Business Coaching

Can MySpace make a comeback?

MySpace has been considered dead for a while now among the social Media-savvy. But could MySpace make a comeback?

Five years ago, news Corp. acquired MySpace for $580 million…and then the losses came. Although MySpace Music is listed as the number one music site from comScore, it’s had a steady decrease in popularity since news Corp. has owned the site.

News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said, “We’ve got to admit that during the last two or three years, I think we made some big mistakes. But we’ve got fine new management now; they’ve started to introducing new features. There’ll be a lot of changes coming through the summer. The early indications—and they’re only early indications—are we’re getting more visitors and they’re staying longer. When that gets more substantial, we’ll get more advertising.”

News Corp. has also called MySpace a “work in progress,” as it plays with its number one music platform ranking to try to get back on top of the social Media scene, and plans to roll out a number of enhancements to the site in the next few sites.

What do you think? Can MySpace regain its status in the social Media site scene?

You can learn the ins and outs of social Media via Web tools.

Social Media exploded and confused many business owners in the process. “What on earth is a blog?” “Who are all these people who want to be my friend on Facebook?”

But it’s not impossible — small business owners CAN learn how to use social Media to their advantage. And there’s no need to look to a “social media guru.” Look no further than Web tools already out there, like blogs, webinars and online forums. Check out the article SmallBizTrends.com wrote about it here to find tips small business owners — or anyone — are using to learn the ins and outs of social media.

What else can you learn as a business owner? Click here to find out what a business coaching session might teach you.

Yesterday we reported Google has listed Facebook as a top competitor. Then Hitwise released a report saying Facebook was more visited than Google. It seemed like social Media had overtaken the search engine! Huzzah!

Not so fast.

Industry Pace has pointed out a few facts that make the above false. A major biggie that affects the above statistic? Hitwise purposely didn’t count how often people visit both sites via mobile phones. That’s a huge chunk of people right there that weren’t even counted!

Read what else Hitwise ignored on Industry Pace’s article page here.

What does this have to do with business coaching? A lot — if a client ignores parts of their business that should be helped, a business coach can’t help them. If they tell you they know their numbers and give you wrong ones, or try to cover up “embarrassing” parts of their business, all will come out in the end, and even though that’s a better situation, you’ve wasted a lot of time where you could have been helping their business.

Keep that in mind next time you take on a new business coaching client. Encourage honesty…it’s the only way clients can be held accountable.

Google used to have just two competitors...that number has grown.

Google reported just two competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, in their 2008 10-K report. For 2009, however, their number of competitors grew to 10.

Facebook, Twitter and Yelp are listed as Google competitors, as well as specialty search engines like WebMD.

Google probably didn’t anticipate social networking sites or specialty/specific search engines being their competitor, but that’s a fact. As Google stated: “Our filing reflects the reality that we compete against a number of alternatives, including traditional search engines, e-commerce and specialty search sites, social networks, and other forms of online and offline advertising.”

Something like this that’s happening to Google is important to keep in mind for any business. As times change, new competitors in various niches can pop up…and your business should be prepared for anything.

In business coaching, business owners will hear often that they should always be prepared. If the recession didn’t teach it enough, it rings true; more competitors in seemingly different niches can come up, as is the situation for Google, or with technology advancements, what many businesses found during the recession.

To see if your business might benefit from a business coaching session, take our Business Health Check. A healthy business makes for a happier business owner.

Facebook is joining the world of location sharing.

That might not be such a good idea, as we’ve mentioned before. With the increase in popularity of such apps and sites like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt, it’s even easier for just about anyone to see where you are. There are even new sites like this on the way, like Plancast. And now, Facebook is getting in on the action, and will debut a new location sharing feature next month.

This sort of thing might be an advantage when business coaching; clients can see where their business coach is, whether it be out networking, running a ProfitCLUB, in a business coaching session, or enjoying their free time at the newest restaurant in town.

But with everyone having access to where you are and what you’re doing at all times, is it safe? Are people setting themselves up for break-ins or attacks, or making it easier for stalkers to find them?

The location feature will have two basic components: the location-sharing capability offered directly to Facebook members and a set of APIs (application protocol interfaces) for third-party developers to add location-based elements to their Facebook apps.

So, is location sharing a good thing, that can help people network and meet others? Or a bad thing, that can lead people to you for not so nice purposes?

The team behind the start-up Secret London. Founder Tiffany is in the front row.

This isn’t an uncommon story anymore: a 21-year-old has a successful start-up.

What’s unusual, however, is the start-up was originally a Facebook group.

Tiffany Philippou started a group called Secret London in response to a competition for a summer internship with Saatchi & Saatchi. The Facebook group started as a page where Londoners could share secrets and their favorite things about the city, things only locals know about. There are also forums on the site where people can ask where to find something like live music, African drumming classes or a quirky wedding venue, and locals can respond with their opinions.

Just two weeks after starting the group, it had 182,010 fans. While the competition eventually had 800 different groups competing for the internship, Philippou now has a start-up. Internship? Old news.

With the URL bought (www.secretcities.com) and a Twitter account with 5,300 followers and blog that have both been live since early February, Secret London is blossoming. The most amazing thing about this start-up – besides the fact that it spawned from a Facebook group – was it only 2,963 pounds.

“What’s amazing is how much you can do cheaply if you are working on a project that inspires people.,” Philippou wrote in a guest blog post on TechCrunch.com. “As well as the incredible talent we got on board, we also got a printer from Freecycle.org, brought some equipment from home, and borrowed the rest. The folks at the Finsbury Centre in particular were really generous with their time and help.”

So how about that? A business can start from just about anything…including a Facebook group.

Start-up or not, every company has issues to overcome…does yours? Take our Business Health Check to find out.

Marla Erwin helped Whole Foods master social Media.

Think you’re busy trying to constantly update your own Twitter page? Imagine handling more than a million Twitter followers.

Marla Erwin, Interactive Art Director for Whole Foods, is credited with Whole Foods’ social Media success. In its first year on Twitter, Whole Foods gained a million followers. Since starting with Twitter, Whole Foods now has several separate accounts for users who have more specific questions about the store’s products — a Twitter account for cheese, one for Whole Foods recipes, etc.

How did Marla garner so many followers? She incorporated user-generated content onto Whole Foods’ Twitter and Facebook accounts. Recipes, product ratings and reviews and comments on the Whole Foods’ blog all went onto their Twitter feed.

Marla then went on to use Facebook and Twitter for different uses: Facebook she uses for more editorial content and to start discussions among fans and friends (since users can see others’ comments on Facebook, it’s easier to have a discussion), and Twitter she uses for Whole Foods promotions, information for customers, to answer customers’ questions and tweet out links to Whole Foods’ blog.

Read the whole article here,  and see if any of what Marla did for Whole Foods’ Twitter and Facebook can be used for your business.

As with traditional marketing, it’s all about opportunities. When you find opportunities to sell your products and services, you don’t shy away, do you? You take advantage! The same with online marketing – find opportunities to get the word out about what you’re promoting. However, with online marketing, it can be trickier. Where do you find these opportunities? And with social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, sure, you might have 500+ followers/friends, but do they really care about what you’re promoting?

If you’re lost in terms of online marketing, you need to be able to first find opportunities which you can expand upon in terms of marketing. Don’t know how to start? The following tools will at least give you a good idea of what’s being said about your company or industry online, and where users spend their time:

• Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) emails you whenever a chosen
keyword (e.g., company or product name, CEO name, campaign tagline,
industry term, etc.) is mentioned in any form of online content.
• Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/) scans the blogosphere
for any keyword or phrase you type in.
• Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) scans all Twitter posts for your
selected keyword or phrase.
• SiteVolume (http://www.sitevolume.com/) reports how often keywords or
phrases appear on Twitter, Digg, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.
• SocialMention (http://www.socialmention.com/) enables you to search
keywords and phrases by specific channel category (blogs, images, news,
video, etc.), or as a whole, and to receive email alerts when a new mention
is posted.
• Socialcast (http://www.socialcast.com/) offers real-time analytics on microblogging
and other social activities and identifies individual users’ level of
activity. Unlike most tools, it also can quantify the value of “lurkers” who
aren’t visibly posting comments, but by how often they frequent a site.

Take note of what’s being said about your company or whatever keywords you search, whether it’s positive, negative or neutral; what people
are passing along to friends; and if there are any particular needs or customer
segments that aren’t served. These are all opportunities for marketing…

Hopefully you get it by now: social Media is the way to go, and it’s here to stay…for a while, at least, as a marketing tool for businesses.

Are you caught up on social Media sites? Do you utilize each site you joined to its fullest potential, so you can get the most marketing usage out of that site?

Look at our checklist and hopefully, you’re already doing the following to benefit marketing your business on social media sites:

Networking: What good are your 789 friends if you don’t talk to them? Just like in real life, networking is key. The more people you know, the better; everyone you network with starts off as a lead or someone who can refer you to a client. Get to know people at BNIs and networking events, and add them as friends on Facebook, connect with them on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter.

Don’t Be a Spammer: Just like you’re turned off at a live networking event when someone pushes his product or service on you right away, on social media sites, you’ve got to build a rapport. Your first conversation with anyone on social media sites should be anything but “Do business with me.” On Facebook or LinkedIn, a good icebreaker is to join several groups and become a fan of pages and connect with members of the same group/page. Start up a discussion about an issue pertinent to the group or post in their forums. On Twitter, engage in conversations and reply to other users’ tweets.

Post Interesting Info: If you post useful, relevant and interesting info, people will be more likely to pay attention to you. Check out what your friends or followers are posting, and try to post news and info that are in a similar vein to connect over those topics.

Link to your Blog: Again, no one likes someone who only talks about their services, but you are on these sites to promote your business. Do it the smart way by linking to blog posts you’ve written, which will send traffic to your blog, or articles you find about the benefits of business coaching or articles about companies that have done better after getting a business coach. Avoid anything that is a blatant advertisement of yourself. Don’t have a blog yet? Start one, or link to blogs you like and read a lot. Like this one (okay, that was a shameless plug…but still, not a bad idea).

If you’ve been utilizing social media marketing strategies, comment below and let us know your success stories! To find out if you need to improve your marketing strategies, or other business issues, click here.

With the recession, charities' donations have decreased.

With the recent disaster in Haiti, many people and charities are reaching out via social Media networks to raise funds.

But before the Haiti disaster, charities were increasing their social Media efforts to attain potential donors…and it seems to have been working.

The Detroit News recently published an article about how charities are joining Twitter and Facebook in an effort to spread the word about charity events and recruit volunteers and donors, something that’s been a more urgent need in the down economy. An example they cite with Forgotten Harvest, a charity that supports impoverished areas that need food, is they had 100 volunteers for an event to help package 11,000 meals. And about a fifth of those volunteers were recruited online.

Even though charitable donations took a hit with the recession – in 2008, donations slid 2 percent from 2007, the first decline in donations since 1987 – E-philanthropy, giving donations online and recruiting volunteers, increased 4 percent that same year.

Charities are getting so savvy with social media marketing, that some have added their own apps for iPhones and Facebook. For example, the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign has a facebook widget with a game that collects real donations.

ActionCOACH is making waves by marketing its own charitable campaign, Coaching for a Cause, on Twitter and Facebook. The end goal for the pro-bono business coaching campaign is raising $2.5 million and so far, with successful business coaching, $859,294 has been raised.

If it’s working for non-profits, social media marketing can work for small businesses and big businesses, too. Fine-tune your social media marketing skills and figure out what you can do to leverage your business this way.

On the other side of things, if you’re a social media whiz, you might consider how you can help charities with your expertise. Coaching charities — and businesses — does wonders in this economy.