Okay for today’s blog post I’m actually recording this live on my iPad and the program I’m using is dragon naturally speaking. If I have a few issues with the grammar I’ll go through and fix it myself manually but I want to talk about today’s topic and discuss the difference between SEO and Social Media and you should know by now the two go hand-in-hand unless your living on Mars.

Let me explain why SEO is more beneficial for a product driven business model. When it comes to other business models that are more service-based businesses compared with events, it’s very difficult to do SEO for non-product driven websites based on my experience in the social media trenches. Being in this field for almost 3 years now, if you’re looking for quick rankings or a way to get quick traffic, quick visibility, quick brand recognition, then social media is that the best route to go. You will see over time you will start to rank for certain keywords based on social media tactics and relevant postings that you are doing. I had stumbled upon this in my early years just running some tests and putting out great content while doing basic keyword research. I was actually being ranked for some very competitive keywords which was cool! What’s even more interesting is that 1.5 years ago before Google and twitter signed an agreement, I started to notice my twitter messages ranking in Google search results on page 1 real time. This occurred from my twitter account because as we know twitter is a micro-blog so that was even more interesting.

So I guess the take away for today’s topic is when it comes to social media versus SEO, social media is actually going to be beating SEO for product & service driven businesses that’s my prediction in the not so distant future. Id like to hear your feedback in the comments section if you somewhat agree or disagree we can debate all day and Id be more than happy to. So thank you again for coming to the social networking San Diego blog. Please sign up for a newsletter on the right-hand side or download our free e-book if you have not already. Also there’s an ebook that I wrote for $9.95 for the best 10 you will ever spend as far as an informational social media guide for small business. This is Justin “Results” French signing off. Will see you guys tomorrow. Thank you

Are you a social media consultant? Are you involved in a social media mastermind group? Well if you are not, I wanted to share with you a question I get asked a lot lately. I wanted to explain why I feel social media for business is BOTH an art AND a science.

1. Social media is an art because you have to be both strategic, creative, and somewhat tech savvy. I’m not saying you have to be a programmer, BUT you have to know how to be human in a digital world and utilize the online tools. This can be very difficult for some, and require some teaching, which is why I passionately teach at Mira Costa College a Social Media and Internet marketing course that has been rising in popularity. It’s called Introduction to Marketing Your Business Online and you can find out more info by clicking here: social media workshop

2. Social media is a science because it ties very closely in with sociology (which was one of my favorite subjects in my lower division) and studies the human behavior in groups. Hence the rise of social networking, social media, and other human behavioral technologies that continues to advance. Social media requires people to be REAL and if you are not, others will know. The 5 realest people I know in social media are GaryVee, Chris Brogan, Scott Stratten, Brian Solis, and Tony Hsieh of Zappos.

So what do you think? Is social media an art OR a science? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. Enjoy the world Cup!

Justin “Results” French

Are you a social media matchmaker? Just wanted to give a speical shout-out to all those I am connected with on twitter, facebook, linked-in, etc. Things have been busy in the social media mastermind for business trenches so keep up the good fight! Stay tuned for more exciting news to come from the journey!

Justin

First- Congratulations to Beverly Macy and Rodney Rumford on their 1 year milestone for providing exceptional Social Media For Business conferences, workshops, and educational forums. The last one I went to was at Harvard and this was probably one of the best conferences I had been to. I am looking forward to what the 1 year anniversary will bring. Here is a link to the event. http://www.gravitysummit.com/ I will be tweeting live to give you the best 140 character highlights of the event so follow me on twitter here if you want: @JustinRFrench

Also, Enjoy this quick video I made (shout our to Chris Brogan for the Hotel Room idea) where I try to stay on topic with 3 main points: Hustle, Helpfulness, and Heart. Also, I ask, what are you doing to make sure you are being extra helpful to clients and colleagues these days? In times like these, we must be going above and beyond (one of my favorite groups by the way) in being extra helpful in providing quality customer serve. Just talking about it isn’t good enough anymore. (Thank Zappos for being the model example of this)

Enjoy

JustinRFrench

Gotta love that catchy headline right? Ok so yesterday when I logged into my personal Gmail account (I have about 30 Gmail accounts by the way all for a different business purpose because you know I’m all about business and occasionally having fun) and I happen to see a landing page come up introducing me to Google Buzz. I watched a quick video, got versed on it, and began exploring. After you watch the video I would advise you to play around with it a little bit. Do you think Twitter may be worried? My personal opinion is just like Linked-in, Facebook and Twitter. Google buzz will be just another means of me communicating to another online community of those I am connected with. (it just happens to be my contacts in my Gmail account and on my phone- the G1 Android). Buy one here and I’ll teach you how to set up a special proprietary workflow system I have created to streamline email and increase productivity

As the lines become more and more blurry between my professional life and personal life, I started out having two separate accounts but quickly realized how non time efficient this was. I am slowing trying to migrate to just 1 user account per social network, but we will see where that takes me. Right now I am more into twitter and Linked-In (obviously) but it depends on my goals.

What are you thoughts on the new Google Buzz? Should Twitter be afraid? I don’t think so, not for now anyway, BUT who knows what will happen in the next year. The world of social media and social networking for business changes every day. It is so hard to keep up BUT if this is your passion, you never consider it work. Its part of your life. It consumes you. You are addicted. But there are many other worse things you could be addicted to so until then, go get your Buzz on with Google and Tweet it up on Twitter. Cheers,

Justin R French

Social Media and SEO go hand in hand now. Because of the real time nature of the web, Google is now ranking tweets, video, and other social media conversations because of the increase in user generated content. Even early last year when I was experimenting with SEO tactics and twitter, I began seeing various twitter accounts ranked for certain keyword phrases. Here is a video I did that explains this principal in more detail:

Do you have some examples of Google ranking your social media activities real time? Let us know- Cheers

P.S. Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on a well deserved Super Bowl win yesterday!

Are you involved in social media?  Are you in Marketing?  If you are, you have probably heard the term brand association.  Brand association is a growing trend in social media.  Many people are starting to capitalize on this while growing their social influence or social capital.  Yes even twitter has a grading system and measures your influence.  Because of this, personal branding is becoming a necessity in todays digital economy and I wanted to share with you my take on the topic.

First, when I think of personal branding, I refer to personal branding expert for generation Y  Dan Schawbel (click his name for link to his Blog) who I had the pleasure to meet at Gravity Summit last year in Boston.   Here is the blog post With a video I did interviewing Dan on online branding tips for small business: http://bit.ly/2jYUl Celebrities and other influential people in the online and offline world leverage brand association and capitalize on this everyday.

Now more than ever thanks to social media, we will continue to see this trend gain more popularity with big brand names endorsing people who build up their social capital, social influence, and trust with their audience.  Why should you pay attention to this?  Because thanks to social media, this levels the playing field and creates new opportunities that did not exist before social media.  Now just average people can possibly take advantage of this new opportunity to use social media to associate themselves with brands they are passionate about and capitalize thanks to their brand evangelism.   Affiliate programs do a lot of this too.  Thanks to our personal stories and testimonials (being transparent of course) the smart companies and brands will start reaching out to key influencer’s active in social media and social networking.  This is continually happening and this trend will continue growing so get involved, IF you don’t mind being transparent of course.

Here is my video that explains brand association in more detail.  I am interested in hearing from you-  what are your brand associations? Hint- follow products and services you are passionate about.  If you are not involved now with social media and associating yourself with products and services you are passionate about, then I suggest you start.  Do you see anything wrong with social media and brand association?  Have you been able to capitalize on this yet? I’m interested in hearing your stories.

If you are from Infiniti and intertsted in speaking more about the endorsement- I can be reached via email at snsdjf@gmail.com

Happy Branding!

Here is a Top 8 list of our Most Popular Posts for 2009 according to our tracking statistics on Hootsuite. You the community, clicked on these posts the most, so I put together a list of the most popular ones just in case you wanted to bookmark it or share it with your contacts (always appreciated)

Please help share these with the Business Community as I’m sure they will find these extremely valuable in preparing their strategy for 2010. This is in order of oldest post to the newest.

1. Top 5 Lessons Learned about Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, and Business”

This is the post that really kick-started our renewed passion for consulting, except instead of providing trusted IT consulting, our TEAM shifted into providing trusted Social Media Consulting because we identified the trends of businesses needing a team of consultants to help guide them on this new medium which should now be part of their marketing mix. Social media has been added to the equation of all marketing departments, or at least should be and the budgets will finally be there for 2010.

2. 10 Keys for Small Business Success Using Social Networking

This post gave actual tips small businesses can implement right away and gained much popularity among the small business community.

3. How CEO’s Can Create A Blue Ocean Strategy And Save The Company Using Social Media

As we know, good leadership starts from the top and works its way down, yet now we have seen a more bottom up approach thanks to social media. I would suggest any executives still trying to wrap their head around social media, you may want to read this popular post I did and the video explaining how to create a blue ocean strategy using social media with some examples in layman’s terms.

4. Top 5 lessons learned in the trenches of social networking for business and social media consulting

This post discussed what life has been like in the trenches of providing social media consulting and strategies for companies to leverage with even some lessons we learned early on. A good refresher like this is much needed for the New Year.

5. Top 5 Lessons in Trust relating to Social Media and Social Networking

Especially in today’s economic climate, we are extremely reliant upon the trust we have built with our network and community, and we must constantly be cultivating these relationships. The book I would recommend you read is by a fellow social media evangelist Chris Brogan. The title of his book Trust Agents speaks for itself. Here is where you can get your copy: Remember- leaders are readers!

6. San Diego Small Business Fair- Social Networking 101 Slides

This post gives the actual presentation I did at the local San Diego business fair. We received some very good feedback on the content presented so I encourage you to view this post just in case you missed the live event.

7. Top 10 Reasons Businesses Should Embrace Social Media and Twitter To Survive in 2010

Here was another Top 10 list I had put together explaining why businesses will should be embracing social media more as part of their business strategy for 2010. It received over 800 hits so there should be at least a few good points that you may find beneficial.

8. What are the ABC’s of Social Media For Business?

It is important to know the foundation of social media for business development purposes, so these ABC’s explain some of our processes we use (transparency) in working with clients to establish principles to ensure a solid foundation.

Here is to a great 2010 and we at the SNSD team wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Justin R French

P.S. As your trusted advisor, In case you were looking for a cost effective tool to stay in touch with your customers, prospects, and community, you may want to consider starting 2010 off with a tool we use at SNSD called Aweber. You can sign up here for a FREE test drive:

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First off, as 2009 comes to an end soon, I am very humbled by all the great people I have come to know on twitter over the last year throughout our journey. The team at SNSD could not have gotten here without all your support. Honestly, it’s those close to me in my network on Linked-in and especially Twitter that keep me moving forward even though some days I feel like I am in the dumps or have lost my mind….

I have heard so many different terms used for the new title in social media lately and wanted to discuss some of the following with you and get your feedback:

Social Media Strategist
Social Media Consultant
Social Media Advocate
Social Media Manager
Social Media Coordinator
Social Media Coach
Social Media Mentor
the list goes on……

People want to know where the jobs are- they are in social media. If you have a business degree, experience in consulting, understand strategy, marketing and sales, and have some technical abilities, these are the types of careers to consider. Are there any titles I am missing? If we are connected on twitter or linked-in and we share a common bond around the social media movement for business, I want to hear from you. I have some very exciting things planned for 2010 and as we have developed and grown our thought-leadership collectively on social media for business, we will finally be able to start productizing our best practices and direclty impacting the business community in a positive way. Can you say turn-key?

More to come on this in 2010 Be ready for Great things!

Justin R French
Social Media Visionary

Social media marketing is going to be HUGE in 2010 and we are finally seeing some decent budgets being formulated. We started out the first 2 quarters of 2009 helping the small business community mostly, but have realized that mid-size firms have demonstrated to us the budgets are now there and they are seeing the value more and more (which is a very good sign for the economy too). We will continue to help our small businesses of course, and are still finalizing the coaching and subscription services we have been discussing (I know well over-due) but things have been very busy in the trenches.

I wanted to share with you some frequently asked questions we ask prospects before engaging in a social media marketing engagement:

1.  Is your business involved in social media yet?

2.  What’s working / Not Working?

3.  Why do you think your company is ready to engage in social media?

4.  Do you have a social media plan for 2010?

5.  Are you measuring your results?

6.  Are you keeping an eye on your competitors online?

7.  What is your differentiation factor?

8.  Is your website web 2.0 friendly?

9.  On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your customer service?

10.  On a scale of 1-10 how would your customers rate your customer service?

11.  Do you have staff members who can commit the time to training?

12.  Are you breaking the news first for your industry and developing yourself or your firm as a thought leader for your consulting or legal practice?

Well, this is EXACLTY what we help our clients do everyday; prepare them to listen, teach them to engage, and change their mindset into the 21^st century digital economy. But I must warn you that if you think everything is perfect when it comes to social media marketing your wrong. There is NO one tactic you will try that will get you 2 million views to your you tube channel (unless you are using Scott Stratten or better known as @UnMarketing on Twitter- make sure you follow this Jedi Marketer for some un-believable insight.)

Just like traditional marketing, you have a lot of options (tools) to consider. I know your boss is telling you to stretch your dollars as much as possible, BUT at the same time get the most effective response from your audience while not trying to sound to “spammy” right? Well then social media marketing may be the answer you’re looking for. Remember, marketing is getting the horse to the pond, and a sale is getting the horse to drink.

I know marketing is more complex than that, but you get the idea. It’s all about the marketing message you portray and the call to action that’s key. With some heavy research from our research team, we may be able to offer you the “fast track to social media for business” which many of our clients have experienced.

What topics would you be interested in hearing more about for 2010? We are preparing some turn-key products and essential social media tools as resources to our clients that are going to really help the business community so stay tuned. If you’re a marketing firm looking to offer social media marketing and consulting services to your clients, send our CEO Justin R French an email at snsdjf@gmail.com and put in the subject “affiliate program” and request more information.

Look forward to hearing more from our growing business community.

The Social Networking San Diego Team