Monthly Power Sessions

Every business should have a group of advisors to bounce business ideas with. What if you were involved in strategic think tank group set in a casual setting where you could discuss ideas, thoughts and concepts openly with like-minded entrepreneurs? This is exactly what I do on a monthly basis. We call our group the cool kids and we meet up once a month across different restaurants in the lower mainland.

50 shades of social media engagement.

I gave this away for social media week and this was a big hit! I want to share with you with the intention of helping you with engagement.

• 1.Creating Fresh Content that is unique and blows your audience away.
• 2.Curate, aggregate and create content that is compelling enough to share and promote reaction onplatforms like scoop it
• 3.Blog with passion not for dollars. Give away the farm! (WordPress makes it easy)
• 4.Visually stimulate your audience through Pintrest… Pictures deliver instant reaction
• 5.Film your keynotes and capture their attention.
• 6.Slide share your power point presentations
• 7.Write white papers on scribd and build a resource centre
• 8.Customize email marketing campaigns and deliver emails in a timely fashion.
• 9.Create engaging contests and incent awesome prizes for fans to act on a call to action.
• 10.Allow your followers to submit content, photos and videos to promote engagement.
• 11.Create social bookmark plugins on your website to make it easy to share content.
• 12.Become a voice actor and use keynote to film presentations.
• 13.Share events, accomplishments and highlights worth bragging about.
• 14.Drive traffic by sharing valuable links to stimulating content.
• 15.Info graphics makes reading easy and fun!
• 16.Podcasting allows you to share insight and deliver passion
• 17.Online radio shows can help engage a fan base and ensure consistent loyalty.
• 18.Google Plus can help drive traffic to your website
• 19.Social Monitoring Tools can deliver insights on trends that you can take part in.
• 20.Social Dashboards allow you to converse with people on multiple platforms.
• 21.Use charm, humour and common sense when asking questions and engaging with the audience.
• 22.You Tube Channels can ensure fans keep coming back for more quality videos
• 23.Rebel mouse can be a great social media content aggregator for social links.
• 24.Develop a blogging calendar to ensure consistency for your loyal readers.
• 25.Record your interviews, panels and keynotes and share virally.
• 26.Promote and share video testimonials
• 27.Create templates to manage and support customer inquiries through social platforms
• 28.Live chat platforms can be very engaging for web visitors.
• 29.Phone Apps and mobile responsive themes makes mobile engagement easy.
• 30.List Segmentation on Twitter can be highly effective for engagement. Use TwitListManager!
• 31.Group Forums and message boards prompt conversation
• 32.Linked In Answers and groups can help with online conversations
• 33.Event marketing features on meet up can help with engagement
• 34.Allow clients to review products, services and locations
• 35.Check in to high frequency locations with visual images on four square
• 36.Hash tags allow you to network, report and converse.
• 37.E books, strategies and documents can be a great tool for credibility when shared on socialplatforms.
• 38.Viral videos can be infectious especially when you tap into emotions and controversy.
• 39.Answer every comment whenever possible! You do not know who is watching!
• 40.Distribute your content across your content funnels but space them out at different times. Buffer and Timely helps!
• 41.Become a personality, remember the old spice commercial!
• 42.Have a quirky brand and do not be afraid to poke some fun at yourself!
• 43.Coupons can be effective if implemented properly.
• 44.Ensure your website is focused on the user experience to ensure more time spent on your website
• 45.Integrate your social platforms when commenting on your website
• 46.Report important and breaking news within your industry
• 47.Ask Questions that initiate debate or conversation
• 48.Ask for feedback, assistance or advise
• 49.Tag images or posts whenever appropriate!
• 50.Be Human

Brand Ownership…

Personal Branding for any service provider or entrepreneur is necessary to build an identity within your audience. Yet so many business owners expect branding to come their way with ease. As a business owner you have to lose this sense of entitlement and chase after your vision. It comes with hard work and a ton of face time in the first few months of starting out.

Who is the brand?… This answer is simple, you are the brand!

The responsibility of your brand identity falls under the business owners shoulders. With that comes a lot of accountability and you must embody your core principles. You must also protect your brand identity. This weekend I had to make a business decision that complimented my visions for where I am taking my brand moving forward. With that I had to decline a partner project that would have contradicted my business views and opinions. Sometimes saying no is essential to gain momentum

My rant really comes from a recent client consultation where there was hesitance to showcase ones character and principles when it came to developing the business model. As a business owner you play the vital responsibility is assuming ownership for your brand.

Social Impact

Social Media has been pivotal for my brand in 2012. Before the year began my focus were solely on my international affiliations and back ground to the internet marketing community. Through affiliate marketing I had managed to build contact from across the globe. Yet through speaking and social media I was able to build a local following in less than a full year.

Social Media impacted my business in so many ways. Here are just a few areas where social media played a role in my success last year:

• The ability to highlight social media week on several speaking events
• Speaking at over 40 keynotes
• Social conversations led to customers and paid workshops
• Build a local community of followers
• Lead generation
• Build a content and internet marketing agency
• Podcast Interviews
• Become a content authority
• Meet influencers and high power people

There are many other great accolades in 2013 thanks to social media. How has social media impacted your respective brand?

Rules of social engagement

Social Media Engagement will be pivotal for any brand presence on social platforms. In fact social engagement in its truest form promotes influence. There are many things to consider when it comes to social media engagement as far the audience, credibility and the tone of your message.

There are 5 main rules when it comes to social media engagement

• Crash the party and join in on the conversation
• Loose the formalities as it is a social platform
• Search and Listen for conversation starters
• Become a content authority and share vital resources
• Become a regular and show consistency

As a business you have to promote such rules to see success in your work. Most businesses will not customize their message and hence broadcast the same message to their following. Yet the brand is made up of different entities and hence it is important to cater your message to the person you are interacting with for better engagement results.

Business Planning for Events

It was only until recently where I was exposed to writing a business plan for an event. Many business owners overlook such necessities when it comes to strategic planning. It was only after putting the plan together that I realized how essential this process is. I was able to highlight the areas of focus and concerns simply by viewing the plan after creation.

The following are the entities for writing an effective event planning business plan

• Objective
• Logistics
• Locations
• Competitor Analysis
• Resources
• Partners
• Sponsors
• Food and Beverages
• Speakers
• Entertainment
• Phases of Development
• Marketing Plan
• Media
• Content Plan
• Social Media
• Advertising and PR
• Operations
• Sales

When putting an event which one of these entities have proven to be the most challenging?

Basic of social media service.

Social Media Customer Service has been at the fore front for brands and businesses looking to offer an alternative to provide other venues for consumer engagement. I recently had a bunch of escalation and had to deal with my phone, cable and bank on three different occasions. At all three scenarios the service shown on the social platforms was a lot more superior.

There are 5 basic considerations for basic social customer service:

• Wow service always wins and is a lot more viral
• Your service team should care and go above and beyond
• Everyone should represent your brand
• Engagement is viral and public
• Compliance and privacy of client records should be a necessity.

These core essentials will enable you deliver superior customer service. As a business are you prioritizing any of the above key components?

The people behind a content bank!

A content bank is a collection of curated, created and shared information to help aid with a consistent blogging process. A content bank, including the editorial calendar helps define a smoother content deployment process.

There are many different aspects to a content bank team as each person plays a vital role. The following roles are key essentials when it comes to mapping out a content bank team. The content bank team includes the following:

• The Research team that searches for content, curates and collects information
• The Calendar and planning team which usually also takes care of the editorial process
• The writing team that is involved in the creation of fresh content
• The proofing  and editing team
• The creative and design team to help with visual engagement
• The deployment team that focuses on distributing content across web and social channels
• The analytics team that measures metrics
• The engagement center and sales team

There is an existence of each key accountability helps with the proper implementation of a business blogging process.

Benefits to a content bank

There are many benefits to a content bank. The purpose of a content bank is to ensure that there is efficiency in your blogging editorial and publishing process. As a blogger a content bank can help aid you with your content deployment plans. Some of the benefits of a content bank include the following:

• Help align your content schedule
• Plan for special events and have a good oversight of your content
• Gives you insights on where to put your writing focus on
• Help eliminate writers block
• Give you extra time for planning new and fresh content
• Eliminates the pressure of delivering content daily
• Deliver content consistently
• Identify your resources and concerns with your editorial process
• Help identify key areas of focus
• Project how far out you need to write for
• Manage time more effectively
• Plan and organize your content and ideas into implementation
• Spend effective time on content distribution and social channels
• Help build a resource center for future use

There are overall many positive factors to having a content bank. It is important for a business to develop their blogging efforts through a proper content bank.

What is a content bank?

When it comes to blogging it is more effective to write content for the future rather than for the present. This allows for consistency in distributing content on a daily basis to your web audience. It also eliminates the stress of trying to come up with something to publish on the blog last-minute.

“A content bank is defined as a large pool of content related articles, blog posts and resources that you have at your disposal with the intention of delivering content delivery consistently”.

A content bank will also include an editorial calendar, a content publishing schedule as well as resources and media to compliment the publishing process. Some successful bloggers will have a content bank with articles written 4-12 months out depending on how often fresh content is published. Loyal readers develop expectations and trends show when you deliver compelling content the audience will come back to review more content. Google favors websites that show return visits of traffic as well as fresh content.

A content bank when implemented correctly will ensure your blog auto publishes such content and you more time is spent effectively coming up with new and creative pieces every week. This elimination of pressure on writing expectations helps also in times when you have creative blocks or are in need of inspiration. Bloggers who have shown success at writing will all credit a content bank for one of the key essentials for content deployment. A content bank will also have a content calendar to ensure timelines and events where special content needs to get posted. Further analysis on your content and proper event planning can also be identified with the creation of a content bank and calendar.

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