Do You Love Yourself Enough?

February 14, 2012

How do you love yourself? Do you give yourself permission to seek training, education and resources to expand your knowledge base and online presence?

As a social media coach that has trained privately and in groups’ adults since 2009 on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, I’ve been told over and over how the style of my social media coaching, the patience and focus I extend to the participant during the training pays off in dividends. Unfortunately, many have spent countless hours in time, and often financial investment before they ask for help! Are you one of these individuals / small business owners?

So many adults in today’s world know they need to be online, but don’t give themselves a chance to learn before diving in full force. You wouldn’t jump in a lake without swimming lessons would you? What about skiing? Lessons for that too … right!

Often times, you dive in unprepared and become overwhelmed, discouraged and intimidated. You spend day after day using social networking sites, getting limited or no results and all they are getting is nowhere fast!

This is where loving yourself comes into play! You need to give yourself permission to not be perfect in everything. You worry about what other professionals think if you don’t have all the answers, so they don’t seek out the training, education, information and ask questions to help you succeed online.

You can’t be all things at all times – at least not without some training to get you started. Perhaps the investment isn’t monetary. It’s an investment of your time.

• Reading blog posts is a great way to learn more about the power of social media. I recommend Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, Windmill Networking and of course my own blog, LissaDuty.com, to get you started.  There are countless other ones out there that I love and read.
• Google – use Google and search out your questions! Seriously, I use Google all the time and ask it questions like “HTML Code to change Link Color”. Google will come back with tons of references that I can review on how to complete this action.
• Follow Other Social Media Influencers and see what they are doing online. I have to add here, realistically, you are not going to be one of these influencers anytime soon, just follow them and learn.  You will get ideas to incorporate into your social media strategy.
• Seek out a Social Media Coach. This is where I come into play.  I teach individuals and small business owners step by step hands-on how to use and understand these social networking sites. The 1^st part of each one of my trainings focuses on understanding what each aspect, link, word, etc. means to the individual / small business owner. To effectively use a social networking site, you need to understand what everything means and does – no assumptions! The 2^nd piece of that is teaching them how to use the site for their purpose.

So do you LOVE YOURSELF enough to INVEST in yourself?

If you need some social media coaching and have decided to invest in yourself I can help and have just a few spots left available at my 2011 pricing – $100.00 per two hour session. The rate will be $150.00 per two hour session, after these spots sell out. Not sure, I can help you, feel free to email me.

Your turn …. What steps are you taking / have taken in your business and online to expand your knowledge. What kind of training have you taken?

PS. Those that follow my blog know that stuff that happens in my day to day life is my inspiration … a friend (a guy – not a date, but kinda, maybe a date – if that’s possible) cancelled on me for tonight – Valentine’s Day of all days! He had a last minute business trip – duty calls – I guess! I must thank him since he inspired this blog post – he’ll remain anonymous at this point. I knew I wanted to write a Valentine’s Day post, but wasn’t quite sure how to spin it.  When he cancelled – I loved myself enough to tell him “Ok. Be safe” and move on. I didn’t spout off any tacky comments to guilt him. (Notice, I didn’t say I didn’t think any tacky comments! I came up with a few! LOL!) Hence, the title of this post, “Do You Love Yourself Enough”!

What Small Business Can Learn From Big Business In Social Media

February 8, 2012

The social media marketing world is chock full of examples of how businesses can use social media to engage audiences and drive conversation. There’s also a growing number of case studies that show how businesses can actually drive customer acquisition, lead conversion and the like — which are all better business metrics.

But small businesses are often left by the wayside since the case studies are typically focused on companies that invest thousands of dollars into their social media livelihoods. Still, the big companies can offer lots of ideas and even corollary examples for the small- and medium-sized business in this realm.

Most of the customer service models in social media (Comcast, Dell, etc.) were not started with great budgets or sizable teams. Instead, it was typically one person responding to individual Tweets. Sure, the companies quickly scaled upward once they realized how much of an impact social media customer service could make, but small businesses can still do it. And for not much more than time invested.

The revenue-driving case studies we’ve seen to date, like Dell’s $6.5 million in sales from its @delloutlet Twitter account (As of December of 2009, by the way. They haven’t updated the figure since.) or even Cold Stone Creamery’s $10,000 monthly sales increases (per store) thanks to eGifting on Facebook, are inspirations as well. No, not all small businesses have insatiable products with fans lined up out the doors to buy, but understanding the mechanisms used to track and credit sales to social channels is good learning for any business.

When you’re looking at case studies from existing businesses, even large ones, ask yourself a few questions to help understand what you can take from their learnings. Questions like:

1. What channel or communications method did they use to engage their customers? Can I use that same channel and replicate that type of method without adding a lot of time or cost to my marketing?
2. What mechanism did they use the measure their success? Can I use that same mechanism without adding at lot of time or cost. How easy will it be for me to capture that information?
3. Take away the fancy design, fact they probably used an agency or two and had a big budget. Do the tools exist to help me do this on a budget? Google the functionality to see if something exists (e.g. — “free Facebook contest application”).

We can emulate the big businesses out there, often times for a lot less investment than we think. It just takes seeing how other’s success is working and finding more efficient ways to produce it.

Of course, there’s a big advantage small businesses often have over large businesses, too. They’re more in tune with location and a local audience than larger ones. That means they have easier access and more relevant messaging for the end consumer than larger brands. That’s probably the one area of social media that empowers small businesses most.

You and your small business can learn how you can attack the advantages of small business at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth on Feb. 17 at Union Station Dallas. Mike Merrill will be talking about that exact topic. Not to mention, you’ll have lots of exposure to ideas and inspiration from some larger brands and exposure to some high-level strategic learning from national speakers and experts.

Join me, Brian Clark from Copyblogger, Tom Webster from Edison Research, Zena Weist of Edelman Digital, Chris Baccus of AT&T and more at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth. The day includes breakfast, lunch and a cocktail reception, great learning and networking and a one-month free trial of ExploringSocialMedia.com, a question-answer site and learning community. Next Friday will rock. I want you to be there.

Head on over to register. Just make sure to use the code LISSASVIPS to get $150 off the full ticket price. (Lissa’s cool like that … takin’ care of y’all and such.) We’ll see you on Feb. 17!

Special thanks to Jason Falls for this guest post contribution! (The first guest blogger I have had on my blog – not to shabby, if I say so myself! Next guest blogger – who knows! You better stay tuned! You never now what rabbit I will pull out of my hat next. ~ Lissa

Jason Falls is the CEO of Social Media Explorer, host of Explore social media marketing events and author of the book No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. Follow him on Twitter at @JasonFalls.

Do you have a backup plan for your business and clients if something happens to you?

November 10, 2011

Hey you, small business owner, sole proprietor, one-person business do you have a plan if / when something happens to you? This backup plan and a succession plan are essential and your responsibility as a small business owner. If you are like me, you have your plan all thought up in your head, but nothing documented. It’s time to get busy typing.

First, I want to share a little background on why I am saying this to all of you right now. Recently a young God fearing, beautiful, energetic, successful business woman, Denai Downs Vaughn was in a fatal car accident.  She not only left behind a beautiful little girl and a husband, but a business, a successful BlogTalkRadio show and had an Online Radio Summit planned out and starting very shortly with a colleague, Dale Little. It was a slap in the face for me and many of my friends, which are also many of hers! She was the exact same age as me.

I know, because I am there with you, something happening to you that makes it so you can no longer do business as usual, is a topic no one wants to talk about, think about, etc. However we have to do it! It’s ugly, scary and unpleasant, but it must be do anyway. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a death, as it was in Denai’s case, that makes it so you can no longer work. It can be a heart attack, stroke, or even a loss of limb. As much as we all would like to think we are in control of our fate, we are not.  We can control how we act, drive, the risks we take, etc., but we can’t control weather, tornados, Acts of God, or the actions of others.

I am a small business owner, a sole proprietorship and in many cases, a one-person shop. I do have a team that I bring in on a project-by- project basis, but in general it’s all on me. Every single Tweet, LinkedIn and Faceboook Page update for a client is completed by me.  The blog posts are put up on their websites and published by me. Their email newsletters are drafted and finalized by me.  The logins, passwords and the flow for these accounts are known only by me in most cases.

So what is my plan:

1.  After I complete the setup for a social media client on their accounts I will make sure I give them immediately the websites, logins and passwords for the accounts I created. Print off the logins and passwords and put in my lock box.

2. Backup plan – keep a close friend or relative (my sister in this case) updated on the background about my business. Where it is at growth wise and what kind of services I am doing. She doesn’t necessarily need every detail about who my clients are (she can get this from the lock box and computer records if the times comes where it is necessary), but she needs an understanding of how many clients I have / project scope etc.  (Sis, we are going to need to schedule a monthly meeting I think.)

3. Your team – document who your team is, what kind of information you trust/share with each one, their contact information, what your payment agreement is and the scope of work they complete for you. Print it off and put it in the lock box.

4. Outline – What you do for each client and when do you do it.  Of course I have this and you do to when you submit a proposal to them and get a signed contract back from the client, however you need this accessible easily in case something happens to you.

5. Colleague - You must talk with and designate a trusted professional in your industry with your skills set who can / will finish up the projects for your clients if something was to happen to you.

6. Successor – Is your business going to continue on with another owner if something was to happen to you. Do you want it to continue on? Do you want someone else to use your business name?  You need to document this information carefully and share with the person you designate in item #2.

The person you designate to know your backup plan – item #2 and item #5 the colleague can be the same person, but I don’t necessarily recommend that. You want someone #2 to make sure the colleague #5 is finishing the projects and keeping their commitments.  You might decide two have to colleagues that you designate. One to complete some of the tasks and one to complete the others, or the primary person and the backup person, who knows, something could happen to the first person at the same time as you.

7. Business Records - Document your system for how you keep account of your business expenses. Your spouse or backup plan person, as designated in item #2, will need to be able to organize these records for tax purposes, etc.

8. Business Debts – Document your monthly business expenses, who you pay what and when. Automatic drafts, etc. Your backup plan person will need to get these accounts closed and the automatic drafts turned off or determine if your colleague mentioned in item #5 has these same accounts, so she can finish the scope of work. Obviously, your colleague wouldn’t be able to keep all of the money made from the clients for the projects they complete if your business is still paying for the expenses attached to the individual clients.

Keep your business debts paid current. Try not to have any IOUs out there. If you pay your team flat rates per project, pay them promptly when they complete the project. If you pay monthly, document each occasion for each team member you owe them – a monthly history.

9. Keep your hard drive (yes, a techy word) organized – I know this one might throw you for a loop, but seriously, you know where and how you save your documents and records, but will someone else be able to make sense of it if they need to access the records later.

Make sure you have printed details on how you organize your computer files in the lock box. (For the non-techy, a hard drive is where are you files are saved are your computer.)

10. Passwords - If you are like me all of your clients’ logins and passwords are written down and documented, but all your login and passwords to your accounts (social media, bills, bank, etc) are in your memory. You don’t write them down because you are protecting yourself from getting hacked and someone stealing the file.

Write them down anyway, you may be protecting yourself by not documenting them, but that is the only person. You are not protecting your spouse, team, debtors, etc. when you don’t. If no one can access your accounts, how in the heck can they close them, pay anyone, etc.

Wow – what a TO DO list! I just shared 10 things with you to check out and act on, and in the process gave me many things I have to go do right now. I already have my #2 person picked out and designated, Jimi Bratt, and my #5, two people actually, Web Designer / Graphic Artist / Marketing Authority – Robin Moss and Social Media Marketing Consultant / Online Marketing Extraordinaire - Ana Lucia Novak, they already know – aren’t they lucky! LOL! Between the three of them, I know they will get my clients fixed up and finished out if an emergency was to happen.

What about you? Do you have a plan? It’s time for you to get busy and do some serious thinking?

It’s your turn … comment below the other steps you thought of that I need to do and the other steps everyone reading this post needs to do. Please comment away and remember, we are only as good as the friends and team we surround ourselves with.

P.S. This blog post is dedicated in Loving Memory to Denai Downs Vaughn. She was an inspiration to many. Please do keep her family and friends in your thoughts, say a quick prayer and end it with a WOOHOO for Denai, as she is with her maker now.