Young Professional Success Tip – Choose The Right Place to Launch Your Life and Career

As a young professional you typically have less holding you back than you will later on in life when it comes to choosing where you want to launch your life and career.  This provides you with an incredible opportunity to choose the perfect place for YOU.  The factors you must consider when choosing where to live as a young professional:

People – Do you want to be as close to your family as possible?  Did you make a pact with your high school friends that you would all move back home after college?  Are you and some college friends all moving to a certain city together?  Is your boyfriend/girlfriend already living somewhere?

Money – Are you at a point financially where you feel as though your only option is to move back home?  Do you want to move to a big city but can’t afford to even split a studio with your income?  Are you being offered twice as much money to start your career in a certain city?

Location – Do you need to be near a beach?  Or can you not live without the lights and sounds of a big city?  Do you need to be on the mountains and ski as much as possible?

Education – Does a school 1,500 miles away have the best program in the country?  Is your field of study only offered in certain parts of the country?

Industry – Is it easier to become an actor in Los Angeles than it is in Omaha?  How difficult is it to be a ski instructor in Miami?  Are you at an advantage to choose one location over another based on your industry?

With those factors in mind, you will need to choose if you want to live at home, live on your own in a familiar city or relocate to a completely different city.  The best advice I can give is to consider your options extensively, and don’t make a quick decision based on one of the five factors.  Weigh them all and remember that you are only young once – being a young professional may very well be your best chance to try something new and relocate to an exciting new place!

Thoughts on "The Social Network" Facebook Movie

I had the opportunity to see “The Social Network” over the weekend (along with 4 of my Facebook “friends”).  Overall, I really enjoyed learning about the story of how Facebook came to exist.  I continually questioned the facts of the movie, how much of it was true and how much of it was completely false.  From what I’ve read, it seems that the movie is fairly accurate; says screenwriter Aaron Sorkin – “If we know what brand of beer Mark was drinking on a Tuesday night in October seven years ago when there were only three people in the room, it should tell you something about how close our research sources were to the subject and to the events”.  Like anything else, I’m sure some of the facts were dead on and others were exaggerated, but everyone agrees that the general timeline of events is accurate.

I’m not a movie critic and will not pretend to be – rather than provide a detailed review, I want to briefly discuss the one thing that I’ve continued thinking about since I viewed the movie:

Is Mark Zuckerberg a highly-driven entrepreneur or back-stabbing jerk?

The beauty of this movie is that there is no good guy or bad guy.  This isn’t about Good vs Evil, it is about telling a story and letting the viewer determine how they feel.  Because we live in a black and white society where everyone wants to pick between “right and wrong” or “good or bad”, people will immediately point to Zuckerberg as either a genius or jerk.  No middle ground or gray area, just a “this guy is brilliant” or “he is such a jerk”.

What are my thoughts to the above question?  After giving it some thought, I would summarize my answer as “a little of both”.  He is absolutely a highly-driven and brilliant entrepreneur – most college students don’t have enough discipline to wake up for a 10am class.  He was writing code, drawing process maps and building a business at 3am while most students were slamming a Large pizza after a night of partying (yes, they party at Harvard).  So there is no question that he was willing to work harder than probably anyone else on that campus while also having a ton of knowledge about computer programming.

But didn’t he steal the idea from 3 other guys on campus?  Didn’t he stab his best (and only good) friend in the back?

Lets tackle that first one first – I believe there were undoubtedly certain concepts that Zuckerberg took from other people and utilized in building The Facebook.  Did he use their code?  Nope, but he liked aspects of their project and utilized them.  You might think those guys were vindicated by the $65 million settlement, however that represents a tiny fraction of a percent of the companies current valuation, so it probably falls significantly short of “fair”, dependent upon how you look at it.

The other main argument that can be made for him being a “jerk” is that he stabbed his best friend in the back.  I’m not going to watch a Hollywood movie and assume that it perfectly summarized their relationship, because it is obviously impossible to do that in a 2 hour movie.  My thoughts are that they both made some significant mistakes – after all, they were college kids with no business experience.  It seems like Zuckerberg could have been more loyal to his friend and his friend should have been more aware of what Facebook could become and have never signed documents that he didn’t have a lawyer review first.

My final thoughts are that Mark Zuckerberg deserves a great deal of credit for having the knowledge, perseverance, vision, discipline, ambition and creativity to build Facebook.  Are there certain things he would change if he could go back in time?  Only Mark knows the answer to that question, and I believe that answer would reveal a great deal about his character.  There is a lot to be said about loyalty and sticking with the people who were with you from the start – I’m sure there is a part of him that wishes he had his best friend to hug when they hit 1 million users.

What are your thoughts on the movie?  Any opinion about what I discussed above?

Interesting Social Media Statistics to Consider….

•Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
•1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
•Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)… Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
•If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
•1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
•% of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees…. 80%
•The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
•The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
•Wikipedia has over 13 million articles… some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica
•There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
•54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
•People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
•78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, Only 14% trust advertisements AND Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
•In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media
•More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook… daily.
•Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second.

(Stats above from Socialnomics – http://www.socialnomics.com)

The 3 Things You Need to Know About Using Social Media for Your Business

1. It can be very profitable…. If you do it the right way
Have you ever seen the person who attends every networking event in town, collects a huge stack of business cards and comes home thinking they had a highly productive day? I’m sure you have plenty of them over the years – they feel busy, therefore they assume they are productive. In reality, none of the people will remember this person and he/she will close little or no business out of their business card collection efforts. Promoting your business through social media is very similar; if you are running around trying to add a bunch of friends/connections with no rhyme or reason, it will produce little or no business. Sure you will feel busy, but you won’t be putting any money in your bank account.

If you would like to be profitable using social media, you must do things the right way. You need to know the most efficient way to use these tools, how to find your target prospects and the best way to turn those relationships into revenue for your business. At a traditional networking event, you are better off having three meaningful conversations in two hours, rather than collecting a stack of business cards. Social media is no different – you need to do it the right way, not just do activities that make you feel busy.

2. You need to determine how you will use social media
When we initially sit down with our clients, we focus on learning what their specific goals are as an organization. Every business has different objectives – attracting new clients, creating awareness in the community, upselling existing clients and many others. Each business is unique so there cannot be a “cookie cutter” approach to social media marketing. Determine what you big picture goals are for your organization and then leverage social media to help you accomplish them. If you try to do 10 different things, you probably won’t be successful at any of them, so choose your main objective and get started.

3. You must create a specific strategy
Your business MUST have a specific strategy for social media. If you own a restaurant, you will want frequent communication with your social media network, reminders about happy hour, special deals, new menu items, upcoming events and other exciting happenings at your establishment. Do you think that an insurance company will do the same things? Of course not! They will be talking about the importance of asset protection, the value they bring to clients, the services they provide and the overall importance of financial organization.

You must develop a specific strategy that is unique to your business! Make sure that you understand your objective and then utilize the appropriate social media tools to move you towards accomplishing your organizations objective.

6 Reasons to Use Social Media in Your Business

1. Avoid a Gate Keeper
The days of cold calling an office, getting through a receptionist, smooth talking an executive assistant to finally reach a decision maker are over…  if you know how to use social media to gain access to the right people.  You can approach almost anyone through social media these days:  CEO’s, actors, musicians and anyone that used to be virtually impossible to connect with directly.  By building your presence on social media and knowing the method/tools to strategically reach the right people, you can avoid the old-school ways that no longer work in business.

2. Innovators Always Win
Those that jump in early, get acquainted with technology and carve out their space are more often than not the big winners.  The longer you wait to become fully engaged in social media, the harder it will be to get caught up and build a presence.  Invest your time and money into learning the most innovative methods to leverage social media in your business.

3. Wider Net = Greater Opportunities
The fisherman who has a huge net will more than likely catch more fish than a fisherman with a much smaller net.  The same holds true for the internet – the more exposure you can create for your business online, the more likely you are to attract your ideal prospects.  Social media is a very efficient way to reach a lot of people and get a lot of exposure online; this exposure will undoubtedly provide you with greater opportunities to convert prospects to clients.

4. It’s Who Knows You That Counts
Since we were young, we were constantly told that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  In reality, it’s not really who you know that’s important, but rather who knows you.  You can know thousands of people, but we want to focus on how many people know you and the product/service that you offer in your business.  Social media will allow more people to find out about you and your business, which will lead to more people doing business with you and referring you to others.  It’s who knows you that counts!

5. Free Market Research
Do you remember the days of walking through the mall and being asked to do a survey?  They would quiz you about things such as products, commercials or politics and then pay you $10 for your help.  Companies would obviously pay a great deal of money for these results, which would dictate the direction they went in.  Social media allows you to conduct FREE market research in so many different ways – you could post a potential TV ad on YouTube and ask for feedback or ask your Facebook friends for ideas on a new business slogan.  You can also search through blogs for certain keywords and see what others are saying about your business, your competitors or current trends in the industry.  There are literally unlimited ways in which you can use social media to do market research.

6. Top of Mind Awareness
It is so important in business to have top of the mind awareness for your product/service.  If you aren’t constantly visible to your target market, they can forget about you and try your competition.  For some of you, it is impossible to call all of your clients/prospects on a regular basis, or it would be terribly inefficient and might annoy them.  So how can you be in their mind constantly?  By being connected with them through social media and then providing the right type of value on a consistent basis.  They might not want to receive a call from you every day, but they love the informative articles you share about your industry, the blogs you post, the videos you create and the discounts you offer.  You are accomplishing the same objective (lots of touches), but in a much more efficient and less intrusive way (social media).  This is a great way to reach more people while doing less work and providing them with great value!

How to Measure Social Media’s Effectiveness

You’ve heard that social media works, you have set up some accounts for your business and have even seen a few results; the problem is, how do you measure the true effectiveness of social media?  There are many different ways and it really depends on what your objective is with your social media strategy.  You might be trying to increase attendance at events, attract new clients or simply inform your existing clients of the latest happenings in your business.  Regardless of what your objective is, here are some of the different ways to measure your effectiveness with social media:

• LINKS – How many websites are linking to you?
• COMMENTS – How many people are commenting on your blog posts and statuses?
• REVENUE – How many revenue have you brought in to your business through social media?
• FRIENDS/FOLLOWERS – How many people have engaged with you on your accounts?
• REFERRALS GENERATED – How many new referrals have come your way through social media?
• WEBSITE/BLOG PAGE VIEWS – How many views and unique views are you receiving?  How long are they staying on your page, which pages are they viewing and how many are contacting you?
• GOOGLE RANK – When you search for yourself, your business or someone who does what you do, what page are you showing up on?  Are your social media accounts showing up on these searches?
• TESTING – Does one headline lead to more sales than another?  Are people more likely to engage with you on one blog subject than others?

Let us know if we can help you measure any of these statistics and show you what they mean for your specific business.

How Are Olympic Advertisers Using Social Media?

Many advertisers in this years winter games will be using social media more than ever before.  Coca-Cola estimated that 100 million saw its Super Bowl ads, but online interactions with those ads now number over 500 million.  They anticipate that this years Olympics will be no different.  Here is a look at the social media plans for four Olympic sponsors:

Visa – 40% of its marketing funds will be digital this year and they have created a YouTube Channel to showcase their ads before they hit the TV airwaves.

Coke – Every piece of their advertising will have a social media component, such as their sponsored athletes tweeting throughout the games and a virtual snowball fight to share on social media.

McDonald’s – They have created a virtual scavenger hunt with the winner receiving a free trip to the 2010 London Games.

GE – They have pulled together 25 health experts to tweet about getting healthier and will use the Olympics to officially launch this initiative.

For more information on how marketers are using social media for their Olympic advertising, click HERE.

Using the "V-C-P" in Social Media

If you are a business owner in the valley who enjoys receiving referrals and would like to learn how to generate significantly more, one of the absolute best resources available to you is Victoria Trafton, who owns the Referral Institute of Arizona.  Victoria has a variety of classes and programs that show entrepreneurs how to more efficiently grow their business through referral marketing.  One of the main concepts she teaches at her introductory classes is the idea of building Visibility in your target market, then earning Credibility among those folks, and finally, reaching Profitability from those activities.  This certainly doesn’t happen instantaneously, but it is the most effective way to strategically build your network so that you aren’t just running around town trying to “close deals” with new people every week for the rest of your working life.

As I build social media strategies for businesses, I always educate our clients on this concept.  Regardless of whether we are talking about face-to-face networking or building a network through social media, this concept is the most effective way to build, nurture and grow your network.

Let’s take a look at “V-C-P” in social media:

VISIBILITY – To be visible, you must be out there.  In other words, you need to be searchable and visible to your target market.  You need to utilize the right keywords in all of your copy and have a search engine optimization expert on your team.  You must also have the appropriate accounts set up, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, a Blog and videos on YouTube.  (Reaching more people = More opportunities for your business)

CREDIBILITY – Once you have begun attracting the right people to your social media sites (your target prospects), you must quickly establish credibility with them.  Some of the ways you can do this are by using a professional looking picture of yourself, having your complete profile filled out, being on all of the major social media sites, consistently updating your profiles, interacting with “friends”, receiving comments on your posts, being truthful and genuine, not selling your product constantly and many others.  When we do our initial consultation with clients, we often see really great people making mistakes they aren’t aware of because they were never taught the proper way to build credibility online.

PROFITABILITY – What is a new client worth to your business?  What if every week you received two new clients that found you through social media?  This is the beautiful part of social media – once you are visible and credible, you will attract new business just because you are out there and have a powerful message.

Hopefully this was helpful as you build or refine a social media strategy for your business.  There is an unbelievable amount of opportunity out there; if you don’t take advantage of it now, your competition will.  Best of luck building “V-C-P” for your business!