It is easy to get caught up in all the social media tasks that you have.  If you are successful, your list of tasks keeps growing every day.

What are 10 things you should outsource to a virtual buzz assistant?

1. LinkedIn Approval - If you are openly linking to people on linked is, as I do, it is silly to be approving those links yourself.  You could get a lot more mileage if you have that approval and polite email reply outsourced.
2.  Asking Bloggers to Write About You – If you are researching blogs in your industry and sending them a polite request to link to your site or write about your product, do not do this work yourself.
3. Reciprocal Connections – I tend to follow people that follow me on twitter if they are active.  I also approve friendships in many networks and return the connection.  But I do not need to do those things myself.
4. Light Blog Writing – If you want to have more blog posts, consider hiring a virtual buzz assistant to write a daily summary on industry news – in addition to your regular posts.
5. Account Creation – Do you need help creating and managing your many social network accounts?  Don’t do it yourself unless your time is worth next to nothing.
6. Interlinking – All your accounts and sites perform better when they occasionally link to each other.  An assistant that is managing these accounts for you can also link to a few resources every day.
7. Correspondence – View Yaro Starak’s piece on this. Reducing your activities to critical business building activities is best for you in the long term.

Keep in mind I am a huge fan of creating great relationships.  But given the choice of a few stronger 1 on 1 relationships vs. more free time to create more great content for all readers, I will usually take the free time to write.  And a good assistant will forward me the connections that make sense.

When you first started your business, it was simple.  You had a checking account and it had a few expenses every month, and if you were lucky, some deposits.

“Today you are trading in social currency.  You may be rich, or you may be poor, but it is the currency of the future whether you like it or not.”

If the IRS came knocking at your young business, you gave them the shoe box of transactions and brewed them some coffee while they sat at your kitchen table and reviewed a whole year’s worth of transaction.  If you have been in business for a while, you know how quickly that changes.  Multiple checking accounts, automatic transactions left and right, loans, credit cards, balance transfers….

For a more mature company, an audit is a hassle if you have to do it yourself.

Social Networking seems just as confusing and out of control as finances can be.  It all started out easy.  No need to keep lots of records, you are just trying out that new social media tool…

Doing taxes, and auditing your own financials is not fun.  But if you were not forced to do it periodically, imagine what a mess you could have after a few years.

Your Social Media Efforts Need Audited

Your social media efforts produce important things for you, even if you are not taking full advantage of them.

1. Connections – Also known as lists of people
2. Feeds – Avenues to publish information other people see
3. Access – Permission to publish on other websites

Much like scheduling auto-payments for a bill, many of these tools automatically publish information or grow your network.  It is easy to forget it is happening.

Here are recommendations to getting the most out of your social media effort.

1. Have a real strategy – Who would you like to connect with and what do you have to offer them?
2. Have a reason for them to sign up to an email list – Email is still #1 when used correctly.  What can you offer people in your many online groups to entice them to sign up directly with you for email?
3. Track all your accounts – Keep a spreadsheet of accounts, when you signed up, password, etc.
4. Audit your profile and settings at least twice per year.  You will find all kinds of things have changed, but you have not updated them.
5. Look for new integration opportunities – Social media is doing a better job of integrating and standardizing than financial tools are, in my opinion.  (Yes, financial is a bit harder, I know)

Perpetual Beta Social Media

Social media sites are constantly evolving.  If not the tool itself, then some other tool that will take data from a site and display it within another tool.  Crazy!

You have to keep up, or your image will get muddled or stale.  The good news is that there are social media bookkeepers.  A good virtual assistant can help you organize the tools, track progress and outcome, grow your connections and audit your profiles -  often in a few hours per month.  The Virtual Buzz Assistant network was created because of the incredible need for this kind of help.  It helps people develop their own Virtual Buzz Assistant business and help busy professionals that understand the importance of social media to find the help they need.

No sales pitch here – you can do it all yourself right after you update Quickbooks and finish your weekly payroll.

I drastically lost weight over the past 9 months.  43 pounds, to be exact.  I did not do it with anything fancy.  I just had a check list I went down each day and over time I lost weight.  It was a list of all the things I would eat.

Here is a list of things I try to do each day to grow my business waistline over time.

1. Meet Someone New
2. Post something to my blog
3. Twitter or other social media
4. Generate New Income
5. Follow up with someone
6. Work on new product development
7. Improve something we currently do

Do I do all these things every day?  No.  And that is why I am not as successful as I could be.

Use the comments below to let us know what your list looks like.

OK, if you remember from the last article, we have assumed you are now sophisticated marketers that are blogging, writing and using social media effectively.

One of the big mistakes that I see people make, and that I have made, is by focusing on the big picture too much.

Lets take a business example of this first.  You probably know certain metrics for your business. 

• How many customers you have
• How much money you spend
• How much money you make
• How many hours you work

Good, you can calculate your profitability divided by your hours and get a clear sense of what you are earning.

But what would happen if you broke down each client as a profit center?

Unless you are selling widgets at the same price to everyone, you will see that some customers are much more profitable and take up less time than others.  If your business model is designed around maximizing value AND profit while minimizing your time involved PER client, you will have a successful business.

Internet Marketing is Exactly the Same

Instead of thinking of your Internet Marketing, start thinking about various Internet profit centers.  This can get tricky, because one could generate the lead and the second can generate the revenue.

Let me take my email course as an example.  It costs roughly $20 per month.  Our main website and several blogs generate the people that sign up for it, and this email system actually generates sales for us when people are interested in our products or affiliate links.  It has a high profit margin but by itself does not pay enough to support me.

I have other websites that do not sell anything, but they do generate leads for the eNewsletter, so the better they produce email subscribers, the more profitable they are even if they do not directly generate a penny.

This can all get fairly complex, which is why you have to think of each individual web effort on its own merit and with its own goals.

The outcome can be one of three things:

• Actual Revenue
• Links and Traffic
• Audience

Actual revenue might be a micro-site that is a one page website that sells something.  Since it probably costs less than $5 a month to host, you should be able to turn any website into at least a minor profit center with a solid product and good copywriting.

Links and Traffic are the currency of sites that you host, hopefully with minimal effort, that point to your higher value sites and drive traffic to them, as well as help them rank better.  These are “profitable” based on the total value of each visitor and link minus the cost to maintain.

Lastly, audience.  Also called the list and referred to as the most important asset a business has.  Have you given some thought to setting up a website that does nothing but offer a free white paper to build your list?  The long term value of your list, if used well should make your one page website & white paper download a big profit center, although not via direct sales.

Buzz Marketing is most effective with simple things that are easy to pass along.  If you keep focusing on the big picture, you are building bigger and more complex things and you may not know which parts are working.  If you create targeted efforts with clear potential for eventual profit, you will get more referrals and buzz.  It is just an easier message to communicate.
 

This is just a quick post to point you to Duct Tape Marketing  – The Hierarchy of Social Marketing.

 The most profound thing here is the blog as a base.  I have said for a long time that a reasonably good blog is the foundation for all other social media.  Social media tools create interest – and your blog is how people act on that interest and get to know you.

There is a variety of problems with social media.  I have identified the 7 mistakes that really make you look like a rookie that just learned about the Internet thingy.  Don’t worry if you are making some of these mistakes, you are not alone.

1. Trying to participate in too many tools
   If you are siging up and building a profile on every new thing that comes out, you better be a writer for Mashable.  No one can keep up with all the new things.  Find some you like and do a good job in them.
    
2. Expect that just setting up an account will yield results
   Guess what – you have to do more than just set up an account to get results.  If I had a dollar for every person that has told me they set up a LinkedIn account and nothing happened, I’d be rich.
    
3. Not using the tools to connect with people
   Nearly every site makes it possible to connect with other people (I think that is why they call is SOCIAL media).  If you are not connecting, no one is finding you.
    
4. Giving up after a short time
   Social media is about making and sustaining connections.  The only way you can grow your influence is long term.  Stop crying – if you do not like the fact that it takes time, don’t do it at all.
    
5. Promoting yourself without providing value
   The fact that you signed up for an account does not give you the right to promote yourself constantly.  And it is a sure way to get people to run in the other direction.
    
6. Not using the tools to link to other resources
   Similar to not connection to people, if you only link to your website or blog and never bookmark or link to other interesting resources, you will never gain the respect of your audience.  Nor should you.
    
7. Not intentionally building a target network
   Don’t pick the biggest network or the one that your kid brother said you should use.  Find out where your current customers go and your target audience hangs out online.  Intentionally build value and influence in the right communities, even if they are smaller.

If you are a business person trying to get into this social media thing, I fully expect that you have made all of these mistakes.  I promise you that if you get these things turned around, your popularity and influence will rise online, as will your pocketbook eventually.

Great reading – just in time for the snow (here, at least.)  I copied this list, which is a meme (something people are passing around) from Servant of Chaos.  The list is called O! Blogger and people are posting it all over.  I found some new blogs to read right away.

Feel free to add a few and copy it to your blog.

1. 100 Bloggers
2. 37 Days
3. 3i
4. 43 Folders
5. A Clear Eye
6. A Daily Dose of Architecture
7. The Agonist
8. All Things Workplace
9. All This Chittah Chattah
10. Angela Maiers
11. Antonella Pavese
12. Arizona High Tech
13. A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye
14. Badger Blogger
15. Bailey WorkPlay
16. Being Peter Kim
17. Brett Trout
18. Best of Mother Earth
19. Beyond Madison Avenue
20. Biz and Buzz
21. Bizhack
22. BizSolutions Plus
23. Blog Business World
24. Bloggers Showroom
25. Blogging for Business
26. Blogher
27. Blog Till You Drop!
28. Bob Sutton
29. Brain Based Business
30. Brains on Fire
31. Brand Autopsy
32. The Brand Builder Blog
33. Branding and Marketing
34. Branding Strategy
35. Brand is Language
36. BrandSizzle
37. Brandsoul
38. Bren Blog
39. Business Evolutionist
40. Business Management Life
41. Business Pundit
42. Business Services, Etc.
43. Busy Mom
44. Buzz Canuck
45. Buzz Customer
46. Buzzoodle
47. Career Intensity
48. Carpe Factum
49. Casual Fridays
50. Change Your Thoughts
51. Chaos Scenario
52. Cheezhead
53. Chief Happiness Officer
54. Chris Brogan
55. Christine Kane
56. Church of the Customer
57. Circaspecting
58. CK’s Blog
59. Come Gather Round
60. Community Guy
61. Confident Writing
62. Conversation Agent
63. Converstations
64. Cooking for Engineers
65. Cool Hunting
66. Core77
67. Corporate Presenter
68. Crayon Writer
69. Creating a Better Life
70. Creating Passionate Users
71. Creative Think
72. CRM Mastery
73. Crossroads Dispatches
74. Cube Rules
75. Culture Kitchen
76. Customers Are Always
77. Customer Service Experience
78. Customer Service Reader
79. Customers Rock!
80. Custserv
81. Craig Harper
82. Daily Fix
83. Dawud Miracle
84. Dave Olson
85. David Airey
86. David Maister
87. David S Finch
88. Design Your Writing Life
89. Digital Common Sense
90. Director Tom
91. Dipping into the Blogpond
92. Diva Marketing
93. Do You Q
94. Duct Tape Marketing
95. Empowerment 4 Life
96. The Engaging Brand
97. Essential Keystrokes
98. Every Dot Connects
99. Experience Architect
100. Experience Curve
101. Experience Matters
102. Extreme Leadership
103. Eyes on Living
104. Feld Thoughts
105. Flooring the Customer
106. Fouroboros
107. FutureLab
108. Genuine Curiosity
109. Get Shouty
110. Glass Half Full
111. The Good Life
112. Great Circle
113. Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog
114. Hee-Haw Marketing
115. Hello, My Name is BLOG
116. Holly’s Corner
117. Homeless Family
118. The Idea Dude
119. I’d Rather be Blogging
120. Influential Marketing
121. Innovating to Win
122. Innovation Feeder
123. Inspiring & Empowering Lives
124. Instigator Blog
125. Jaffe Juice
126. Jibber Jobber
127. Joyful Jubilant Learning
128. Joy of Six
129. The Kaiser Edition
130. Kent Blumberg
131. Kevin Eikenberry
132. Learned on Women
133. Life Beyond Code
134. Lip-sticking
135. Listics
136. The Lives and Times
137. Live Your Best Life
138. Live Your Inspiration
139. Living Light Bulbs
140. Logical Emotions
141. Logic + Emotion
142. Make It Great!
143. Making Life Work for You
144. Management Craft
145. Managing with Aloha
146. The M.A.P. Maker
147. The Marketing Excellence Blog
148. Marketing Headhunter
149. Marketing Hipster
150. The Marketing Minute
151. Marketing Nirvana
152. Marketing Roadmaps
153. Marketing Through the Clutter
154. Mary Schmidt
155. Masey
156. The Media Age
157. Micropersuasion
158. Middle Zone Musings
159. Miss604
160. Moment on Money
161. Monk at Work
162. Monkey Bites
163. Movie Marketing Madness
164. Motivation on the Run
165. My 2 Cents
166. My Beautiful Chaos
167. Naked Conversations
168. Neat & Simple Living
169. New Age 2020
170. New Charm School
171. Next Up
172. No Man’s Blog
173. The [Non] Billable Hour
174. Note to CMO
175. Office Politics
176. Optimist Lab
177. The Origin of Brands
178. Own Your Brand
179. Pardon My French
180. Passion Meets Purpose
181. Pause
182. Peerless Professionals
183. Perfectly Petersen
184. Personal Branding
185. The Podcast Network
186. The Power of Choice
187. Practical Leadership
188. Presentation Zen
189. Priscilla Palmer
190. Productivity Goal
191. Pro Hip-Hop
192. Prosperity for You
193. Purple Wren
194. QAQnA
195. Qlog
196. Reveries
197. Rex Blog
198. Ririan Project
199. Rohdesign
200. Rothacker Reviews
201. Scott H Young
202. Search Engine Guide
203. Servant of Chaos
204. Service Untitled
205. Seth’s Blog
206. Shards of Consciousness
207. Shotgun Marketing
208. Simplenomics
209. Simplicity
210. Slacker Manager
211. Slow Leadership
212. Socially Adept
213. Social Media Marketing Blog
214. Spare Change
215. Spirit in Gear
216. Spooky Action
217. Steve’s 2 Cents
218. Strategic Design
219. Strength-based Leadership
220. StickyFigure
221. Studentlinc
222. Success Begins Today
223. Success Creeations
224. Success From the Nest
225. Successful Blog
226. Success Jolt
227. Talk to Strangers
228. Tammy Lenski
229. Tell Ten Friends
230. That Girl from Marketing
231. Think Positive!
232. This Girl’s Weblog
233. Thoughts & Philosophies
234. Tim Longhurst
235. Tom Peters
236. Trust Matters
237. Verve Coaching
238. Viral Garden
239. Waiter Bell
240. Wealth Building Guy
241. What’s Next
242. Writers Notes
243. You Already Know this Stuff
244. Zen Chill

 Tags: O! Blog

When it comes to Internet Buzz, are your careful, fearful or full throttle?

If you make the argument that the Internet does not matter to your organization, then you are just in denial.  The three options above are your only real choices with how you approach your online image.

Careful:  Careful companies control internally who can say things and what they can say.  They plan for worst case situations and they do not enter into the wild world of social media without a lot of preparation and a solid game plan.

Fearful:  Fearful companies are afraid of what customers and employees will say, so they have a basic website and avoid attracting attention.

Full Throttle:  Full Throttle companies fully expect some negative comments and reactions.  They try lots of things and see what works.

You might think that I favor Full Throttle, and I do for my own business.  But my business is the type that people expect to have that attitude.

What businesses should be careful businesses and why do they still need employee evangelism?

Careful businesses are usually businesses that have a long and established brand identified.  They need to first do no damage, and if they get a little buzz, great.  These organizations should have a core team of employees that act as evangelists online.  They should be trained to carefully represent the core message and brand of the company while still putting a personal touch to what they do.  This will help companies create a more personal connection with the public.

Fearful Companies - These companies are probably afraid to get publicity because they know that their product, services or support are not as good as advertised.  Another type of fearful company could be one that would easily attract negative comments and publicity.  Maybe a heavy polluter or a controversial service.

Limited employee evangelism is still critical to these companies.  If there is going to be negative publicity at some point, you can proactively (yet quietly) be publishing the good things associated with your name.  The more good things that are out there, the less damage a bad story can do.

Full Throttle companies are going to be your start up companies or trendy companies.  They can make a mistake or get some bad publicity and will laugh it off, because it is a small part of who they are.  People will forgive a full throttle company faster because they feel like they know them, are connected to them and they are the little guy taking on the big (careful) guns.

- Not that I am saying anything goes – You still have to be smart about it.

These companies can get every employee involved with evangelism.  You should be everywhere you can and stirring the pot.

There is no right answer here.  The question you have to ask yourself is: Do the negative risks to the company and brand outweigh the positive benefits of big time Buzz?

Are you tired of hearing about Web 2.0, Blogging and new media?

 When we started doing Buzz Marketing a few years ago, it was fresh and new.  Now every web developer says they offer innovative Buzz Marketing and social media services.  This is because it is easy to do.  The hard part of Buzz Marketing is that it takes time and passion.  That is why I only work with a few clients at a time – I cannot shift passion every hour.  There is a better solution than hiring me to do it.

Employee Evangelism is a better bet for most companies.  Sure, you can hire someone to go out and get links and create relationships for you, but you cannot buy the passion that SHOULD BE within your organization. 

Employee Evangelism Training
Las Vegas – January 24th and 25th – 2008

Employee Evangelism Event >>

Buzzoodle builds resources and conduct workshops that help you improve the Buzz you are getting from your exceptional team members.  The return on investment when you create employee evangelists is huge.  They generate interest, generate website traffic, generate visibility and stronger brand awareness, and they develop a broader network of people they know and influence.  One exceptional evangelist can change the face of your organization.

Click here to read the details of the event.  If you want to get the ball rolling, send a great employee or two and we will help then see the benefits to them and the organization – as well as introduce them to the how.  Basic computer skills and communication skills are all that are needed. AND ENTHUSIASM – Can’t forget that!

Expect those people you send to come back charged up and infecting the people around them with enthusiasm for creating buzz on a regular basis.

Hurry – There is a DEEP discount if you register in November!

In a perfect world, employee evangelism strengthens your brand and spreads its message.  But unless you have a strong brand that clearly stands for something and can be easily passed from person to person, your brand can never grow legs and take off running.

Scott White, the Big Kahuna of BIG – Brand Identity Guru – agreed to give us a few tips on making the brand more Buzz friendly.  For more information read his blog: http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress and use his research services  if you want to pump up your brand.

Ron: Scott, What are 3 simple ways to improve a brand that most people can do themselves?

 Scott:

1. Social Media- get on Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace etc. It’s easy and free and you can pick up some great business.

2. Blog- on a regular basis, tell your story, be compelling and honest.

3. e-Newsletter – sending out an e-newsletter is simple and very inexpensive to do. Staying in front of your prospects is really important.

Ron:  What does a brand expert like you do that is different?  What could someone expect if they hired a professional brander?

Scott:  They would expect us to develop a brand identity and positioning that are different and unique. I’ve been out to see Fortune 500 company’s that can’t tell me their own positioning. Why are you better? What makes you different? Are you ready to live that brand?

Ron: If someone wants to create a buzz, what does their brand need to have to make success easier?

Scott: A definitive brand identity. If Volvo the auto maker stands for safety what do you stand for. It’s the toughest question a company can answer.

Ron: Who should contact you and how do they reach you?

Scott: Anyone responsible for their company brand should contact us. And we’re a small boutique branding agency of only 15 so call me directly at 508-238-4347 or email me at swhite@brandidentityguru.com. Ask for the BIG Kahuna!

Thanks Scott.  Remember, if your Brand is weak, employee evangelism will be much harder.  Check out there excellent website and blog.