First- Congratulations to Beverly Macy and Rodney Rumford on their 1 year milestone for providing exceptional Social Media For Business conferences, workshops, and educational forums. The last one I went to was at Harvard and this was probably one of the best conferences I had been to. I am looking forward to what the 1 year anniversary will bring. Here is a link to the event. http://www.gravitysummit.com/ I will be tweeting live to give you the best 140 character highlights of the event so follow me on twitter here if you want: @JustinRFrench

Also, Enjoy this quick video I made (shout our to Chris Brogan for the Hotel Room idea) where I try to stay on topic with 3 main points: Hustle, Helpfulness, and Heart. Also, I ask, what are you doing to make sure you are being extra helpful to clients and colleagues these days? In times like these, we must be going above and beyond (one of my favorite groups by the way) in being extra helpful in providing quality customer serve. Just talking about it isn’t good enough anymore. (Thank Zappos for being the model example of this)

Enjoy

JustinRFrench

Gotta love that catchy headline right? Ok so yesterday when I logged into my personal Gmail account (I have about 30 Gmail accounts by the way all for a different business purpose because you know I’m all about business and occasionally having fun) and I happen to see a landing page come up introducing me to Google Buzz. I watched a quick video, got versed on it, and began exploring. After you watch the video I would advise you to play around with it a little bit. Do you think Twitter may be worried? My personal opinion is just like Linked-in, Facebook and Twitter. Google buzz will be just another means of me communicating to another online community of those I am connected with. (it just happens to be my contacts in my Gmail account and on my phone- the G1 Android). Buy one here and I’ll teach you how to set up a special proprietary workflow system I have created to streamline email and increase productivity

As the lines become more and more blurry between my professional life and personal life, I started out having two separate accounts but quickly realized how non time efficient this was. I am slowing trying to migrate to just 1 user account per social network, but we will see where that takes me. Right now I am more into twitter and Linked-In (obviously) but it depends on my goals.

What are you thoughts on the new Google Buzz? Should Twitter be afraid? I don’t think so, not for now anyway, BUT who knows what will happen in the next year. The world of social media and social networking for business changes every day. It is so hard to keep up BUT if this is your passion, you never consider it work. Its part of your life. It consumes you. You are addicted. But there are many other worse things you could be addicted to so until then, go get your Buzz on with Google and Tweet it up on Twitter. Cheers,

Justin R French

Social Media Monitoring Tools are key for Reputation monitoring. A lot of companies are quick to say they are ready for social media, but do they really know what they are getting into? Do they even have a social media plan written? Do they even know what people are saying about their products and services? Do they know best practices to use when engaging a prospect online?

These questions might seem odd considering how many social media consultants are popping up all over the place but how many actually have track records? What campaigns have they implemented, measured, and what results were achieved? Well, we have done all of the above. That is why we suggest to our customers a product called Trackur to give them a taste before they jump right into the unknown. Trackur is one of the first products we are finally telling people about as one of the tools we help set our clients up on which is a reputation management or social media monitoring tool. You can actually get a FREE 14 day Trial by going here:

This is actually one of the first posts we will be doing on occasion to help businesses know about which tools are good to implement for their business , what the benefits are, and how to use them. We will be recommending products to try based on what we have used that actually work. So please get started with Free Online Reputation Monitoring today!

As businesses constantly struggle to get leads, some companies have embraced Social Networking, SEO, and Social Media to assist with lead generation. This is something we stumbled upon over a year and a half ago and have been helping businesses develop their own online lead generation system or workflow to embrace this cost effective strategy. We have helped numerous companies develop a strategy around creating value for the community, building relationships, all while collecting information to maintain communication about helpful products and services. This enables prospects to do business with them or purchase from them when THEY are ready. This is the less obtrusive approach that is continually being embraced by the companies that are getting ahead.

The 3 model companies using social media for business development include Zappos, Dell, and Whole Foods.

Here is The Top 10 Ways to Use Social Networking and Social Media for Business Development:

1. Be where the People Are

2. Focus on Customer Service

3. Be Helpful

4. Be Courteous

5. Be Kind

6. Demonstrate your product/ service knowledge or expertise

7. Share a current customer’s story that relates

8. Kindly ask for referrals when appropriate

9. Connect with them everywhere to stay on top of mind

10. Online business development makes lead generation fun

Any tips you’d like to offer that we may have forgotten? Also please remember to subscribe to our blog (top right where it says subscribe to our feed) and Re-tweet this post for those in your network that might find these quick tips helpful. I’m sure they would appreciate it.

Social Media and SEO go hand in hand now. Because of the real time nature of the web, Google is now ranking tweets, video, and other social media conversations because of the increase in user generated content. Even early last year when I was experimenting with SEO tactics and twitter, I began seeing various twitter accounts ranked for certain keyword phrases. Here is a video I did that explains this principal in more detail:

Do you have some examples of Google ranking your social media activities real time? Let us know- Cheers

P.S. Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on a well deserved Super Bowl win yesterday!

Are you involved in social media?  Are you in Marketing?  If you are, you have probably heard the term brand association.  Brand association is a growing trend in social media.  Many people are starting to capitalize on this while growing their social influence or social capital.  Yes even twitter has a grading system and measures your influence.  Because of this, personal branding is becoming a necessity in todays digital economy and I wanted to share with you my take on the topic.

First, when I think of personal branding, I refer to personal branding expert for generation Y  Dan Schawbel (click his name for link to his Blog) who I had the pleasure to meet at Gravity Summit last year in Boston.   Here is the blog post With a video I did interviewing Dan on online branding tips for small business: http://bit.ly/2jYUl Celebrities and other influential people in the online and offline world leverage brand association and capitalize on this everyday.

Now more than ever thanks to social media, we will continue to see this trend gain more popularity with big brand names endorsing people who build up their social capital, social influence, and trust with their audience.  Why should you pay attention to this?  Because thanks to social media, this levels the playing field and creates new opportunities that did not exist before social media.  Now just average people can possibly take advantage of this new opportunity to use social media to associate themselves with brands they are passionate about and capitalize thanks to their brand evangelism.   Affiliate programs do a lot of this too.  Thanks to our personal stories and testimonials (being transparent of course) the smart companies and brands will start reaching out to key influencer’s active in social media and social networking.  This is continually happening and this trend will continue growing so get involved, IF you don’t mind being transparent of course.

Here is my video that explains brand association in more detail.  I am interested in hearing from you-  what are your brand associations? Hint- follow products and services you are passionate about.  If you are not involved now with social media and associating yourself with products and services you are passionate about, then I suggest you start.  Do you see anything wrong with social media and brand association?  Have you been able to capitalize on this yet? I’m interested in hearing your stories.

If you are from Infiniti and intertsted in speaking more about the endorsement- I can be reached via email at snsdjf@gmail.com

Happy Branding!