The Social Wave

It wasn’t more than a decade ago when businesses large and small were investing hundreds even thousands of dollars in advertising and paying people a lot of money to write powerful marketing copy for their campaigns. Now businesses are starting to invest not only their money but their time in a new form of marketing…social media. However, most businesses have no idea what they are doing with this new form of marketing, let alone how to make this marketing vehicle work in growing their brand exposure and ultimately drive sales. This book aims to solve these problems and guide you—the business owner, marketing director, brand manager, entrepreneur—in how to utilize quick, easy strategies about online marketing and social media, and how to avoid what just doesn’t work. My first book, Get Connected: The Social Networking Toolkit for Business, was created to highlight the basics of social networking and online marketing, along with a few get-started strategies to get you better results right away. The emails, posts, feedback, and comments I received have been somewhat overwhelming, so I figured that I had struck a cord with most readers. Therefore, I am back with The Social Wave—basically social media and online marketing on steroids, a more intermediate and advanced approach than Get Connected. Some of our greatest lessons can come from our attempts and tests. Therefore in this book, I will share my journey, mistakes, suggestions, hair-pulling-out social interactions, successes, and challenges. Basically this is me being transparent: a teacher, friend, mentor, student, and well . . . marketer. I will also share stories from studies, surveys, and a few friends of mine that have been successful online with their efforts. Take what you want and what feels right to you. Although I should say leave the rest behind, I would like to ask that you consider all approaches, suggestions, and resources in this book to help you grow your business and take it to a higher level financially and/or emotionally.

So why me? Why am I writing on social media and online marketing? Well, I didn’t just fall into social media and online marketing. I flew into it. More than five years ago, when I decided to sell my public relations agency and travel the globe to present and train business owners on their branding and public relations, I was completely motivated by the social movement. I started to notice a shift in the communications industry when dealing with the media as they were moving to less phone pick-up and more email answering. As I began to move my own communications online, I noticed conversations forming and, more important, how easy it was to contact decision makers, and movers and shakers—and get almost instant media coverage for clients and me. This online world was moving at a speedboat pace, and I wanted to be on board. I was ready. I embraced it. I dug into it. I learned all I could and continued to become a part of the conversations more and more every single day.

As I began to move online and get more involved, I met thousands of important people in a matter of months. I noticed very quickly that a lot of people within my center of influence were not embracing this new movement. In fact it was quite the opposite. They were ignoring it, some even running from it at the speed of light. This aroused my curiosity. I could not understand why businesses and entrepreneurs were not embracing this change (or what some people are referring to as a shift), because their consumer sure was! Brand consumers embraced it way before the actual brands, which is why I feel that they have more influence and more of a voice as compared to the businesses that fought it. Why fight exposure?

I came to understand that businesses and entrepreneurs alike were ignoring this new form of communication and marketing because they were either intimidated and didn’t know where to start, or they didn’t understand the power behind the voices online. Either way, they were soon going to find out what the ROI (risk of ignoring) would be for their business, which is where we are right now as I write this book.

Businesses are now trying to buy a boat, jump in it, and steer it in a thousand different directions with no chart, no compass, no real destination, and more importantly no basic understanding about how this online social ocean even works. Some businesses are throwing thousands, even millions, of dollars at social media and online marketing. When doing this, there is one key point that is missed: money alone cannot buy a space in this place online. A transparent voice, however, can start a movement and become viral, which in turn can build some pretty amazing relationships with a focused market. Hiring people, agencies, or younger-generation family members to be the voice for a brand because they happen to understand the technology in itself is not necessarily a problem. However, when you have no idea what your voice is online and you are not using it to engage with people instead of sales bitching (aka sales pitching), or just talking to be present on a social site, then you are completely missing the point. But don’t worry, that is why you have picked up this book: not only to understand using social media as a marketing vehicle but also how to take your brand voice and message and start to make some waves online.

I am going to dig into your branding and image because these are key foundation items a majority of businesses seem to be missing completely. These areas need to be looked at in depth before you even consider boosting your social media and online marketing efforts. And last, but not least, you need to decide who in the heck is going to manage your marketing actions and journey online, as well as what you are budgeting to make this ongoing. From my personal experience in marketing both online and off, or traditional and new, businesses do not allocate a set minimum budget to continually invest in growing their businesses, but they should. I am not talking about a large amount here, my reader friends. I am referring to just committing to some type of budget. Without a growth budget, you are just playing with a hobby or possibly a company that has no long-term plan to stay in business. So, let’s dig into what I call the investment of moola part of your marketing, because it needs to be addressed whether you like it or not. I would rather help you get to a place of happiness with marketing investment than be in a place of anxiety and uneasiness. Although I do not want you to put all of your eggs in one basket in regard to your marketing, I do want you to have a seriously big egg set in the social media and online marketing basket, because communication and technology will continue to grow every single day. (Oh wow, as I type this, Apple just came out with a new product. Surprise, surprise!)

I eat, sleep, and drink marketing every single moment of every day, and I have tried, tested, re-angled, tried again, asked, surveyed, and studied to bring you the best, proven marketing and branding strategies that get results. My constant curiosity and what I call “Shiny-Object Syndrome” are driven by my passion to get businesses known around the globe for the betterment of this planet, our health, and our well-being. My goal in this book is to teach you a minimum of five new things that you have not yet tried to expand the growth, exposure, and revenue of your business. Also be on the lookout for “Wipeouts” throughout this book; these are little side notes that will highlight common issues that people have with social media online, followed by a “Wave Tip” on how you can work through the situation or get better results.