LinkedIn, Facebook and many other Social Networking sites have been suggesting friends and followers for a while now.  Do you follow these people just because the service recommends them to you.   Deep down inside where many Facebookers or LinkedIn users never get a chance to visit there is some formula or algorithm that figures out who you should know and offers suggestions based on your friends, there friends and a number of other criteria.

Twitter is now jumping of the “suggest a friend” campaign with their own “suggestions for you” program.

The Twitter blog has more information on how this will work inside Twitter.  Read the Twitter blog.

Are you the type to follow whomever is suggested to you?

What do you think about the automated suggestions?

In the LinkedIn world, I have used the suggestions to my advantage.  When I see a name pop up from someone I haven’t heard of in a while or a long-lost colleague, LinkedIn can be a great way to get back in touch with people.

But what do you think?

Everyday I get asked by someone who is wanting the “quick win” with their marketing.  What do I have to do today to enable the phone to ring tomorrow?  Well, that is a very good question.  I am one hundred percent sure there is some marketing guru out there who can give you some quick win success formula that will enable this happen.  A couple a tweets here, a Facebook status update there and you are off to the races.  You need to simply spend two minutes on Google and you can easily find them, there are lots of gurus and ninjas and self-proclaimed experts who can help you.  Sure get the quick win, lots of promise but they all lack real substance.

Success in marketing doesn’t come overnight, I know…I haven’t been marketing for several years and it takes blood, sweat and tears.  It takes works and it takes time.  It takes patience and most importantly, it takes commitment.  The only thing overnight about marketing is your blunders that knock you down.  Those for some reason they seem to occur overnight, but success doesn’t.

I was reading on the side of my cereal box this morning about healthy eating.  Same thing, healthy lifestyles isn’t a race it is a journey and the same thing can be said about your marketing and especially your social media activities.

Success with social media is definitely not a race.  It is a journey and a tough uphill journey at the best of times.   It takes commitment from you and your entire team.  It takes more than just opening a Twitter account, Facebook Page and throwing up a free WordPress or blogger site.  Social Media takes planning, preparation and it requires everyone in the company to play a role.  I don’t care if you have three employees, thirty-three or three thousand and three.  Everyone must play a part.

This is what we do at Ulistic, everyone plays a role in our social media activities.  David, Frank and myself (soon Melanie) all play our parts and we all have the same goal just different paths that are strategically laid out in our marketing plan.  We all blog regularly and we participate in blog commenting almost daily, we are active on Facebook, Twitter and others and most importantly, we are active in our communities and this includes online and face-to-face.  I mentioned this in my podcast with Daniel Gutierrez and Bob Burg the other night…nothing will replace a face-to-face meeting, your social media fills these gaps and helps you get to face-to-face.

Are you expecting that quick win?  You may be a tad bit disappointed with this mindset.  For those who are out there consistently adding value and enriching the lives of others you will have success and it will take time.  Success with your social media marketing is helping others but also getting paid to help these people.  Bob says’ “Give more in value than you take in payment”.  You need to provide value but don’t do it for free.  Never lose site that you are in business and you must convert visitors, fans and followers to clients.  If you don’t you have a big network.  That’s it.

Need help figuring all this out, give me a call 403.775.2205.

Probably not…but I think I took a good step forward on Saturday.

I have been a huge supporter of the blogging platform WordPress for many years.  Like many of you, I cut my teeth on the free versions of WordPress and Blogger.  However, when I started to take blogging seriously, I stumbled on a company called Siteground.com and the rest is history.  Blogging is now part of my daily routine and this blog reaches thousands of folks each day.

WordPress offers one of the most reliable and easy to use blogging platforms available today.  Over the course of my regular business day, I work with many Calgary and global companies on how they can leverage blogs in their business.  Ulistic offers a wide range of blogging consulting services for business.  From blog consulting to coaching.  Contact me if I can help you with your business blogs at anytime.

WordPress is evolving to a fully functional web development platform.

For many years WordPress has strictly been used as a blogging platform.  For a while, some of the leading web developers started developing great looking websites on WordPress.  However over the past little while WordPress has become more acceptable in the mainstream web development world.   WordPress is now making serious moves towards offering a full-featured and rich content management system and web development platform.

On Friday, I met up with a good friend of mine and fellow WordPress blogger in Calgary and we immediately jumped into sharing tips and tricks on how we can make our WordPress blogs really sing.  I shared a few great plugins that I have found and started to use every day.  Many of our Ulistic clients are also leveraging these great additional functions on their WordPress blog.  Some of the plugins allow you to scroll testimonials, perform grammar/spelling checking and a wealth of other great added features.  You can even send a thank you note to those folks who leave a comment on your blog.

Then my friend shared with me a service he has been using and having some great success with, headwaythemes.com.  Headway is a blog development platform for WordPress.  You can see it on this blog, this weekend I changed the layout of my blog to a headway designed blog.  It took a bit of playing around at first, but after you learn how it really works and read the manual  or watch the YouTube videos it is quite awesome.  Headway takes all the confusion of CSS and HTML  and offers a powerful interface for you to develop your own professional business blog.  Upload your own header, change colours and really take ownership of your blog.

Don’t kiss your web developer goodbye just yet, but here is another web tool you can take advantage of for your blogs.  Your web developer combined with Headway can really make your blog rock n’roll.  I am not a developer, but as an avid blogger and marketing professional…I get this and the power a great locking blog can do for business.

Headway only works on your hosted WordPress blog.

Sorry folks…you need to have your own hosted version of WordPress to make this work.  If you have your blog hosted on the free WordPress servers, you can’t take advantage of the power headway offers.  However, don’t worry I have a solution for you.  Get a hosted version of WordPress with your own domain name for only $9.95 for the first year.  Click Here – Cheap WordPress Hosting.  After the first year, your hosting is only $120 for the year.  Great deal to get started.

Headway is about $90 for a personal version which allows you to run it on 2 of your websites, upgrade to the developers version for about $160.00 and use it on unlimited sites.  This is an awesome tool for WordPress, if you are serious about your blogging – this service if for you.

I am flowing a very interesting discussion on one of my LinkedIn groups which focuses on Social Media.  The question raised by one of our members was on “what makes or what qualifications does a social media administrator require?”  Interesting question since the person asking the question has a title of “Certified Social Media Strategist”.  I was shocked to hear that there is actually a program for a Certified Social Media Strategist.  It is provided by Social Media Academy.  Very interesting.

Back to the question at hand, what skills or requirements does a social media administrator need to have?

Does business acumen matter?

How about a marketing degree or equivalent career history?

What risks does your business take by having someone who doesn’t get it?

I believe that alignment with the overall marketing strategy of the business is crucial, social media doesn’t stand on its own for many companies.  It is very important but the company can’t rest everything on the modern tools of the day.  Most businesses today who are looking at or implementing social media are not dumping their existing or proven marketing or communication activities.  The successful organizations continue to send postcards, making phone calls and hosting meetings. Their social media activities play a supporting role in many of the activities of the corporation including marketing, corporate communications, customer support and forming strong business networks.

Alignment is critical to the overall success of social media into your business.  Does your social media administrator need to understand where they stand in the pecking order?

Social Media is just another spoke in the wheel of your business.

What about maturity, is this important? Would you rather have someone who has a proven track record in your industry or someone new.  Everyone has to start somewhere but when it comes to maturity I mean you don’t want to risk having someone, regardless of age, tweeting what they had for breakfast on your company Twitter account.

Is social media deeper than Facebook and Twitter? What is the depth of knowledge of your social media administrator?  Do they have press contacts or know where the industry or your clients go to research information?  Is your administrator’s depth of Social Media knowledge stop at Facebook or Twitter?

How about thinking out of the box? In other words, creativity!  Can your social media administrator come up with creative solutions to enhance your company’s reputation or ability to serve your clients better?

What about the size of their ears? Well, not physically.  Can they listen to what is going on around then.  What is happening in the marketplace?  How about understand what news Bloomberg is reporting and what it means to the organization.  Can they listen and then approach the leadership to formulate a response or plan to seize opportunities which may exist.

Lots of stuff to consider.

If you would like to engage with the Social Media group on LinkedIn and our discussion, click here.

Does Twitter have an application for the busy small business owner who makes widgets down the street?

Does Twitter have a fit for the MLM looking at building their network?

I believe there are YES and NO answers mixed in with both of these thought-provoking questions.  Can a Canadian Small Business training organization use Twitter to build a community of entrepreneurs?  How as a marketing engine to invite others to their series of webinars?  How about the Chestermere REALTOR looking to expand into a new market?

Where is the value to small business owners?

At the core of social media it is all about building a community.  For those business owners looking to expand and build community, then I would assume Twitter is for you amongst a hockey sock of other online services.  We really need to look at what is important to small business across Canada and this is sales and marketing and then design strategies which will help lead to the end goal.  I believe it is the end goal that is often missed when businesses start with social media services.

Twitter is a great service to build community, I have said this time and time again.  What is not, a tool for your direct selling, sale of the week or magical herbal cure for cancer.  This use is the reason I believe Twitter will fail in the business community.  Just because it doesn’t lead to a sale and many fail to see this.  Here is a question for you. Have you checked your Twitter direct messages lately, many of them are spam from MLM or people who have the secret sauce to your online business success. Garbage I say!

Where Twitter will succeed is in corporate research. David and I are hosting a Google Search event in Calgary in May and one of the areas we cover is researching information online with the Google Search Engine.  With the Twitter new live link and archiving into Google, it can become a great research tool for business owners, sales executives and many others in an organization.  What blog said what, which journalist reported a certain story and many more research type queries.

It is not a sales tool, many will agree with me.  It is a community and information tool.  I believe I just answered my question on the importance of Twitter in business.  Share great information, your commentary on information and let those looking for the information you share find you now or later.

Will Twitter be a fail?  Only time and adoption will tell.

P.J. Lamberson, an MIT Sloan School of Management visiting assistant professor mentioned in the article that you would think the more people you talk about your products and service with would actually adopt it, this is not always the case.  As a Calgary Online Marketing professional this is a huge hurdle many business owners we consult with through our Ulistic Online Marketing program need to jump.  It is never about the product and service, it is about engaging, helping and being part of the community.

I just finished reading “Go Givers Sell More” co-written by my good friend and trusted mentor, Bob Burg.  Bob always talks about the reasons why people do business with you.  First, they need to know, like and trust you and you can not meet these critical requirements by simply pitching your business on Twitter.  There are many things to think about.  Online Marketing is not the holy grail that will save your business, but it can help if used correctly.  It can be that first step towards know, like and trust.

Deep down inside we all want to get the word out about our business (sometimes we come across very desperate), just be careful how you go about doing this and make sure it doesn’t come back to bite you in the backside.  This is how I help many business owners across North America each day, we share ideas and concepts about balance and strategize about their overall marketing, not just online.

The article from the Boston Herald goes on to speak about President Obama and how he used social media services to help connect many young voters and now using these same services to gripe about the President.  How can these networks impact your business?  Word of mouth is so powerful today and the Internet is a giant word-of-mouth network.

Personally, I think simply focusing on ROI is very shortsighted.  I understand how important it is that your business is profitable and sees a return on the investments made however I think the deeper question is “what is the return on opportunity” or “How can my business capitalize on the opportunities out there”?  For me this is much deeper and really hits the core of why we do what we do.  I believe this is what makes our team at Ulistic different, we have and continue to run profitable and a successful business.  We know what it takes to be profitable, where to reach your markets and a unique approach to looking at the entire picture and the impact on your business.  Then we share this information with our consulting clients.

How does this tie into Social Media?

What is the ROO with your marketing efforts?
What is the ROO in having the talented staff member fielding support calls?
What is the ROO of being present in the online communities?

You have to understand the opportunity and what potentials exist in your target market.  I speak about casting your net and the importance of knowing where to fish for maximize effectiveness plus have nets out there which catch less fish (The Long Tail).  But you also need to know when the fish are hungry. (Thanks Bob Burg).

During our Calgary Social Media Workshops which Ulistic holds every couple of months for business owners, we focus on the importance of looking at the potential opportunities associated with simply being present online.  I remember how T. Harv Eker would open his Millionaire Mind intensive with every single time “80% of success is just showing up”.  This goes for your online marketing and social media activities as well.  You need to show up, that is the first step but of course it is not the last step. You need to have a presence, now there are tricks so it doesn’t consume all your time.

What opportunities are you missing by not having a presence on the mainstream social media services?  I shared recently online with you about how Google is now archiving tweets on Twitter.  Twitter, Facebook Pages, Digg, LinkedIn and many others are importance networks to participate in and do you play in these sandboxes?  David and I cover the importance of search and your social circle during our Calgary SEO courses and plus the importance of having effective online strategies in our Calgary social media courses.

What is the ROO for your online fishing (marketing)?  To me, it is so much more than talking about Facebook, Twitter and other online services.

Personally, I think simply focusing on ROI is very shortsighted.  I understand how important it is that your business is profitable and sees a return on the investments made however I think the deeper question is “what is the return on opportunity” or “How can my business capitalize on the opportunities out there”?  For me this is much deeper and really hits the core of why we do what we do.  I believe this is what makes our team at Ulistic different, we have and continue to run profitable and a successful business.  We know what it takes to be profitable, where to reach your markets and a unique approach to looking at the entire picture and the impact on your business.  Then we share this information with our consulting clients.

How does this tie into Social Media?

What is the ROO with your marketing efforts?
What is the ROO in having the talented staff member fielding support calls?
What is the ROO of being present in the online communities?

You have to understand the opportunity and what potentials exist in your target market.  I speak about casting your net and the importance of knowing where to fish for maximize effectiveness plus have nets out there which catch less fish (The Long Tail).  But you also need to know when the fish are hungry. (Thanks Bob Burg).

During our Calgary Social Media Workshops which Ulistic holds every couple of months for business owners, we focus on the importance of looking at the potential opportunities associated with simply being present online.  I remember how T. Harv Eker would open his Millionaire Mind intensive with every single time “80% of success is just showing up”.  This goes for your online marketing and social media activities as well.  You need to show up, that is the first step but of course it is not the last step. You need to have a presence, now there are tricks so it doesn’t consume all your time.

What opportunities are you missing by not having a presence on the mainstream social media services?  I shared recently online with you about how Google is now archiving tweets on Twitter.  Twitter, Facebook Pages, Digg, LinkedIn and many others are importance networks to participate in and do you play in these sandboxes?  David and I cover the importance of search and your social circle during our Calgary SEO courses and plus the importance of having effective online strategies in our Calgary social media courses.

What is the ROO for your online fishing (marketing)?  To me, it is so much more than talking about Facebook, Twitter and other online services.

My views on the overall importance of Twitter for business varies each day.  Some days I am on the bandwagon and some days I am not.  I believe effective use of Twitter has some importance for a business and your presence on Twitter can help with your overall online fishing.  I often speak on “casting your net” during our Calgary Online Marketing Courses.  In the same breath it is important that business people don’t consume all their time and efforts using Twitter as a tool to share information and events.

This is where a great blog comes into being an extremely strong strategy for your business.  Using your blog as a centre point and then leveraging Twitter (automatically) to help share out your information can be a very effective strategy.  Set it and forget it.  My blogging strategy is to offer my insight on popular topics, simply not to retweet other peoples stuff.

Google announced this week that searchers have the ability to go back in time, eventually to March 2006 to see archived tweets from Twitter.  This is pretty cool feature from Google.  Google calls this search technology “Real-Time Search” and it has been around for  few months now.  This week Google announced enhancements to real-time search, you can read about it on their blog by visiting Google Real-Time Search.

Do you really want to see its effectiveness? Google “Iceland Volcano” to see how it works on trending topics.  Real-time search is great, but it is really the archived Twitter search results that are impressive.

To see how the archived Twitter search works, just check out what Strathmore Realtor, Kevin Baldwin is doing on Twitter.  His Chestermere Real Estate blog feeds Twitter every time he posts information on his blog, posts a video on YouTube or lists a home on the MLS system, check out his Twitter archive at Chestermere Real Estate.

The next big thing around this search technology is also the “Top Links” section.  As a blogger, my goal is to share information with people they find interesting.  The Top Links on the right side of the Real-time Search results shows some of the top URL’s based on a particular search term.

Is your Search Engine Optimization firm helping you understand the importance of Real-time search?

I recently read an article by a Calgary Social Media Support Specialist on why your Calgary business needs to be on social media.  I have respect for the author of this article however I need to share my views on why the article is leading a typical small business owner down the wrong path when it comes to social media.  I really don’t agree with this article at all and to be honest it is pretty standard for a lot of the junk out there today.  It is this sort of FUD which is leaving many business owners uncertain about social media and the purpose of social networking in their business.

Social Media in my opinion is important but it is not for everyone.  This is where our team at Ulistic helps Realtors, small business owners, IT Professionals and many other types of business understand your entire online marketing strategy.  Not to toot our own horn too much, but we are business people first, teachers and educators second, consultants third and then somewhere deep in the order of priority, guys who understand social media.  We use social media in our business but it is NOT for what many of our peers in the industry will try to tell you.

The author of this article talks over and over about building followers, lists of friends and great connections.  True, social media can do this for the selected few.  But, let’s be real, the average person really only has about 25 followers on Twitter, about the same on LinkedIn and maybe 100 friends on Facebook from their high school and college days.

One other items the author talks about is that your competitors are beating you out of customers because of social media. If you are losing customers it is because of your lack of service or a sales/marketing delivery not because of social media is winning them away.  Yes, a client may read a post and follow a link to an article, but think about it, if you are giving exceptional service what do you have to worry about?

Online marketing is more than social media.

Social media is just one small component of your overall online marketing strategy for your business.  I am not saying you should ignore it as social media does have a place in your business.  However if you focus on your blogs, Google reviews, your marketing website and your own personal network, social media strategies can fit in very naturally and actually support what you are doing in your marketing activities.

This is what we strive to achieve for everyone who engages with us at Ulistic.  Service comes first and our mentoring and coaching program helps every business understand what needs to be a priority and what are nice to have, according to your goals, objectives and desired outcomes.  If some consultant says you need to be on social media or you will go out of business, without sitting down with you and understanding your business first, turn around and run away really fast.

Also, the last myth to squash, social media may help on some search rankings.  A great blog, an awesome website, your business articles and engaging in the online community will help you more than simply sending out a few tweets, putting someone else’s link on your Facebook page or posting a someone else’s story in your LinkedIn group.

Learn the truth about social media for business by contact Ulistic today.