Blue Helm

A few weeks ago I wrote about four useful ways to use social media over Thanksgiving. In the spirit of consistency I decided to write a similar post about Christmas.

This post is more for personal rather than for business use. You can modify most of the ideas to apply to a business if you want. You can also modify most of the ideas in this post to apply to other religious beliefs or nonreligious holiday practices.

Christmas has always been a wonderful time for me. I love family, the traditions, the music, the movies, the decorations, the spirit of giving and love, and all the other elements associated with the Christmas season.

So how should you be using social media this Christmas? Here a few suggestions:

1. Share some of your favorite traditions with your Facebook friends or Twitter readers. As you hear of great traditions, make a list and post it on your blog or as a note on your Facebook profile.
2. I used this idea for Thanksgiving, but it fits well for Christmas too: Share your favorite recipes! We all love the delicious foods that accompany Christmas. Stop hoarding your favorite dish and share it with the world! (My favorite Christmas treat is my mother’s delicious cinnamon rolls.) After you’ve posted your recipe, ask for other people’s favorite recipes and try one of them this year.
3. Make and share a list of your top ten favorite Christmas movies, songs or T.V. specials. Here’s a link from one of my favorite holiday T.V. specials…I still can’t believe that ever aired.
4. Ask people to post pictures of their decorations on your Facebook wall. You could even get people to post pictures of the craziest decorations they’ve seen this year.
5. Share heartwarming Christmas stories you’ve heard. Here’s a link to a story I like.
6. If you have the courage, in this ever-politically correct world, share your gratitude for the birth of Jesus Christ. After all, that’s what Christmas is all about. Linus explains it well.

These are just a few of my ideas. What are some ways you’re using social media this Christmas season?

Bill O'Reilly

I was watching The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News last week and heard the controversial host say something unusually distressing. One of his guests mentioned Facebook and Bill immediately rolled his eyes said something to the extent of: “I don’t even know what Facebook and Twitter are, and I don’t care.” (I have searched tirelessly on the Internet for a video or written transcript of the segment, but couldn’t find anything. I’ll keep searching.)

This sounds very bad coming from the highest-rated cable news host. Bill O’Reilly, a seasoned reporter known for his opinions and analyses of current events, doesn’t know or care about social media? Bill, if you’re reading, please accept my humble advice and change your mind about the biggest phenomenon to change the way we communicate since the mobile phone. Here’s why you should think twice about your ambivalence toward social media:

1. Social media changes the world every day, for better or worse. Barack Obama’s campaign arguably won the 2008 presidential election through its consistent participation and interaction with younger voters on social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube. Sarah Palin and other potential candidates currently drive their grassroots political movements through social media. And perhaps most stunningly, the recent protests in Iran over alleged election fraud was largely organized and broadcast through Twitter.

2. Social media is changing the dynamics of our modern media. Once-powerful newspapers are succumbing to bankruptcy at alarming rates. Why? The emergence of cable news is one possible explanation. But blogs and citizen journalists are attracting more and more Americans, undermining traditional media outlets and forcing them to evolve. No one could have envisioned such drastic times for newspapers and the mainstream media. Who’s to say social media won’t dramatically change the potency of Fox News or other cable news outlets within the next decade in a similarly unpredictable way?

3. Social media isn’t going away. It may change over time, but like other communication megatrends of the past few decades (the internet, personal computers, cell phones, etc.), social media is a powerful networking and conversation tool that unites friends, strangers, businesses and families. It won’t be abandoned any time soon.

4. Hundreds of millions of people use social media every day. As a news anchor, someone who reports on the prevailing trends of our society, shouldn’t you care? You alienate your viewers and listeners by saying you don’t know what Facebook is. Roughly one third of Americans actively use Facebook. This is an astonishing statistic. Many of these Facebook users undoubtedly listen to you and trust your judgement of what’s important news. How should they interpret your utter lack of interest or knowledge concerning something so revolutionary, so innovative, so vital?

Facebook leaves us with...questions.

Facebook’s newly unveiled contest rules are, well, confusing. At least that’s the only determination I can come to today. That might change in the future as more information becomes available. But Facebook hasn’t released a lot of helpful instruction as of yet, so I’m left to ponder on the meaning and significance of the new guidelines.

In case you missed the announcement, administrators of Facebook fan pages can no longer host contests through their pages without written permission from Facebook. You can still use third party applications to host contests, but you can’t do anything now that requires users to become a fan, interact with a feed story or do anything else outside an application tab or canvas page in order to enter or win a contest.

So…what does all that mean? Facebook gives some examples of what you can and cannot do under the new guidelines, but many questions still remain unanswered:

• How are you supposed to contact Facebook to receive “written approval” to run a contest on your fan page? Facebook reveals very little, if any, legitimate contact information on its site. And even if you do contact Facebook through a message option, the company rarely replies.
• Can a business still give away products, promotions or coupons to customers that become fans of its page, even if no contest is involved? I think so, but Facebook doesn’t specify.
• Are there separate rules for contests on personal profiles? For instance, a blogger running a contest through her own profile page (as opposed to a fan page). Probably not, since a personal profile is part of the larger “Facebook Platform”. But the rules are still sketchy and open to interpretation.
• Why has Facebook changed the rules? Is it to protect itself from potential legal disputes arising from contest malpractice? Or does it just want more control over fan interaction with businesses on its site? Has a promotion gone wrong in the past?
• How will Facebook enforce these new rules?
• Doesn’t this just hurt small businesses? They can’t afford to hire large social marketing firms that specialize in creating third-party applications. Many small businesses rely on Facebook for promotions and contests that drive customers to their products.

Social media is like the weather–it’s always changing. So as always, Blue Helm will stay on top of Facebook’s new developments and rules. We live and breathe this stuff (so you don’t have to).

Okay, this is a pretty generalized topic to be blogging about. But Blue Helm is in the middle of its first annual Social Media Library Series, and I know an all-purpose post like this will be helpful to some of our class members. So let’s jump right into this—the following are a few basic, general tips on how to grow your business using social media:

1. Educate yourself: Before jumping onto the social media bandwagon, search around online and find out how other professional leaders in your industries have used social media to enhance their business opportunities. You’ll find stories of shopkeepers using Twitter to advertise specials and driving customers to their stores, financial advisors using LinkedIn to network with prospective clients and construction firms sharing home improvement tips on blogs and Facebook pages. Take the time to learn more about social media and how it works, even if it’s just a few minutes each day. Like we tell our class participants, you don’t have to use all the social networks at once. Learn about the tools, start small, develop a simple marketing plan and go from there.

2. Use Twitter: Go here to learn more about the basics of how to set up and understand your first Twitter account. I think what I want to stress most to our readers is that Twitter can be a powerful listening tool for your business. You can easily search for what tweeters are saying about your business, product or industry in the site’s search box. Then you can respond and engage. For example, let’s pretend you manufacture juice makers. You get to work each morning and type “juice maker” into Twitter’s search box to see what people are saying that day. You happen to see a lot of complaints about complicated or expensive juice makers. You can respond personally to these people on Twitter, explaining to them that your company’s juice makers are neither complicated nor expensive, and that you’d love to send them a generous e-coupon for your product if they’d like. Maybe one or two will respond and purchase your product that day. And the whole ordeal took ten minutes.

3. Blog: Read that as a verb—BLOG! Your business must have a specialty or area of expertise and it doesn’t matter if it’s plumbing, accounting, rock climbing, electrical engineering or chimpanzee grooming. You should blog about it. You should share valuable, genuine, consistent content with readers about your area of expertise. You should communicate and enhance relationships with your readers and other bloggers. This will generate buzz and excitement about your product and augment your status as an opinion leader in your field. Find out how to start blogging here.

This should get you started. Remember: educate yourself, try Twitter and blogging, and don’t give up! Social media can be overwhelming at first but the more you use it, the more you’ll come to understand it and discover your special niche.

I’ve been thinking a lot this morning about persistence–pushing through the hard times with determination and optimism and faith. Persistence is not just a wonderful business or professional quality, but an essential life attribute. I decided to share today my favorite ten quotes about persistence (in no particular order), but please leave any other good quotes or ideas you have about the subject. This is a topic that never gets old.

“Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.” — Mary Kay Ash

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” — Calvin Coolidge

“Some give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.” — Herodotus

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.” — Louis Pasteur

“If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.” — Mary Pickford

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” — Confucius

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people.” — Randy Paush

“Some guys they just give up living, others start dying little by little piece by piece, some guys come home from work and wash up, and go racing in the streets.” — Bruce Springsteen