Are You Wasting Your Time on Social Media?

Posted on March 1, 2013 by stayingaliveuk

More than likely you are. Be honest with yourself, how much time are you now spending on social media compared to say 2 years ago? It’s addictive right? Don’t worry I am not judging you, and it’s not your fault. All the social networks know that we as humans are curious by nature and very very interested in other people’s lives.

Yes you are, whether you wish to admit it or not. It’s not an issue, really it’s not. And…you just need to be aware of it.

Peer pressure exists too, how many times have you heard someone say, you’re not on twitter really?? Or…well I use Facebook to spy on my kids that’s all I use it for. Liar!!

The majority of 16 – 24 year olds will be massively engaged with social media. Wind forward 10 – 15 years, what will the world look like?

OK so you’re a baby boomer and don’t think much of this social media lark and will not get drawn into to it. Wrong!

flickr | meijergardens – baby boomer pile up

You are already part of it whether you like it or not. Whatever you say or do in business or in your private life, people (and family) around you may be tweeting, facebooking, linkedinning you (for real Michael??).

Yep, before you speak and if you don’t wish to be quoted, tell your gathering that they haven’t got permission to share what you say via their social media channels.

So whether you’re part of it or not, resisting or engaging, annoyed or happy, you do have to get your time spent on it back in check. Become more targeted and laser focussed on what you wish to achieve. Random doesn’t work any longer and you’ll get found out. Just this morning I saw someone on LinkedIn (no names) who had posted 18 articles from their website in a matter of 2 hours. Wondering who’s in charge of their marketing efforts?

I’ve been studying social media for 5 years now and after several years of intermittent study with the thought leaders in the USA, I’ve recognised where this is going. No I’m not unique in my thinking.

Firstly social media is no longer a new phenomena it’s now part of the marketing mix, except that it should in most organisations expand into customer service, sales and the executive floor as well.

flickr | smi23le

Social media has expanded into social learning, social selling, social marketing. But in a few years the word social will start to disappear. You will be left with the originals, learning, selling and marketing.

The only difference will be that the major platforms that support these activities will become synonymous with them.

For example LinkedIn will be known exclusively for selling. Indeed what was once a recruiters website with employees CV’s is becoming THE most powerful lead generation platform in the world.

FB will become the product marketing platform in the world. Just imagine all those people on FB that could be watching your product advert on their 4G mobile.

FB has enabled message voice recording already and its just a matter of time that they will introduce video message recording technology. Your written messages will be video email instead. We are already tired of reading, but will we be happy to watch a short video?

Camera shy?? You’ll get over it!

flickr | Rego – d4u.hu

I was involved with video email even before YouTube, the only problem was that most people were on dial-up then (2005). Now with 4G becoming standard and super fast fibre broadband, it will open possibilities we’ve not even imagined yet.

flickr | Gavin St. Ours

Video cameras in your smart phone or tablet are common now, but you’ve heard about google glasses right?

So just imagine a world where your glasses are connected to your smart phone and whatever the camera (in your glasses) sees it can find on your smart phone, of course no need to tap on your phone, you just do it via speech if at all. The mind boggles!

flickr | Stuck in Customs

I’d love to hear your views, good, bad or indifferent about social media, technology and where this is taking us. I’m excited, are you?

Success!

Do You Follow The Crowd?

Posted on January 15, 2013 by stayingaliveuk

If you are in business or working for a business, you are more than likely examining the results for 2012 and wondering what 2013 will bring.

Reinvention? Examining the offer? Going in a new direction? Looking for new partners, sales channels, sales people?

These may all be questions that are being asked at the moment and maybe your business coach or business consultancy is asking you to think about those too?

Last question, why do we do this now when we have crossed this magical December 31st into a new year?

Shouldn’t we be examining these questions each and every month? Maybe some of you do, but…

There’s something in our human nature that causes us to be creatures of habit and we have a habit of following the crowd and when the world at large is doing it as well.

flickr | nationaalarchief

David Bowie decided to not follow the crowd. On the 8th January he released a new single and announced a new album, after a decade in the dark. OK so what is special about that? Well nobody in the music industry or press knew about the fact that he was recording, and they had no idea that the single was being released until it was done on the 8th January. So it made the national and international news instantly.

designspiration.net

Why follow the crowd? We do it most of the time and research confirms that we are hard-wired to follow the pack.

Gregory Berns [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Berns ] is an American neuroeconomist, neuroscientist, professor of psychiatry, psychologist and writer. He did some experiments with the ABC network in the US and below is a summary of one of the social experiments that he researched.

They invited a group of strangers to Jean George’s Asian restaurant in lower Manhattan for a fabulous dinner — and a surprise.

Party planner Colin Cowie and his friend, Donna D’Cruz, were in on the experiment. Their role was to exhibit outlandish behaviour most people wouldn’t dream of while out at dinner with a group of strangers.

Cowie and D’Cruz licked their fingers, a dinner table no-no. Cowie picked his teeth. The guests initially seemed not to take the bait — until dessert rolled around.

D’Cruz told everyone they should pick up pieces of mango face first, using their mouth. Eventually, people who were total strangers at the beginning of the evening were passing fruit back and forth, mouth to mouth.

Only Harold and Maria, a Canadian couple, passed on the gustatory familiarity. Finally, Harold was the only one who dared to ask, what is the point of the dinner?

Cowie explained the experiment to the group. “I think because we broke the rules, and we made things possible at the table, several of you followed suit with it.”

One woman at the table said: “I think the majority of people will look to see what others are doing and follow their example.”

Conforming Can Have Dangerous Consequences

This test is an example of our human need to conform. In fact, Berns’ experiment is a variation of one done many years ago by another scientist trying to decipher an extremely vicious instance of conformity — why so many Germans followed Adolf Hitler down the path to death and destruction. Berns says there are two ways to explain conformist behaviour.

“One is that they know what their eyes are telling them, and yet they choose to ignore it, and go along with the group to belong to the group,” he said.

The second explanation is that hearing other opinions — even if they are wrong — can actually change what we see, distorting our own perceptions.

Berns wanted to see what was happening in the brain during his experiment. Using an fMRI, Berns found that, during the moment of decision, his subjects’ brains lit up not in the area where thinking takes place, but in the back of the brain, where vision is interpreted.

Essentially, their brains were scrambling messages — people actually believed what others told them they were seeing, not what they saw with their own eyes.

flickr | library_of_congress

“What that suggests is that, what people tell you — if enough people are telling you — can actually get mixed in with what your own eyes are telling you,” Berns said.

And for those who went against the group, there was another intriguing result: Their brains lit up in a place called the amygdala, which Berns calls “the fear centre of the brain.”

“And what we are seeing here, we think, is the fear of standing alone,” Berns said.

So why do people follow the pack no matter how ridiculous it seems? Perhaps it’s not so much about good and evil, right and wrong, smart or stupid. It might be, as Berns’ experiment suggests, that our brains get confused between what it sees and what others tell us.

Just knowing that might help us guard against it.

What product or service are you planning or considering that can be kept a secret until you are ready to launch it to your prospects and customers?

Keep your powder dry, have less fear about rejection and more resolve about success.

Stop following the crowd and be DIFFERENT in all areas of your business.

Success!

What is stopping YOU?

Posted on July 3, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

I probably speak to people daily about the power of video and how this is such an important area for businesses to invest in. In fact I have been on about this since 2004, even before the birth and rise of YouTube and yes I was way ahead of my time, even if I say that myself. How right I was, if only I had invested more time and effort, I could have been an Internet billionaire by now. Oh well there’s still time!

And whenever I mention it, they agree, they wax lyrical about YouTube and how they have found stuff on there, which was really useful and how they learned so much from it. Or how they saw this really funny video about a cat and a dog!!

So why is it then that YOU aren’t doing it yourself?? I even remember (ok so I am getting on a bit) when websites first started emerging, those horrible American sites with the textured backgrounds, companies were saying that it wouldn’t take off and that people wanted to be able to feel something tangible, a brochure or a leaflet, is what they needed. The same people who said that email would never take off, because people wanted a physical letter, and I bet they also said that photography was wrong online and that there was nothing better than having a printed photo, to put into a physical album. You have heard it all before I know you have…

flickr.com/yaketyyakyak

Could these dinosaurs also be the ones who said that social media was for kids and for sharing what you had for breakfast and how they didn’t get it? Actually a lot of them are still saying that even now. Yep they certainly are! Ah I nearly forgot of course they also said that music could only be listened to via a physical product like a record or CD, yes even a CD was hard to swallow but they had to give in on that one, because the quality was better.

Back to Video then, let me share an infographic with you. Whether you believe it or not there are a few things I am sure you will accept.

Watching video is fast, you probably watch an average of 5 hours each day, whether through the TV, DVD’s and online.

You get what’s said in a video very fast, much faster then via the written word.

Most of your senses are engaged with Video, eyes, ears, feeling or VAK as the experts call it Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. Yes indeed these senses make you remember so much more from watching video. That’s why ‘the movies’ are still so successful because they know how to get you to get a full sensory experience, which makes you want to come back for more and no I am not talking about the popcorn and coke!

Broadband speeds are getting faster and the roll out of fibre across the UK means soon everyone will enjoy over 30mb download speeds and even more over the next few years.

This means the likes of Netflix, Apple, Amazon and many more will see their video download services explode, in the same way music downloads did. And yes there will be the dinosaurs that say that copyright, piracy will be an issue and since when has that stopped anyone?

My appeal to you then is to get engaged with video, whether it’s to promote your business, educate your colleagues or communicate to your staff.

JUST DO IT!!

Is your speed reading working?

Posted on February 25, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

I am finding the volume of tweets, links, posts, articles a touch overwhelming at times, so this short article explains how I manage this in today’s super digital age.

Ideally the following tools are needed:

iPad or iPhone
iBooks
Safari or equivalent browser that allows you to save a web page as a PDF
Or a PDF converter
Dropbox

Basically I leverage my iBooks app as much as I can, by saving PDF documents to it for reading later.

Articles and the like come at you like a formula 1 car at top speed sometimes and this is how you can stop it in its tracks.

Apple’s Safari web browser is a major plus but not essential. Whenever you find a link that provides you with an interesting article, but you don’t have time to read it, immediately convert or save it as a PDF into Dropbox.

Then retrieve it from your Dropbox on your iPad or iPhone and open it into iBooks.

Now you can decide to read them when convenient to you and not when the article catches your eye via a tweet, email or something else. Plus you’ve got the article for future reference in a meeting, discussion with your colleagues or clients. I’ve found it very handy.

And if you have found other ways of capturing your links, please do share.

The other way where I can interact with them is on Flipboard, the best iPad and iPhone app in my opinion.

Let me know how you get on.

Success!

Are you afraid of LinkedIn?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

(135 million+ LinkedIn professionals around the world as of November 3, 2011)

I attended a recent networking event and chatted with business people, who were there because like me they would like more business. I was taken aback a little when 2 people that I spoke to out of the 5 that I met, who shared with me that they were “afraid” of LinkedIn.

I use the term “afraid” on purpose because, when I asked them whether they were on LinkedIn, which is a standard question I ask every business person I meet, their faces filled with horror and then they shared with me the reasons why they either weren’t there or why they were very very careful who they connected to.

Maybe I am the naive one, but my philosophy with Social Media is to either be active in it and play full out or stay out of the game, you can’t be half in and choose when to come out and play and when to stay at home.

But it got me thinking, maybe there are more of you out there, who are “afraid” also, so I wanted to write this article to appeal to your more liberal side, the part of you that has courage and is willing to take a few risks, because you know you’ve got that part inside of yourself, don’t you?

Here are the “fears” that were raised with me today:

People who I have never met or spoken to, ask to be connected to me on LinkedIn, why?
They tell me that they are wishing to grow their networks; well they are pulling me into the same mindset and I do not wish to be part of it!
I am very choosey who I connect to, because I only wish to be connected to people, who I have met and I have got to know them and what they are about
What if they start calling my contacts and telling them that they know me, when really they do not?

And I am sure there could have been more. The real reason for the “fear” is actually ignorance and I don’t mean that in a negative way, I actually believe it is really positive, because there is a fantastic opportunity to educate people.

I consider LinkedIn as my virtual business networking database. LinkedIn is actually very ethical, it is run with the same principles as face to face networking and yes of course it is ideally best to have met that person or at least to have spoken to them. However business is a numbers game and in order to have some influence in your business community you do need to connect with people who can be in your circle of influence.

It is good to build a relationship with people who you have not yet met face to face and yes try and do that even if you are only connected virtually. Actually LinkedIn is so transparent, they can learn about you, your history, your experience, your business goals and learn so much more, which you would never be able to share at a face to face networking event.

We all need to do more with less, so LinkedIn is the perfect vehicle to network, without the expense of attending networking events, breakfasts, lunches etc. It is becoming more acceptable to do things virtually and of course I appreciate it’s not everyone’s “cup of tea”.

We need you all to start getting into the game and changing your mindset, because this is only going to continue to grow and we would like you to be there with us and be part of the journey.

There is a huge amount to know about LinkedIn and I have witnessed the massive changes it has undergone in the past few years, which I promise you will continue, especially as they have gone public now.

Below I have shared my own network stats on LinkedIn and you can see the reach you can have with only a few connections. They say that the level below your direct contacts are where your real business opportunities lie. You can see that I have 365,000 connections that are 2 degrees away from me. That’s just unbelievable and I could never imagine that I would be connected to so many people. However if you notice carefully Linkedin, presents a small box to you every time you log in, which says “people you may know”. And when you click through you will see a list of page after page with people that are 2 degrees away from you. Well the same is presented to everyone that goes on LinkedIn and is active on there and that’s how you get noticed, that’s when people view your profile.

I hope you take on board what I am trying to convey, but just in case you don’t, I would be happy to explain some other finer points to you at any time, just post a comment or question on here.

Success!

Are you making enough use of Video?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

With the majestic rise of YouTube, there really is no excuse for any of us not to be making more use of video in our communications with clients, training of our employees and using it to get our marketing message out.

The images are from an infographic commissioned with research data from the following 3 companies; smallbiztrends.com | getresponse.com | emailmarketingreports.com and gives us an idea about how important video is in email marketing.

It reports that around 80% of small businesses see videos as a vital medium through which to communicate to their audience. With around 88% of companies considering video most effective in training courses (29%), product demos (22%), product promotions (19%) and customer testimonials (18%).

I have certainly started focussing more on video, whether it is to explain a concept in social media or assist people in getting their marketing message out to prospects.

I have also learned from Fusion Universal, that presentations never need to be dull any longer. Instead of the usual death by PowerPoint it’s more effective to create a 2-3 minute video, which you play at the presentation, and gives the client the essence of your proposal. Then you can spend most of the meeting discussing it, rather then taking up most of the meeting discussing your presentation or demo.

You can literally see the delight on people’s faces, when they have just watch a short video and “get it”. It solves a massive problem and that is “attention-span”. Most of us struggle to concentrate for more than 5 minutes sitting through a presentation. Our mind is always thinking and even when someone is talking to you, you are thinking. Even when you are reading this you are thinking and our thinking wanders from thinking about the subject being discussed or presented to our personal thoughts, back and forth.

What we do a lot is deciding whether we agree with something or not and we get ready with our critical questions and objections in the first place. This I believe comes from our primeval survival response to believing that this may be threatening to us in some way. Therefore I have to ask some challenging questions, to make sure that I will be safe. Does that make sense?

Anyway enough of the “Philosophy”.

My recommendation to you is to investigate the use of video more in your endeavours on the web and with your marketing activities. It will continue to grow and it’s time to become more active with it.

Success!

How effective is your “SoMe” Marketing?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by stayingaliveuk

Most of us are now involved with Social Media, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or something else. And if you’re not, well you can’t be having as much fun as most of us!

But…how do you know whether you are making progress, there are plenty of “SoMe” gurus, (me included), who will charge you for education and may even do all the hard work for your business with an even heavier fee.

So when I found SplashCube, I was delighted to find something that would help me, guide me, direct me and most of all track me on how well I was doing with my “SoMe” marketing.

They use a clever method, which is now known as gamification, basically a clever algorithm that calculates what you are doing and then produces the results in a clever graphical representation, allowing you to adjust your performance. Thinks of it as a game that you are playing and every time you need to get better at the game you are told where you need to improve.

After you have connected your accounts to SplashCube, it will analyse what you need to be doing in order to maximise your “SoMe” marketing.

I have not seen anything better as yet, but let me know if you have found something better.

See the example below for my Twitter account. To be honest (and I always am), you don’t need to get an account with them to understand what you required to do, basically just adopt what I am showing you in these images.

In the image at the top of this post, there are some great suggestions on what you need to do for your various “SoMe” accounts as well, and just to expand on one of them;

Facebook Fan Page | Ask 2 questions in 6 days | Means that you need to post a question on your Facebook fan page every 6 days as minimum in order to get better exposure and engagement with your fans and grow your fan base. Get the general idea?

Have a look at the image with Twitter suggestions, just copy these down somewhere and start acting upon them.

What SplashCube does, you can do for yourself, as long as you are disciplined and if you are not, then go ahead and open account with them. (By the way I am not affiliated to them in anyway, I just thought it was a “cool tool”, which I felt I should share with you).

Success!

Blogs that wear Clogs…

Posted on November 29, 2011 by stayingaliveuk

I have done it, I have resisted doing it for months, but finally I have opened a hosting account with the brilliant 1and1.co.uk and transferred from a “.com” WordPress account to a “.org”, wordpress.org. And I am delighted with it. Because now I am in charge of my own destiny, and able to make use of the thousands of plugins for WordPress, develop true social integration and if need be mess with HTML and embed code, when I fancy.

It’s quite incredible to think that only a few years ago, creating a website or blog was the domain of web developers, graphic designers, charging “an arm and a leg” to create a website for you. But now the website is free and the hosting is a just a few pounds per month. This makes it incredibly cost effective for anyone to have their own website and more importantly be in charge of their own updating as well.

Their is a huge amount of training available either through WordPress and many others who have created hours of video or tutorials to help you develop your own learning of WordPress. And it’s all free! All you need is a bit of courage and a friendly help desk in 1and1.co.uk who give all their telephone support for free to get your hosting up and running.

The other thing I have learnt as part of my Social Media journey, is that blogs are more important then having a standard brochure website. It means you can be more engaging with your audience, it allows them to understand better what the company is about and what they are up to, through reading or subscribing to their blogs. Obviously if you are selling via the web then that is different.

Therefore my suggestion is to ditch the website, create an engaging series of videos (we can help with that), which talk about your business and create a “weblog” instead of a “website”.

Most of the information you can include on a weblog is the same, it is just displayed differently, no difficult navigation buttons, just a simple clean layout is what is required and I hope that this is what I have managed to achieve here.

I have noticed that a lot of the latest websites have gone for this very clean, white and open design. And I do like it, because it means my eyes are not distracted from lots of stuff on the site. Hopefully it means that the viewer will stay on the site longer and will be more interested in making an enquiry.

Anyway I hope you like it and please feel free to leave me some feedback and share the site by using the social media toolbar wibiya.com at the bottom of this weblog.

And if you need any assistance in doing the same, you know where I am!

Success!

Phone Hacking | Murdoch | UK Government | Met Police | News of The World

Posted on July 18, 2011 by stayingaliveuk

OK I have been thinking how all this reminds me of something, something very familiar, something that started in a comic strip many years ago, something we have all been exposed to in our lives. Yes it’s Superman, Batman and Robin, Cat Woman and I am sure you can think of many more.

So here are some of the characters, can you think of any others?