Shane Gibson's Podcast – AI and Digital Selling – B2B Sales and Influence

Today’s podcast is on 11 Social Media Trends for 2012. Here’s the outline for my podcast – I would love your feedback and thoughts:

 Key trends

Potential pitfalls

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Hiring a social media manager, social media coordinator, chief tweeter or whatever you might call it is a challenging endeavor. There are many brands which have experienced great success and many who have also shot the foot off of their brand on the internet. Social media is not a department or a cubicle, it represents the most powerful word of mouth (or word of mouse) channels that have ever existed. Too many organizations aren’t strategic about who they hire internally or how they intend on implementing social media and integrating it into their business processes. Today’s podcast covers four major areas you need to look at (there are many more) before hiring.

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Today’s podcast and blog post are a result of some great dialogue, ideas and amazing research findings that were unearthed at yesterday’s panel at the ERDI conference here in Calgary, Alberta.

The panel I sat on was on “Technology Implementation over the last 20 years in our schools. The panelists were: Michael Goldberg, Economist, Marty Keast, President of the School Division for Pearson Education, Linda Fabi, Director of Education for the Waterloo District School Board and the panel was kicked off by a very engaging and insightful talk by Thomas Greaves.

Thomas who is the co-author of “America’s Digital Schools” spearheaded an in-depth research project called Project Red, of which he shared key findings with us. They did an in-depth study of 997 schools (K-12) in the USA and looked at 136 different variables in regards to technology and it’s impact on student engagement, drop rates and even the positive economic impacts and savings associated with schools that are digital.

The schools that had some or all of the above 9 factors implemented effectively outperformed comparable schools that had not embraced technology. Very few schools (I believe only 1 if my notes are correct) apply all 9 strategically and comprehensively.

The one thing that really stood out for me is that fact that students that were allowed to regularly use search and social media in the classroom outperformed those that didn’t. One big question from the audience of over 100 school superintendents, directors and technology partners is: “Where a how do we start with social media?”

My thoughts would be to do the following: (which is expanded upon in this podcast):

#1) Start with a social media policy for district staff from senior executives to principles and teachers. Then expand that to a policy for students, volunteers, parents and any other stakeholders.

#2) Have a series on initial buy-in sessions for staff at all level to help see the scope of social media and it’s impact and relevance in education. This is vital as so many people have varied knowledge and assumptions about social communications. The biggest barrier to implementation is often misinformation and/or politics.

#3) Put together a step by step strategy to implement social media at the school board level. (If leadership isn’t using it how can they tell principals and teachers to do it?

#4) Collaboratively work with Principals and Teachers to build an implementation plan at the school level. (Start with a few pilot schools)

#5) Each plan should involve training in both policy, the rules of engagement, online learning best practices, and in the key tools used by today’s digital citizens (including but not limited to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and social search/monitoring) Some of this training can be done by student leaders.

#6) Develop curriculum to help get students social media literate. This educational component must address online etiquette, safety, and the value of collaboration and positive social communications.

#7) Reward collaborators and contributors at all levels.

There is a lot more to this process but the key opportunity and core ingredient for success in using social media for learning is the bi-directional communications and collaborations. It’s no longer about talking at kids in the classroom, it’s about engaging them in two-way dialogue and creating an environment where a network of students (and their teachers) can learn together through networked intelligence.

One statement that was made over and over was that collectively the computing power of smartphones that people bring to school far out-powers what is in the average school computer inventory/labs. The educational environment of the very near future is highly networked, always on, and very mobile. Those organizations that apply all 9 Factors indicated above can prosper in this new environment.

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Today’s podcast is an interview with Cameron Herold on his brand new book “Double Double – How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less.” I read this book twice I found it so valuable and so I reached out to Cameron and asked him to come on the show.

If you’re a business leader, entrepreneur or business builder you need to read this book. It’s packed with usable real-world advice and success strategies.

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Psychology in marketing is still a rather untapped landscape. Since I stepped into the ring and became a guerrilla author in writing Guerrilla Social Media Marketing with Jay Conrad Levinson I have come across all kinds of misunderstanding, misuse and abuse of the term guerrilla marketing. Today’s podcast was inspired by what I can describe as a well meaning (or possibly not) but off-base commenter on the Creative Guerrilla Marketing blog.

I decided instead of just replying in the comments section that I would take the time to respond in the form of a podcast. Why? It’s so vital to understand the role of psychology and community in Guerrilla Marketing.

I also think it’s important to establish that Guerrilla Marketing is well defined, and it’s body of wisdom and definition that is widely accepted and used by over 20 million readers of the Guerrilla Marketing Series of books. Some people will take pieces of the body of wisdom and use them to suit their outlook on marketing but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In addition to this just because you slap the term guerrilla on a book, blog post or marketing campaign it doesn’t make it guerrilla.

Guerrilla marketing does not rely on guesswork because wrong guesses are so darned expensive. Instead, it relies upon psychology as much as possible. Psychology used to be a body of theories. Today, many of those theories have been debunked while others have been transformed into laws, actual laws of human behavior. Guerrillas lean on these laws because they want certainty to be a hallmark of their marketing.

There are 15 things that all guerrillas know about psychology as marketing is slowly transforming from guesswork into science:

So I have a challenge when someone (for their own self-interest) tries to redefine Guerrilla Marketing. Add to it? Great! Innovate? Great! But don’t negate, shrink, or dilute it. Back off. It is a timeless body of wisdom that has grown to be mainstream but it is more relevant than today than it was 20 years ago. It works, it’s simple, and it’s time tested.

Guerrilla Marketing is a body of wisdom and movement. It’s bigger and more important than campaigns, tricks, or tactics. To learn more about the book that started the movement (and continues to grow daily and globally). You can visit http://gmarketing.com.

Have a listen to the podcast and tell me what you think!

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Today’s podcast is an interview with Patrick Schwerdtfeger author of the new book “Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed” (2011, Wiley) and a regular speaker for Bloomberg TV.

We talked about how you can take one blog post and repurpose it in at least seven different ways.  Patrick shared with us a few simple tips, that can build a MASSIVE online identity while working less than most of our competitors competitors.

We also covered some important social media how-to’s:

1. Five places to get great content ideas.

For more information on Patrick’s book and a free gift visit http://www.80shortcuts.com/gifts

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Today’s podcast is a little different than most. It outlines the upcoming Social Media Week in Vancouver that my team and I at Socialized! are putting together (with some massive help from our community, sponsors and our advisory board). I will posting a full text outline of this as well on the Social Media Week Vancouver blog shortly. In the meantime, have a listen and if you’re anywhere near Vancouver we would really like to have you attend, sponsor or even speak.

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Today’s podcast is on defining and measuring your social media influence. Dave MacDonald who is an integral part of our team at Socialized! works on our social media assessment process with our clients. Recently he suggested we add a component to our assessment that measures how well the client we are working with is engaging and connecting with influencers in social media.

The question of course is what makes someone influential? Should we look at the Klout score of the people they interact with? Possibly the number of important bloggers that write about them? Or is it simply how viral or broad their message gets shared? As a guerrilla social media marketer I measure success in profit and net-action or results. For this podcast I want to focus on a section right out of our Social Media Rules of Engagement training module. Here is the basis for what we consider influential:

He didn’t say leadership is a good idea, a vision or a title. He said influence. Influence can be defined for our purposes as causing someone to take action (internally as and personal growth or externally as in doing something). So we can imply the following:

Following are some examples of action:

There are many more. The important factor here is to go beyond the Klout score mentality and realize that people are not an algorithm. I check my Klout on a regular basis, but it’s value of the actions we create determine if we are truly influential. So to summarize this:

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Today’s podcast is on social media listening, monitoring and strategy. I have also done a quick infographic / flowchart on the process and key points from the social media monitoring podcast. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

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This podcast was one I was apprehensive to post. I’m not angel — but I thought I would share this perspective — possibly as a social media penance. Here’s a quick list.

I have broke most of these rules (it was a learning process) and they were hard lessons. Hopefully this podcast will help you shorten your learning curve. Did I miss anything?

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