As you may know, I spent some time in November gathering responses to a 10 question social media use survey. The need for this survey grew out of the success of the Future of Social Media webinar Denise Wakeman and I held this past October.

After the webinar, we realized that many people still had questions about using social media effectively to build influence, credibility, and visibility. The two areas that participants asked about very frequently were content creation and syndication. People seem to be wondering what kind of content, and how much content to produce, and then, also, how to distribute their content most efficiently across the social media platforms.

Along with this, people had questions about growing their Facebook fan page, using remote blogging sites like Posterous, and how to set up their own content syndication streams.

We had more than 300 people respond to our survey, and the results are available for opt-in/download. We’ll be using this data to build a online marketing coaching program which we plan to launch in March 2010. Our goal is to demystify the process of online and social media marketing so your efforts make sense, and bring you the results you want.

If you’d like to get a copy of the survey results, and get on the notification list for this new program, please visit this link and sign up. Remember to confirm your subscription so you can get the report, and please retweet on Twitter if you wish to do so (retweet buttons are in the document itself.) You’ll need to be able to open .pdf files to access the results.

Our goal is to make 2010 the year your online and social media marketing finally makes sense!

Here’s the link to get the results:

http://www.mindsharecorp.com/go/socialmediause/

Happy New Year!

See you in 2010!

Let me preface this post by saying I am a huge fan of Seth Godin’s. I admire the way he thinks and his vision. But I do have concerns about his latest venture.

I was just reading about Brands in Public, a service launching soon which focuses on helping gather information about your company or brand and aggregating it in one place. As a brand subscribed to the service, you can (for $400/monthly), respond to any feedback or comments about your brand, as it is listed on the page.

While I certainly agree for the need for online reputation management, my strong feeling is that this is a service each of us must do for ourselves. In Seth’s post, he does mention that it is something you can do on your own, presuming you have sufficient resources to do so.

My concerns about this stem from two main issues. First, I have issues with the idea that Brands in Public will become the middlepeople between companies and their customers. Essentially, because of the reach and traction I expect this service to have, they are becoming the arbiters or monitors of what is being said. They have put themselves into a judge/jury type position in terms of content, and I believe that if enough paying clients complain, certain information will be reduced in its importance or removed entirely. In a sense, by aggregating the information, they can also change the information.

I agree that this type of service would be useful. I understand that there needs to be a revenue model. I just have concerns about any service which is supposedly for the public good, but can allow a reshaping of public sentiment based on who is paying for the page.

In a way, this process is removing or at least reducing the community driven aspect of online brand management.

My second issue with this service is that if you don’t invest with them, they are gathering all the data about your company, and you, essentially have no control over it. Again, because of their reach and influence, they are likely to become the authoritative voice on issues- even if their information is wrong or incorrect.

I don’t expect that I’ll have to worry, and you, as a small business owner, may not either- but the fact is, should any inaccurate negative information appear about you or your company on Brands in Public, you or I are unlikely to have the resources to combat it adequately. At minimum, this means the continued perpetuation of misinformation. At maximum, it could mean lasting damage to our businesses or reputation.

I don’t think that Brands in Public is a good idea as it stands. A better way to approach it may be to use the resources and knowledge of Brands in Public and work with businesses to build their own self managed brand pages. This way, Brands in Public can help businesses accomplish a key objective (which Seth himself notes is a good idea) without putting themselves in as middlepeople of a company’s online brand management.

What do you think?

Facebook just added the @mentions feature, which allows you to include other Facebook users in your status updates. If you use Twitter, the @name symbology will look very familiar to you.

While I haven’t played around with it a whole lot yet, the feature lets you mention another Facebook user, list their name like @mary, and then opens up a drop down menu of all your friends named Mary, from which you can select the actual friend you were talking about.

There is an auto-suggestion feature to help you cull through your list if you know a lot of people named Mary. Once you mention someone using the @, they get a notification and it also show up in their Wall- it’s almost like posting to their Wall without having to go to their profile.

The new feature allows you to include individual users, as I’ve mentioned, but you can also include brand names (through their Facebook pages), events and groups. When you monitor your friend’s status updates, all the links are clickable, so you can see exactly who your friends are talking about and hanging out with.

These changes have a few key implications for marketers.

First, you will gain from fostering overlapping connections within your social networks. If you (like me) tend to update mostly on Twitter, you might want to start spending some time in Facebook too, and highlighting your connections there. This will help “place” you within a social context that will build your reputation and influence.

Second, you will need to be even more careful about what you share online, as there will be greater transparency about what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with if you use the @mentions feature.

Third, you should get into Facebook and get your fan page and profile fully set up, so when people mention you and link to you, you’re putting your best profile forward.

And while you’re in there,  please connect with me on Facebook!

One of the biggest challenges we entrepreneurs face today is keeping sales coming in. With the current economic situation, it becomes more and more crucial that we each use all of the tools we have to sell more. No matter what your business, you are first a marketer, and second, a salesperson.

This is uncomfortable for many of us in professional services, as we just want to do our “art” and leave the marketing and sales to someone else.

I wanted to be sure you that you are aware of a book launch which is happening today- the book is “How to Sell When Nobody’s Buying (And How to Sell Even More When They Are)- and is written by my good friend, Dave Lakhani, who is one of the top sales trainers in America, in addition to being a best-selling author, high paid speaker, and regularly appearing in national media. You might have seen him on the Today Show or The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (when that was still on the air.)

In any case, Dave’s new book is out now, and is a must read for every small business owner. The reviews of this book are extremely positive, with people saying that the wisdom in this $15 book is worth more than information found in many $497 infoproducts.

(And we both know how many of those you’ve invested in, right?) (My bookshelf is full of them.)

Anyway, I’m promoting the book today because it is excellent, and I want you to get it, read it, and apply it. You’ll get sales advice starting in Chapter 0 (yes, the book has a chapter zero), and this chapter, alone, is worth the price of the book.

You’ll learn how to use social media to increase your visibility and brand recognition (thanks to chapters contributed by me, and Facebook/Twitter guru Mari Smith), and you’ll get inspired by some motivational interviews with people who have overcome tremendous obstacles to achieve meaningful results.

You can learn more about the book here: http://www.HowToSellWhenNobodysBuying.com – and can even read a sample chapter.

Don’t wait, because in business, time wasted is money lost.

It had been a while since I last spoke with David Bullock, the famous Taguchi testing expert, so I was thrilled to hear from him today. 

He caught me up on all kinds of great stuff he’s been doing (and it’s a lot!).

One of his new projects is a new blog that examines how Barack Obama is using social media to drive his Presidential campaign.

I checked it out today and there is some good stuff there. You’ll want to visit if you’re interested in a broader perspective of how social media is influencing the election landscape.

Using a basic strategy of organization, engagement, and fundraising, Obama has been able to reach multiple campaign related goals using multiple Web 2.0 sites.

Politics aside, Obama’s use of social media is masterful. Visit Barack2.0 to learn more.

*Image in this post clipped from their site.