Don’t Get Your Identity Stolen

Over 10 million people had their identity stolen in 2008 (a 22% increase from 2007).  If you have had your identity taken, you know that feeling of complete helplessness, someone is out there pretending to be you and you can’t do anything about it.  Your credit report is trashed, you have to get a new license, ss number, credit card… basically a new identity to stop this other person from continuing to trash your name.  I believe it is the same with social media marketing.  If you decide to use social media marketing for your company, you don’t want just anyone running that for you.  You want to make sure that whoever is running it has your company’s values and personality.

I met someone a couple of months ago that pays a young man in India $4 an hour to run their social media.  That is fine if you just want to talk AT your customer, but in my opinion, that is defeating the whole purpose of social media marketing.  SMM is a way for you to talk WITH your customers on a more personal level, to put a face with your business and gain their trust in an honest way.  If you are invading their space in an effort to just push a sales pitch at them, you are going to loose their trust and they will not want to do business with you.  The best way to use SMM is to interact with your customer by posting really great content that they will want to read, retweet, repost, and share with others.  Really great instructional videos and contest are some examples of great content.  When you pay someone to run your SMM for you, you are trusting that they will know everything about your company model and be able to represent you in the way you want.  Most people will not be able to do that, if I am running your SMM for you and someone asks me a specific questions about your company, I will not be able to answer as effectively as you would be able to, I would be stealing your identity and ruining it.  That is why you need to pick someone in your organization that you trust to run your SMM strategy.  If you have no idea where to start, hire someone from the outside to walk you through the process of getting started.  Marketing firms are finally understanding that social media is here to stay and that it can yield huge rewards in the long run.

So, in conclusion, don’t let someone steal your identity and ruin it just to save some time and money.  Learn how to use these online tools yourself and see the time spent as valuable time.

What are some of your concerns when using social media for business?

What are some ways that your company is utilizing these online tools?

Who Does Your Brand Belong To?

Don't let your organization be behind the times.

Older organizations are having a hard time understanding this new world of social media. They don’t see it as valuable, they still see it as a pimply faced 15yr. old trying to find a girlfriend online. They still think that press releases and an ad in the yellow pages will get them good business and that they have control over their brand. Well, it is time to wake up. Traditional media outlets are becoming less and less effective with each new social media website. In the past, organizations could control their brand image by the kind of marketing campaign they put out (t.v., magazine, newspaper). It gets a little tricky now. While each of those are still important, a lot more is required if an organization is trying to create a brand. It doesn’t matter if you call yourself “The King of All Beers” or “”A Church where you can be “real”, ” if the community that engages with your brand doesn’t agree with it, then your attempts at creating a brand have failed and your organization will fail if you don’t listen to your community. Your brand is whatever the community says it is. For example, if you release a scary movie and the commercials for it say “Scariest movie of the year!” and the majority of the public thinks it wasn’t scary at all and that is what they are saying online, then your movie wasn’t scary and you might need to rethink how you sell it.  The public owns your brand, not you, and until you understand that and get on board with it your organization will only fall father and farther behind the times.  Listen to the pubic and make changes accordingly.  I have posted a link for some free sources at the bottom along with some questions to ponder.

What are your thoughts on organizations having no control over their brand? Maybe corporate should use this info, but what should non-profits do about this? Is it wrong for a religious organizations to cater to the public’s opinion?

Here is a link for some Free Social Media Monitoring Tools.

Why does the church stink at online community?

I went to a conference called Lead Now in Dallas. The conference is for leaders within the Christian community to come together and ask hard questions about where the church is at and talk about how to reach the community at large. I had just come from making a presentation on social media in business for Administaff (they provide HR services for businesses) and I walked into the break out session with Francis Chan about “Redefining the Church.” At the end of his session there was a Q and A time and I asked the question, “Do you feel like social media is having an impact on the church and what role do you think it will play in the future?” Francis Chan then said, “I don’t know too much about that and I feel like face to face is really where the best relationships happen.”  For those of you who don’t know Francis Chan, he is one of today’s most influential Christian thinkers.  I was very surprised by his answer for a couple of reasons: 1. I don’t know of a christian college student right now that doesn’t love Francis. So you would think that he would know more about Social media and be talking with his admirers in that world. 2. He is a young thinker, so even if he doesn’t use it for ministry, he should see the value in it.  Granted, he could have misunderstood my question and that is why he answered the way he did.

I am not surprised though at that kind of answer from a church leader.  Historically, the church has always been behind culture.  Churches should be talking about the impact of social media and how to wield it’s power for good, but they are too caught up in traditional methods of outreach to see value in it.  If I was a church leader I would want to be reaching as many people as I could and social media has made it possible to do that.  Every church I have been to talks about building community and since online community is becoming a greater part of our daily lives, the church should be there as well.  Think about how many times you get on Facebook, Twitter, etc. daily.  There was a recent study done that found that 43% of people that participate in online communities value their online communities as much as their real world communities.

3 ways the church can use social media:

1. (The obvious) Bring people in your congregation together during the week online. I worked in a church for 5 1/2 years and this seemed to be the biggest hurdle.  How do you get people involved with your church during the week. What about leaving out a part of your sermon and telling people to look it up on the churches blog during the week.  How cool would it be to tell the congregation to get online at a certain time during the week for the opportunity to ask questions anonymously.  Sometimes people don’t talk about their problems because they don’t want people to know who they are.  But once those questions are answered, the opportunity arises to meet up in person.

2. Have church without the building. There are studies that show church giving has been in decline for a number of years (7-12% decrease a year).  So what happens when your church building and staff can’t be funded?  You obviously still want to tell people about Jesus. So if you have a good following online, you will still have a church just without a building.  You could Tweet your congregation and say, “Hey, we are having church at the local park this morning, bring 2 cans of food to support a local family in need.”

3. Expand your ministry beyond just your local community. With larger churches starting podcasts and video podcast of sermons, people are listening/watching your sermons all over the world.  With social media you can make that world seem a little smaller by engaging the people that follow your church online but never get to visit with your physical attendees.

What are some of your thoughts on social media and the church?  How do you think it can have an impact?

The everchanging digital world around us

If you find your self confused by the words “tweet” and “blog,” you are in the right place.  The world has changed and you find yourself behind the times.  The goal of this blog (i.e. an on-line journal) is to keep you updated on the current terms and online tools that will help your non-profit or small business grow in this new world.

Let me start off by defining social media.  Social media is the idea that everyone is the media.  In the past, we got our news from traditional media outlets, such as T.V., newspapers and magazines.  In our world today, the news is what’s happening at your dinner table.  Every tweet from Twitter, status update from Facebook, and YouTube video uploaded is news.  People are joining a very large conversation online, and it is your organizations job to contribute to that conversation.  People will talk about you online and it is your job to talk back.

I will be blogging weekly and giving simple steps that your organization can take now to catch up with the world around you.  The first tip I will give you is to educate yourself on social media and how it effects your business (and yes, it effects YOUR business and non-profit).  There are some really great books out there on this subject.  The one I will recommend you start with is “Six Pixels of Separation” by Mitch Joel.  This is a great book that takes you step by step through the different online channels that can help your business grow online.