I had the opportunity to hear Jay Baer speak – TWICE – when he was in Des Moines this past March at the Downtown Central Library. 
The cost of the luncheon meeting included a copy of his book The Now Revolution which he co-authored with Amber Naslund.
The Now Revolution talks about how the social web has changed the way we do business – forever…
Your organization once moved at a snail’s pace when responding to outside inquiries and complaints – you would have meetings with numerous internal teams to determine how to respond to an “incident”.
With today’s online world, businesses need to respond instantaneously – and are expected to. You might not have all of the information, but we (the online world) want a response! Customers are lost and won in real-time, every second of every day.
If your business hasn’t adapted to this evolution, it must.
The Now Revolution won’t teach you how to Tweet or update your Facebook status; it outlines how you must retool your business to make the real-time, online world work in your favor rather than against you.
Below are the seven shifts that will help you make your company faster, smarter, and more social:
- Engineer a New Bedrock
- Find Talent You Can Trust
- Organize your Armies
- Answer the New Telephone
- Emphasize Response-Ability
- Build a Fire Extinguisher
- Make a Calculator
Have any of you read this book? What are your thoughts?
While making a yummy afternoon snack, I dropped some of my food on the floor. “Five-second rule”, right? Everybody’s heard of it. If you pick up the piece of food within five seconds, it doesn’t matter that it was on the ground. It couldn’t have gotten THAT dirty, right? Imagine how much food went to waste before this rule!
Do your social media activities have a five-second rule?
Have you ever in the heat of the moment hastily written a blog post ranting about a client (names excluded to protect the innocent) and posted it only to regret it altogether the next day? You can always just delete it, right? Sure, you may have deleted it from your blog/website, but if I subscribe to your blog via RSS feed, your blog post is sitting in my Google Reader. The damage can’t be completely undone.
How about Twitter? Sure, it’s a more laid-back community, conversations can happen pretty quickly. What if you’re tweeting on your business’ handle towards the end of the work day and instead of typing “ask”, you type “a**”? You don’t realize it until the next day because you “power-down” at 5pm (who does that anymore? Raise of hands?). You quickly delete the tweet so it’s removed from your Twitter profile, but the damage has already been done in the form of retweets (your followers sharing your tweet with their followers).
Have you ever made a social media blunder only to realize that you couldn’t completely “take it back”? I feel that the online world is forgiving when it comes to accidents in the case of my Twitter example above; but how about the blog example? Thoughts?
Where do I turn to when I have a question or don’t know how to do something? My situation may be unique since I am independent professional. Perhaps you work in an office environment where you can stick your head over your cubical wall and ask your neighbor. This is what I do:
- LinkedIn Questions/Answers: You can ask your question to the entire online community or just to your LinkedIn Connections. After you’ve categorized and submitted your question, the answers start rolling in…from people all over the world willing and able to help. Give back to the LinkedIn community by answering questions posted to your area of expertise
- Tweet: I tweet out my question and often receive a response and/or a link to an article that can help. People LOVE to answer questions on Twitter – makes them look smart…
- Facebook: The same with Facebook. I didn’t know where to find a reputable mechanic to fix the air conditioner in my car and hadn’t had much luck on my own in the past. I asked my Facebook Friends for their suggestions. My friend Chris Seiberling mentioned a business he was familiar with on the NE side of Des Moines. I checked them out and they’re GREAT! They’ll be getting a LOT of my business. I respect the opinion of a friend over the plain, old Yellow Pages. How about you?
Where do you turn when you don’t know how to do something?
I was a late adopter of Google products and I’m glad I made the change when I did. You can really use Google to manage all of your business’ communications strategies whether you’re colleagues are on the same “network” or not.
Google Calendar recently came out with a new feature: appointment slots. Here’s what you can do with it:
- Show clients/employees your availability (you can already share your busy calendar with others)
- NOW you can let them book an appointment during the times/dates you designate
- Your appointment availability calendar lays on top of their Google calendar to make it easier for them to choose a date/time that fits their schedule
This is a major time saver. No more back-and-forth emails/phone calls. Simply block out the time you are available for appointments and share that calendar with others. I just added my appointment availability calendar to my e-signature and to my website since I offer free 30-minute consultations. Prospects don’t have to call during office hours to book an appointment. They can schedule you when it’s convenient for them.
How to create appointment slots
- Sign in to Google Calendar.
- Click an open spot in the calendar grid. In the event window that pops up, click Appointment slots.
- Enter all the details for the appointment slot: what it is, which of your calendars it should appear on (I created a separate calendar), and whether it should be a single slot or multiples.
- From there you can finish by clicking Create slots, or click Edit details to modify more settings: location, description, repeating slots, etc. If you want to invite others to attend, use the Add Guests field.
- When you click Edit details, you’ll see the URL Google created to allow you to share your calendar. Be sure it’s the URL that corresponds to the correct calendar you want to share. It’s a LONG URL, so I used www.bit.ly to shorten it up.
- When you’re done, click Save.
What are some other uses you can think of for Google’s appointment slots? How about organizing volunteers???
Hopefully, by now, you’ve created a Facebook Fan Page for your business. Did you know that you can comment on people’s personal Facebook pages AND other business’ Facebook Fan Pages as your business’ Facebook Fan Page? (What did she just say???)
For a long time, you could only comment on Walls as yourself; now you can comment as your business/brand. Here’s step-by-step instructions:
- From www.facebook.com, login to your personal Facebook page
- Click “Account” in the upper right-hand corner
- Select “Use Facebook as Page”
- You will be shown a list of all of the pages for which you have Administrative Rights. Select a page
- You’ll then be taken to that particular Fan Page
- If you’re not sure if you’re using Facebook as yourself or a Fan Page, you can always click on the “Account” button in the upper right-hand corner
Why would you ever want to comment on other’s Walls as your business’ Fan Page? To create awareness for your business.
People and businesses may “Like” your page if they knew about you. Sharing a resource on another business’ Fan Page is providing value to their audience, and, if they are compelled, they may visit your Fan Page and “Like” it.
Be sure that your businesses are complimentary and not competing. For example, if you event planning business is organizing a local festival, share the event on the Convention and Visitor Bureau’s Fan Page. The CVB will thank you and so will their audience.
Be cautious: don’t use this technique to leave sales pitches because the Administrator can (and will) delete them. AND you’ll have a negative effect on their audience which will reflect poorly on your brand.
