Happy Birthday Internet! You Rock!
Can you believe it? The internet turned 25 this week! That’s right! TWENTY FIVE! To celebrate this milestone, I share with you my story of the first time I went online.
I actually remember the first time I went online, that I entered the world wide web. It was in 1995 or 1996 when I worked at the UC Santa Barbara Alumni Association. Go Gauchos! The Association had just been hooked up to the world wide web. And so at my computer, my co-workers and I huddled around my computer and using Netscape Navigator (remember that?) we went online.
We looked up very generic topics and were completely fascinated by what we saw. We were not exactly sure how everything worked, but all we could think was, “This is so cool.” We definitely appreciated that the internet was an amazing invention and one that could change the world. And boy has it!
As a communication person, I love the internet and all the fabulous technology that has been built atop its foundation. I am grateful for websites and social media, the ability to shop online, watch movies and TV and all the crazy apps that people dream up. All I see is opportunity. I see opportunity to be and stay connected globally and opportunity to improve communication. I have never understood all the negativity surrounding social media. All I see is the chance to connect and communicate with pretty much anyone, anywhere in the world. That, to me, is amazing.
I have no idea what the next 25 years of the internet has in store, but I am sure looking forward to the ride!
I would love to hear your story! Do you remember the first time you used the World Wide Web? Was it as much of an event as my office story? What are your predictions for the next 25 years? Will we see another Facebook emerge or do you have other ideas as to how the internet will develop? I can’t wait to hear from you!
BONUS: Read Yahoo’s 25 Ways The Web Has Changed The World
The “I don’t have time for social media” Excuse
How many of you have ever said, “I don’t have time for social media?”
I know I hear it from potential clients, and even from team members of current clients.
So in this week’s video, I explain why social media is not a time hog, nor a waste of time. What is heard when you say that you don’t have time for social media is, ““I don’t have time to directly connect and communicate with my audience.” I don’t think that’s true, so we should understand that with proper planning, you can make your communication work for you and help you achieve your goals.
If you prefer to read through what I’ve discussed in the video, then you’re in for a treat. Here’s the full post:
For years and years, we have had the same sales, marketing and communication tools to work with. Now with social media, we’ve added these dynamic tools to the toolbox to help us do our jobs better, and we push them aside and label them a waste of time. The thing is, if we keep using the same old tools we’ve been using forever and ever, we will continue to produce the same results.
Your audience is online. And they are using social media. They use social media to gather news and information, to share information and discuss, and to learn more about and connect with people and organizations they care about. They are online waiting to connect with YOU.
Put in simple terms, social media are communication tools. Social media are simply communication tools designed to help you communicate directly with a specific audience. That’s it. Social media is not some big mystery or time hog. Social media is not out to get you or make your job more difficult or add extra work to your already big load of tasks.
So let’s take a step back and understand that when we say “I don’t have time for social media,” we are really saying is,
“I don’t have time to connect and communicate with my members.”
“I don’t have time to connect and communicate with my potential members.”
“I don’t have time to connect and communicate with the parents.”
“I don’t have time to connect and communicate with alumni.”
“I don’t have time to connect and communicate with donors.”
“I don’t have time to connect and communicate with future students and student-athletes.”
“I don’t have time to connect and communicate with corporate sponsors and media.”
“I don’t have time to directly connect and communicate with my audience.”
Is that true? Would you ever say that? Probably not. I sure hope that’s not the case. How can we get over this sense that we don’t have time for social media, then?
We have to change our approach to why we use social media and how we label it. We need to appreciate that this is the preferred form of communication for the majority of our audience and that social media presents a HUGE opportunity for our organizations to connect directly with our members and community. It’s a crazy effective tool that will allow us new, improved results. Here’s what we need to do to change our approach:
1. You must set clear and specific goals which allow your communication to work for you. Maybe you want to encourage current Members to sponsor one new Member this month, perhaps you desire 250 more people at the soccer game. You might set a goal of growing your alumni reunion attendance by 7% this year. Or you may set a goal to recruit 5 new graduate students from San Diego. Your organization has lots of goals. Each department has specific goals. And the individuals in your organizations have goals to fulfill as well. Communication can serve to achieve those goals.
How can communication serve those goals?
2. This is done through a content plan. Setting up a content plan is really not that difficult. It organizes your communication so that everyone on your team understands that on this date, X message will be posted to Y channel. A content plan will help you organize your daily, weekly and monthly communication to your audience. It will also help you keep track of what you’ve said in the past, so that you stay on point and remain consistent. A content plan will save you time. This is key, because without a specific plan of action, you can and will get lost within your social channels because you are not fulfilling a task. You’ll find yourself aimlessly searching through your news feed, because you didn’t have a clear purpose for logging on to the network in the first place. Coupling a content plan with a social media management tool like Hootsuite or Buffer, where you can schedule messages in advance will eliminate distractions and help you stay on track.
What else can a content plan do?
3. A content plan can also help distribute responsibility for posting to social media. For example, a Private Club has several voices the Members should be hearing from. Chef, Food & Beverage, The Golf Pro, Membership, Private Events and Member Relations all make up the collective voice of the Club. However, if all of the Club’s communication is initiated from Member Relations, that is the voice the Members will hear. Your members miss out on the opportunity to learn how to sponsor a new member, what private event packages are on offer or what’s the best advice to improve a golf swing. Everyone needs to and should want to contribute to the content plan so that everyone has an opportunity to achieve their department goals, and directly connect and communicate with their audience.
Therefore, your content plan should include notes to the tune of that on this day, at that time, on X channel, so-and-so will post Y message.
Let’s change what we label social media…
4. Just as you make time in your daily schedule for meetings, sales calls, responding to e-mails and events, so you should make time for social media. But instead of putting “social media” on your calendar which is vauge and without purpose, be specific. “Reply to Twitter messages.” “Post the sponsorship details of the ABC event and include weblink.” “Invite the ‘new biz cards’ pile to connect on LinkedIn.” This makes for a specific task with a specific purpose, designed to help you achieve specific goals.
Social media provides us a tremendous opportunity to creatively, quickly and directly connect and communicate with our audience. We really need to make that mental flip and value the opportunity that social media provides us. We need to approach these tools with the attitude, “This is my goal, this is my message, and this is how I’m going to deliver that message to my audience.” Otherwise, we will keep doing the same thing, using the same methods, and achieving the same results. That to me seems like the waste of time.
3 LinkedIn Updates to Encourage You to Update Your Profile
While there has been a lot of fuss about Facebook lately, LinkedIn is quietly updating and upgrading its platform and is becoming incredibly valuable to its Members.
In this week’s video, I share with you three LinkedIn updates that should encourage you to check in with your profile and make some updates.
Click here to watch the video:
These updates are super helpful for those of us who want to keep an updated profile and make sure we are appealing to and connecting with the right people. The updates I discuss are:
1. Who’s Viewed Your Profile
This is the most viewed section of LinkedIn, and now they are giving us more information about who is finding you and more importantly – how people are finding you. Use this data to tweak your profile headline, summary and experience to make sure you are discovered by the people you want to connect with.
The snapshot looks something like this (will vary based on your own profile results):
You can now learn more within categories:
Industries of your viewers
What your viewers do
Where your viewers came from (how they found you, i.e. in a Group or via Search)
Keywords that led to you
Where they work
Where they live
My results definitely encouraged me to adjust my summary section! Please remember that your headline, summary and experience section should be peppered with your keywords, as these sections play in the search function and help you get discovered.
2. LinkedIn Opens Publishing Platform
LinkedIn has now opened their publishing platform to its membership. This provides all of us greater opportunity for exposure and to offer greater value to our network. If our articles consistently receive many views, likes, comments and shares, they we have the chance to become a LinkedIn influencer.
This is being rolled out over the next few months, but if you’d like to send in an application for early release (I did) then you can fill out a short form, provide two examples of the type of content you’d be publishing, and cross your fingers.
Apply early: http://specialedition.linkedin.com/publishing/
3. Encouraging Professionalism in High School Students
In August, LinkedIn dropped it’s minimum age for Members to fourteen. This was done in an effort to encourage students to begin thinking about their future, the moment they enter high school. LinkedIn wants to provide an advantage to ambitious students, recommending they follow university pages to connect with admissions and alumni.
One high school student wrote for the LinkedIn blog,
“I’ve discovered that the sooner you put yourself in the professional community, the better your chances of finding the opportunity you want.” – Rutha Nuguse
Perhaps this attitude will spill over into behavior on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, too. That’s why I love this push from LinkedIn. It reinforces that you are never too young to build your professional profile, polish your personal brand and manage your reputation.
This news has really made me think twice as to how I use LinkedIn and inspires me to be more proactive with my account. I hope it encourages you to do the same!
A Facebook Success Story
This week I enjoyed client visits in Orange County. And on the heels of my visit with Center Club, I wanted to share a Facebook success story with you.
As you may remember from my newsletter a couple of weeks ago, Facebook changed it’s algorithms. That means that the chances of our Page posts landing in the news feed of the people who like your page has changed. And what’s worse is that those chances have decreased. Facebook wants you to share content from big sources like Time Magazine or ESPN. Facebook wants you to share photos. And Facebook wants you to pay to get your content into the newsfeed of the people who like your page.
I worked with the Center Club team to determine how we could work around this. And here’s what we tested:
Increase the number of posts per day
Before the algorithm change, the Club was posting about 2 times per day. We increased that to 5-7 times per day. It is nearly impossible that any one of the people who like the Center Club page will see every post. That would be a nice problem to have!
Focus on the content
What’s the incentive for people to like, comment or share? While it’s nice to post more often throughout the day, it’s absolutely essential to make sure it’s quality content. For Center Club, the goal is to continually share content which helps Members take advantage of and enjoy their membership. Every post is Member-centric. And that also means that every department has a voice, so you see content from Membership, Private Events, Food & Beverage, Member Relations and spontaneous moments that are fun to capture.
Behind the Scenes
Members love interacting with the staff, and so the BTS type posts often perform very well. We geared up to share more BTS-type posts.
Contests
Simple trivia and photo contests are popular among Members. And it gives incentive to share the post on their own profiles. Our test period fell during Valentine’s week, and so the “Cutest Couple” contest was a big hit and certainly played a role in increased engagement. Center Club will post a simple contest each week.
Our team schedules their posts directly in Facebook (FB likes this more than third party apps like Hootsuite) and after two weeks of consistent posting, the results were in. We were delighted to see green arrows pointing up in all categories on our Facebook Insights
Page Likes increased 5.6%
New Page Likes increased 580%
Total Reach increased 172%
Post Reach increased 335%
Engagement increased 143%
The team is encouraged and excited to keep up their efforts. They now feel a positive challenge to reach out to the Members more frequently through the day and they are continually thinking about what they can share via social media. They are determined to “beat Facebook.”
My challenge to you is to give this a try and see if you enjoy similar results. Give it a week for your efforts to kick in for measurable outcome. Leave a comment to let us know if this worked for you. If you’ve found another way to work around Facebook’s algorithm change, please leave a comment below so that we may all learn. I’m sure there are plenty of you who want to avoid paying for your content to be seen and feel that we should have to pay for our content to be seen by people who have liked our Page. Especially when most of those folks are Members and who have a genuine interest (and need) to stay connected.
I’ll make sure to update this post in another couple of weeks and share if this method of more frequent posts continues to positively effect levels of engagement and reach.
Five Tips to Help You Fall in Love with YOU!
I’m delighted to share with you a special Valentine’s Day edition of Beaming Bohemian. While you may be enjoying a romantic getaway or a single’s party with your best friends, I hope you’ll stop to take a moment to realize how much you are loved. Your partner, friends and family, as well as all those cheerleaders and supports in your life love and appreciate you so much. I hope that no matter your plans for this romantic holiday, you recognize how much love you have in your life!
With all this love floating around us, I must ask the question, how much do you love YOU? I hope you enjoy a healthy level of self-respect. Self-love is the foundation of how we treat others, how we behave and how we communicate. (I promise I’m not too far off the topic of communication today. See #4.)
For those of you who need a boost of self-esteem, I share with you on this Valentine’s Day…
Five Tips to Help You Fall in Love with YOU
1. Begin your day with love, positivity and purpose
For those who follow my blog or tweet with me, you have seen my daily statement. Before I get out of bed in the morning, I ponder what the day holds for me and say out loud:
“Today will be a great* day. I will listen, speak and act from the goodness of my heart. I will accept others as they are and treat everyone with kindness and compassion.”
*Sometimes I change this to fun, productive, traffic-friendly, amazing, successful, happy or whatever word best fits the day I have in store for me.
When I say this, I make a commitment to myself about how I will conduct myself that day, as well as remind myself that I am a good person with honest intentions. It is a strong-willed statement filled with love and respect.
2. Accept yourself to own your potential
You are awesome! You are amazing! You are unique. Out of the more than 7 Billion people on this planet, there is NO ONE like YOU! You have unique qualities and characteristics that no one else has. You have something to offer the world which the world craves. Take some time to write yourself a love letter and tell yourself what you love about you. Once you accept yourself for the way you are, the way you were uniquely created, you will have the ability to own your potential and make that significant contribution the world needs and desires.
3. Play your own game of life – no comparisons
How often do you find yourself comparing your life to others you feel have “more” than you? STOP! Your life is yours to live. And remember, you have unique qualities that those other people wish they had. I found this quote which sums up the negative impact comparisons have on our self-respect:
“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” – Steve Furtick
How true is that? We look as the messy parts of our life and compare that to someone else’s best moments. How is that a fair comparison? It’s not. So stop. Everyone has their own pain and struggles. No one is as polished and perfect as their highlight reel.
Your life is a solo performance. You are not in a band. Think of your life more like a game of golf versus a team sport like baseball. Your life is yours. Own it.
4. Do what honors and respects you – be true to yourself
When you maintain healthy levels of self-love and self-respect, everything you do should be a direct reflection of your true self. Your hobbies and activities, your work, the people you hang out with and what you communicate.
And on that note, be mindful of how you communicate. We see so much hateful, hurtful and mean speech, words filled with negativity. This is particularly true online. You have to ask, “Is this comment/post/tweet the real me? Am I being true to myself?” Make a point to communicate with honor and respect. The majority of people (and the good people you want to associate with) will appreciate you.
Whenever you get that “this is not me” twinge, stop what you are doing. Stop talking, stop doing, leave the party…whatever it takes. Say to yourself, “I love me more than this.”
5. It’s an adventure everyday.
This video and post will not instantaneously make you fall in love with yourself. And I admit that I have to work on this everyday. We all do. There is no quick fix for a healthy level of self-respect. Another quote for you:
“Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” Margaret Runbeck
And that is the same for self-love. So with these tips in hand, let’s travel together, every day, in self-love and respect, in kindness and compassion, in positivity and purpose.
Happy Valentine’s Day. I wish you a day filled with lots of LOVE!
Social Media Integration
It’s time for a confession. I’m a magazine junkie. Flipping through the pages of Vogue, InStyle, Real Simple and Travel & Leisure serves as my escape from the digital world. Even so, I often wear my marketing and communication hat while contemplating a time in my life when I might wear Prada. Sometimes that can be a good thing, because I’ve noticed that many magazines are using a full page to direct traffic to their websites and social channels.
But Glamour takes it one step further on their “See It, Share It” page. They call out the people who are pinning and posting, those who are interacting with them online. I love this. Glamour encourages social interaction with the incentive that your pin or post might make it to the pages of Glamour Magazine. Very smart. Glamour has found a clever way to integrate what’s happening in social media with their traditional form of communication. Here’s the See It, Share It page (note that this is a photo from the digital version, which you have to tap to read the captions):
And that is our challenge for this week: What can we do to integrate our social media activity with more traditional forms of communication like newsletters and magazine, websites and e-news? In this week’s video, I share tips for my clients – Private Clubs, Athletics, Greeks and Graduate Schools. Take a look:
The purpose of doing this is to encourage those online to visit and engage with your more traditional marketing pieces, and for those who are already avid newsletter or magazine readers to engage with you online. By integrating your social media with more traditional communication, Your are breathing life into all of your communication channels and rewarding those who interact with you the most. Your members and students gain recognition and reward, you grow effective brand ambassadors and highly engaged fans.
So now it’s time to tell me how you plan to integrate your social media into your traditional communication channels. Have you seen someone else do this really well? Leave a comment below and get this discussion started!
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Facebook Likes and Reputation Management
When I have the opportunity to speak with college students – student-athletes, Greeks or graduate students – I am always curious which point of the presentation will resonate most. Of course, college students believe they already know everything they need to know about social media and assume they are “doing it right.” So when I use examples from their own profiles, posts which are embarrassingly bad, they do tend to perk up and realize they have room to improve their communication skills.
This week, I was so pleased to speak with student-athletes at Cal State San Marcos. Athletic and Club Sport athletes joined me to learn how they can use social media and communication to achieve their goals.
During the presentation, I pointed out that one’s reputation also stands upon the types of posts and things you like and the people you associate yourself with online. Some of the students have liked more than 1000 Facebook Pages. I cannot even fathom what these Pages are, but with a quick glance over many profiles, they are not Pages which work to build a good reputation.
We also discussed the accounts they were retweeting. When Twitter handles like @ReallyStonedPanda and @WeedReport pop up in someone’s news feed, it’s a clear indication that they enjoy the content these accounts produce. Retweeting them is associating yourself with them and their content. And as you can gather from these two examples, this type of association does not work to build a good reputation.
Wouldn’t we love to believe that it’s just college students who do not take care with what they like and who they retweet? Many seasoned professionals have room to improve their skills, as well. So in this week’s video, I mention a few social networks and what you need to take care of to maintain a positive profile and manage your reputation.
A quick breakdown:
Facebook – Be mindful of the Pages you like and the posts you like, comment on, and share. Make sure your “friends” are people you actually know.
Twitter – Take care with who you follow AND who follows you. You are associated with both. Double check the Twitter handle and content of the accounts you retweet.
Pinterest – Follow people and businesses who have good content and who are reputable. Repinning pictures which are linked to “spammy” sites is not a good practice.
LinkedIn – Accept invitations from people you know, have done business with and who add value to your contact base. Remember my advice from my networking video – You want to be able to connect the people in your network. Help them in their business so they will help you with yours. (You can also check out the blog post on networking, too.)
YouTube and Blog Comments – Often overlooked, your comments on blogs and videos says a lot about you. What videos are you watching? What types of blogs do you interact with? If they are controversial on any level, your interaction with them paints you in a negative light. Your comments are discoverable online.
Finally, please remember that NOTHING online is private. It doesn’t take much to learn about a person with a simple Google search and a bit of browsing through social sites. When the recruiter or admissions officer, the media or your colleagues take a tour of your online profile, what will they find? And what will the things you like and the people you associate with say about you?
Tell me in the comments if you are a person who is diligent about managing your reputation. Do you already take care with what you like and who you follow? What other things do you do to protect your brand? Share your advice in the comments! Thank you!
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