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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.

5 Reasons Why I Splurge On Travel

Misc

A street in Trinidad, Cuba. Trinidad has been ...
Image via Wikipedia

Guest Post Author Bio: Miss T blogs at Prairie EcoThrifter. She grew up in the Canadian prairies and still lives there today. She is passionate about saving money, being healthy, looking out for our environment, and most of all having fun. Her blog shares tips on how you too can live a green, debt free, and fun life.

This week I am participating in a Yakezie blog swap where I am to answer the question ” Name a time when you splurged and were glad you did.” I had to seriously think about this for a minute and then it came to me. What do I consistently spend my money on that brings me the most enjoyment? Answer: Travel.

To say I love to travel would be an understatement. Travel for me is a life changing experience that I desire to re-live over and over again. I can think of a million reasons why I love to travel, but I thought I would boil it down to five.

1. Learn about myself. When I travel I gain a deeper understanding of myself and the world in general. Much of the experience is dependent on how different the environment is from what I am used to. When I traveled to Europe the first time, I got to try some different food and see how great it was to have a siesta in the middle of the day, but the transition was relatively painless. When I traveled to Central America last year for my honeymoon, I was a lot more out of my comfort zone. I was sleeping with tarantulas and geckos and trying food I couldn’t even pronounce. Plus, I couldn’t speak the language.

When I am in this kind of situation, I encounter things that I have never encountered before. I am forced to be on the alert because I don’t have any prior knowledge to rely on. Since everything is new, I am automatically forced to try to make sense of it all.

For many of us we have never really looked inside ourselves and examined what we are made of. When we are somewhere new, we have nowhere to hide. This is the point where you become really intimate with the ideas you have of yourself, of your ego, of life, which you may have been really identified to, and derived your sense of self from.

Your ego is essentially your self image; it’s the persona you display to society. Your ego survives only by constantly seeking approval from that which it wants to identify with. This is the society you are raised in. What happens when your family, friends, and your typical environment is not there to reinforce the ideas you have of your self? You ego becomes shaky; it starts to lose it’s hold on you. By traveling to the unknown, your ego falls apart and the true you is given the chance to emerge.

You begin to challenge and question everything you have ever believed. If you can be brave and not run away and use this as way to grow, you will see that all your beliefs belong to society and that they were never really yours to begin with. This can be extremely scary, liberating, nauseating and a million other things all at the same time.

I remember going through this very process when I traveled to Cuba. I knew intellectually that there were people in this world that weren’t as fortunate as me, but I was never able to fully understand that until I saw how some people lived in Cuba. I couldn’t help but reflect on what it would be like to never be able to own a home because the government owned everything and personal freedom didn’t exist. I wondered what it would be like to be so poor that I would have to walk around grimy city streets barefoot because I couldn’t afford shoes and it wouldn’t matter how many cuts I would get from broken glass because I had to get myself to work everyday on foot. That trip really shattered my ego and my mental models and when I arrived back home, I approached my own life very differently.

2. To do what I love. Interestingly, there are very few other areas of my life where I feel more at home and happy then when I am traveling. I really enjoy experiencing the unknown and all of the possibilities it has to offer. I guess I feel totally free; free from obligation and expectation. I am able to explore on my own terms and be who I want to be without negative consequences. When I am planning a trip, my excitement consumes me. I can’t help but wonder; what am I going to see? Who am I going to meet? What am I going to learn?

3. Re-live my youth. Unlike many of my peers, I skipped the university experience. When I graduated high school I went straight to working full time at my family’s business. It wasn’t until later in my life that I went back to university and got an education and got the job that I have now. I never had the opportunity to have 4 months off for 4 years and travel when I was younger. I was too focused on making money and buying my first house. I wanted to be an adult as fast I could.

Traveling now allows me to capture some of those stolen moments. The best thing is I have more money and resources behind me now so I can travel without incurring debt and causing financial strain which would have happened if I had done it in my younger days. I also have a partner to travel with, my husband, which allows us to grow and experience with each other by our side.

4. Redefine my boundaries. Being in a completely different environment than what I am used to excites me. I am somehow willing to try anything, regardless of what the consequences can be. When I was in Europe for the first time, I decided to try para-gliding in Austria. It was an amazing experience. However, if you would have asked me when I was still at home if it would run off of a mountain and free fall to the ground, I would probably have said “no way”. Being somewhere different allowed me to push my boundaries and cast my fears aside. Not only was it liberating and a ton of fun but it has made me push myself harder and further in other areas of my life which has only led to success.

5. Enhance my education. Learning through textbooks is not the same as learning hands on. I much prefer learning through experience. I find I never forget what I experience whereas I can forget what I have read.

Traveling allows me to enhance my education of the world around me through experience. I get to see first hand how something is made or used, or taste a food that I have never heard about before. I get to experience history by walking through castles and basilicas instead of reading about it or watching a documentary on TV. I get to discover the world for what it is first hand instead of through someone else’s eyes. I am able to learn about something honestly instead of through a tainted image painted by someone else.

The knowledge I have gained through my travels to date has enhanced my life and opportunities in so many ways. I have never learned something that hasn’t proven useful.

Travel isn’t cheap and to many is viewed as a luxury but to me it is something worth splurging on from one year to the next. The personal gains I get from my investment are invaluable!

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Debt Burnout

Finance

Burnout.
Image by LunaDiRimmel via Flickr

You’ve got a budget.  You’ve got a debt repayment plan.  You’ve been paying off your debt.  You’ve even paid off a few of your smaller debts.  Now you’re staring down the barrel of your big debts: your mortgage, a $30,000 credit card, maybe a car payment.  You’re looking at months of payments with no quick wins; no more watching your debts die every few months.  You’re in the middle of a very long slog.

All of the easy milestones have been reached and the next one is a year or more away.  This is when debt repayment gets hard.  How can you avoid getting burnt out doing the same thing, month after month, with no major visible progress?

1.  Keep your eye on the prize. Try focusing on the end result, while ignoring the time it takes to get there.  Do you have a reward planned for when you pay off your debt?  If not, consider that to be your new shining goal-post.  My wife and I plan on taking an Alaskan cruise when our debt is repaid.

2.  Ignore the prize. If #1 doesn’t work for you, try focusing on just the current month’s progress.  How much did you pay off this month?  Was it more than last month?

3.  Make micro-goals. Try breaking the long slog into bite-sized pieces.  How fast can you pay off the next $1000?  How many months will it take to pay off that TV you bought last year?  Sometimes, meeting a smaller goal can make the whole works feel like it’s going by faster.

4.  Take a snowball vacation. For just one month, take every dollar you would normally apply to your debt–except your required payments–and have some fun with it.  Take a weekend trip, have a fancy dinner, or pick up that video game system you’ve been eying.  Something.  Anything to take your mind off of your repayment plan for a while.   Be careful not to make this a habit or you will never get out of debt.

5.  Start a blog to share your pain.

A debt snowball is a long, intense process.  If you’re not careful, you can burn out and let the whole thing collapse.  How do you avoid burnout?

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Money Problems – Day 7: Paying Off Debt

Finance

Scottsturgis unicorn
Image via Wikipedia

Today, I am continuing the  series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances.   The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances.  It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear.  Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days.  That’s not my schedule.  Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us.   Instead, it will run roughly once a week.  To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.

On this, Day 7, we’re going to talk about paying off debt.

Until you pay off your debts, you are living with an anchor around your neck, keeping you from doing the things you love.  Take a look at the amount you are paying to your debt-holders each month.   How could you better use that money, now?  A vacation, private school for your kids, a reliable car?

If you’ve got a ton of debt, the real cost is in missed opportunities.   For example, with my son’s vision therapy being poorly covered by our insurance plan, we are planning a much smaller vacation this summer–a “staycation”–instead of a trip to the Black Hills.  If we didn’t have a debt payment to worry about, we’d have a much larger savings and would have been able to absorb the cost without canceling other plans.  The way it is, our poor planning and reliance on debt over the last 10 years have cost us the opportunity to go somewhere new.

The only way to regain the ability to take advantage of future opportunities is to get out of debt, which tends to be an intimidating thought.   When we started on our journey out of debt, we were buried 6 figures deep, with a credit card balance that matched our mortgage.    It looked like an impossible obstacle, but we’ve been making it happen.   The secret is to make a plan and stick with it.   Pick some kind of plan, and follow it until you are done.  Don’t give up and don’t get discouraged.

What kind of plan should you pick?  That’s a personal choice.  What motivates you? Do you want to see quick progress or do you like seeing the effects of efficient, long-term planning?   These are the most common options:

Debt Snowball

Popularized by Dave Ramsey, this is the plan with the greatest emotional effect.   It’s bad math, but that doesn’t matter, if the people using it are motivated to keep at it long enough to get out of debt.

To prepare your debt snowball, take all of your debts–no matter how small–and arrange them in order of balance.   Ignore the interest rate.  You’re going to pay the minimum payment on each of your debts, except for the smallest balance.  That one will get every spare cent you can throw at it.   When the smallest debt is paid off, that payment and every spare cent you were throwing at it(your “snowball”) will go to the next smallest debt.   As the smallest debts are paid off, your snowball will grow and each subsequent debt will be paid off faster that you will initially think possible.    You will build up a momentum that will shrink your debts quickly.

This is the plan I am using.

Debt Avalanche

A debt avalanche is the most efficient repayment plan.  It is the plan that will, in the long-term, involve paying the least amount of interest.  It’s a good thing.   The downside is that it may not come with the “easy wins” that you get with the debt snowball.   It is the best math; you’ll get out of debt fastest using this plan, but it’s not the most emotionally motivating.

To set this one up, you’ll take all of your bills–again–and line them up, but this time, you’ll do it strictly by interest rate.  You’re going to make every minimum payment, then you’ll focus on paying the bill with the highest interest rate, first, with every available penny.

DOLP

This is the plan promoted by David Bach.  It stands for Done On Last Payment.   With this plan, you’ll pay the minimum payment on each debt, except for bill that is scheduled to be paid off first.   You calculate this by dividing the balance of each debt by the minimum payment.   This gives you an estimate of the number of months it will take to pay off each debt.

This system is less efficient than the debt avalanche–by strict math–but is better than the snowball.  It give you “quick wins” faster than the snowball, but will cost a bit more than the avalanche.   It’s a compromise between the two, blending the emotional satisfaction of the snowball with the better math of the avalanche.

Snowflaking

For each of these plans, you can give them a little steroid injection by snowflaking.  Snowflaking is the art of making some extra cash, and throwing it straight at your debt.   If you hold a yard sale, use the proceeds to make an extra debt payment.   Sell some movies at the pawn shop?  Make an extra car payment.  Every little payment you make means fewer dollars wasted on interest.

Paying interest means you are paying for everything you buy…again.  Do whatever it takes to make debt go away, and you will find yourself able to take advantage of more opportunities and spend more time doing the things you want to do.  Life will be less stressful and rainbows will follow you through your day.  Unicorns will guard your home and leprechauns will chase away evil-doers.   The sun will always shine and stoplights will never show red.   Getting out of debt is powerful stuff.

Your task today is to pick a debt plan, and get on it.   Whichever plan works best for you is the right one.    Organize your bills, pick one to focus on, and go to it.

Assuming you are in debt, how are you paying it off?

 

 

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Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

Business, Finance

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to set up a WordPress site.   I’m going to show you exactly what settings, plugins, and themes I use.   I’m not going to get into writing posts today.  That will be next time.

I use WordPress because it makes it easy to develop good-looking sites quickly.   You don’t have to know html or any programming.   I will be walking through the exact process using Hostgator, but most hosting plans use CPanel, so the instructions will be close.  If not, just follow WordPress’s 5 minute installation guide.

Installing WordPress

Assuming you can follow along with me, log in to your hosting account and find the section of your control panel labeled “Software/Service”.  Click “Fantastico De Luxe”.

Fantastico

On the Fantastico screen, click WordPress, then “New Installation”.

Install WordPress

On the next screen, select your domain name, then enter all of the details: admin username, password, site name, and site description.  If you’ll remember, I bought the domain  http://www.masterweddingplanning.net.   I chose the site name of “Master Wedding Planning” and a description of “Everything You Need to Know to Plan Your Wedding”.

Click “install”, then “finish installation”.   The final screen will contain a link to the admin page, in this case, masterweddingplanning.net/wp-admin.  Go there and log in.

Configuring WordPress

After you log in, if there is a message at the top of the screen telling you to update, do so.   Keeping your site updated is the best way to avoid getting hacked.  Click “Please update now” then “Update automatically”.  Don’t worry about backing up, yet.  We haven’t done anything worth saving.

Next, click “Settings” on the left.  Under General Settings, put the www in the WordPress and site URLs.  Click save, then log back in.

Click Posts, then Categories.  Under “Add New Category”, create one called “Misc” and click save.

Click Appearance.  This brings you to the themes page.   Click “Install Themes” and search for one you like.   I normally use Headway, but before I bought that, I used SimpleX almost exclusively.   Your goal is to have a simple theme that’s easy to maintain and easy to read.  Bells and whistles are a distraction.

Install a theme

Click “Install”, “Install now”, and “Activate”.  You now have a very basic WordPress site.

Plugins

A plugin is an independent piece of software to make independent bits of WordPress magic happen.   To install the perfect set of plugins, click Plugins on the left.    Delete “Hello Dolly”, then click “Add new”.

In the search box, enter “plugin central” and click “Search plugins”.    Plugin Central should be the first plugin in the list, so click “install”, then “ok”, then “activate plugin”.  Congratulations, you’ve just installed your first plugin.

Now, on the left, you’ll see “Plugin Central” under Plugins.  Click it.  In the Easy Plugin Installation box, copy and paste the following:

 All in One SEO Pack
 Contact Form 7
 WordPress Database Backup
 SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
 WP Super Cache
 Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress
 date exclusion seo
 WP Policies
 Pretty Link Lite
 google xml sitemaps
 Jetpack by WordPress.com


Click “install”.


On the left, click “Installed Plugins”.   On the next screen, click the box next to “Plugins”, then select “Activate” from the dropdown and click apply.


Activate plugins


Still under Plugins, click “Akismet Configuration”.  Enter your  API key and hit “update options”.  You probably don’t have one, so click “get your key”.


Tools


The only tool I worry about is the backup.   It’s super-easy to set up.   Click “Tools”, then “Backup”.  Backup


Scroll down to “Schedule Backups”, select weekly, make sure it’s set to a good email address and click “Schedule Backup”.   I only save weekly because we won’t be adding daily content.  Weekly is safe enough, without filling up your email inbox.


Settings


There are a lot of settings we’re going to set.   This is going to make the site more usable and help the search engines find your site.  We’re going to go right down the list.   If you see a section that I don’t mention, it’s because the defaults are good enough.


Writing


Set the Default Post Category to “Misc”.


Visit this page and copy the entire list into “Update Service” box.   This will make the site ping a few dozen services every time you publish a post.   It’s a fast way to get each post indexed by Google.


Click “Save Changes”.


Discussion


Uncheck everything under “Email me whenever…” and hit save.   This lets people submit comments, without actually posting the comments or emailing me when they do so.  Every once in a while, I go manually approve the comments, but I don’t make it a priority.


Permalinks


Select “Custom structure” and enter this: /%postname%/


Click save.


All in One SEO


Set the status to “Enabled”, then fill out the site title and description.  Keep the description to about 160 characters.  This is what builds the blurb that shows up by the link when you site shows up in Google’s results.


Check the boxes for “Use categories for META keywords” and “Use noindex for tag archives”.


Click “Update Options”.


Date Exlusion SEO


Check the boxes to remove each of the dates and set the alt text to “purpose” or something.   This will suppress the date so your posts won’t look obsolete.


Hide Dates


SEO Search Terms 2


This plugin reinforces the searches that bring people to your site.   It’s kind of neat.  Skip the registration, accept the defaults and hit save.


WP Policies


Scroll to the bottom and click import.  We’ll come back to this.


WP Super Cache


Select “Caching On” and hit save.


JetPack


Across the top of the screen should be a giant banner telling you to connect to WordPress.com and set up Jetpack.  You’ll need an account on WordPress.com, so go there and set one up.   After authorizing the site, you’ll be brought back to the Jetpack configuration screen.   Click “Configure” under “WordPress.com Stats”.  Take the defaults and hit save.


Contact


On the contact configuration page, copy the code in the top section.  You’ll need this in a moment.


Contact form code


Pages


Now, we going to create a couple of static pages.   On the left, click “Pages”, then “Add new”.


Name the first page “Contact” and put the contact form code in the body of the page.  Hit publish.


Menus


Under Appearance, click “Menu”.   Enter a menu name and hit save.


Then, under “Pages”, click the box next to “Contact”, “Disclaimer”, and any other policies you’d like to display.  Hit save.


Widgets


Also under Appearance, click “Widgets”.   This is where you’ll select what will display in the sidebar.   All you have to do is drag the boxes you want from the middle of the page to the widget bar on the right.   I recommend Text, Search, Recent Posts, Popular Search Terms and Tag Cloud.  In the text box, just put some placeholder text in it, like “Product will go here”.   We’ll address this next time.


Posts


We’re not going to worry about getting posts in place, yet.    That will be the next installment.  However, the steps in the next installment could take 2 weeks to implement, and we want Google to start paying attention now.  To make that happen, we need to get a little bit of content in place.   This won’t be permanent content.  It’s only there so Google has something to see when it comes crawling.


To get this temporary, yet legal content, I use eZineArticles.  Just go search for something in your niche that doesn’t look too spammy.


Then, click “Posts”, then delete the “Hello World” post.  Click “Add new”.   Copy the eZine article, being sure to include the author box at the bottom, and hit publish.


To see your changes, you may have to go to Settings, then WP Cache and delete the cache so your site will refresh.


Congratulations!  You now have a niche blog with content.   It’s not ready to make you any money, yet, but it is ready for Google to start paying attention.    In the next installment, I’ll show you how I get real unique content and set it up so Google keeps coming back to show me the love.


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