Social Business by Design

As Facebook approaches its public offering, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is making one thing very clear.

“The world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph.”

In other words, your business needs to be social by design. Virtually every business in every industry needs to redefine itself around social to be relevant with the changing behaviors of consumers.

Define the Purpose of Your Company

Every business has a purpose – what some refer to as a higher purpose. It is your mission. It’s something that transcends profits – while also contributing to them.

It’s what you and your small business team believe in – and what is vitally important to your success.

My purpose is helping mainstream small businesses take advantage of this marketing opportunity of a lifetime – social media.

Social media can humanize your business to reveal what is real, authentic, and honest about it. And that is the magic that yields relationships, alliances, and everything else that differentiates your business in the marketplace.

Understand How Social Graphs Work

Mark Zuckerberg states in his message to potential Facebook investors that Facebook thinks the world’s information and infrastructure should resemble the social graph – yours and that of your small business.

Social graphs tell a story. They illuminate everything about us – what is good and what can be improved.

When a business is willing to be authentic and transparent, it communicates to its consituents that it is open, able, and willing to make improvements.

Does that describe your business?

Solve Important Problems

Businesses exist for the exclusive purpose of solving problems, what traditional marketers have referred to as serving needs and wants.

Determining the needs and wants of the communities you serve is like chasing your shadow. Yet, solving problems is something that most business leaders can easily wrap their arms around.

You understand the problems of your customers, especially if you are willing to test the boundaries that others have established.

When you have the mindset of solving problems, you are no longer challenged with what to share on the social networks.

The essence of content marketing is teaching – helping your prospects to become better buyers of not products and service – but solutions that will solve their most important problems.

Facebook has become hugely successful by solving an inherent problem – enabling people across the globe to connect and share.

Forget about profits and consider the important problems that your business can solve for your communities.

The social design of your business will lead you right to them.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below.

And please share this with your community and encourage them to join the conversation.

Until next time, Jeff

Ambiance for Writers

Writing is a skill –  one that is highly sought after these days when there is such a thirst for quality online content.

If you are a writer you know the challenges – including the distractions. Writers know that getting into and staying within “the zone” (or whatever you want to call it) is essential if you are to accomplish your writing objectives – and meet your deadlines.

Think of the times when your writing is marching along to amazing levels of accomplishment, only to be pulled out of your zone. Also consider the circumstances when you are faced with an impending deadline and need some help finding your focus.

Ambiance is a mobile app that can help. It has certainly worked wonders for me.

Creativity and The Power of Sound

Sound is the most primordial of the senses for human beings. All creation starts with sound. It is the basis of how meditation works.

When you practice traditional forms of meditation, you are mentally repeating a sound that brings your attention inward. That mental sound is known as a mantra. It’s a sound that has no intrinsic meaning, which is why it enables you to connect with your true self – the one that creates.

Ambiance offers thousands of sounds that you can explore to create the right mood that you need to get your writing accomplished.

If you are having trouble focusing, the deeper sounds help to stabilize your mental chatter. Some of my favorites are Gentle Intensity, Light Trails, and Resonance of the Gods.

I’ve created a playlist of these three sounds, and they work wonders for helping me to find and maintain my writing focus.

As you can see, the screenshots that accompany the sounds are also mentally stimulating and pleasing.

Change Your Writing Environment with Sound

Too much of any form of stimulation can dull the senses. Sometimes you need a spark to energize your thinking. This is when I’ll switch to a sound such as Fire, which is the crackling sound of burning leaves.

When I am writing in a public place and need a sound to simply hold my attention, I find that that the many of the Rain sounds (Ambiance categorizes sounds) work well, especially Thunderstorms in the French Countryside. It is one that offers variety, and I imagine evokes youthful memories of feeling safe while the outside environment is changing.

Ambiance offers premium sounds for a modest price, but I’ve discovered plenty of free sounds that work well for me. It is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices, and it also works from your desktop.

Now that I have Ambiance, when I am working from home and have my Bose headphones on, it’s a signal to my family that I am in the zone – doing the work of writing.

Even if you are able to find your creative focus, Ambiance may just be the thing to take you to a higher level of creativity.

We’re talking about the work of writing here. Couldn’t you use a little help from time to time?

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below.

And please share this with your community and encourage them to join the conversation.

Until next time, Jeff

Personal vs Business Social Media Accounts

Small businesses naturally tend to focus on daily actions that generate results, such as engaging prospects with their sales process, and then efficiently converting that interest into profits. Advertising is a form of media that fits well with the small business mindset. It creates awareness, a sense of urgency, and a desire to take action [...]

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Google+ for Small Business: An Interview with Chris Brogan

In this interview, New York Times bestselling author Chris Brogan offers insights into the power of Google+ for small businesses. Google+ is an emerging social network that promises to challenge Facebook – especially in regards to its benefits for businesses. While Google+ is only a fraction of the size of Facebook, it is indeed backed [...]

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Innovate or Die – The Race to The Top

Imagine a web with perfect search capabilities – one in which consumers have access to everything they want to know about your business and others just like it. Knowing that, would you operate differently than you are today? You can hope your prospects will not discover other sources that are cheaper or better than yours, [...]

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Facebook Contest Engages Small Business

Once in a while you come across an opportunity that is a no-brainer – such as receiving FREE stuff. Facebook wants to help small businesses, and they believe the best way they can accomplish that is introducing you to the benefits of Facebook advertising. FREE Facebook Advertising So, they have launched a contest, one that [...]

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Creating Addictive Marketing Content

One of the distinguishing qualities of successful marketers is they are passionate students of human behavior – more specifically, buying behavior. Human beings have innate tendencies that lead to actions – some favorable, and others not. Addictions are unfavorable behaviors that can develop very innocently. For example, exercise is a positive action that people take [...]

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Presentation Skills for Marketers

Successful marketers know that presentation skills are just as important as the message – maybe more. The reason for this is every message is subject to interpretation, and the better it is presented the more likely the audience will draw from it the necessary elements that are going to be of value to them. Media [...]

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How Google is Like A Third Grader

You can dedicate yourself to learning the complexities of search optimization – though, you may discover that it can easily become a full-time job. For those of you that already have a full-time job, or a business to run, a better option is to learn the basics and apply some logic to achieving practical results. [...]

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Google Search Plus – A New Game Changer

As Google continues to roll out their new Search, Plus Your World capabilities, there is already growing concern that they are compromising search results. Who are the most vocal objectors?  Naturally, their competitors – Facebook and Twitter. Google used to have an arrangement with Twitter to index their streaming firehose of real-time data, one which Twitter [...]

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