One of the last things I did while working in Television back in 2008 was to get my local Telemundo Bay Area station active in Social Networks. A few issues arose with questions about copyrights, confidentiality, etc. Many companies today are struggling with how to best approach this social phenomenon without jeopardizing their reputation. Do they join the conversation? Do they ignore it and pretend it is not there? The bottom line is that marketing has forever changed and big companies are understanding this more and more. You cannot ignore the evolution of communications and media. According to a report issued by eMarketer, 35% of the Fortune 500 companies are currently tweeting! Yes! They are actively connecting with their customers, improving their services, getting reviews for new products and growing their BRAND equity. Check out Intel Social Media Guidelines or IBM Social Computing Guidelines.

What is required here is a new mindset both for companies and their employees. A mindset that needs to be consistent! Are your employees well aware of how to talk about your company in places like Facebook and Twitter. If your answer is no, then perhaps you should take a look at what other companies are doing in this regard. Take a look at the 152 policies that compliancebuilding.com has published as a reference. Also, take a look at Shift Communications’ Top 10 guidelines for social media participation (Company) template.

Social Media is here to stay! You can either join now and become RELEVANT or join later and play catch-up.

Cherie Del Carlo and Nadir Hussain

Gather Your Crowd had the honor recently of interviewing Nadir Hussain, Co-Owner & COO of Media Flint, a premier provider of Internet advertising and marketing solutions. It was at a Traffic Bootcamp seminar where Nadir covered over a 6-hour period many, many topics of which there was time only to scratch the surface. Here are some of the items discussed: Paid Search, Keyword Research, Keywords for the Shopper Cycle,  Ad Copy, Content Networks, Geo-Targeting & Ad Scheduling, Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing and more.

Mr. Hussain offers his knowledge as an instructor with the Stanford Continuing Studies program and is a frequent speaker with Gene Chamson’s Meetup group, Bay Area Net Marketing Alliance.

Of the huge amount of information covered at the bootcamp, Nadir sums it up with 3 high level keys for getting started with generating targeted web traffic in the following video:

Cherie Del Carlo and Nancy Chou

Cherie Del Carlo and Joanna Cezniak

If you had dominion over every hour of your life – as I pretty much do at this point – what would you do?

1. spend more time in your heart space and less in your head, believing that life will be abundantly joyful if you are more loving and less judgmental; or
2. actively use your mind to master something new because you believe the old adage, “use it or lose it”?

13 (Living The Brain)

Can you do both?  Or does an active mind oppose an open heart and vice versa?  Well, I think I’m going to find out, because right now I am definitely trying to do both.  Tapping into the emotional dimensions of me is an interesting pursuit, something I have never tried much before.  Like many of my male contemporaries, I spent the last 45 years scratching and clawing my way up the corporate ladder, leaving my compassionate heart in the closet and relying solely on my brain power to get ahead.

Now that I’m off the ladder, my interest in the qualities of my heart has surfaced, but my left brain still craves intellectual stimulus.  Is this a predicament or an opportunity?

Honestly, everything on the Internet fascinates me (well, except maybe learning html programming).  For two reasons:   I do like the mental stimulus, but maybe even more, I love the social engagement that the Internet provides.   And to do the social engagement well demands that one acquire certain skills.  You don’t just buy a website off the shelf at Safeway; to build it yourself requires some technical dexterity.    Same for a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account, LinkedIn, et al.  But then what is life, if not a constant stretch to embrace the ever-changing “new”.

I know social networking in cyberspace is not for everybody, but if you’re as gregarious as I am, this new way of being connected to others is totally satisfying.  And I know of at least 400 million people who agree with me, because they’re all on Facebook, too — 50% of them log on daily.  Only 30% of all Facebookers live in the U.S., so there are still 180 million Americans yet to “drink the Kool Aid”.  Come on, folks, what are you waiting for?

As I move around the social networking groups in Silicon Valley, I am amazed at how many more women are in attendance at these meetings than men.  In checking Facebook statistics, I learned that there are more women using Facebook than men, so maybe women are taking their natural propensity to relate to other women from face-to-face to the virtual world.  Not a big surprise, but there could be some big surprises in store for the masculine gender if this trend continues.  I’m thinking perhaps a major paradigm shift from a patriarchal world to a matriarchal dominated world.   Frankly, at this point, I’m ready to let them have it.  Men have made a mess of things!!!

Which leads me to a scary conclusion: men are still from Mars and women are still from Venus.  But now women have invaded Mars, as well.  Okay, guys, anyone know the way to Venus?

Wrapping up our wonderful experiences this winter co-facilitating, presenting and building the online community for Stanford Continuing Studies’ course “Branding Yourself Strategically”, Carla and I would like to thank dearly instructor Angelika Blendstrup, the students and the presenters with whom we had the pleasure of working. Being a multi-cultural team ourselves, Carla and I enjoyed interacting with the lively and colorful group of students from different places across the globe and their diverse backgrounds. Creativity flowed in every class where brands and bonds were developed, home made cookies eaten and even the unexpected: Gather Your Crowd’s Carla Ivette Yashiro delivered her second baby boy a month early! Welcome Nicholas Ryuji Yashiro! Some students suspect that the baby’s first word will be, “Tweet!” 

Never a dull moment, Angelika nurtured the fun and rich learning with an exciting and irreverent line-up of guest speakers. We all got to meet amazing people behind refreshing and well-crafted brands, such as Rani Gill of Tech + Education + Business, Ravit Lichtenberg of Ustrategy, Jeremy Toeman of Stage Two, Erica Lee of Strategiclee, Valerie Orsoni of Le Boot Camp and yours truly, Gather Your Crowd. 

Carla and I were especially excited to see the class’s Facebook Fan Page, Stanford CS: Branding Yourself Strategically, serve as an informative and engaging place where students extended their bonding and branding beyond the classroom. Angelika shared additional news about branding; guest speakers and their brands were introduced to students prior to presenting in class; and, most importantly, students immersed themselves with sharing their branding questions and experiences with each other. 

Everyone was so jazzed up about where the branding and bonding process took them that they want to continue to the next level. Could this lead to a  new course titled, ”Connecting Your Crowd to Your Brand”? Regardless of next steps, based on the energy portrayed in this group photo I’d say everyone had a fun “branding” experience this winter and is ready for more! 

Stanford Continuing Studies Course "Branding Yourself Strategically" Group Photo, Winter 2010

 Enjoy more photos from Stanford CS: Branding Yourself Strategically (Winter 2010)

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R to L: Valerie Orsoni, CEO of Le Boot Camp®, Angelika Blendstrup of Blendstrup & Associates, Cherie Del Carlo of Gather Your Crowd

Valerie Orsoni, CEO and Founder of MyPrivateCoach® and LeBootCamp®, leading European, American and Canadian online coaching programs for healthy living and weight loss, is living testament to a personal brand success story! Just listen to a portion of her bio:

Orsoni’s successful battles against a brain tumor and cancer led her to become one of the world’s most inspirational coaches. In 2003, she founded MyPrivateCoach®, a coaching service that uses a large array of tools and methods including behavioral science, management trends, work space ergonomics, Feng Shui, spirituality, philosophy, finance and business to help individuals unlock their inner potential in the areas of business, life, relationships and weight loss. Today, Valerie oversees more than 90 coaches worldwide who use her hands-on, personal approach to help clients achieve and exceed their personal goals.

Helping people enhance the quality of their lives through MyPrivateCoach® brought Orsoni tremendous gratification. At the same time, the experience helped her recognize how valued the weight loss services offered by MyPrivateCoach® were to so many. As a result, Orsoni tweaked her successful business model to launch LeBootCamp®, an online service focused solely on weight loss coaching. Over the past two years, more than 700,000 people in Europe, North America and Australia have joined the LeBootCamp® community to benefit from the effective, scientifically-backed, personalized weight loss program that boasts a stunning 92% success rate.

Gather Your Crowd had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Orsoni this past Wednesday evening at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies course, “Branding Yourself Strategically” where she shared on her founding principles and tactics she uses for maintaining her international acclaim.

Rooted in her successes at overcoming her life’s challenges, she was first very clear on the value proposition she wanted to deliver to others. Valerie started out by creating for people the kind of value we all want in our lives: health and well-being. Only then did she begin to create her brand which she said grew rather organically at first and not without challenges of its own.

With her delightful humor and candid openness, Valerie informed the class of her early mistakes which, being the optimist that she is, served as stepping stones toward the right course of action. It wasn’t until she landed a radio show in Canada syndicated out of Vancouver that she began to see her hard work pay off. As she put it in her French accent, “It was the first thread I started pulling that lead to more.”

Valerie’s talk reminded students that establishing a successful brand is more than finding the right opportunity; it’s about creating opportunity. The successful CEO spoke of ways that work for her brand, which include publishing her own books under her own name and sending out press releases that get people’s attention. But for any brand maker at any phase of the process Valerie stressed a universal truth, “Don’t undervalue or underestimate people you don’t know.”

Gather Your Crowd asked Valerie to share how she uses social media in particular to continue leading her brand and here’s what she had to say:

You can follow Valerie on Twitter at LeBootCamp and you can Fan her Page on Facebook at Le Boot Camp Fan Page.

Vous remercier Valerie Orsoni pour partager avec Rassemble Votre Foule que vos médias sociaux mélangent. Le c’était véritablement une joie vous rencontrant!

Thank you Valerie Orsoni for sharing with Gather Your Crowd your social mix. It was truly a joy meeting you!

Cherie Del Carlo of Gather Your Crowd videorecording Coach Cassandra Rae of Simply Fearless (see videorecoding below)

Coach Cassandra Rae is a true inspiration! This past Saturday Cassandra was the featured speaker at the monthly Self Marketing event hosted by our dear friend Kent Pelz, a Gather Your Crowd founding member. I felt lifted and inspired by her “7 Simple Ways to Connect with Your Ideal Client.” Did you know that you don’t get to pick your ideal client?  The good news is that your ideal client is seeking you! These were just a couple of the tips Cassandra shared.

Cassandra Rae was born in Alaska and raised in the ghetto of Salinas, California. She’s a high school dropout and a college graduate. She holds degrees from Hartnell College, University of California, Berkeley, and the International Coach Academy. Her search for meaning, purpose, and making a difference has brought her through 8 jobs and 2 careers. Today she is the founder of Simply Fearless and is passionate about helping you connect with your calling.

Emanating from her soul is the message, “Your ideal client is part of your calling. Your calling is a function of your Soul. Your Soul speaks through your heart. Therefore the closer you are to your heart, the closer you are to your Ideal Client.”

You may find yourself asking how that works. Well, here are Coach Cassandra’s 7 simple ways to connect with your ideal client:

• Simple Way #1: What can you celebrate right now?

Among the many things you could celebrate right now, Coach Cassandra suggests you start with celebrating that there is no other you and that your success is predictable and unavoidable. Could there be anything more refreshing to hear from a coach?

• Simple Way #2: What must you release in order to move forward?

I think we all can think of one or two things. How about perfectionism? Ah-hah! Can you identify with that? Cassandra’s keen awareness of why you need to discover what you must release is that, “In the space of letting go, we get to open up to receive.” This might have something to do with the next simple step.

• Simple Way #3: What are you ready to receive?

Have you ever stopped to really think about that? Go ahead, take a moment to contemplate. How does it feel? Are you ready to receive your ideal client?

• Simple Way # 4: How are you showing up for your business? Your clients? Yourself?

Consider things like your attitude, your time, and your money. Is it difficult to show up in any of these areas? Coach Cassandra recommends showing up steadily with a lot of small, consistent steps. Everybody who’s anybody had to do just this in order to show up at all!

• Simple Way #5: What are you inviting people to do?

Really, what is it that you are inviting people to do with you? Do you believe in what you’re inviting them into? Are you stretching to believe in yourself? Or do you wait until you can show up perfectly and ready-made? Maybe the next simple way can help!

• Simple Way #6: What are you willing to promise to complete within one week? One month? One year?

Coach Cassandra prefers making promises over goals. Instead of asking yourself what your goals are, ask what your promises are to yourself and to your ideal client. Lastly, but certainly not least, Coach Cassandra ties together all 7 simple ways with her signature way…

• Simple Way #7: What can you do for fun?

After all, Coach Cassandra loves to take a moment at the end of each week to acknowledge all the effortful energy she and her clients put into realizing their callings and connecting with their ideal clients. She asks everyone to join her in celebrating “Champagne Fridays”!

Gather Your Crowd asked Coach Cassandra to tell us about how she uses social media to promote her business and here’s what she had to say:

On Twitter you can find Coach Cassandra Rae’s daily coaching tips at SimplyFearless, and you can chat directly with Coach Cassandra at CassandraRae.

To find out more about these monthly events, visit SelfMarketing.us or join their Facebook Fan Page.

Do you truly embody your personal BRAND? What’s your signature look? How do you communicate? What makes you UNIQUE?

Last night, Stanford CS: Branding Yourself Strategically had 2 outstanding presenters who emphasized these questions.

The first presenter was Erica Lee, VP Global Marketing and CEO of StrategicLee, Inc. She shared 10 important steps in the branding process:

(1) Create the brand (2) Find the medium (3) Build your community (4) Create a signature (5) Define your platform (6) Start partnering (7) Start communicating (8) Start conversing (9) Get out there, and (10) Become consistent.

She also stressed the importance of ENGAGING with people and to always remember that your AUDIENCE is king. Erica really encourages to  ”do unto others as you would have them do unto you” which means attending your friends/followers events, commenting on their blogs, retweeting their posts, etc.

Gather Your Crowd asked Erica about her brand engagement using social media and this is what she had to say:

The second presenter was Jeremy Toeman, Founder of Stage Two. Jeremy, who is an expert in digital media and consumer technology, delighted us with his sense of humor and shared very useful tips on the use of Twitter for Branding.

He is a believer in showing WHO you are in the process of engaging with others using social media. “Communicate your GOALS visibly, be personable, relevant and above all, consistent!” “All is fair in love and Twitter!” said Jeremy while talking about the type of information to be posted on Twitter. He also made reference to the Social Media Venn Diagram.

We asked Jeremy about his prefered social media tools for personal branding online and here is what he told us:

Participate in the Branding discussion. Become a fan of Stanford CS: Branding Yourself Strategically on Facebook or find the #StanfordPB conversation on Twitter.

Twitter, the ever-popular free micro blogging platform, is great for large groups of dispersed people to be in conversation with one-another, whether its one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many. Let’s take a situation where Twitter is used. Let’s say we’re at a large meeting or conference where many people are present (and presenting) as well as people participating online and interacting via Twitter. The moment tweets become relevant, captured and brought into the room or the conversation happening in the meeting, it becomes a kind of virtual live interaction with those physically present. This type of communication interchange has many names, but the one we’ll focus on here is “real-time feedback loop.”

Rich Reader’s definition of a real-time feedback loop is this: “…a method for capturing ideas as they arise and bringing them back into the group for examination through the use of social media. “

Last week I attended Social Media Club’s panel discussion where 7 social media professionals explored the topic of “Innovation through Real-Time Feedback Loops,” which was, as an experiment, video-broadcast live on Justin.tv in order to test the concept of a real-time feedback loop. The platforms used to loop back in communications were Twitter via the hashtag #RTFL and Justin.tv’s chat feature.  Of the pros and cons deliberated, the leading sentiment seemed to be that real-time feedback loops don’t work the way we would hope and could be either overvalued or even grossly misused. I agree that you can’t have a conversation when everyone is talking, especially when rendered unorganized. But I’d also like to challenge this notion. From my background in the field of Organization Development I believe it is possible to turn noise into conversational real-time feedback loops if it is planned in advance and handled with care.

L to R: Jennifery Lindsey, panel moderator, with panelists Liza Sperling, Ravit Lichtenberg, Evan Solomon, Van Riper, (not in photo) Tom Foremski, Bill Johnston and Sylvia L. Marino

Let’s look at what’s involved. Designing and facilitating interactive organizational meetings or events are complex tasks. As a Change Management practitioner my experience has been that a well conceived meeting design is based on previously gathered input and expectations from varying stakeholder groups and is facilitated live such that the meeting allows for the inflow of new and often unexpected information from places like, well, Twitter. Facilitating the process of weaving new information into the deliberation that is happening in the room is probably the most challenging meeting design feature to conduct. For the sake of exploring this topic, I’d like to glean knowledge from a couple of experts.

• Sam Kaner, founder and executive director of Community at Work, is known as a leading expert on consensus-decision making and collaborative systems change.
• Lenny Lind, founder of CoVision, is a pioneer in the field of group engagement technology consulting.

Sam and Lenny co-authored the best-selling book, “Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making” (2nd Ed., Jossey Bass, 2007). While Sam and Lenny each have their methods and technologies (which they likely often use together) for holding effective, dispersed large-group meetings with real-time feedback loops, could these effective solutions migrate successfully to the real-time web and to places like Twitter?

Going back to the panel discussion last Thursday night, I’d like to point out that a couple of terms seemed to be bandied about interchangeably. The two terms were, “facilitator” and “moderator.” Simply to illustrate from last week, there was a panel moderator and there were two people facilitating Twitter and Justin.tv who did marvelous work bringing questions into the room that, at times, sparked new discussion. I’m not pointing out how these roles were worked, but rather within the discussion itself it was easy to think of the roles of moderator and facilitator as one for the other when truly they are different. A moderator is someone who arbitrates, which is to say that they may be in the role to decide, determine or mediate. Thursday evening’s panel moderator, Jennifer Lindsey, starred at meditating the flow of topics and opening opportunities for the facilitators to bring in what was being said live on the social media. But the discussion, in my view, overlooked the role of facilitator on whether real-time feedback loops could work.

Sam Kaner, a master facilitator, is quoted in Wikipedia with defining the role: “The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking and practice. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements.” Could these skills turn the tide of noise making into meaningful conversation with real-time feedback loops?

Let’s look at the role of facilitator as described by Sam in conjunction with what Lenny Lind has to say about meeting design. Last Fall Lenny gave his perspective on the use of Twitter for meeting designers and, in reference to the diagram below, shared his wisdom that, “The ideal design provides a robust channel for participant response throughout the meeting, which is designed well into the detailed process flow. Moving from the upper left quadrant to the right, adds repeated opportunities for feedback and collective understanding that is focused on accomplishing ambitious organizational objectives (objectives that actually depend on that robust participation channel in order to be realized).”

Click on Image to Open in Large View

I wanted to know more about what was being said on Twitter during the live panel discussion and discovered an interesting tweet that I don’t recall hearing about in the room. The gem-of-a-tweet I found was this, “Noticed that feedback from Justin.tv increased a lot when they heard their questions answered #rtfl.” This is great information that begs to be considered conversational and less like noise which I believe serves as a tip or the beginnings of best practice for real-time feedback loops with social media.

To be sure the facilitator’s task is challenging, especially on a platform like Twitter. But when it is supported by a little a design, structure and pre-communication, and optimized with the use of a good sorting tool for live communication, like TweetDeck, turning noise into insight-filled real-time feedback loops is bound to have real-time impact. As a social media practitioner with experience in meeting design and facilitation, I propose that real-time feedback loops using social media can work and will spin off sustainable, positive change.

What do you think?

Join Gather Your Crowd at Stanford University as a special guest to Network and learn about Branding this coming Wednesday, January 10th, 2010.

To participate:

• You must be Gather Your Crowd’s Facebook Fan.
• You must contact us here! The first 3 who reach us will be the lucky winners.

Featured speakers:

• Erica Lee of StrategicLee
• Jeremy Toeman of Stage Two

Event details:

• Stanford Continuing Studies: Branding Yourself Strategically
• Instructor: Angelika Blendstrup
• Wednesday, February10th, 2010 6:15PM-9:15PM