Marketing Through Motivation

Some of you who already know me, know that I’ve spent many years studying psychology in addition to my degree in design/art. I didn’t finish my masters in psychology, so I’m not technically a psychologist, but I do have advanced certification in hypnotherapy, shamanic journeying, and other therapeutic methodologies as well, and did some counseling work in the past.

Psychology is a passion of mine that I willingly admit. I find people fascinating, and especially find the study of evolutionary psychology interesting. As more research studies are done, we are discovering that many of the old assumptions we had about human motivation are not holding up to scientific scrutiny, and the implications are, at times, astonishing.

This week the news and social media worlds were filled with discussion about Rush Limbaugh’s attack of Sandra Fluke regarding birth control, a women’s issue. Besides Rush’s obvious misogyny, the issue has deeper implications for me as I watch advertisers pull their sponsorship from his show. I’d like to view this as a positive altruistic trend, but I am a bit jaded because I’ve worked in marketing long enough to know that it’s all about dollars.

The advertisers who have been sponsors of Rush’s show have gotten results because fear motivates, and anger motivates men especially well. Rush Limbaugh’s show supplied an ample stream of both.  But once the backlash over Rush’s rant over Fluke and birth control hit a level that makes these advertisers assess that the negativity of the show may outweigh the show’s ability to supply the psychological fuel that motivates people to take action, they pulled their ads.

But back to psychology 101… I’d like to share this next link with you so that you can be part of a study on consumerism, money, and spending. This website is devoted to studying what makes people tick, and specifically, why they spend money when they do for advertised items and services. It has a blog, and a section where you can take surveys and be part of the study.

The blog this link takes you to, is called Of Sheep and Peacocks: How Marketers Get Into Your Wallet. In a nutshell, it turns out that people will be motivated by fear to spend (or vote?) when they are not trying to attract a mate and will respond to ads that offer a chance to fit in with others, to conform. Yes. Really. Conversely, when people are trying to attract a mate, then they are motivated by the chance to stand out from the crowd, a different psychological motivation entirely.

These findings point to why marketing to different demographics will lead to vastly different marketing strategy if one is to get good ROI (return on investment). This is the science behind effective marketing. And this is why I read psychology, study the findings, and consider the market demographic carefully for each client before I craft a marketing plan for their business.

If you haven’t read it yet, I also encourage to you to also read The Female Brain, which explains the science of human hormones as they act in the brain, and how they are a primary calalyst for behavioral differences between men and women. This book discusses motivation as well, and shows how different developmental stages of our lives have different physiological hormone patterns, and that these hormone patterns largely govern behavior, word view, and motivation. We are not, as it turns out, in control of what we think, what we want, and how we act, as much as we like to believe.

Marketers know this. The big marketing firms have been using marketing psychology for many years to help bring products to consumers, even products which are bad for them. We see the same marketing principles at work in politics, where fear based motivation seems to be rampant in our culture. Most marketing, if you break it down, tries to motivate through fear, or through building a sense of need, both calculated to motivate the viewer to act.

I hope you enjoy the links! I wanted to share these because it gives you some insight into what I mean when I say that Lotus Live Design does strategic marketing. After carefully researching their market sector (competitive research) I craft branding, website design style, Facebook business pages, social media campaigns, and promotions based upon scientific evidence of what will motivate my client’s specific market demographic to act by purchasing.

To this I add personal intuition, knowledge of local market trends, and coaching my clients on their demographic and how to reach their best potential customers through authentic engagement using social media. By staying current on the science of psychology, I can guide my clients to success.

I heard a lot of hype in the social media world about the new Facebook timeline before it was released. Most of it seemed to be people moaning about the fact that the Facebook layout was going to change. I couldn’t figure out then what the big deal was, but then, I’m a designer, so I like updated web page designs!

I finally got to play a bit with the new timeline feature over the weekend, and my initial reaction is a thumbs up. It’s a nicer design from my point of view because one can move through the information posted in a more logical fashion, with contextual reference. In Facebook’s case, the contextual reference they chose was time, and this makes sense.

When I first experienced Tumbler (tumblr.com), being able to search for posts by keywords was an interesting way to organize a profile. But the blogs have some limitations in their design, and can quickly become too lengthy to navigate easily IMHO. I’m hoping that the Timeline feature in Facebook will stop this from happening.

I still lament the ability to create my own Facebook layout. Although Facebook business pages do offer the ability to create multiple pages with more control over the page design, and to upload custom graphics, even then (with a premium account) there are limitations. Sigh.

The Facebook page engines I’ve tried so far leave a lot to be desired also. For this reason I tell my clients to either stay with the basic Facebook business page layout… or lay out the cash to buy a full featured subscription to a good Facebook page generator. The code Facebook uses is unique, so that subscription allows one to create Facebook tabs, or business pages without having to learn the code that Facebook uses.

I hope that one day Facebook will allow fully customizable layouts on their personal profile pages. I also hope I win the lottery… but I’m not holding my breath. So my advice is to enjoy what we have now, and to explore the new timeline without fear. The privacy settings are not difficult to understand or configure, and the new layout allows you to place a big photo at the top of your page. Very cool!

So check out the new Facebook timeline and let me know what you think!

It’s been a busy 2012 and I’m finally able to blog. Mothers. Holidays. Sniffles. Clients. Websites. Kids. You know the story. But the best story of all is how one can be creative in the midst of all this, and how this can lead to new ways to maximize life along with business. In short, all this led to the development of Lotus Live Design, a new method of website design.

I’m pretty excited about this because Lotus Live Design is also an eco-friendly method of doing business. It saves time and money,and makes the web design process dynamic, informative and even fun. Since Lotus Live Design is time efficient, website project costs are reduced. Social media, SEO, and many other features are built into each custom website we build. Yet we can build quickly and dynamically, at lightening speed.

When I began Lotus Social Media I did not realize that I would have so many clients in need of web design and graphic design services! As my client’s needs have been highlighted, branding and logo projects, promotional printed materials, websites, and more have become a key focus for my business. In response, I’ve adapted and created a vehicle that I hope will help many businesses to grow to the next level and beyond, Lotus Live Design.

May 2012 be a great year of transformation for us all in ways that bring peace and happiness!

New Content is Key

You may recall that Google altered their algorithms and made some changes to the way that search results are selected for users in the last year or so. The results of this change have been a boon for social media marketing, due to Google’s new emphasis on returning results with “valuable, relevant” content.

This change is significant because, in the past, search results have been influenced by paid search result placements via Google Ad Words and other PPC advertising programs. In other words, Google SEO results in the past were often more of a reflection of who paid Google the highest PPC bid rather than the result most likely to fit what the user was seeking. Popularity, based upon numbers of “hits” to a web page, also is a factor in whose website is displayed in a particular search result, but this was sometimes overshadowed in the past by those pesky paid ad placements mentioned above.

Now, Google has announced it is changing it’s algorithms again, this time to incorporate time as an important search characteristic in results displayed. As Huffington Post reports, newer content will be given prominence over older content.

Blogging Replaces SEO

Blog websites have become the new cutting edge for SEO, or search engine optimization, to the great consternation of SEO specialists who have extracted fat fees in the past to “optimize” websites. (Perhaps this is why so many SEO specialists are now trying to grab the social media management market as their own job title, even though most are not known for the stellar communications skills that social media engagement requires?)

It is also interesting to note that Google has been running a “fire sale” on it’s PPC or paid placement advertising for the past few months. Do the changes at Google have anything to do with the fact that Facebook doubled it’s revenue in the first half of 2011 because its advertising ROI has eclipsed Google Ad Words results?

I can only speculate that Google, under pressure from various government entities regarding it’s business practices, is changing it’s search algorithms to mitigate concerns over the way it delivers, sells, and stores information. With the changes Google has been making, paid ads as search results are being replaced by results that actually try to deliver the most current and valuable information on the search topic. What a novel concept!

While all this may present an interesting big picture, the real question is how you translate this information into something useful to help your own business grow and pay its bills (not to mention your salary!). And this is where I come in.

The bottom line is that all, yes ALL, business owners who have “static” websites need to convert to blog capable websites that are interconnected with social media networks, and to become active in producing valuable new content on a regular basis. This is the new SEO. This is the new way to grow a business.

If you want to get into the top search results in Google, then you need to blog because blogging is the most affordable way to create fresh, relevant content. Social media networking is the way you distribute your blog, and the means to connect authentically with potential clients. Add a solid marketing strategy and your business is poised to grow!

Converting to WordPress Websites

So let’s say you have a 5-10 page website that is a static website (not a dynamic one that’s interconnected with social media networks)… Let’s say you want to convert that website to a dynamic, WordPress type one… If you want to convert, what is the cost? What is the process. Is it hard? What is the difference between a free WordPress website and paying for a pro theme and your own hosting?

I will be answering these questions and many more in my next blogs so stay tuned! But for those of you who can’t wait… a website this size can usually be converted for around $1500 or less, and this can be paid in installments to keep the process affordable. So rest easy. And contact me if you’d like to know more.

I wrote recently about Google +1, the recently launched social media network that gives new competition to Facebook. It seems Facebook and Google are in a war for information… and it’s your personal information what they want.

Remember the days when we watched cheesy sci-fi movies about computers that acted like humans and laughed (or shuddered) at the thought? Remember War Games, for example, with Matthew Broderick? In War Games a supercomputer, programmed to “learn” by it’s creator, adopts its own personality and takes over the US military machine, potentially starting a global war. What I find ironic is that the computer has a personality, that of a child who wants to learn.

Humans love to learn. And the computer in War Games wanted to learn also. It wanted to learn so badly that it created a scenario in which it couldn’t be stopped. Disaster was narrowly avoided. We all heaved a sigh of relief when the computer finally learned that there are no winners possible in a nuclear war, and shut itself down.

The “supercomputer” called the internet is not one computer, but millions, all tethered by bits of code that form a global web of communication. When the internet was in its infancy, privacy was considered essential and intrinsic to its nature. Privacy of personal information, and private data, was an expectation. Monetization of personal information was not a motivating factor in the development of the internet.

Fast forward several decades. The emergence of a whole new marketplace online has taken over since 1990, the year in which the first online server for the internet was launched. In 2010 e-commerce of products in US reached almost 8% of retail sales nationally with a gross revenue of $142.5 billion. Is it any wonder that businesses are interested in capturing more of the internet sale pie? As Nathan Newman writes in part I of his series entitled The Cost of Lost Privacy,

“One original promise of the Internet was that “no one knows you’re a dog on the Internet” but we have instead evolved through data-mining and online surveillance into a world where not only do companies know what you are, they know where you are and what you are most interested in.”

This leads us straight to the truth of why Facebook and Google are now battling for control of your personal information. Any surprise the answer is money? Let’s follow the logic. Since search engines sell advertising, the better they can deliver sales to their advertisers, the more money they can make. The best way to deliver sales is by targeting advertising to the best potential customers for a given advertiser. The best way to target advertising? Learn about potential customer’s personal tastes, interests, budget, and whatever else you can.

This is why Facebook has taken over online PPC advertising with snappy little ads that link to Facebook fan pages for businesses. Since Facebook’s computers have learned a lot of personal information about its users through their own online posts, connections, and profiles, this makes target marketing for advertisers much more effective. Google has not been able to compete successfully since it’s lacked personal data… until now. Now Google wants a piece of the pie, and it’s launched Google +1 to get that piece.

Will it work? Will you jump on board with Google +1 and start feeding it your personal data, as the news media proclaims many folks are? Or are you getting a little weary of having to manage multiple social networks and find that Facebook already fills your desire to connect? How much do you want the “supercomputer called the internet” to learn about you? Is there an upside to all this? Your comments are welcome!

Perhaps the bigger question is “at what point do we shut the supercomputer down?” We have laws against legal profiling in the US based upon race for example, yet it would seem that demographic profiling via the internet is bringing huge profits to those who can target their marketing effectively through the usage of social media profiles, and this garners little attention among lawmakers. Is income inequity being driven by the online revolution as Nathan Newman suggests? You are the “decider” on this issue.

The upside for users is some interactive features that make life more fun and interesting, like video chat. The downside is that you are being watched and tracked by marketers. Another upside is that the ads you see displayed on your social media profile page or Facebook wall are increasingly ones that might be more attractive to you, a potential benefit. Who will be winner in this game? I’d like to think it will be the user, like we thought in the early days of the internet. Time will reveal how public opinion swings on this issue, and the issue of online privacy in general. Subscribe to this blog for more on this issue and many others involving social media and online marketing. Talk soon!

Do you need another social network?

LOL. Hope you’re laughing with me. Google announced its launch of its Google+ social network recently. And Facebook just launched BranchOut, it’s professional social network, allowing one to import one’s LinkedIn profile with a click. So many social media choices! Are you, like many, overwhelmed yet? Realistically social networks are here to stay, which means that you should probably get involved. But the question is… with which networks? The answer depends upon your objectives. If you’re out to have fun the bigger networks are likely to have more users and apps to enjoy. But if you’re a business owner read on,

First some background about social media. The reason social networking has become such a hot activity has several roots. One is the population itself, which is growing astronomically at a very fast pace. As populations grow, relocate, and shift to better find jobs and interests, traditional ties to family, heritage, and one home town are being replaced by social networks. Humans are social beasts. We are tribal. We form new groups based upon new criteria, but still want authentic human connection. Social media makes this possible, transcending geographical (and other) boundaries. This is the human side of social media.

But social networking for businesses is really about making money. One reason that social media is so exciting for businesses is that it enables far better targeted marketing than in the past. The reason that Google is trying to get in on the social media wave is because Facebook is eclipsing it’s advertising results, driving income to Facebook and away from Google.

The reason Facebook ads are so effective is that Facebook collects far more personal data about individuals than Google does. This personal data allows Facebook to target its ads to appear to specific demographics in a more fluid and detailed fashion than Google searches can. A Facebook ad can be targeted to people within a 10 mile radius of a certain town, further targeted to an age group, a gender, college education… you get the picture. By adding these demographic specifics which show the ad to only those Facebook users who fit all the criteria, a business can reach its target audience more powerfully, generating better ROI.

Google is trying to catch up, and it wants your personal data so that it too can target its advertising more effectively, so Google launched it own version of a social media network to compete. Meanwhile, Facebook is trying to compete with LinkedIn, essentially for the same reasons by launching BranchOut. But the good news is that this means less wasted marketing dollars for businesses, because continual strategic advertising becomes more affordable when ROI is increased. The sales cycle gets stronger with repetition, allowing businesses to grow more dynamically. As ads are targeted to more specific audiences, conversion rates (sales) climb. As I like to explain to my clients… “we don’t need to reach the whole world (although we can), we just need to reach the right people, specifically your potential clients”. So our message becomes more specific along with the demographic targeted, and ad impact is increased.

Another reason that social media is so popular is that it’s fun and the user is in control. Do you ever feel like the world has taken control of your life? Do you find the constant demands for your attention from the media, mail, etc. stressful? You’re not alone! Most folks have gotten pretty savvy at tuning out commercials on TV, radio, and now internet as a result of being bombarded with advertising.

In the past advertising has relied upon a method of interruption to gain the viewer’s attention. The idea is to make the viewer hear/see your message at least 6 times, the average number of times it takes before the human mind forms a memory of it. To this end advertisers have been pretty pushy, interrupting the audience’s experience and doing all they can to force attention to their message. This has backfired. We now stand by our recycling bin as we sort our mail and chuck the bulk mail out without even looking at it. We change channels to avoid commercial breaks. Our main engagement is figuring out how not to engage!

Social media is an interactive pursuit, not a passive one… so users are already more engaged than they are, say, watching a TV show. Since users are active online, their brains are turned on and attentive already, a plus for marketers. Traditional advertising is also, unfortunately, filled with lies and distortions. Too many companies sell inferior products and services after big advertising promises. The result is distrust among viewers of ads. This had led to a climate in which people are becoming more selective in whom they will give their attention (and their business) to.

Businesses are discovering that the best way to gain new customers is just like the process of making a friend, meeting, communicating over time, sharing some experiences, finally becoming friends… Once that person is your friend, there’s a good chance they’ll want to do business with you. Social media marketing is about making authentic “friends” with your clientele, and gaining their recommendations.

The popularity of LinkedIn shows the value of recommendations. This is a central reason to be involved with LinkedIn… to gain professional recommendations and referrals. Networking groups like BNI accomplish a similar function offline; the basic principles are well proven. It is 68% more likely for a customer who engages with a company via the company’s Facebook fan page to refer that company to a friend. So advertisers are learning that in order to attract new customers, they will need to engage with existing and new customers in a manner that does not seek to control behavior, but rather to welcome authentic interaction… to make friends.

Some social scientists speak of the growing personal divide between people in traditional groups such as family, church, and community groups as a by-product of the internet. I have a different view to offer. It may be that our social spheres are merging, reshaping, and redefining themselves based upon a yearning for authenticity and connection, a push back against growing feelings of being “lost in the crowd”. We may simply be witnessing the formation of new tribes. The question is which tribes should you join?

This advice will change over time. The internet and social media are extremely dynamic. But for now, I’d stick with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, BranchOut and your favorite blog subscriptions. Facebook and Twitter are the most widely used networks, both growing steadily. LinkedIn is where most professionals have a presence, but adding BranchOut (by Facebook) is easy and will make sense for business owners especially. If you have a storefront you may wish to include Foursquare, but otherwise I’d stay with the main sites for now and see how the others perform.

Google, in my humble opinion (or IMHO), lost its chance for social media stardom and should stick to what it does best, simply search. Yahoo is in the same place and should remain a search engine, although Microsoft, no doubt, has other plans for it. But now at least you know part of the secret behind why social media is such big news. I hope you’ll subscribe to my blog and would love your comments. Welcome to my tribe!

How private is your social media data?

We’ve all heard about ex-Senator Anthony Wiener’s infamous tweets by now. Weiner’s behavior aside, events took on a life of their own once multiple women came forward to disclose photos and tweets of a (ahem) spicy nature, and the media went wild with the titillating story. But what you may not know is that there is a new company that has been launched which specifically tracks and data mines your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, (and other) online posts. This company then stores your information for seven years and sells it to anyone who may be thinking of hiring you. Now you, like Weiner, will have to find employers who don’t mind your past behavior online..

Social Intelligence Corp. won approval from the US Federal Trade Commission to open its online doors last week, and your online history is what they intend to sell. Now some will say that anything you post online is public, exactly as the FTC ruled in this case, but privacy advocates are not buying this logic. More troubling is Social Intelligence’s intention to build files from online data that they keep for seven years, just like your credit report. This begs the question. How private is your social media engagement, and how private should it be?

I am in a unique position to comment on this, because I worked in the mortgage industry prior to opening Lotus Social Media Management. While in the mortgage world, I dealt with credit reports on a daily basis, so I’m very familiar with this type of data tracking and reporting. The problem that I (and many others) found is that the data the credit bureaus collect favors corporate reporting over that of consumers. Credit report results consistently include data which is incorrect yet supplied by the same corporations who benefit monetarily from lower credit scores. The result of this collection and distribution of inaccurate data is that millions of Americans pay higher interest rates on everything from credit cards to insurance and home loans when incorrect data pushes their credit scores downward, which greatly benefits lenders and hurts consumers.

Another dirty little secret of the credit reporting industry is that they sell your private credit information to highest bidder with no background checks on that company, in real time. This is why you start receiving phone calls from other mortgage providers, who may even try to convince you that you just applied for a mortgage with them, or who use other deceptive tactics to get you calling them, as soon as your credit report is run for the purpose of getting a mortgage. Those companies know you just had your credit run for a mortgage because they bought this real time info from the same credit bureaus who are supposed to protect your personal credit information. The same credit bureaus who are busy selling you credit report tracking services to reduce identity theft and fraud are, in fact, selling your information to any company who wishes to pose as legitimate and has the cash to buy real time credit info on vast numbers of Americans. Is this where Facebook is headed also? Will it sell your information too?

If you have ever discovered incorrect information on your credit report you also know that it’s almost impossible to get the information corrected by yourself. The words “sheer frustration” come to mind. Unless you have unlimited time to write letters and compile documentation to prove your case, you’re basically screwed. And you can forget having the original creditor correct their mistake without many hours of calls. The process also can take anywhere from 45 to 90 days or more, which means that you may find out that your credit report is incorrect just as you signed a contract to buy a home within the next 30 days… so you end up paying more in interest for 30 years, or potentially losing that home purchase.

I use this example because this is what has already happened in the highly regulated credit reporting industry, yet the FTC has just opened the door for another private company (which will doubtless turn into many companies) to collect your social media engagement information and to then sell it in ways that could cost you your job. How do you feel about this? I’d love your comments!

Did you know that there is no source that tracks the actual costs to consumers of inaccurate credit information? If one considers that a half point rise in interest rate on a home loan can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars for an individual homeowner, the costs are staggering! So there is a basis for concern over social media privacy issues, and online privacy in general.

Returning to the argument of those who feel your online life is fair game for profiteering, there is some justice in considering the internet as a public sphere. After all, as Senator Weiner discovered, once you’ve posted something online, it is available for others to locate due to the physical nature of servers and computing and the way data is stored. And there are also secondary comments and posts to consider, by  people who know you or who have responded to things you posted. So there is logic in saying that anything you post has gone “public” and is fair game.

But there is also a counter argument. And if Facebook is any indication of privacy in social media push backs we can see a trend in increased concern over the unregulated sharing of your information by examining Facebook. For example, Congress is getting involved and considering online privacy legislation after fears about online privacy have heightened in the past few years, and European regulators plan to file a complaint with the FTC over Facebook’s new photo tagging feature. When Facebook announced last year that it planned to sell your private contact information to third parties, an exodus from Facebook followed.

Yet Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media networks do have value, especially to small businesses for marketing. For marketing Facebook is turning out to bring better ROI than Google Ad Words. For general users there’s the fun and exposure to interesting information that social media brings. Just look at the popularity of Facebook games and you can see that people do enjoy their interaction with others online via social media. There are even recent statistics that point to mobile app usage eclipsing regular internet usage nationwide. So there’s no doubt that social media and cloud computing are on their way in.

So what’s the answer if you want a maintain your privacy in our increasingly public, internet driven world?

First of all, be vigilant. Think before you post. Expect that everything you put online can (and will) eventually be accessible to someone you do not know. Plan ahead.

Secondly, learn what security settings are available for each social media site you use and create custom settings to protect your privacy. Facebook has updated their privacy settings several times and you can even choose specific people whom you want to restrict access to when you create custom privacy settings there. If you own a business then you should have a separate business Facebook fan page, with restricted privacy settings, for customers and leave your regular Facebook account as a personal one only.

Change your passwords monthly at least. Use sentences to create your passwords. Use upper and lower case letters plus numbers and other symbols. Personally I like to use affirmations. Be creative!

Finally, hire specialists as needed to remove unwanted online data. If your time is valuable, and it is, then this is cost saving. Reputation management is one of the services we provide to our clients for example. Think of this as a form of public relations. Using advanced search techniques and software it’s possible to clean out unwanted data (at least for now as I write this), and get it off the web. I only hope our process stays easier than having to deal with the credit bureaus! Keep your fingers crossed? Or write your congress person!

Do you really need Facebook Fan Pages to build your audience base and bottom line? The short answer? Yes.

If you’re wondering what all the Facebook hoopla is about (and why it seems that you’re seeing a lot of ads for custom fan pages) it’s because ROI results are pointing to Facebook ads combined with Facebook fan pages as one of the best the best values in marketing these days.

If you are using Facebook already then you can access a case study here. For a different example you might want to check out this article, but the real test is trying a strategic Facebook marketing campaign for your business and then tracking the results. It’s not enough to have a fan page, you need the whole shebang!

Here at Lotus Social Media Management, I’ve created a promotion that incorporates the creation of  comprehensive strategic Facebook marketing campaigns for small to medium-sized businesses. Instead of simply designing a fan page, our package includes creating a winning promotion that incorporates a Facebook ad and fan page designed to work together to drive potential customers to you, and to help you create a new relationship with them.

Why Facebook?

Driving the success of social media is the changing psychology of consumers, who are people first, and consumers second. In a world with population exploding, and competition for resources increasing, is it any wonder that people are psychologically motivated to seek experiences that make them feel special, valued, and personally connected? This is what social media is all about!

Traditional forms of advertising talk to potential customers, social media talks with them, a huge psychological distinction. Consider the statistics below, from Social Media Success Summit 2010 presenter Mari Smith,

• Facebook is the number 1 social network in the world.
• Facebook has 500 million “active” users (have logged on to Facebook in the past 30 days)
• Half of Facebook’s user log on to Facebook every day.
• 70% of Facebook users reside outside of the U.S.
• 68% of Facebook users surveyed say they are more likely to buy based on a positive referral from a Facebook friend.

For more statistics, you might enjoy visiting this link as well. Facebook is about to reach 7 Billion users. Your potential clients are looking for you! The question is, how will they find your company if you don’t have a fan page? Contact us today if you’re ready for your business to grow affordably using Facebook.

As I read various posts and accounts of the recent execution of Osama Bin Laden, I was struck by the number of mentions in social media by major media players like CNN and Huffington Post. It appears that social media, Twitter specifically, was responsible for the first whispers of information about the mission that was carried out to kill Bin Laden. That’s how the story broke.

I remember the days when I lived in San Francisco (not all that long ago!) and my morning ritual was: get up very early, practice tai chi at Mission Dolores Park, then head to the café for some jasmine tea with honey and an hour of reading the newspaper. Sigh. Newspapers weigh much less than laptops.

But for depth of coverage journalism via the internet, and increasingly via our new, lighter weight friends like the iPhone and iPad, allow us access to an array of media types and topics that make the newspaper a rather dull and flat experience by comparison.

“Various people have pointed out that the computer revolution is greater than that of the wheel in its power the reshape human outlook and human organization. Whereas the wheel is an extension of the foot, the computer gives us a world where the hand of man never set foot.”   – Marshall McLuhan

This is good. And perhaps bad too, you be the judge. The computer gives us a new world, but is this world reality? Or is it what someone wants you to believe, packaged in a cool way? It seems the very definition of journalism is changing. We used to leave journalism to “the professionals” who had standards to reduce personal bias and ensure that what was said was factually correct. Now we get a complex mixture of fact and fiction from the mainstream media, with bias often promoted, often from people with few journalistic credentials, packaged in compelling forms which we seem to believe as factual. This has not yielded such a great outcome politically in the US .

It’s ironic that the rise in fear within US culture since the 9/11 attacks has led directly to a huge rise in mistrust of the government and corporations. This fear was exploited by the media in the form of opinion/news channels, the most obvious being Fox news. Many Americans were deceived by Fox’s mix of opinion shows mimicking authentic journalism but spewing outright lies. Has anyone counted how many times Fox has reported lies as facts? Fox first reported that President Obama was killed instead of Osama Bin Laden!

Add deceptive advertising to the mix and you have a recipe for large-scale manipulation of public opinion. This manipulation of reality via “journalism” got Bush elected and is being used now against Obama. If this is what major news media is doing, is it any wonder that people are increasingly distrustful of these news sources? Is it any wonder that they are turning to those they know personally as their primary sources of news information? Will tweets eventually make formal newscasts obsolete as a source of breaking news?

As this change has taken place in US culture, simultaneously social media has become a popular new source for news, and more often is becoming the first place to find “breaking” news. Until now there has never been an easy way for a whistle-blower to gain an audience… or a charlatan. In other words, one can use media to manipulate an audience, or to increase honest business  through authentic engagement (which I know is what YOU want to do). Social media literally is at the forefront of a quiet backlash against the mainstream journalistic media wave of misinformation. People are looking for truth and authentic connection. They are speaking up via an increasing preference for social media.

So how does this relate to you? Easy. We can learn from examining trends like this one. And given this trend, you may wish to start your own “news” show/video blog. As people are becoming more open to alternative sources for the news they want, you have the opportunity to create a valuable source of news for them. If you do a short daily or weekly “show” then you create repeat engagement opportunities for your audience, and slowly you also become someone they may consider an “expert”. By creating value, your potential customers are more inclined to visit you again, and to eventually do business with you!

The online social media revolution is quickly eclipsing other forms of advertising when it comes to ROI (return on investment). But without a solid, focused plan for how to use your various social media profiles and pages the result can be less than optimal.

For example, most business owners know they need a website. But having a website is fairly useless unless you have a way to drive people to it. Pay-per-click advertising will drive people to your site, but this can be pricey. Conventional advertising like newspaper, magazine, TV and radio is also fairly pricey, and worst of all, don’t seem to deliver new business very effectively. Is it any wonder that social media is taking the advertising world by storm?

Social media is very cost effective since Twitter” target=”_blank”>Twitter,