Passion

Earlier this year I was lucky to not only attend TEDxCharlotte but to also be part of the Social Media team.  It was an amazing experience and I walked away inspired to make a difference in my community and the world.

There was an underlying theme of passion.  The speakers and the room was exploding with it.

One of my favorite talks that day was Chad Henderson of NoDa Brewing Company.  You can view it below and/or read the live blog post over on the TEDxCharlotte blog.

I approached Chad at the after party with a NoDa brew in hand to say hello and to let him know I enjoyed his talk.  What happened next is best described as someone throwing up their passion all over someone else (also known as "Chadding").  His passion for craft beer was, like everything else that day, inspiring.

I have had moments where I "Chadded" all over someone.  It was after one of the Charlotte American Marketing Association monthly meetings.  The topic that night was inbound marketing. To say I was geeking out the whole time is an understatement.  I live tweeted during the event and then cornered the speakers after their presentation.  What happened next was like-minded people Chadding about topics they were passionate about.  Among the items discussed were inbound marketing, The Sales Lion, The Challenger Sale, Hubspot e-books, the power of social selling, and content marketing.  It's possible that I forgot to breathe a couple of times and my hands did a lot of talking.  I was high on passion.

The actual verb "to Chad" came from a conversation with a dear friend of mine when I told her about my TEDxCharlotte and CAMA experiences.  Since then, we have used it to describe things that we are passionate about, things that make us come to life.

And yes, Chad is aware of this and I thank him for being a good sport about becoming a verb. 

What are you passionate about?  

4 Ways to Stay Top of Mind on LinkedIn

1. Sharing valuable and insightful content

“Top of mind” was one of the points I tried to drive home during the social selling training at our National Sales Conference.  It’s one thing to have a complete LinkedIn profile; it’s another to provide insights to your network with content and engage them in conversation.  But you have to be careful not to assume that “top of mind” means constantly posting crap just to stay visible.  There’s nothing worse than annoying your network.  Be relevant and practice constraint (there are apps that can help with that but more on that later).

A few days ago I noticed that LinkedIn has added a new feature on their home page labeled “Who’s Viewed Your Updates.”  This is an exciting new feature because it shows you how many people have seen your update and it allows you to analyze what information your network really wants to see.  That’s powerful information and best of all it’s available for free (detailed insights  are available for premium accounts)!

2. Like, comment and share others’ content

Content is only one part of helping you stay top of mind.  You have to be active by liking and sharing others’ content as well.  My personal rule of thumb is to keep 80% of my likes, shares, and comments specific to my industry and reserve 20% for all other interests. 

3. Endorse and recommend

Regardless of whether you love or hate the feature, endorsements can be a great tool not only as a “feel good” but to also remind someone of your existence. But I must caution you, do not do it just do it and only endorse people for things that you can honestly back up with a true recommendation.  This is why a recommendation is more powerful.  Recommend past colleagues, current colleagues, and customers.  Help others be viewed as experts and rock stars in their field.

4. Set what others see when you’ve viewed their profile to public

There are pros and cons to setting your profile view to public and for the longest time I hid behind the wall of anonymity.  Staying anonymous allowed me to view others’ profiles without their knowledge of who I was and in my past role it was a good way to screen candidates prior to their interview with our company.  Now my profile is set to public and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  This feature allows you to see who has viewed your profile but even more importantly, it allows others to see that you have viewed theirs. 

People do business with people they know, like, and trust.  Sharing content and staying active on social networks helps build your personal brand and helps you stand out as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) amongst a sea of others who do not bring value to their customers and networks.

And remember, it’s not all about you.  Give to give, not give to get.  Your activity should be 90% about others and 10% about you or your company.

Curating Tools:

Some days the relevant content floodgates open up and all you want to do is post it all at once to your networks.  Don’t.  Pick out several gems and post them at different times during the day (again, not all at once).  Save the others for when the waters run dry. 

My favorite tool for curating content for a slow day is Scoop.it.  The free account allows you to have five different boards and you can push the article directly to LinkedIn from the site.  A premium account gives you ten boards as well as the ability to schedule posts.

Feedly is another great tool to keep all your RSS feeds in one place and allows you to share directly with your network.  Feedly is also tied to Buffer, an app that allows users to schedule posts. 

These tools allow you to stay top of mind even when you’re away.

Organizing Your Inbox After Vacation

I’m a bit of a workaholic so the thought of vacation both excites and scares me.  Excites me because a vacation is a much needed break.  Studies show that a well-rested employee is much more productive and satisfied with their job than an exhausted one.  Scares me because that’s two weeks (or 120 hours) of work that will need to be made up.  It’s no wonder that one ends up working more before and after vacation...  

My goal of peeking at my e-mail once a day was thwarted by the $20.48 charge per megabyte of roaming data.  This meant one thing and one thing only: catching up was not going to be easy.   

The Grumpy Cat hates e-mail.

But catching up doesn't have to be difficult either.   

Organization is key, even if you're not away from the office.  I use Outlook for both my day job and at home for side projects because it allows me to use categories and color coding to organize my e-mails, mark them for follow up with different due dates and reminders, and automatic filing for select senders and message types.  You  can even change the color of the message in your inbox for different senders and if you're in the "to" or the "cc" field.   

I have used the same inbox organization system and have perfected it over the past couple of years. It takes me, on average, 4-5 hours to sort and organize one week's worth of (about 500-750)  unread e-mails and create an action item list to tackle for the rest of the week. 

So how do I do I tackle my inbox? 

Step one: 

Move all newsletters and other subscriptions into a folder marked "Read Later."  It's important to catch up on industry news but that can be done at a later time either during lunch or when taking a quick mental break before moving on to the next task. 

Step two: 

Sort e-mails by sender and check for "fires" that need immediate attention from key stakeholders.  Take care of quick wins and advise of timeline for the resolution of others. 

Step three: 

Start at the beginning and work your way up the inbox tagging e-mails for follow up, categorizing, color coding, and filing.  At this time I'm also creating my to-do list the old school way, with pen and paper, and prioritizing tasks.   

Step four: 

Tackle e-mails with quick responses first.  Get those out of the way.  It also has a positive psychological effect because you feel like you've checked  a lot off of the to-do list in a relatively short time frame.  

Then tackle e-mails that may require a little bit of research and/or tasks that are not extensive. 

Lastly, prioritize larger tasks/projects. 

How do you catch up at work after vacation?

Travel Tuesday: China & Social Media

It’s #TravelTuesday and I’ve got China on my mind.  In less than a week I will be embarking on my second trip to China and my to-do list keeps growing.  Mark one item off only to add five more. 

It amazes me how much has changed since the last time I have traveled there, specifically digital marketing and social media.  All Western social media platforms that I use daily are blocked, except for LinkedIn, by the “Great Firewall of China” (GFC).  This got me curious, what is social media like in China?  So I googled my little heart out, like I always do with any topic that sparks interest. 

Turns out the Chinese have their own networks (no surprise) and mobile is huge!  There are more mobile internet users than there are PC-based internet users.  [Gosh, I hope they have Wi-Fi everywhere!]

Below is an extensive SlideShare deck on social, digital and mobile usage in China.  The cliff notes version can be found here.

We Are Social’s Guide to Social, Digital and Mobile in China (2nd Edition, Jan 2013)

Usage and adaptation of social media is growing in China and the opportunity to tap into a market of 1,353,821,000 people is tempting but should be approached with cultural sensitivity.  Thankfully, there are marketing agencies that could help you enter the rapidly growing market and navigate the intricacies of Chinese government relations and culture.

I’m not only excited to explore the sights, sounds, culture, and food but also the intricacies of digital marketing in China!

Do you do business in China?  Does your brand have social media presence behind the GFC?

Additional resources:
Chinese Firewall Test
List of Websites Blocked in the People’s Republic of China (Wiki)
Chinese Social Media 101 (blog)
Big International Social Networks Are Closing In On Facebook

marketCHARLOTTE: Doing More with Less, CruiseDeals.com

This is a recap of marketCHARLOTTE, part three of three. 
Part one: Lowe’s Mobile Strategy
Part two: Quaero and Big Data

The last session at marketCHARLOTTE was presented by Rich Tucker, Digital Marketer Extraordinaire (ok, ok, I added that last part but it’s true).   First things first, he’s hilarious.  You just had to be there! You’re welcome! ;) 

Rich was one of the first people I followed on Twitter when I signed up for the platform in 2009 so it was exciting to finally meet him in person and to hear him speak at the event.

​Rich Tucker - Slicing through the Noise

His presentation really hit home on doing more with less.  “Social media” is not free but it does allow you to do more with the ever decreasing marketing budget.

My main takeaways were as follows:

1)      Social media should follow your marketing plan, not the other way.  It should be fully integrated into your marketing plan and not left to flail around on its own.

2)      Focus and master one or two social media platforms.  Go where your customers are and concentrate your efforts there.  Don’t waste your time on platforms where the return on investment is low.

3)      Engage with your followers. 

Nothing upsets me more than a company that asks for follower engagement but does not participate in the engagement themselves.  Set time aside to respond, ask follow up questions, and thank your followers for their feedback.

We’re in the people business regardless if it’s B2C or B2B.

​Rich Tucker - Partnerships

4)      Partnership, partnership, partnership!

Partnerships allow you to not only share the cost but to also gain new customers.  You don’t have to be in the same industry but you should be complimentary to each other or have some commonality within your customer base.

Rich provided six ways organizations can partner together via Social Media:

• Guest Blog
• Social Good
• Re-tweet and share each other’s content
• Co-host events
• Create content together (such as an e-book or a video)
• Contests or other social medial campaigns

These tips apply to all business types and sizes, whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a company of one.

What was your favorite marketCHARLOTTE session?  What was the one thing you’ve learned that you didn’t know before?  Have you since applied any of the advice to your business since the event?

Additional reading:
Why P&G Can’t Blame 6,250 Layoffs on Facebook
What in the Heck is Co-Marketing?