You’re in for a treat today!

Lindsay Bell is one of a kind and you’re about to learn why.

I first got to know Lindsay when she was working with Radian6. As you probably know, their community is everywhere and they do a fantastic job of spreading the word and adding value.

Lindsay is no different. She got to know me on Twitter, read the blog, and built a relationship in a way that is very human.

She is a former television producer – she worked at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – so she’s had an entire career of building relationships with human beings. And she’s really, really good at it.

Top that with her ability to write and you have a PR professional’s dream. Heck, she’s a client’s dream. Continue Reading »

It’s Facebook question of the week time (clap, clap, clap!). This week I’m giving you a little repeat from a video I did for Radian6.

I’m a big fan of theirs so I was ecstatic when they asked me to guest blog for them.

And then they changed their minds and asked me to do a video instead.

I asked if they were sure. I mean, it’s one thing to do goofy videos for you guys. It’s totally a different thing to do it for a big, grown-up business. Continue Reading »

This first ran over at The Whale Hunters. It’s written with the business leader in mind, but the process outlined below works for anyone responsible for using the web.

Hell has frozen over!

Oh wait. The Cubs haven’t won the World Series yet. Never mind.

But it does seem that way, doesn’t it, with all the changes in technology? You run a business. You don’t have time to keep up. Does it feel like, somedays, you’re being left behind?

You’ve always been responsible for payroll and HR and legal issues and tax laws and retention customer service and innovation and managing debt. Now you also have to be responsible for Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Yelp and Flickr and Quora and blogging and Foursquare.

Where does it begin? Better, where does it end? Continue Reading »

A few months ago, Jack Monson, who is the programming chair (and good friend) of the Chicago chapter of PRSA, asked me to do something that hadn’t yet been done at one of their monthly lunches: Take questions from the audience the entire hour.

At the time I said, “Sure!” without really thinking it through. All I thought was, “Great! I won’t have to prepare a speech two weeks before we launch Spin Sucks Pro.”

But taking questions from an audience, for an entire hour, is pretty nerve-wracking because you have NO idea what is coming and you have zero time to prepare. It’s completely on the fly and, I learned yesterday, that you have to have a whole bunch of confidence (which began to diminish the closer to 12:30 we got) in order to do that.

Afterwards, I was scrolling through the Twitter feed to see what people tweeted the most, in order to give you some of the key points. I don’t know what we did before Twitter. I guess we didn’t blog about it the next day! Continue Reading »

Happy April Fool’s and Opening Day! The helicopters were circling our house at 6:00 this morning (we live in Wrigleyville) in preparation for the big Cubs home opener. That means spring is almost here!

Of course, the east coast got snow today, but like I told Ken Mueller, that means allergies are at bay a few more days (it also means that cycling season hasn’t begun yet, but I’m trying to stay positive!).

Are you ready for your Gin and Topics? Let’s do it! Continue Reading »

There have been plenty of things you’ve had to buy in the past 45 days so I thought I’d give you some FREE eBooks found around the web to help out your pocketbook and your sanity. Plus they’re really good books so you’re gaining free knowledge, as well.

The B2B Blogging eBook from Mark Schaefer offers a look at basics, best practices, and blunders. If you want to begin blogging, but don’t know where to start, this book is for you.

From Stats to Strats is the eBook from Danny Brown at Bonsai Interactive. These guys (Danny and his partner Troy Claus) are really smart when it comes to building a strategy for ALL marketing and communication tools (not just social media). I recommend it if you’re stuck in planning hell and need some inspiration.

I’m a big fan of the content that Radian6 produces…and they have a free eBook every month (we aspire to that level). My favorite of the dozen or so they have (you can find them all here), is Building and Sustaining Brand Communities, which talks about not only how to build a community, but how to keep it engaged and moving toward one vision. Continue Reading »

Guest post by Ann Manion, president of Hotel Advantage.

I would not describe the hospitality industry as a community of early adopters when it comes to social media.

As a specialist in hotel reputation management, I’ve watched hoteliers confront companies such as Trip Advisor and request the removal of unfavorable reviews from their profiles.

Too many hotels have no track record for responding to online guest reviews. And not enough of my colleagues have dipped their toes into Twitter and LinkedIn. Continue Reading »

Yesterday I moderated a social media monitoring and measuring panel for PRSA Chicago. Amber Naslund from Radian6, Brandon Noel from AllState, and Ian Sohn from Ogilvy 360 Digital were the panelists…and they were really good!

We talked a lot about both monitoring and measuring social media, but one of the points that kept coming up was “how do I sell this to my executive team, including our general counsel?”

A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post about that very topic and you can read it here, but I thought yesterday had some great material to add to the conversation.

* Do an analysis of what your competition is doing and show that to your executive team. It’s pretty amazing what happens when you show the CEO that his/her competition is using social media successfully. Suddenly you no longer have to sell the idea!

* Create not just share of voice or volume share charts, but also share of conversation to show the c-suite that social media is not only driving traffic (eyeballs) but also that it’s contributing to the conversation, in terms of referrals or recommendations. Companies such as Radian6 can help you with this, pretty inexpensively.

* Go to the Arment Dietrich Delicious page, where we’ve bookmarked social media policies for all types of businesses. Download the ones most like your company and share them with your general counsel.

* Demonstrate your knowledge of how social media affects the entire company, including human resources, customer service, marketing, communication, sales, and the executive team. Show case studies on how each department, even if they’re not using social media directly, benefit from the company’s use of it…from a dollars and cents position.

* Provide the executive team with a real analysis of how social media will increase sales. This happens through increased online sales, better and qualified leads, a referral network from your community, and/or sampling.

* Know which buttons make your executives excited and use those to your advantage. Some CEOs are egomaniacs (did I say some? I mean most!) and think seeing their name in lights is going to help increase sales. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But if you can help create an expert of your chief executive through the social media channels, show him/her how it will benefit the business, as well as stroke their ego.

* Be prepared. Have a plan. Develop a strategy. And don’t forget the benchmarks. It’s OK if your benchmark is zero or if you have to create a new benchmark that has never been there before. Just make sure you have something, with goals for increasing in 30 days, 90 days, six months, and a year.

What other ideas do you have? What has/has not worked for you?