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Book Review: Social Nation

Business, Reviews

I recently had an opportunity to read Social Nation: How to harness the power of Social Media to attract customers, motivate employees & grow your business by Barry Libert.  Heckuva title.

Libert is the the CEO at Mzinga, which is a company that connects other companies–and their customers–using social media to collaborate and communicate.  Social media is, quite simply, using the internet to drive interactive communication.  This includes Twitter, Facebook, and forums.  Sometimes, it’s just discussion, sometimes, it’s sharing user-generated content.

Social Nation “will show you, as an employee, customer or partner, how to use new social technologies, make yourself heard, and produce better products and services.”   It bills itself as a “complete toolbox” for social media.   Does it match the hype? Let’s see.

The book is broken into three sections.

Part 1: The Future of Business is Social

Libert asserts that the future of business is social.   That is obviously true, to a degree. A solid viral marketing campaign can drive more eyeball to a product than a full-page spread in the New York Time or a 30-second spot during Super Bowl halftime.  However, there are a lot–possibly a majority–of business-to-business companies that will gain no value from a social media campaign.   Would a regional supplier with an exclusive distributorship for a top-name line of faucets benefit from being on Twitter?  No.  On the other hand, 17% of our time online is spent on social applications and the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 35 years old or older.  There is certainly some value to be gained by have a social media presence in some markets.

This section(all of chapter 3!) also contains a link to a test to determine your social media skills.   I haven’t taken the test, mainly because I don’t feel like registering for another site.  This struck me as nothing more than lead generation, which is a shame.  It could be a useful tool.

Part 2: Seven Principles for Building Your Social Nation

This section has seven chapters, containing 7 case studies that detail the 7 principle of social media, as defined by Libert and Mzinga.

The principles include:

  • Let the culture lead the way, as demonstrated by Zappos.com.
  • Involve your fans.  The big takeaway from chapter 8 is that, when you create a community, your job is to facilitate involvement, not to control it.  If you try to run it with an iron fist, it will choke and die.
  • Reward others and you will be rewarded. Apple lets developers keep 70% of the money they make in the app store.  That encourages developers to develop, making everyone more money.   Give.  Karma will take care of the rest.
  • There are 4 other principles, but some are just common sense, and I don’t want to give away the contents of the book.

Part 3: Start Today and Create Your Own Social Nation

aka

Chapter 11: How to Get Started and 10 Pitfalls to Avoid

Section 3 has just one chapter, but it’s a good one.    It explains the difference between followers and fans, the value of each and how to bond with each.   The difference?  Fans are actively involved.   Followers are far more passive.

This section/chapter also goes into some things to avoid, like abandoning a social media strategy too early, failing to market your business, underestimating the power(positive and negative) of a social network.

Is it worth getting the book?

Social Nation bills itself as a complete social media toolbox, but it falls a bit short.   The book tackles social media from a purely strategic point of view, ignoring the tactical concerns.   It’s clearly geared toward helping a company plan its social media strategy from a 10,000 foot perch.   For the people in the trenches, or anyone with a grasp of strategy that’s looking for the details on running a social media campaign, it’s not enough.  That said, if you are trying to plan a social media strategy, or you have no idea where to start, this is a great book for you.   It holds a lot of value, but stops some distance before “complete”.  Definitely worth a read if you are involved is social media planning.

Giveaway

I’m giving away Social Nation.   If you’d like to have a chance to get it, just leave a comment, telling me how you like to see companies use social media.  Fair warning, this is the book I read, so it’s “used”.   I take care of books, so you can’t tell that it’s used.

Publishers, Publicists, and Authors

If you have a book you’d like me to review, please contact me.

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Clearing Up Social Debt in 3 Steps

Finance

Debt can be thought of as a disease–probably social.  Most of the time, it was acquired through poor decision making, possibly while competing with your friends, occasionally after having a few too many, often as an ego boost.  Unfortunately, you can’t make it go away with a simple shot of penicillin.   It takes work, commitment and dedication.  Here are three steps to treating this particular affliction.

1.  Burn it, bash it, torch it, toss it, disinfect. Get rid of the things that enable you to accumulate debt.   If you keep using debt as debt, you will never have it all paid off.   That’s like only taking 3 days of a 10 day antibiotic.   Do you really want that itchy rash bloodsucking debt rearing its ugly head when you’ve got an important destination for your money?   Take steps to protect yourself. Wrap that debt up and keep it away.

2.  Quit buying stuff. Chances are, you have enough stuff.  Do you really need that Tusken Raider bobble-head or the brushed titanium spork?  They may make you feel better in the short term, but after breakfast, what have you gained?  A fleeting memory, a bit of cleanup, and an odd ache that you can’t quite explain to your friends.   Only buy the stuff you need, and make it things you will keep forever.  If you do need to indulge, hold off for 30 days to see if it’s really worthwhile.   If it’s really worth having, you can scratch that itch in a month with far fewer regrets.

3.  Spend less. This is the obvious one.  The simple one.  The one that makes breaking a heroin addiction look like a cake-walk(My apologies to recovering heroin addicts.  If you’re to the point that personal finance is important to you, you’ve come a long way.  Congratulations!).  Cut your bills, increase your income.  Do whatever it takes to lower your bottom line and raise your top line. Call your utilities.  If they are going to take your money, make them work for it.   If they can’t buy you drinks or lower your payments, get them out of your life.   There’s almost always an alternative.   Don’t be afraid to banish your toxic payments. Eliminate your debt payments.  This page has a useful guide to debt and how to clear it off.

Update:  This post has been included in the Festival of Frugality.

Make a Budget

Finance

DSC02103
Image by r.lovewell via Flickr

In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template.  If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all.    I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.

This is the master index of my budget planning resources.  As I develop more, this will grow.

Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system.   The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy.  We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.

Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills.  These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month.  Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true.   You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking.   You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.

Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills.  That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis.  I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed.   I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios.  If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.

Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule.  Sometimes, they are never actually due.   We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things.  A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun.  You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.

Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2.   Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills.   For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount.  For almost 2 years, it was granted.  Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled.   100% discounts help us save more.

Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3.  These bills are harder to reduce.  Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?

Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4.  Notice a pattern, yet?

Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1.   Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.

So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?

5 Steps to Save

Finance

neighbor of the beast
Image by BitHead via Flickr

“Saving is too hard.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“How much should I save?”

“Who the heck are you to tell me what to do with my money?”

“Shut up, Jason.”

These are the things I hear when I start talking about getting a good strategy in place to save some money.   Financial matters are intimidating to a lot of people.  They’d rather not think about their money any more than they absolutely need to, if that much.   Here, I’m breaking it down to some simple steps to make saving easy.

1.  Get motivated. Why do you want to save some money?  Are you trying to make a secure future, or do you just want to buy a new toy?  These are the kind of questions you have to ask yourself.  Nobody else can tell you why you want to make changes to your lifestyle, and nobody else’s reasons matter in the least.   Saving money is something you have to do for you.

2.   Figure out how much you can save. Generally, you’re going to need a budget so you can figure out what you can afford to save, but not always.  If you are making ends meet, then you get a raise, you can obviously afford to bank the difference.  If you do that, you’ll never even notice the missing money.  If you try to save so much your mortgage goes unpaid, you’re plan is doomed to failure.

3.  Open an account at a new bank. The biggest problem I used to have when I was trying to save was that it was too easy to get the money.  Every time I checked the balance of my checking account, I saw the balance in the savings account.   Worse, it took seconds to transfer that money from my savings account to my attached checking account.    Every time I wanted to see if I could afford whatever toy I was looking at, I’d see money that wasn’t earmarked for anything in particular.  Naturally, that money got spent more often that it was ignored and allowed to grow.   Now, I can completely forget about the money.

4.  Automate. I’ve automated everything I can.  All of my bills are paid automatically, except for one company that insists on quarterly paper invoices.    I’ve got $665(neighbor of the beast!) automatically transferred to my INGDirect account, to get divided between my various savings goals, including a fund for my semi-annual property tax payments and a fund to pay for the braces we haven’t actually had to buy yet, but will in a couple of years.   The money disappears into a bank I don’t use for my day-to-day expenses and grows completely out of sight.    Every once in a while, I look at the account and get surprised by how much has accumulated.

5.  Get rich. Once you’ve got the other four steps in place, all you’ve got to do is let it work.  Over time, you will build wealth in a way that may surprise you.    Your goal at this point is to do nothing new.    Every once in a while, you can pull out some money and tuck it into an investment account to get some real growth going for you.

“Thank you.”

“You’re the best.”

“What would I do without you?”

“How can I show you my appreciation? <wink><wink>”

“What the heck are you doing with my wife?”

These are the things I always hope to hear after sharing my strategies to save money.

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Budget Lesson, Part 4

Finance

Part 4 of the Budget Lesson series.  Please see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to catch up.  The Google Doc of this example is here.

The final category in my budget is “Set-aside funds”.  These are the categories that don’t have specific payout amounts and happen at irregular intervals.  When my car is paid off, there will be a car fund added to the list, instead of a new car payment.

  • Parties –  We throw two parties each year; a Halloween party and a summer barbecue.  We also have three children who have varying expectations and needs for their birthday parties.
  • Gifts – I don’t buy presents for my friends, and the number of relatives I buy gifts for has decreased dramatically over the years.  I do, however, buy birthday and Christmas presents for my wife and kids and I participate in some form of gift exchange with my brothers and their wives.  Combined, we set aside about $100 per month for parties and presents.
  • Pet Care – We have four cats and a dog.  This is to cover cat litter and food the bunch.  We have too many pets, but we can’t give them away.  They are family.  However, there is a moratorium on new animals for a few years.   Two cats and a dog are our hard limit.
  • Car Repair – Cars break.  Tires wear out.  This isn’t a surprise, and it certainly isn’t an emergency.
  • Warranty Fund – We are building up our own “Warranty Fund“, to replace appliances when they break.  I’d rather have the interest accruing than see this as a line-item fee on any of my bills.
  • Medicine/Medical – Kids get sick and prescriptions need to be filled.  We figure our monthly prescriptions plus one office visit per month, but the money accrues in this fund.  On low months, we have more, so we can cover the visits during flu season.
  • In The Hole – This isn’t actually a fund we set aside.  If, for some reason, we go over budget one month, it gets entered here to immediately pay ourselves back for the over-spend.  This month, this number is $170, which is how high we went over for Christmas.  Since we have all of the “Set asides” and non-monthly bills stored in the same account, there was no actual debt, just this “paper” debt to ourselves.  This serves the combined purposes of a mild punishment for overspending and a method to get back on track.

That is my entire budget laid out.   As the series continues, I’ll be examining how I have lowered the bills, how I could lower them more, and how I’ve screwed them up.

Budget Lesson, Part 8

Finance

This is a continuation of the budget series. See these posts for the history of this series.

This time, I’m looking at our discretionary budget. These are the things that don’t have a fixed cost. Any individual item is largely optional, and, ultimately, we don’t track these purchases closely. At the beginning of the month, I pull this money out of the bank in cash, except for 1 category. When the discretionary budget is gone, it’s gone.

  • Groceries/Dining  – At the beginning of the week, we sit down with a meal planner and (Can you guess?) plan our meals.  The planner we use has a weekly calendar with a checklist below each day to build the grocery list.  At the bottom of the page is another checklist for staples that don’t apply to a specific day’s meal, like milk or snacks.   We build the list, then transfer it to another sheet, broken out by grocery department.  That keeps me from having to criss-cross the store.   I make one lap.  When I go to the store, I only bring that week’s grocery budget in cash,  so I keep close track of how much is going into the cart.    Recently, we’ve gotten so good at making our meals cheaply from scratch that I reduced our monthly food budget by $50.   I enjoy good food, so I wouldn’t reduce this budget item if it was a sacrifice in quality.   For example, the Rainbow Foods store-brand chips actually taste better than Lay’s for half of the price.    We stock up when things are on sale and cook creatively.   Sometimes, if time has been too tight to make a meal plan, we eat solely from the pantry for a week, buying nothing but bread and milk.   By sticking to the list, and not fearing the store’s brand, we are able to feed our family of 5 1/2 for $450 per month and still eat well.
  • Discretionary  – This is for the random things that come up, and some of the not-so-random.   Toiletries, activity fees, admissions, and fund-raisers all come out of this fund.  At the end of the month, whatever is left gets tucked into a box and forgotten.   When the box gets full, it goes to the bank to be applied to debt. There isn’t a lot to cut here, since this line-item is only $200.
  • Baby stuff  – This category is continually shrinking.   Our middle kid is recently potty-trained and our youngest is trying.   There is no baby food and no formula, just 1 pack of diapers every month.   In 6 months, this category will be eliminated.
  • Gas/oil  – This is the single category that isn’t cash-based.   It makes no sense to take the kids out of the car to pay inside, especially in the winter.    Also, all of the temptation is inside. It’s much better to spend the money at the pump.    There isn’t much we can do to reduce this, at the moment.   Our next car won’t be a full-sized pickup, but we are several years from that purchase.    We’ve started clipping oil-change coupons to keep this down to the minimum amount possible.
  • Clothes  – We only allocate $15 per month for clothes.   In a good month, we don’t spend it.   We can’t eliminate it completely, because things do come up.   Over the summer, I’m hoping to completely leave it alone to save up for a new(used) winter jacket for our older daughter, who doesn’t get hand-me-downs.
  • Blow Money  – This is the safety valve.  It can’t get reduced and still work.

We’ve now addressed out entire budget, including what we can do and have done to keep our costs under control.  Looking back, I don’t see too many cuts I’ve missed.