Posts tagged social media careers
Five steps to create breakthrough actions toward “Everest Goals”
Jun 8th
By Shauna Chymboryk, {grow} Community Member
Personal power is the ability to achieve what you want. More than anything else, it is personal power that brings you success and happiness. So, how do we go about increasing our personal power? One very effective way is to set and achieve what I call “Everest” goals. Let’s look at how they worked for me, and how they might work for you, too!
Step 1: Find Inspiration
In 2001, Erik Weihenmayer became the only blind person in history to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Erik redefines the term “blind ambition.”
Since Erik went blind, at the age of 13, it was a dream of his to climb the world’s tallest peak. Erik knew that some people would think he was crazy, but hoped that he could find others to share his dream.
Erik found a supporter that believed in him; that first person was the beginning of a team of supporters. Erik’s supporters helped him realize his dream, while his accomplishment increased his personal power to tackle other tough challenges.
Erik’s story became a source of inspiration for me. If Erik can climb Mt. Everest blind, surely I can also reach out in the dark, embrace a challenge, and conquer it. I really wanted to feel the same sense of exhilaration and personal power that Erik found by conquering something challenging. For me, it was starting over and tackling an MBA program.
Who inspires you?
Step 2: Dream Your Own Dream
Standing on top of Mount Everest expanded Erik’s view of what was possible in his life; conquering Everest was Erik’s dream. Each of us need Everest goals in our lives to expand our vision of what we’re capable of; we need to dream our own dream.
In 2010, I set my own Everest goal. After raising my children, I decided that it was time to continue my education; I decided to earn a master’s degree. But what degree should I pursue?
My undergraduate degree was in education. I wondered if I should continue in that area. Honestly, that would be the easiest avenue to pursue. But I wasn’t looking for easy; I was looking for challenging and exhilarating.
I wanted to broaden and enlarge my knowledge, skills, and abilities. After considering a number of options, I decided to obtain a Master of Public Administration from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business Management.
Why? Thoughts of leading, supporting worthy causes, developing organizations, and making a difference propelled me to think of public administration. This became my dream.
What is your dream?
Step 3: Qualify Your Everest Goal
An Everest goal goes beyond normal goal setting. It represents an ultimate achievement or an extraordinary accomplishment. Achieving it requires everything one can give, and that is exactly how and why it increases our personal power.
Like setting our sights on climbing to the summit of Mount Everest, an Everest goal is clear, engaging, compelling, exciting, stimulating, and passionate. An Everest goal is visionary, and it leaves individuals better for having engaged in its pursuit.
An Everest goal meets these qualifications:
- It captures our deep inner commitment because we care deeply about it.
- It require our supreme effort.
- It depends on our complete authenticity and genuine desire.
- It motivates our learning and wisdom as we conquer and achieve.
- It enhances positive relationships because it is rare to achieve an Everest goal alone.
- It requires that we get in touch with our personal values and core purpose in life.
What qualified my goal to obtain a master’s degree as an Everest goal? I believe strongly in life-long education; I feel a strong commitment to, and value, education. This goal would require my supreme effort because I have been out of school for so long, I was pursuing a degree for which I had no foundation, and I wanted to “excel” and not just “complete.” I genuinely felt that I had chosen a goal that would both challenge and exhilarate me.
Does your Everest goal meet these six qualifications?
Step 4: Conquer the Challenge
This is the step that pushes us to our limit. We discover barriers to our success that were not obvious at the outset. Discouragement, fatigue, doubt, and fear threaten to derail us altogether. The very act of enduring, overcoming, strategizing, adjusting, and conquering enlarges our personal power. If we can do this, we can do other challenging things.
This quote from The Power of Passion: Achieve Your Own Everest echoes my feelings about conquering Everest goals: “Winning is an internal satisfaction, a deep inner sense of pride and joy. Success can only be measured within ourselves, by ourselves. It has nothing to do with other people’s perception of our achievements. It has everything to do with our own perceptions of our efforts. Success is giving it your all.”
I gave it my all. I conquered my Everest with excellence and I can look back with an increased sense of ability and personal power.
What Everest goals have you conquered?
Step 5: Repeat the Process
Did Erik stop conquering challenges once he reached the summit of Mt. Everest? Not on your life. In 2008, Erik completed his subsequent goal of climbing the Seven Summits—the highest mountains on each of the seven continents.
Achieving personal power is not an event — it is a life-long process. So, after we have enjoyed our accomplishment, processed the learning experience, and integrated our new abilities into our daily lives, it is time to reach out once more for a new challenge.
I graduated just two weeks ago, but it’s not too soon to start dreaming up my next Everest goal. Whatever it is, it will be as challenging and exhilarating as this one.
What is your next Everest goal? How have Everest goals increased your personal power? I’d love to be inspired by your experiences. Please comment below!
Shauna Chymboryk is a recent graduation with an MPA degree from the BYU Marriott School of Management (obviously!) and her goal is to assist small businesses in developing social media efforts. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn
Successful? It might be time to replace yourself.
Nov 6th
A few miles from my house there was a very successful Wal-Mart store. It was in a great location and the parking lot was always packed. I had heard that this was actually one of the chain’s most successful stores.
So at first, it was surprising when Wal-Mart closed this store at the height of its popularity and opened a bigger store a few miles away. They were abandoning an extremely successful site, but with a very good reason. They were re-inventing themselves. If they hadn’t opened up a grand new location, their competitors would. If they hadn’t added new features and services, their competitor would be nipping at their heels with new innovations.
Replace yourself.
I think this is a powerful recipe for success. While the retail chain might be best known for “every day low prices,” in fact their core competency is relentless and continuous process improvement. They are in a constant state of re-invention. Doesn’t it make sense to “replace yourself” instead of waiting for somebody else to do it?
This is a principle that needs to be applied to every business, both big and small. Even me.
I have to admit that success had made me become a bit complacent with my business strategy. When you’re embroiled in the day-to-day hurricane sometimes it’s difficult to think about the big picture and the prospect of re-inventing yourself and your business.
So I’ve been re-evaluating where I am and we’re I’m going. Here are a few questions to consider in a strategic renewal:
“Only we …”
Can you finish that sentence? It’s probably the hardest task in business but it’s absolutely essential because it unearths your points of differentiation, the nature of competition, the needs of your customers, and ultimately, your strategy. If you haven’t considered this in a while, has it changed? Are you sure you are aligned with customer needs? Are you continually improving and refreshing your core competencies?
Tune-in
If you haven’t spent time considering the changing needs of your customers, it might be time to get out and talk to them or do a survey. While we’re focused on serving, it is often difficult to see what’s coming next. In my corporate life, we had a formal “listen to the customer” exercise that helped us discover many new product ideas.
Scan the playing field
Are you watching for changing trends and innovations among your competitors? Even in the fragmented and highly-competitive field of social media marketing, there are certain over-arching themes emerging. Are you ahead of the curve or behind the curve? Do you even know?
Revenue renewal
My business has changed dramatically int he past three years as evidenced by this comparison:
My work with SMB (small and medium businesses) has nearly come to an end. This was a difficult transition and I had to make the hard decision to literally give away my valued customers (who have also become my friends) to another consultant.
Instead, I am focusing on enterprise-level customers. This is more in my comfort zone, better utilizes my background in organizational development and is more profitable.
I am also devoting more time to teaching in executive programs at Rutgers University. This is rewarding work and it is a great experience to to be part of a social media “A Team” that includes CK Kerley, Glen Gilmore, Augustine Fou and many other notable faculty members.
Included in the “content creation” category is Social Media From Scratch Videos, my books, social media speaking engagements and other paid content. This is the fastest-growing area and now I need to figure out if something else has to “give” or if I continue to expand this area.
So I have been aggressively re-inventing my business model, and I’m not sitting still. I’m constantly re-assessing and shedding my business skin.
Application
With the speed of business today, we simply have no choice but to constantly re-invent our businesses and even replace ourselves. I would be really interested to hear how you’re handling this transition. In the face of a busy work schedule, how do make re-invention a priority? Is this post going to help give you a kick-start?
The New Market for Social Media Consultants
Oct 3rd
By Neicole Crepeau, Contributing {grow} Columnist
To date, most social media consultants have focused on helping organizations use social networks for marketing and customer service. But there’s a new career opportunity for social media consultants — helping your company use social technology for collaboration inside the enterprise, called social collaboration.
What is social collaboration? Think Yammer. Yammer is an enterprise social network used by employees or businesses to share, collaborate, and innovate. Microsoft’s recent purchase of Yammer is a testament to the business opportunity social collaboration offers. Last year, Forrester Research predicted that the enterprise social software market would grow to $6.4 billion in 2016, as companies added tools for internal use.
Big Benefits for Social Businesses
Businesses have good reason to pursue the use of social media tools in the enterprise. As Mark Schaefer wrote recently, a McKinsey report on social technology published this summer estimated that companies could see a 20-25% improvement in knowledge worker productivity through the use of social technology. For example, they found that making information available via social media could reduce the time workers spend searching for information by 35%. Those numbers will garner CEO and CIO attention.
The company I work for, Vizit Corporation, just completed a study of 1,100 mangers of SharePoint sites. (SharePoint is the number one social collaboration tool used in the enterprise.) Although the results will not be published until October 22, I wanted to give {grow} readers a preview of the opportunity for social media consultants.
The Enterprise Could Use Some Help
62% of the individuals we surveyed said their organization had or would have an internal social initiative within two years. 57% of those planning to implement are doing so for internal collaboration purposes. Another 35% are planning to use it for both internal collaboration and to communicate with customers/partners (primarily for customer service). Both of these are areas where an experienced consultant can help.
This momentum comes despite mixed results in their use of internal social technologies thus far. 48% in our study reported that their SharePoint social implementation was successful or very successful. That leaves 52% who could not declare success. Doesn’t that sound like an opportunity for talented social media professionals?
You’ve Got the Tools
In fact, the challenges to implementing social tools inside the enterprise are not that much different from those social media consultants encounter when working with external customers:
- How best to use the tools—When you work with clients, you probably start with business/marketing goals and then help your client determine how best to use the available social networks and social media tools to accomplish those goals. The task is similar when helping organizations understand how to use social tools internally.
- Education and training—Most social media consultants have worked with a customer whose employees weren’t familiar with social networking, and weren’t comfortable with it. Education and training are essential in both environments.
- Building communities—To get knowledge workers to adopt social tools inside the enterprise, organizations will need to proactively identify potential communities and foster them. Businesses typically think of each department as a potential community and roll-out and optimize tools for each department. In fact, though, to get full value from social technology, organizations will need to look at how to build communities across departments. According to McKinsey, part of the value of social technologies is in “lowering barriers between functional silos, and even redrawing the boundaries of the enterprise to bring in additional knowledge and expertise in ‘extended networked enterprises.’ “
- Incenting knowledge workers—Just as marketers have to find ways to incent potential customers to engage with the company on its Facebook page or LinkedIn group, businesses have to find ways to incent their workers to use the social media tools they are providing. Social media consultants can leverage all the experience that they have gained about engaging customers and apply similar techniques to engage users within the enterprise. Contests, reward systems, gamification—they are all valid tools that cutting-edge organizations are using to increase adoption of social tools by knowledge workers.
Two Challenges
There are two big chalenges for consultants wanting to enter this market: 1) Understanding the technology used for social collaboration inside the enterprise (SharePoint being a primary one, often in conjunction with Jive, Yammer, etc.); and 2) consulting with clients about the internal cultural issues that may inhibit effective use of social tools.
The technology hurdle can be addressed by education and by partnering with consulting companies who implement internal social technologies.
The cultural issues are an area that may be new to social media consultants. At issue is whether the organization’s culture is suitable for the kind of open discussion that enables effective collaboration and innovation. Forrester has identified four critical attributes of an innovative culture. Consultant may need to develop skills to help companies that aren’t optimal for social. Or, you could team up with an organizational change specialist.
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of competition in consulting for companies around social media marketing. The potential market opportunity for consulting on internal social collaboration is a big one, and that market is in its infancy. So, if you’re a social media consultant looking to grow your business, you might consider making a shift—soon. What do you think?
Neicole Crepeau is the Senior Marketing Manager at Vizit Corporation, and blogs at Coherent Social Media. She’s the creator of CurateXpress, a content curation tool. Connect with Neicole on Twitter at @neicolec
Maybe using LESS social media is the path to online success
May 30th
By Srinivas Rao, Contributing {grow} Columnist
Earlier this year as I was transitioning through phases of the blogger’s evolution and making the shift to entrepreneur, I decided to make a Twitter list of some of the most successful people online so I could study them It’s an incredibly eye opening exercise that I recommend to anybody. What shocked me was to learn how little time some of the biggest names online were actually spending on social media. Here are a few of the lessons I learned:
Creating Lasting Value
Every tweet, status update and moment of brilliance you have on any social media platform has a shelf life of about an hour. Nobody is going to dig through the archives of your tweets and Facebook updates. This approach to social media is the path of least resistance. To make matters worse, you’re creating content on somebody else’s platform and not getting paid for it.
To make an impact on your business, community or tribe, it’s essential to create things that have lasting value.
- Blog Posts: When compared to a tweet or status update, a blog post has a significantly longer shelf life. Not only will it have a more powerful impact immediately upon creating it, but it has potential to be found in your archives years later.
- Books: While blog posts are great, it’s easy to get on a hamster wheel and create content without a purpose. To add to that not everybody will dig through several years of archived content. A book gives you an opportunity to expose a reader to your entire body of work. Mark Schaefer could write a series of amazing posts about how to use Twitter. But a book like the Tao of Twitter will have a much bigger impact in the long run.
- Videos/Podcasts: Podcasts, videos and any other sort of multimedia content arguably take a longer time to create than written content. But the shelf life is fantastic, and the potential to repurpose it can make it a goldmine of value for your business and your customers.
Self Promotion is a Necessity
Self promotion gets a bad rap on the social web, but I think we have be to careful not to dismiss how essential it is to the sustainability of a real business. Free content is not going to keep your lights on or put food on the table. To make money you have to sell.
The typical launch sequence of most bloggers is to spend months working on a book, course or information product of some sort. It’s followed by an aggressive promotional effort that lasts a week or two, and most of the revenue is generated in those first few weeks. After that sales come in, but sporadically. There’s nothing wrong with having an ongoing promotion strategy for the work that gets you paid:
- If you have a product, eBook or course that you created a while back, schedule a tweet once or twice a week letting people know about it.
- If you have an email newsletter, don’t be afraid to let the people on your list know about your services and products on a regular basis. If you lose subscribers, don’t sweat it. You’re running a business not a charity.
The biggest brands continually make you aware of their products with one primary goal: to generate more sales.
Having an End Game
Do a search for any social media advice and what you’ll find is an endless stream of articles about how to increase your traffic, how to get more fans/followers, or how to write better content. But what nobody spends enough time talking about is the end game. What’s the ultimate goal of your social media efforts? If you have no idea why you’re doing something, there’s a high likelihood that you’re wasting your time.
If you’re not careful social media can become a giant time suck that has little impact on your business. Are you so consumed by social media that you’ve started to confuse activity with accomplishment?
Srinivas Rao writes about the things you should have learned in school, but never did and his the host-co founder of BlogcastFM. You can follow him on twitter @skooloflife
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Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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