How are you building your online business brand or personal brand? I have had the privilege to connect and communicate with Brian Solis on MANY mediums such as Facebook and Twitter, and him and Chris Brogan are one of the most responsive social media and social networking for business authorities who actually respond and communicate with their audience. I know there are many individuals who communicate with their audience as well, but these two have really impressed me in how quickly they can respond and demonstrates they really CARE! Not to mention, they usually respond right back within 3 minutes! this is unbelievable! I can barely keep up with 2600 followers (very humbling by they way- people who actually have taken an interest in me, my company, my thoughts, ideas and opinions about small business, technology and social media for business purposes.) Obviously this is my passion, and that is crucial to building your personal brand- follow your passions EVEN if you are not making money at it YET. Also helping the small business community right now as Chamillionaire mentions is crucial.

Imagine, communicating real-time with actual “people” and engaging in conversation, building relationships, all around a common interest on-line. This is what social media is all about, whether you are building a personal brand or company brand.

Here is some footage I taped on Brian Solis (see his website here) today on Fox Business discussing some good insight on personal branding, building a community around your brand, and actually and MEANING something to the people you are connecting with so you can stand out and build your brand. “This helps transform connections with people from just a fan base to an actual community”- Brian Solis

Here is the video of Brian on Fox- enjoy, and congrats again Brian! Your thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment- Justin CEO Social Networking San Diego

By now your business should be on twitter, have a facebook fan page, and hopefully your on linked-in networking. For the small business market (which is where we have been providing most of our consulting services) it is still struggling with social media and social networking for business because of the 3 reasons i have seen:

1. budgeting requirements
2. time investment required for training on their part
3. being afraid of change.

Now i have to say that years ago i had the same concerns, but the point is that i started EDUCATING myself. Once you as a small business owner start getting educated (and hopefully you’ve signed up on our coaching program for social networking and social media for business here: SIGN UP ) you can begin the educational process.

Here is quick video that explains how to implement a social media marketing system into your company (enjoy) and leave a comment on your thoughts (its helps our blog ranking out 🙂

Everyone especially business professionals (rightfully so) keep talking about how to monetize social media and social networking. As of now, you should know how out-of the box my thinking is when it comes to business. I assure you that during these times, I am not the only business professional trying to think outside the box for innovative strategies. For better or worse, I am really going out on a limb on this one. Let me know if i am going over-board on this.

I will predict what the future holds (and how we can all make some money from not only social media consulting services for firms that “get it”) but possibly off things we are “Passionate” about. Besides, who wouldn’t want to make some extra money right now right?

Now hypothetically, lets say you drive a Prius. And you love it, you tell your friends how much you love it on facebook, twitter, linked-in, etc. So in a sense, you are now a brand ambassador for the Toyota prius. Now because you are so much in love with your prius and you happen to be marketing it for them “online” whether you know it or not, why couldn’t you reach out to Toyota, state your case, and charge them a small fee to write something about your experience (like or dis-like) about your Toyota prius fully disclosed of course? Believe it or not, that is what Ted Murphy @Izea has done and it is not a bad idea. I give him credit for coming up with this concept and starting to put bloggers in touch with corporations to write fully disclosed reviews. Brilliant!!

I would even take it a step further and really start reaching out to companies and demonstrating the power of these “word of mouth” brand ambassadors by providing case studies. This is already going on. Maybe even get a sales team doing B2B. This is writing on the wall for more business models that will monetize social media because at the end of the day, we don’t want all this hype to implode like the 2001 dot com bust right? If businesses don’t get educated on social media soon, they may not be around next year when things start to pick up again.

As for facebook, here is what i would tell Mark to do. Start charging a small fee for businesses to use facebook (just like twitter should do) because this demonstrates to business people the value of social media and social networking tools for corporate use. Those business leaders who STILL DO NOT see the value, will continue to be lost in translation. Or maybe schedule some twitter training from one of our internet marketing strategists by going here for our twitter for marketing training: Just one mans opinion. What are your thoughts on this post?

Social media marketing and social networking for business use continues to grow. Thanks to all those social media authorities and industry experts, we are able to reflect and give you the business value of these tools and even teach our customers how to use these tools effectively.

I used to be a personal trainer at Bally’s (among many other things ive done in my career) and I thought to myself “What analogy can I use to help the business community understand social media marketing a little better?” And then as I was going to the gym today, I said, this is perfect! I will relate twitter, social networking and social media to working out. So here are the 3 reasons why social media marketing is like working out at the gym. Enjoy, and please leave a comment at the bottom on some of your analogies.

1. Being consistent with your workouts & wording- I must admit, I am not the most consistent person when it comes to the gym lately, yet I know the importance of working out regularly, eating right, and taking care of yourself. When you’re a workaholic like me, this can be a challenge. But I cannot stress enough the importance of building your online social media presence and personal or company brand online for long term success. This is a long term marketing strategy that goes along with other parts of your marketing mix, so work those online muscles regularly and engage, participate, and build value for the community (your prospects and clients)

2. Change up your online and off-line workout routine once in a while- At the gym, every month or two I switch up my routine because my body plateaus. You should do the same with your online marketing mix or social media mix. Do a podcast, shoot a you tube video, do a webinar, send out a newsletter, but always blog. This mixture of tactics with help you be a well rounded online business professional and help build your content for your user base. Remember, this all takes TIME.

3. Learn from the pros at the gym and the online gurus- We know the famous bodybuilders: Ronnie Coleman, Lou Ferrigno, Arnold, etc. Do you know who your internet celebrities are? What are their specialties? What separates them from the others? Always be following and listening to the gurus in the online world because these people will teach you many tips and tricks of the trade so you can start implementing for your own online marketing tactics or strategies. Believe me, I have been doing this for about a year now and it has saved me so much time in research by understanding what they do. Hopefully you are still one of my readers from the beginning of January when we started this social networking and social media for business journey together and have learned a thing or two from this blog 🙂

If you are a small business owner or business professional ready for a social media marketing survival guide, purchase the discounted version for 9.95$ in the upper right corner (the full version i am still writing) and enjoy. It will be the best under 10$ purchase your business will make all year, i guarantee it!
Justin

Social marketing campaigns can be basically implemented in a local, regional or national level or a combination of any of these levels. Each social marketing campaign can be custom made to reach the desired targeted audience regardless where they are located.

The initial concept of social marketing was a result of blending ideas and principles of commercial marketing with the public health’s desire to promote and provide social behavior in individuals. At present, social media sites are seeing a virtual explosion and you have to be in touch with the virtual world to stay in touch with these instant message networks and relevant information for your market and industry. Try and target specific groups or individuals during your social networking campaigns to ensure that your product reaches the right people.

Social marketing campaigns aim at influencing the ideas, attitudes and behaviors of target individuals in order to improve personal as well as social welfare through commercial marketing technologies especially using the internet. The term “social marketing” and “mass media” are used interchangeably but the main difference is that social marketing uses a wide range of communications method to influence and benefit society and not merely to increase sales.

Just like the process of commercial marketing, social marketing deals with four aspects of a consumer and how they deal with products. For example,

1. What product is required for this consumer?
Social marketing serves to pinpoint and enforce consumer needs like medical procedures, heath initiatives, or health ideas like preservation of the environment and recycling. Here social marketing serves as a research tool to find out what the consumer needs and possible products to make them to take action towards achieving it.

2. What would be the ideal price of the product?
The price of the product is determined to allow the consumer to decide what they would be willing to pay for a product and using social media marketing or social marketing can provide quick feedback. Social marketing allows vendors to listen to the audience feedback on what they might be willing to pay for such products or services.

3. Where can they get the product?

Through this aspect of social marketing campaigns, consumers are assured of a good supply of the product along with distribution systems, warehouses and retail outlets where the product is sold and will be readily available. Social marketing ensures that the customer will have up to date and relative information of the product as and when he or she requires it once the product or service is ready to be released to the market. Don’t forget the social media strategy of building up the “online buzz” prior to product or service launch to generate more interest much quicker than traditional marketing mediums.

4. How will you be Promoting the product?

Although this is the least important aspect of social marketing, it’s often the most visible and thus mistakenly considered the most important. Using social networking and social media for business to promote products and services to various online networks is a science that must be communicated in a marketing combined with an engaging way with the audience. This can be critical to the success of the online marketing campaign, and with the right strategy, social networking san diego can help your form a successful social marketing campaign.

These questions basally are the building blocks of the social marketing campaign. A social marketing campaign should provide additional information to the audience’s so that they can take the ‘next step’ forward in the buying process. Almost all social marketing campaigns are a long term investment, as society needs time to accept changes and changes cannot be made by individuals overnight. A strategic social marketing campaign may require a lot of time to reach the particular objective but we help do the work for you by the many proven research techniques we use. This is why clients partner with us and trust us to help conduct these campaigns and get them trained to be involved in their online community.

In between teaching, consulting, running a start-up, and trying to have a little fun every now and then for the summer, I have been in the process of working with my programmer on an online coaching and training program to help the individual business owner who wants to invest time on their own and build sweat equity into the social media and social networking for business journey and here it is:

The Social Networking And Social Media Business Kit- FREE Introductory Offer – Click Here –

The reasons i am doing this are for 3 fold:

1. I have ALWAYS been passionate about helping the small business community, and now is my chance to use technology to cater to a wider audience & many business professionals have inquired about me teaching them so i will record a series of videos and then do 1 on 1 coaching for a small fee (still considering price)

2. Business people i have met online & offline TRUST me and know that i tell things how it is and i will not sugar coat this social media and social networking for business journey and they appreciate and understand my helpful nature

3. Education is the most important thing right now for social media hence why i am now teaching this Fall semester at Mira Costa College to help the business community get back on track

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate to help market the program to your network and help spread the word on this social media for business coaching program please let me know

Thank you for all your continued support
JustinRFrench
CEO Social Networking San Diego

Last week, I had to get an oil change in the G35 before going to UCLA for the Linked-in group discussion on social media, social networking for business, and of course measuring ROI and I decided to try something on my own. After all the talk I had been hearing about using social media to measure the customer experience, as a CEO, i wanted to conduct a customer service rating of my service at Mossy Nissan Oceanside and tweet about it. So here is what i did.

1. I tweeted the entire experience i had (good and bad) and used a hashtag for tracking in 140 characters or less

2. I realized the power us as consumers will have and the “social influence” we will have over products/ services/ brands we decide to buy/ use in the near future

3. Me being a social media consultant for business, i was hoping to possibly demonstrate the feedback to the dealership and possibly get them on board with a campaign 🙂

So here is the text from my tweets and a screenshot of the results:

From justins work photos

Real-time results for #twittercase

justinrfrench Getting an oil change on the G35 for tomorrows trip to LA lets see how the customer experience is at mossy nissan oceanside #twittercase 7 days ago from Twit2go

justinrfrench #twittercase so far so good, customer service rep is enjoyable 7 days ago from Twit2go

justinrfrench #twittercase rep just tried to up sell me on additional services (sales 101 ok gotta appreciate that) 7 days ago from Twit2go

justinrfrench #twittercase times must be tough for them- now charging .50$ for coffee and no more water bottles 7 days ago from Twit2go

justinrfrench #twittercase car is ready, signing paperwork and paying now. So far pretty painless, pretty good customer experience thus far 7 days ago from Twit2go

justinrfrench #twittercase ok overall customer experience at mossy Nissan Oceanside (0-10) i give it a 7 bonus car wash im happy http://twitpic.com/bytbc 7 days ago from web

Can you give me any case studies on customer experiences you have tried yourself using twitter? Let me know, id like to feature them on our blog (be a featured guest poster)

Thanks
Justin