The number one reason why most businesses used to fail in social media was education. I’ve taught online marketing and social media best practices at Mira Costa College now for 2 years to help solve this problem and give back to the business community. This has empowered and helped hundreds of local businesses which I am extremely passionate about. I think its safe to say that this education thing can no longer be an excuse. There are a ton of educational resources out there. The real problem I now see is people expecting immediate results. Social media does not happen overnight and could be a challenge especially for small businesses mostly due to the time involved, knowledge needed, and even a limited resources factor. But the benefits out weigh the downsides.

What being in the social media trenches for 2 years now shows us is a lot of people out there get started in social media and they expect immediate results or instant gratification. I’m here to tell you that this is a myth. There’s no such thing as instant gratification with social media. If your business decides to get in this social media space or get into this game, you need to play to win and you need to finish the race. Have some fun too. I see plenty of companies and business professionals getting into this space and expecting immediate results and they don’t finish the race. They create a few blog posts, they send out a few twitter messages and that’s it. It doesn’t work like that.

I would like to reveal the secret to social media success. If you want to be successful in social media when it relates to your business or your career the key takeaway here is daily actionable steps over a long period of time will lead to sustainable growth. It takes quite a long time to build momentum in social media but with a little bit of planning, execution, and time, you can start to see results fairly quickly compared to other online marketing tactics which are becoming less effective. Whether its traffic, leads, sales, or just awareness for your cause, social media can be some of the most powerful word of mouth and cost effective results for lead generation, revenue, product sales, etc. It’s also important to note that social media is now integrated with SEO or search engine optimization. We are seeing this because of the dynamic of user generated content combined with off-site social media tactics that seem to go hand in hand together as a successful integrated online business strategy. Think of it as a snowball marketing effect on your business. You get that analogy right? As the snowball starts at the top of the mountain, it gains momentum and gets larger as is makes it’s way down the mountain. We help businesses do exactly this and the results have been incredible!

I hope this post helped clear up some myths, so feel free to comment and share. Thanks

Justin ‘Results’ French

P.S. Wrote this entire post using dragon naturally speaking on my iPad pretty smooth

The number one reason why most businesses used to fail in social media was education. I’ve taught online marketing and social media marketing best practices at Mira Costa College now for 2 years to help solve this problem and give back. This has empowered and helped hundreds of local businesses which I am extremely passionate about. I think its safe to say that this education thing can no longer be an excuse. There are a ton of educational resources out there. The real problem I now see is people expecting immediate results. Social media does not happen overnight and could be a challenge especially for small businesses mostly due to the time factor.

What being in the social media trenches for 2 years now shows us is a lot of people out there get started in social media and they expect immediate results or instant gratification. I’m here to tell you that this is a myth. There’s no such thing as instant gratification with social media. If your business decides to get in this social media space or get into this game, you need to play to win and you need to finish the race. Have some fun too. I see plenty of companies and business professionals getting into this space and expecting immediate results and they don’t finish the race. They create a few blog posts, they send out a few twitter messages and that’s it. It doesn’t work like that.

I would like to reveal the secret to social media success. If you want to be successful in social media when it relates to your business or your career the key takeaway here is daily actionable steps over a long period of time will lead to sustainable growth. It takes quite a long time to build momentum in social media but with a little bit of planning, execution, and time, you can start to see results fairly quickly compared to other online marketing tactics. Whether its traffic, leads, sales, or just awareness for your cause. It’s also important to note that social media is now integrated with SEO or search engine optimization. We are seeing this because of the dynamic of user generated content combined with off-site social media tactics that seem to go hand in hand together as a successful integrated online business strategy.

I hope this post helped clear up some myths, so feel free to comment, share, and r-tweet this post.  Thanks

Justin ‘Results’ French

P.S. Wrote this entire post using dragon naturally speaking on my iPad pretty smooth.

P.S.S. I’m excited to share 1 milestone for me- I just wrote my 7,00th tweet today!  What a journey it has been…

As a freelance independent business process consultant/trainer, it is very apparent to me that
social networking is becoming more and more important to any business enterprise. It is not
good enough to be the “Process Guy” (www.TheProcessGuy.com) to get that message out.
As an author of two books, the existing web page is the only point of contact to get that word
out — but that is not enough!

I teach “Business Process Optimization” at UCSD Extension as one outlet for my process
approach and methodology. This single outlet is very limited to students who actually hear my
approach. It is very obvious to me that this message needs to go to a much wider audience.

As a business consultant, my goal is to assist businesses in organizing their operational
business processes to shorten time-to-market, increase product quality, increase process
repeatability, and become more efficient in day-to-day operations. This is one area that is
overlooked by many executives. It is also the one area of business that could very well be
essence of survivability (or not) in this global economy. I target BioTech companies that
are regulated by the FDA, and DoD contracting companies that are required to be at a
higher level of CMMI and/or ISO 9001 certified.

I specialize in setting up a company’s process group, and process training. I am a big believer
that the process organization and layering has a huge beneficial impact on process following,
compliance, control, and quality. I preach about the separation of “what you do” from “how
you are to do it”. That separation is key because you want to mandate the “whats” and have
a lot of flexibility and extensibility at the “how” level. The selectable “how” level provides the
mechanism for process tailoring (scalability, site differences, piloting, etc.). I also believe in
using server-side scripting (php/mysql) to specifically address common high-level enterprise
steps for all company process tasks. These scripted assist can control developmental
configuration management, provide inter-task communication, provide task metric data
mechanisms, link to enterprise inspection procedures for work product quality, etc.

I have seen terrible examples of process elements. I have seen companies spend a ton of
money on their processes and are still struggling with regulatory compliance, good business
practices, day-to-day operational efficiencies, quality, etc. The waste can be enormous
and totally detrimental to a company existence.

Unfortunately putting in good processes tends to be a reactionary event versus a proactive
event. Many companies wait for a total crisis (death of people, lawsuits, etc.) before
addressing this part of their business! I can really help here.

F. Alan Goodman, Independent Process Consultant (“The Process Guy”)
www.TheProcessGuy.com