MarketingMel

Editor’s note: The following blog post was written by MarketingMel Associate Sarah Kinsler. (Sarah and Mel tried out the Vine app in the lobby of  WJCW Radio last month before going on the air to talk about social media trends.)

Mary Ellen Miller and Sarah Kinsler at the Tri-Cities TN/VA PRSA awards.

You can break a bull riding record, cross three state lines or experience an amazing “he’s the one” kiss. You can also post your adorable toddler’s toe-tapping hoe-down to international acclaim.

Now Twitter founders have introduced a way to capture these six second memories and share them! Vine, an app that allows users to shoot, combine and loop video is now the #1 app on iTunes. This app is quickly becoming the preferred outlet of social interaction amongst young adults and teens. However, large corporations and brands are jumping on the bandwagon as well.

But here’s the real question: Can brands tell their full story in six seconds? Maybe not the full narrative, but it is a  definite way to get a person intrigued. Including Vine in your marketing plan can increase brand awareness and add some personality to your updates and news. While a Vine video is only one-fifth of a typical commercial, it can generate buzz to a specific audience that would otherwise ignore alternative media outlets.

Which brings me to my next question: With apps such as Vine, Snapchat and Twitter, delivering information in a such a quick and effortless way is becoming the norm. What does that mean for the future of print media? Are our short attention spans going to change the process of how we get our news? What do you  think?

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MarketingMel Discussing Personal Branding with REALTORS

What are your New Year’s resolutions? When I conducted some video “man-on-the-street” interviews people fell into a couple of categories:

1- People who do not like to talk about resolutions. Most likely it’s because they remind them of broken promises but I’m going to share with you some tips you can act on right away and feel good about yourself in the New Year!

2- People don’t want to talk on camera. Some people obsess about their clothes, hair, make-up, etc. (This goes for men as well as women.) I created an award-winning video on “Ten Tips to Feel Comfortable on Camera” that can help you feel better on camera in the New Year.

No matter how you feel about resolutions, this is a great time of year to assess our personal brand. What we can do to better ourselves in 2013? Here are some tips to help you. I’ll be sharing more on personal branding as a speaker at the SoloPR Summit in Atlanta in February 2013. Hope you can join us!

1. Google yourself- What do you find? Is it fresh? Is it negative? Does it need a PR boost?
2. Does your image transfer to mobile? With more cell phones than toothbrushes in the world people will be on their phones more than ever in 2013. I recently optimized this site for mobile. You can check out your sites mobile likability by running it through http://www.mobilegrader.com/
3. Who is your target audience? What communications channels are they using? Do you have your elevator speech planned for the next time you bump into Future Big Client X?
4. How do you plan to promote your brand in 2013? Through guest media appearances? Your blog? Podcasts? Social media? Your e-mail signature? Video?
5. Do you have an editorial calendar planned for 2013? Remember, you are a publisher. Now is the time to think seasonal and timely in your future writing and publishing. I posted a few social media calendar examples on the MarketingMel P.R. Facebook business page.

All the best of luck to you in 2013 and remember, your personal brand is always with you!

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We are “connected” 365 days, 24/7

This week I chatted with Steve Hawkins of WFHG -Super Talk Radio about what to be working on at the end of the year and where we’re heading in 2013.

Here two items I identified: One, to be working on now and the second, looking forward to the year ahead.

1- Strategic planning: It’s the time of year for strategic planning. Part of that should include a social media calendar for next year. Here is a link to my Facebook page that include a great post by SoloPR pro Kellye Crane on social media calendars including free resources. I hope this helps you in your personal brand planning.

2- Mobile Marketing: Last week I had the privilege of attending a mobile marketing workshop put on by the Virginia Department of Business Assistance and my friend, Sandy Ratliff. Sandy gave some of the most amazing tips! Here are just a few:

• There are seven billion people on the planet and six billion of those have mobile devices.
• There are more mobile phones on the planet than toothbrushes! Now that’s something to think about!
• There are five times more mobile phones than laptops and computers
• There are 300 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. (The U.S. population is 313 million.)
• 91% of people keep their phones within three feet of themselves 24/7, 365 days a year.
• Our attention spans are now just seven seconds long!

The implications for mobile and the future of mobile are huge! If you have a web site be sure it is mobile compatible. Sandy gave us a helpful url to see how your web site ranks on its mobile compatibility. (I know I am working on my site right now to make it even more mobile friendly!) You can listen to the podcast of our entire interview here.

What are some of the top trends you’re seeing for the New Year? I’ll share more predictions for 2013 trends in the coming weeks.
photo credit: prosto photos via photopin cc

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Rick Roll’D and other scams

If you spend anytime on Facebook sooner or later you or a friend of yours is going to get hacked. Just last week a friend of mine, Carly Johnson, a REALTOR with Keller Williams Realty in Johnson City got hacked on her personal Facebook page. I found out because I received what seemed like a very odd message from Carly on Facebook. The note seemed so out of character for Carly that I immediately messaged her  asking if the note was really from her. Carly and two of our region’s finest I.T. gurus have provided me with this information in order to keep this from happening to you!

MarketingMel: Carly, tell us what happened.

Carly Johnson: Last Monday, I received a text from a friend asking if I had sent him a Facebook message regarding a picture he needed to look at. Almost instantly, I received a similar text from another friend, and then my iPhone began showing several Facebook notifications of friends sending messages saying they were unable to find the picture. I went into my account, only to find that it appeared as if I had sent this message to every single Facebook friend. “hey, go to album32 dot com and search for “name of friend” then click on the first photo. I bet you didn’t remember that, eh?” I knew I did not send the message, so I began responding as quickly as possible to every friend who messaged or texted me to make sure they did not try to go there. After sending about 20 messages, I decided to update my status to alert people that I did not send the message and that they should not do as requested. Thankfully, Marcus Ledbetter saw my post and posted that it was a phishing scheme designed to steal passwords.

MarketingMel: Carly, what have you learned from this?

Carly: I changed my passwords on as many different accounts as I could think of, and I updated my status again to alert others that they may need to change their passwords as well. I continued to send messages to friends who were responding throughout the evening, and some are still trickling in. The terrible part is that the message is authentic looking enough to make people think it is from the supposed sender. Unfortunately several of my friends attempted to view the picture and put their passwords in. I have been trying to determine exactly how my account was hacked, and I cannot even remember a time that I clicked on anything unusual. That just means that it is way too easy for them to get in.

MarketingMel: Carly, any takeaways for others?

Carly: I am on high alert now and am being overly selective with regards to my accounts. One lesson I definitely learned from this experience is not to have the same password for multiple accounts. If I had used the same password for my bank account, it would have been very easy for them to research my account to find out where I bank, and they would have known my password. Lastly, it saddens me that people who have the intelligence to make a scheme like this one work, would not have a desire to help others instead of stealing and making people’s lives difficult.”

MarketingMel: Marcus, what is your advice as an IT professional and Director of Operations at ITD Interactive?

Marcus Ledbetter: The key is – while your bank and other important accounts have good security measures in place to stop the brute force intrusions (brute force is where they basically have a program that just guesses as many passwords as it can in hopes that one of them gets in). Twitter does not.  Facebook pages get hacked all the time though – and folks that I’ve talked to that have gotten hacked often have simple passwords: names of their kids, pets, whatever. To make matters worse, people often use the same passwords, or variations of the same password, for all their online accounts. This is the big problem – while getting your Facebook page hacked can be annoying, and sometimes embarrassing, the real danger is if the password they used for Facebook also works for your email login. If they can get into your email account they can often get into bank accounts, credit card accounts, etc. They can request password resets and often get around security questions using info they learn sifting through your Facebook information. maiden names, past addresses, etc. It can snowball very quickly.

Then I sought the advice of my I.T. professional, Andy Mitchell of Holston IT.

MarketingMel: Andy, can you tell me what you tell your clients so they can protect their passwords on Facebook and elsewhere?

Andy Mitchell: The best advice I can give you about passwords would be a few simple rules.

1. Your password should be over 12 characters in length.
2. It should contain Upper & Lower case Letters, Numbers, and special characters such as ! @ # $ % ^ & *
3. It should not contain words or phrases.
4. NEVER USE THE SAME PASSWORD TWICE!  Each login needs its own password.
5. Do not save your passwords when prompted. Always type them in.
6. Change your passwords OFTEN.  Every 30-90 days depending on how important they are to you.

Another school of thought is to use several common words that have nothing to do with each other to create a really long password.

IE:  pinkhorsesummersnowflaketennessee

MarketingMel: How do you avoid phishing attempts?

Andy:

1. Never click on a link in an email.  If you hover your mouse pointer over the link it will either pop up and show you the hidden URL or it will show in your browser at the bottom left.
2. Copy Past the link if you must.  This will copy the text you see and not the hidden hyperlink. Only do this if you are sure the link is safe.
3. Manually typing it into your browser is another alternative. Again only if you know the link is safe.

Here is an example of what I describe above.

http://www.holstonit.com

If you copy past it you’ll get my website.  Click on it and well…..

• Generally I only click a link in an email when I requested a password reset, or need to activate a new account.  Otherwise I go to the website and log in the normal way rather than taking the shortcut presented in the email.

• Keep Adobe Flash and Java updated.  Check them at least every 30 days even if they are set to update automatically.  Java exploits are one of the top sources of computer viruses.

• Finally, Install Firefox and the Adblock-plus Add-On.  This will strip most advertisements from webpages and online videos.  This goes a long way to help you avoid confusion.  Not to mention it is nice browsing without those annoying commercials.

• http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/
• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
• The above links have not been modified and will take you right to the 2 programs I mentioned.

Many thanks to Carly for sharing a story that could happen to any of us and to Marcus and Andy for providing solutions that we hope will help keep all of us a bit safer! Please share your stories here with us along with any tips you have for preventing these things from happening! 

photo credit: DavidDMuir via photopin cc

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Image by Mario Sundar

Editor’s note: The following is a guest blog written by Jon Moss. Jon and I first connected on twitter and then “IRL” while having coffee at Social Slam 2011. We re-connected after his excellent LinkedIn presentation at Social Slam 2012.

“Are you IN?” That was the question I asked attendees at Social Slam 2012. While a lot of people who embrace social media as a means of marketing may be on LinkedIn – meaning they have a profile – the percentage of those who actually dive in and use the myriad of features it offers is far less.

One of the misconceptions about LinkedIn is it’s for finding a job, or posting a resume or profile. While it does offer robust features to accomplish all that, it is so much more. Let’s take a look at some of what it can do for you.

1. SEO-ize Yourself
Back when I was learning of the importance of ranking high in Google searches I realized I had a problem. When searching my name pictures of Boy George always came up on page one. Turned out we had something in common. The drummer for Culture Club (Boy George’s boyfriend at the time), and I shared the same name.

One had to go several pages deep into Google before anything related to me came up. Not good. What was good for me was that LinkedIn profiles rank very high in search. Thank you LinkedIn for putting me back on page one of Google! To borrow from a Culture Club song, “I’ll tumble for ya, LinkedIn”

2. See Who’s Checking You Out
LinkedIn has a cool feature that allows you to see who’s recently looked at your profile. Sure it may seem creepy, but it’s so cool when thinking about what you can do with that information. Imagine you’ve been trying to get in the door with a certain company only to find out they’re checking you out. How about you sent your resume off to a recruiter and now they’re reviewing your profile. A well thought out email or phone call while you’re fresh in their mind could do the trick.

Just keep in mind this works in reverse too. People can see when you’ve been looking at their profiles so be careful when stalking your competition! There are ways to go around this though. You can disable the feature in settings, but you lose the ability to see who’s looking at you. For now, when you browse people from the smartphone app, LinkedIn does not register that you’ve looked at their profile.

3. Signal & LinkedIn Today
Get news on your sector aggregated by your industry connections. It’s like an online industry publication crowd sourced by your peers. Keep tabs on people in your network. Reach out to them when appropriate. If information is power, then this is your source.

4. Groups
Places for like minded professionals to hang out. Most flock to groups geared towards their industry, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Go deeper by diving into groups where your customers hang out. If you sell insurance to doctors how many leads do you think are waiting for you in the “Underwriters of America” group? Got the point? Now get yourself into the groups where they hang, but don’t jump in and start selling. Restrain yourself young salesbuck. Get a feel for the group. Respond to questions by others when you have something of value to add.

Groups can be industry specific, geographic in nature, or centered around activities. Whether avocation or hobby, find the ones where the people you want to meet are in. If you can’t find a group that tailors to a specific group, go ahead and create it yourself. As a group administrator you’ll be in a better position to connect with members.

5. Company Profile
You have a profile on LinkedIn, and your company can have one too. Like Facebook Pages, an LI company profile lets you post products and services, have customers provide reviews/ratings and make recommendations. It’s a great space to claim. People are researching companies just like they are people on LinkedIn nowadays.

6. Pimp Your Blog
Want more exposure for your blog? Pin it on your LinkedIn profile. Imagine all that good stuff you’re writing being seen by everyone checking you out LinkedIn. A prospect quickly comes to realize you’re the expert they’ve been looking for. Your future employer see you’ve got a knack for writing. A competitor realizes they can no longer compete with you and throws in the towel. You are still blogging, right?

7. Add Video
If only you could add video to your LinkedIn profile, then you could show everyone how awesome you really are. Wait, you can. The technology is available. Queue theme from The Six Million Dollar Man. It just takes adding the Slideshare application and embedding a YouTube video. You do have a YouTube channel, no?

8. Answers
This could very well be the most overlooked feature on LinkedIn. Imagine a place where you can have your questions answered by professionals anxious to display their depth of knowledge. Why pay $300 an hour for legal advice when you can get it for free on LinkedIn?

We’re not talking random generic answers, rather insightful thought out responses to your questions. LinkedIn Answers ingeniously allows professionals to ask and answer questions on a wide variety of topics. I know what you’re thinking. Why would someone bend over backwards to give “free” advice to someone they’ve never met before?

When you provide an answer, the “asker” of the question gets to pick who they felt gave the best answer. LinkedIn, in return, awards a “star” to the “askee” for providing the best answer. Earn enough stars and you show up as an expert in that particular topic.

I can personally attest to the power of having lots of stars having picked up new clients by demonstrating expertise, having my competition actually recommending me, and receiving phone calls from national publications wanting to interview me all because of the answers I gave to questions on LinkedIn.

9. Don’t Cross The Streams
On the surface it seemed like a good idea. Connect your Facebook to Twitter and LinkedIn, post to one and you’re done. Right? Wrong!  Don’t do it. LinkedIn is the only platform that’s strictly business. Leave the puppies, the Instagrams of your lunch and everything else you wouldn’t share in person with your employer, client or prospect at the door. Muddy your LI status with hashtags and Foursquare checkins and risk losing relevance. If you don’t believe me, listen to these experts.

10. Go Mobile
LinkedIn’s iOS apps are amazing. With calendar integration the iPad app could become the killer app from which to run one’s schedule. If you’re in sales or run a business, chances are you’re not chained to desk. Packed full of features, the LI mobile apps let you carry your network on the go. Lose the Rolodex, and get down to business with real information at your fingertips. Anywhere. Anytime.

Final Thoughts
It’s amazing when I think back years ago when my company paid thousands of dollars to Dun & Bradstreet and Hoovers for access to business information and personnel. A lot of it is now available for free thanks to LinkedIn. Gold awaits those who seek it. Are you ready to go mining?

So there you have it. Some features of LinkedIn you may have missed. It’s not just the oldest social networking platform, it’s the most powerful in terms of business and professional networking — for those wanting to get down to business.

Here’s video of the presentation and slideshow I did at Social Slam – http://mmlabs.biz/2012/05/talking-linkedin-at-social-slam-2012/

Jon Moss

When he’s not infusing new media with marketing ideas at Moss Media Labs, Jon Moss can be found fiddling with the latest gadgets and mobile apps. Available by email at jon@mmlabs.biz or via Twitter @jonfmoss

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Photo by Jon Sullivan

With one in nine people on Earth now on Facebook I’m sure you are considering the best ways to keep a positive business presence out on the social networking giant. If you’re like me, you sometimes get “stuck” looking for content for your Facebook Business page. Well here are three great content creation ideas that I learned from Jodi Santangelo at a Fred Pryor Facebook training session yesterday.  By the way I have no business interest with Jodi or Fred Pryor I was just very impressed with Jodi as a speaker and the Facebook information she presented was very easy to digest with some great take aways.

Here are the three content creation tips along with the amount of time that should be spent in each area on your Facebook business page.

1- Educate (40 percent): Let people know about your business. Check out your trade associations on Facebook to see what they are doing and share their valuable content. Be sure to search and like their pages. Create strategic partners. Share and personalize the information. (I have two wonderful strategic partners, Maria Peagler of Social Media Online Classes and Cathy Conder Rogers of Seven Waves Marketing who’ve been guest bloggers and master minders with me since the start of my business.)

2- Engage (40 percent): Interaction is key. What’s the best way to find out about people? Ask questions! Don’t be boring. Remember that Facebook is actually ranking your pages. To learn more check out EdgeRank. Also, Jodi recommended having a QR code connected to your business’ Facebook url located at the cash register of retail establishments. This will engage people direct from their mobile devices. Here’s a link to a free QR code site that I’ve used.

3- Entice (20 percent): It’s OK to promote yourself and your product (sometimes) but don’t do any hard selling or you’ll drive people away. The example Jodi used (and coincidentally one I also use in public speaking) is that you wouldn’t walk up to someone at a cocktail party and say, “Hi I’m ___ buy from me!” One positive example she used was a company that had a once a week Facebook coupon and promoted that. That’s actually a great use of enticement on Facebook because your audience is getting something in return for their engagement.

Bonus Facebook Business Tip: Jodi suggested creating a social media calendar for all of your postings and using the social media scheduling tool HootSuite to help you plan your posts. She also said to be sure to personalize your posts.

What content creation tips have you found useful on your Facebook business page? I’d love to hear from you. And if you’d like to connect with me on my Facebook business page for daily social networking tips please join me!

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Photo credit: José Manuel Suárez

Editor’s note: The following is a guest blog post by Ken Fairbanks, a lifelong learner who is now Director of Distance & Distributed Learning at Wytheville Community College. 

Distance learning, cloud computing, social networking, desktop virtualization, augmented reality, smartphones, tablets and the arrival of the post PC era… this all sounds a little scary, huh? Welcome to the world we live in. A world impossible to predict. A world characterized by disruptive technological, social and economic change. How do we prepare ourselves, our employees and children for the future?

The answer is “Lifelong Learning.”

Disclaimer: I work in higher education. I am the Director of  Distance & Distributed Learning at a community college and what you are about to read is more than a little biased.

I just want to get that out of the way!

This should not be news to you. Most of us, who have survived the business climate changes over the past two decades, have internalized the idea of lifelong learning and adaptability. How many job and career changes have you experienced? Depending on your age, you’ve probably had at least two or more. It’s now predicted that new high school graduates may experience 8-10 career changes in their lifetimes. That’s career changes… no wonder my college student son can’t decide on a major!

What we need is a new educational model that is focused more on creating a new breed of entrepreneurial workers, who can adapt to rapid change. A system more about knowledge acquisition and problem solving and less about taking standardized tests.

I think Sir Ken Robinson in the video below and a recent manifesto by Seth Godin are on the right path.

The biggest changes occurring now… are how, where, and when we are learning. When I transitioned into higher education in 2001, distance learning was still pretty new and many thought it was a fad, while others dismissed it as inferior to the traditional face-to-face education model. Today, that has changed and around 30% of all college students nationwide are enrolled in at least one online course and by 2014, that number is predicted to increase to 50%.

Being part of the change doesn’t make us immune to change. Distance learning itself is undergoing massive upheaval… the past two years have been all about mobile devices. Our assumption that students taking online courses, were using a computer to access their materials and perform their work has been shattered. Increasingly, students are using smartphones and tablet devices to complete online coursework. It’s simple economics, smartphones and tablet prices are falling making these devices ubiquitous and our primary tools for accessing the Internet. Students can also use their mobile device to interact with the world around them in real time and share their experience with fellow learners and instructors. Now we have mobile learning… talk about a game changer!

Augmented Reality (AR) will be the next evolution in technology to impact education. We are currently planning AR campus tours using Google Earth and the Layar app. Google has announced that they will be releasing AR glasses by December 2012,  very similar to the Nokia prototype highlighted in the below video.

The future of higher education and distance learning is evolving, as new competitors from the private sector enter the marketspace and big brands like MIT, Stanford and Harvard reinvent themselves. The ideas of open source content and education are gaining popularity. MIT and Stanford are now placing many of their online courses on Apple’s iTunesU for free download by anyone interested in learning. Of course, if you want their degree you will have to pay… but the learning is still there for the taking. Companies have formed their own universities for training and new entries like Khan Academy that are blowing up the traditional education model. The key over the next few years, will be the accreditation of these new open source forms of education.

Add to this disrupted reality, the recession driven increases in college enrollments and decreases in government funding and you will find higher education scrambling to embrace new technology to drive down costs and remain competitive.

I’m proud to say that community colleges have been in the forefront of many of these educational advances. I think the reason for our success has been our small size, connection to the community and ability to adapt quickly to meet the needs of today’s business and industry leaders. Community colleges have become the higher education equivalent of the start-up tech firm that can easily adjust and seize new market opportunities.

As business leaders what do we need to take away from this?

1. We need to embrace change and look for value adding employees capable of adapting to the changes and competitive forces in the marketplace.
2. We need to continuously invest in ourselves and our employees (human intellectual capital) through internal and external educational opportunities.
3. We need to stay abreast of new technologies and leverage them for training and building value in our employees.
4. We need to realize that the new generation of workers coming up, will expect instant access to education and training through mobile technology.
5. We need to recognize that our current education model needs to change, if it’s to be successful at meeting the demands of our new economy.

About the Author: Ken Fairbanks is Director of Distance & Distributed Learning at Wytheville Community College, in Wytheville, Virginia. Ken also works as a multimedia designer and provides corporate training in leadership, problem solving, marketing and team building. Prior to moving into higher education, Ken was Director of Marketing for a successful advertising agency in the Tri-Cities and also worked in the television news business as a reporter and anchor for several years. Ken currently lives in Abingdon, Virginia with his wife Beth and two boys. When he’s not developing online courses or blowing up Facebook and Twitter with his latest thoughts… he’s probably running, walking, or biking on the Virginia Creeper Trail! You can contact Ken via Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. 

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