I love keeping my eye on my Twitter stream.  It always amazes me to see the comments, discussions, quotes, and stories that quickly scroll down my Tweetdeck screen.  This morning, one in particular grabbed my attention. It was talking about how the Medical University of South Carolina had created a “social media newsroom” to share insightful and educational information to “the community.”

How amazing it is to finally have a case study

Over the past few months there have been numerous conferences and events around the high-level concepts of using social media.  A new “social media guru” pops up on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks almost every 10 minutes claiming that if you listen to them, you will be making “big bucks with 1 hour of work.”  Most of these individuals and talks at events seem to be regurgitating the same information in terms of trust, being authentic, having authority, and other high-level concepts. Many do not actually get into the details of presenting actionable steps and strategies on how to actually leverage social media in your organization.

While I am NOT saying that this high-level information isn’t needed or important and I do surely agree it is powerful, I just believe we’ve finally gotten to the point where we’ve beaten that “dead horse” and it’s time to move on to showing how it’s all done.  To reinforce that thought, there are numerous posts by other employed professionals, business owners, and even college students who are also asking for real-world case studies on how organizations are leveraging social media to create a positive impact on their business (whether financially or otherwise.) Unfortunately, not too many examples have been presented.  Even the cool, hip marketing firms that are usually “on top of the buzz” have not really come out to share how they use it to grow their business.  We’re all being held in limbo holding our breathe!

Side note: If you have heard of any, please share in the comments… it just means I’m not connected to the right people or attending the right events to hear about them! I do not claim to be a social media expert even though I operate a strategic marketing firm.  I just want to be taught like the rest of us!

The school that got “hip” on social media

Then there’s the Medical University of South Carolina’s new “social media newsroom.”  Yes that’s right, a freakin’ school has come up with what I think is a brilliant strategy for leveraging social media to provide insightful and educational medical information to the masses.  On top of that, the WAY in which they provide this information (through social media tools) was purposefully used to get individuals such as myself – who love to update my LinkedIn crew, share information on Facebook, post about topics on my blog, and retweet links on Twitter – to become the pathway that delivers their information to the masses. Ingenious!

Is this what those social media experts have talked about all along? Sure.

Did we have an example other than the followings around the social media experts themselves to see how it was actually done? Not really, but now we do!

Here’s a few things they’re doing with social media:

1. Posting a photostream on Flickr about events, individual patient stories, and doctors making a difference
2. Posting informative and educational videos on YouTube and on their site on topics such as swine flu, sports injury prevention, stroke, and hearing loss.
3. Maintaining a blog that informs and educates readers on advancements in technology, tests, treatments, and amazing medical stories.
4. And to top it all off, a Twitter stream that feeds links to this information out to their around 2,000 followers who keep it flowing to the rest of Twitterville.

Now that’s amazing to me!  To see an organization such as this take on such an effort and do it well thus far, in my humble opinion, should be a testament to any business or organization that the use of social media (with an effective and planned strategy, a.k.a. “the missing link of leveraging social media”) can successfully impact your business in a positive manner.

See, there is something worthwhile you can learn from school and they’re not all as outdated as many claim, at least not in South Carolina.

Read the original press release about the Social Media Newsroom at the Medical University of South Carolina here.

That’s one case study in the books, any more?

So, do you know of any organization that is creatively leveraging social media?

Share them with us in the comments below!

I had the privilege of attending an event yesterday that simply blew my mind. First off let me tell you that as a business owner, I hate answering the question “What do you do?” You know that one, the one you are always asked when attending networking meetings or anytime you’re face-to-face with a potential new connection. My answer always just seems so standard and impersonal and though I have an “elevator speech” (which I hate,) I find myself constantly trying to change how I answer the question to seem somewhat differentiated from everyone else in the room who is going to spew out their 30 seconds of “We do blah, blah, blah.”

Then I got to listen to my new friend Bill Whitley.  Bill is the author of the book “The Art of the Rainmaker” and is a successful serial entrepreneur three times over (literally… that many successful businesses!) Now Bill hates elevator speeches just as much as I do and what he did was to come up with a new concept for how to attract new business and new clients by engaging them initially as prospects with what he calls a “Customer Attraction Story.”

The basic definition I would give to this new concept: “It’s your elevator speech on steroids!”

We All Grew Up Listening to Stories

Now why would think that if the person in front of you barely wants to listen to your 30 second spiel about what you offer, that they would listen to you tell a whole freakin’ story?

Well, we want to be engaged don’t we? We would rather be entertained than simply spoken to right? The most followed bloggers on the web and the best professional speakers all tell stories don’t they?

Let’s face it, we just like stories!  We especially like stories about heroes who faced a challenge and overcame it to a “happily ever after ending.” Hercules, Achilles, Oedipus, Perseus & Andromeda anyone? (OK, so I’m partial to ancient Greek heroes… keep reading!)

The point is there is something engaging in stories that captivate our attention and make us focus on the characters, what they went through, and how the story ended. So if we are that captivated by stories and what you want when explaining what you do to others is that same level of attention, then why don’t we use stories to communicate what we can do and have done for our clients (our hero) to our prospects?

Start Pumping the Story-telling Juices

Bill’s concept behind this “Customer Attraction Story” focuses around the fact that instead of talking about “what you do” as a list of your products, services, and how you operate; you instead tell a story about one of your clients that faced a huge challenge, how you provided a brilliant solution to that problem, and what amazing results came from those actions.

Now doesn’t this make sense?

You are telling a prospect an engaging and detailed story about how someone just like them faced a challenge that could be very similar to their own and you show them how you did something that helped them overcome the situation to some form of a happy ending.

Do you see it now?

While your client (the hero) is the focus of the story, you are shown as what pushed them over the hurdle and that communicates your value clearly and effectively to your prospect. Then, it follows that up with stating how it made life so much better for the hero!  At the end story to potentially get the reaction you desire from your listener, all you have to do is say, “So what about you? Can you face that challenge?”

Let Bill Tell You Himself

Bill put together a great video explaining this concept in his own words. Check it out and get his book!  If you can, attend one of his interactive workshops. I promise it will help you turn your pitch into a powerful story that will start attracting new business!

Watch Bill’s Video »

Connect to Bill on LinkedIn »

A quick search on any search engine will show two schools of thought about traditional marketing media. Either 1) traditional marketing is dead, or 2) traditional marketing is not dead… yet. I would say that I’m a believer of the latter.  Traditional marketing is not dead, it’s just dying.

With the rise of social media (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) came the beginnings of the demise of traditional media (magazines, newspapers, TV, radio.)  More advertisers are moving their marketing budgets from offline activities to online activities. A report by eMarketer projects that the online ad spending will continue to grow at a rate of ~1% from where it is today in 2009, at 9.9%, to 15.2% by 2013.

That begs the question of what affect this has on the media outlets that have always survived by garnering a large portion of a corporate marketing budget?

The Bleeding of Traditional Media

I call this the “bleeding” of traditional media.  It was something that they actually saw coming, but seem to never guess would affect them and their $1,000,000 one page print ads.  Traditional media marketing was always about hitting numbers.  The number of impressions, the number of viewers, consistency, and frequency.  Hit as many people as you can with your message and that will translate into a certain percentage of consumers converting to customers.

The problem is we’ve been marketed and sold to death!  We’ve actually learned to AVOID ads.  We walk, read, listen and look right past them! There are all sorts of reports and studies talking about “ad avoidance” from the likes of AdWeek, Huffington Post, and even the World Advertising Research Center!  You people with Tivo, you know what I mean! Fast-forwarding past the ads! Shame on you!

But hello! This is the financial foundation of traditional media! So what are they to do?

Learn to Adapt or Die

Just like TV did not kill radio and video recorders did not replace TV shows, traditional marketing will not be replaced by the likes of social media marketing… unless they do not learn to adapt. It’s time for traditional media to move into the next phase of their existence. What that is we do not currently know, but what I do believe is that there is still a use of traditional media. They just need to figure out how to combine the concepts we love about social media: connecting and forming communities, relationships built on mutual trust, openness and honesty consistently communicated, and always looking for feedback that is applied not just requested.

These mediums are still great tools for connecting and disseminating information to large audiences of people. They just need to learn how to become a part of our communities of influence rather than trying to be the global dictator of them. So it’s learn to adapt or death is just around the corner.

What are your thoughts?

So what do you think? Do you think traditional media is dead? Dying?

How do you think they could adapt to form a sustainable medium?

Now I know I might take some heat for this from my fellow marketers or zealous fans of social media, but I’m sorry, Social Media is NOT the silver bullet for marketing my business. It’s not even a bronze bullet.  Frankly, it’s maybe a nickel-plated bullet in a clip full of other bullets.

Why? Because most of us are still trying to figure out how to use all these social media web services!

Sure, there’s 28 million people a month visiting Twitter. Sure, there’s 250 million active members on Facebook. Sure, MySpace has over 100 million and Bebo over 20 million. So what!? Just because we’re on the site, doesn’t mean we really know what we’re doing, how we’re suppose to use it, or why we actually would care about it!

The point is that these web sites and those like them are simply tools.  Tools that we’re still trying to get accustomed to just like how we were when the first affordable “personal computer” were hitting homes near you! Those PC’s were known as “dumb machines” in that they could not do anything without input Guess what, these social media sites are the same.  Like then, we are learning the concepts of how to use these tools. What are the inputs? What do we get out of it? How can we use this in our daily lives?

Ah ha! There is the silver bullet! The concepts that we learn from using these tools!

The Silver Bullet is in How We Connect, Communicate, and Create Communities

Social media has brought back the idea that we are all human.  That we all have emotions. That we all have thoughts, beliefs, desires, goals, likes and dislikes.  It’s reminded us of the friendly handshake and how we really only trust people that are a lot like us and we have a relationships with.

Connect

Social media has allowed us to connect to one another on a personal level even if we’re geographically far apart. It’s allowed us to get to know one another through conversations that turn into relationships built on commonality and trust.

Businesses have to learn how to engage customers on a more personal, direct level.  We have to open up and show that we’re really just a group of people that want to help our customers in some area of their lives. We’ve kept ourselves too formal, too closed off.

Communicate

These social media tools allow us to use many different media formats to communicate with one another. We share audio, video, and pictures with one another as ways of reinforcing our relationships. We can chat with one another instantly or share messages back and forth through emails and comments on one another’s pages and blogs.  We learn to share our voice and combine our voices.  This allow us to stand together and rally around things we believe in, want to engage in, and have a desire to see change.

Businesses have to realize that we cannot communicate using one method and neglect all the others.  And our messaging is not about who we are, but about who our customers are and why WE WANT JOIN THEM in making their lives better. To do this, we should communicate the way our customers want to communicate instead of forcing them to use our methods.

Creating Communities

The best part about these social media tools is that they taught us how to form communities.  Even better, we can form communities right next door to thousands of other communities of which we can be a part of as well!  Each community may appeal to one of our passions, our desires, or our expertise.  We can become known, respected, and desired to be connected to, to have engaged in the community.

Businesses think the community should be completely around them. Instead, make the community around what you are trying to change in the world.  Does your product or service help people accomplish something? What is that something? That is where you build your community!

The Concepts for Success

These concepts are what combine together to form the “silver bullet” of marketing your business. Learn them, practice them, refine them, and implement them and your business will attract customers. And not just for your product or service, but what you stand for.

Do You Believe in this Silver Bullet?

What about you? What do you think Social Media has taught us? And how does that apply to businesses?

I recently came across a study on Twitter that was conducted by Pear Analytics.  It was interesting in that they wanted to find out how we all REALLY use Twitter.  Their hypothesis or assumption was that Twitter was mainly used for self-promotion (those of us that want to push our wares out to the Twitterverse hoping for a buck or two.) When the results came back, however, there easily could be a case that says Twitter… is a complete waste of time!

Before you jump at my throat, read the report for yourself! Then let’s talk! (Get it here)

Twitter is Full of Useless, Unwanted Information

The clear winner of the categories the surveyed tweets were collected into was “Pointless Babble.”  I found this completely interesting – and yet not surprising – in that so many of those I have connected to constantly share information, input, web links, news stories, conversations and more that I truly deem valuable.  So for me, Twitter is quickly becoming a valuable tool to my further professional and personal development!

Source: Pear Analytics | Twitter Study - August 2009

However, I really am not surprised by the results. Why?  Because the results reflect how Twitter was originally built. The original concept was simple, answer the question “What are you doing right now?” So for any Twitter newbie, they thought the idea was to tell you they were scratching their foot, going to the movies, or watching Grey’s Anatomy.

Over time, those of us that have been using Twitter have found new ways to use it as a communications platform.  We do not care to answer the original question, but desire to connect, converse, share, link, debate, and promote ourselves to one another.  This changes the value perception of Twitter… at least for me.

The Five Loud Mouths of Twitter

The part of the study that really caught my attention was the highlight of a visual representation Dave MCandless did for Gizmodo titled If Only 100 People Were on Twitter. What intrigued me was the section stating that “5 loud mouths created 75% of the tweets” on Twitter.  So out of the 28 million people that Quantcast states Twitter attracts per month (accessed 8/27/09), 5% of those are the ones who create the bulk of the conversation (albeit, that’s like 1.4 million people!)  So in truth, there is A LOT of waste on Twitter! Over 50% of it could be called waste in my opinion!

Marketers Have a Case for Why Twitter Won’t Work?

WOW! As a marketer, I have to ask myself this: If 50% of Twitter is useless and there are actually only 1.35 million ACTIVE participants that may engage my brand, what percentage is actually my customer? Is that large enough to support an effort that will require full-time support, tracking, and engagement?

Now, this is just a simple question most will ask themselves being that Twitter has been one of the most hyped-up “you gotta be on here” places for businesses, and yet we do not have many case studies of long-term success of using Twitter to engage customers of a large corporation.

Is Twitter a Waste of Time to You?

It’s your turn now. I want to know, what percentage of what you read on Twitter is a waste of time?

This sounds like it would be a relatively easy task. I mean, how many things can you actually write about? In truth, when we decide to start blogging we oftentimes come to find that this is one of the most difficult tasks for us to accomplish.

Why? Because we actually know a lot! We just can’t or shouldn’t write about most of it!

What should I blog about?

A lot of professional bloggers that I follow have addressed this very question before in their own blogs.  Most of them have always said that you need to start with something that you’re passionate and know something about and work from there. In reality, this only partially works for us.  Why? Because what we are passionate about is not a topic that always align with our goals for our blog.

Their passion is that they love blogging. They love sharing information on how to blog, and the goal for their blog – to earn a living or to promote their company’s services – is supported by writing about how to blog. So the goal of the blog has much more affect on determining what to write about than simply what we’re passionate about.

This very question is something I ran into when I recently decided to launch a separate blog for myself personally rather than keeping all my personal content on my consulting practice’s corporate blog over at mPower Consulting.  My goal was to allow myself to talk about any and all subjects that appeal to me individually and to create connections and relationships with individuals and organizations that may not have benefited being connected to mPower Consulting.  Sure, I may tell them that my practice could help them better utilize the tools out there such as social media to improve the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, but I wouldn’t tell them about “all the things I hate about people who sell on Twitter” next to an article about “how the use of social media can wow your customers into buying your products!” That just doesn’t make sense (which is why I haven’t written those two articles… yet.)

So, I had to come up with some ways to determine how I was going to pick my topic.  What I ended up with was 5 ways NOT to pick my topics (through trial and error) to find the 5 ways that did work for me!

Five Ways NOT to Pick Your Topics

1. Don’t try to become someone else. In other words, don’t write about a topic you know little about simply because you want to be. That person usually has spent years developing their audiences, building their expertise, and that has generated their success, which is all you really want! Be yourself, because sometimes that stands out more when everyone else is trying to be the same!
2. Don’t write about something that no one else is talking about… unless you can tell the future!  Creating a blog around a topic that no one else is talking about means that you are starting with an audience of none.  That can be extremely discouraging as you may not see anyone dropping by to even say, “Hello, your site stinks.”  The only time to do this is if you think you have a complete “game-changing” idea or topic that no one is talking about. Typically though, your idea builds off of an already established and highly talked about topic.
3. Don’t perform a query of “The top searched topics” on Google, then pick one of those. It’s likely you will have no clue what you’re talking about, which will generate little if any success… unless you’re lucky!
4. Don’t copycat someone else. This is much like the first “don’t” only that if it is a topic you want to talk about and can, don’t just copy the leaders in the field!  You audience will soon figure it out and hate you for it. Stand on your own expertise and opinion.
5. Don’t use a list and “Eeny, meeny, miny,moe.” This is the worst idea and yet I bet is used often (I’ve heard it used a few times.) With this, you never know what you’ll get (which might be fun) and makes it difficult to plan how you’re going to sustain it!

Five Ways TO Pick Your Topics

1. Determine what you want to accomplish with your blog, then pick topics that support that effort. This usually will pull from your expertise.
2. Write down everything you are passionate about, then circle the ones you know the most about.
3. Post questions out on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites regarding ideas you have and let the world tell you what they want to know
4. Keep an eye on the news and on social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. These sites give a good cross-section of what’s going on in many categories of topics. See which ones you’re drawn to!
5. If all else fails, just start writing about your life.  No one may care and you may not build an audience, but it will get your mind thinking and alert to what is going on in all areas of your life. That will help you both come up with ideas for blog topics, plus will give you the experience and familiarity with writing blog posts!

How Do You Pick Your Topics?

I want to know: How do you pick the topics you write about?

I’ve been a member of Brian Clark’s “Teaching Sells” since its first release.  I joined Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents online community on Facebook and bought their newly released book.  I attended an event held for author Pamela Slim who writes on her blog Escape from Cubicle Nation and has a book of the same name.

All of these examples of people I am connected to, have paid money to, and religiously follow have one thing in common… they’re all engageous!

Engageous is my term that means “perpetually engaging without pause.”  It’s the idea that in order to build a true following or community, you must constantly be engaging your followers, customers, fans in constant communication and interaction. Now this doesn’t mean every second of everyday, but it does mean that in some form or fashion you try to engage your audience daily.  If letting them know that you will not be available still can engage them.  Give them something to talk about while you’re away!

How They Pulled Me In

I learned about Brian Clark’s “Teaching Sells” online membership site through a professional connection.  I was already following him on his blog at Copyblogger, and read all the hype about this new upcoming service.  Constantly being engaged by his concepts in his posts and the free information given at Teaching Sells, I was almost instantly sold and was one of 300 people who actually got in the first year’s enrollment that sold out in 24 hours.  I paid $1,000 for that access and it has been invaluable!

Chris and Julien did this through Twitter, Facebook, and their own blogs to both conduct research for and promote their book Trust Agents. That’s how they sucked me in.  I followed a tweet that took me to the Trust Agents landing page, that took me to Facebook where Chris and Julien were constantly updating the followers there as to the status of the book. On top of that they asked engaging questions and created open discussions about the topic of trust, being a trust agent, and the changes in this new trust economy.  Guess what, that only made me want the book more! As of this writing, it’s sitting on a UPS truck waiting to be delivered to my door! HURRY UP!

Pamela Slim is a new person in my little world.  I heard she was visiting Charlotte for a week and was invited to an event of thought leaders around the topics of entrepreneurship, new media marketing, social media, and connectivity.  After sitting down with her in a fantastic discussion about supporting entrepreneurship in the Charlotte area with other business owners, professionals, and public officials, I became an instant follower and bought her book, followed her on Twitter, and read her blog.

Still Think Social Media Cannot Generate Sales?

These are just a few examples of people I have exchanged money for what I deemed valuable from them.  But what each one of these had in common that pulled me in was this, they were engageous. They knew it was about the conversation not the conversion.

Are you engageous?  If you are, share your story with me.  What are you engaging people in?

In terms of a buzzword, customer evangelists are nothing new.  This phrase has been around since the early part of 2002 and was coined by well-known marketers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who authored the fantastic marketing book, Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force.

In my work with small businesses, the concept of customer evangelist is always at the forefront of any marketing strategy being contemplated.  Why? Because word-of-mouth referrals is still the #1 way to convert prospects to customers. Not to mention, with these businesses oftentimes having a much smaller ad budget, the idea of something that can generate free advertising is very attractive!

5 Steps to Connect and Grow Customer Evangelists

It’s amazing to me that when this concept is first brought up in my work with my clients, that it is oftentimes viewed as one of the most difficult and time-consuming activities.  In reality, its actually quite simple to find and engage your customer evangelists.  The difficulty comes in how you interact and how you build your relationship with them.

Here’s five simple steps to connect and grow your customer evangelists:

1. Identify your customers who reflect the traits of an evangelist

These customers are the ones who have shown the most passion towards your brand, your product, or service!  They tell everyone about how you helped them in some way and why they think you are the best.  Take note, these may not be the customers who have spent the most with you! To find them, perform a Google search on your company, product, or service.  FYI, they’ll be the ones talking about you! Capture as much information about them as you can with the focus being on how to contact them.

2. Get to know your customers better by getting them together

Plan an event to bring together your top customers in a smaller, more intimate setting where you can focus on getting to know each one individually. These will include both the current “evangelists” you found in step #1 as well as your top customers based on sales. If your customers are all over the United States and it would be difficult or too costly to bring them all together at one location, find a way to either have multiple local events or create an online portal where you can interact using multi-media tools (web conferencing, phone conferencing, instant message, etc.) We prefer and recommend that this event be in-person at your facilities or local meeting facilities.

3. Give your evangelists deeper access to your organization

You need to create an “evangelist support team” who act as exclusive points of contact for these individual customers and who offer additional access to information than what you would publicly share. People love exclusivity. It makes them feel a part of a special group and much more likely to continue engaging your organization. Having more information and access to write about will ensure your evangelists continue talking up your offerings.

4. Routinely engage your evangelists to provide more insights and request feedback

There is nothing worse to evangelists than when the organization they support seems to cut all lines of 2-way communication.  You can’t stop engaging them or else they will quickly lose trust in you.  Keep engaging them. Whether it be by planned conference calls, online communities, or emails, be sure to continue reaching out to them for feedback (and listen to it) and share with them new insights into the organization.

5. Repeat these steps to create new evangelists

Once you have one group of customer evangelists, it’s not time to stop!  Things can happen in the lives of these individuals and some may fall away.  Some may run away due to how you’ve treated them or if your product failed them, miserably.  Always continue reaching out and connecting to a new group of evangelists.  Doing so can increase your geographical reach, continually reinforce your value offerings, and maybe even open up new lines of revenue.  You never know what one relationship can bring! So don’t stop creating them!

How have you created customer evangelists?

Now it’s your turn.  Tell me how you have created customer evangelists for your organization?  What did you do to connect with them?  How did you empower them to share with their network of relationships?