they’ll be opening their wallets for Facebook with its 350 million worldwide users. Facebook spending in the United States will jump to $450 million this year, up 34 percent from $335 million last year.

Meanwhile, MySpace ad spending will drop 23 percent to $360 million this year from $465 million last year, coinciding with traffic ups and downs.

Traffic ups and downs is referring to the traffic, for example, on MySpace.

Other key social media trends this year will be local social advertising and social search, Williamson said.

Facebook’s ad serving engine will continue to draw local businesses using location-based advertising, she said. Also, advertisers will look to pair social media with search through Google’s new real-time search results. As Google curates tweets, blog posts and some Facebook status updates in its search results, that can lead to new opportunities for social-based search advertising, Williamson said.

“Let’s say you are traveling to San Francisco and you type in ‘French restaurant,’ and in addition to seeing the standard search results, you might see results that are more curated, but from your friends.”

Thank you to this source and Daisy Whitney for information and text: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=123159

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