twitter Archives - ChrisDucker.com

How to Organize and Run a Mastermind Session for the First Time

How did you spend your weekend? I took a break from the usual family time, and hosted a private mastermind session at my facility, here in Cebu, Philippines – and it was awesome!

I’ve been part of many mastermind sessions before, both one-off’s and regular sessions, however, I’ve never actually run one myself – ie. I’m the host.

After posting a few images on my Instagram account, as well as Facebook and Twitter, I started to get comments and questions on how to be part of such a group, or how to actually start one from scratch.

So, I thought it might be useful for you to put down a few tips on how I went about hosting my first session, including finalizing the mastermind group format and rules, so that if you decide to do it yourself you’ll have something to refer back to when the time comes around.

…

READ POST

Ask the Readers: Is Social Media Getting Too Noisy?

Snapshot taken via Instagram, whilst in Hospital

I enjoy my social media action.

I have just as much fun enjoying interacting with friends online as I do in real life… And its a great way to get to know my community here better, as well as hopefully help as much as possible, too.

Not to mention building brands and marketing businesses, too. Creativity to one side – being active on social media channels has become the ‘norm’ in our very online world nowadays.

Tweeting is my favorite form of social chit chat. It’s quick, very mobile and above all, simple. Effective.

Twitter is also a fantastic tool for finding new, real time, business opportunities, too (which I regularly do!). But, thats a topic for a future post, perhaps.

And, in the News: Facebook Buys Instagram

I also enjoy taking photos. Instagram makes even the most inexperienced photographer ‘cool’ with its different filters, and sweet blurring effects (I’m sure there’s a technical term for that, but I’m buggered if I know what it is!). As of today, I have 711 people following me on Instagram, and I’ve posted 192 photos in the year or so that I’ve been using it. If you’d like to follow me – just search for ‘chrisducker’ in the app.

A couple of days ago Facebook announced that it was acquiring Instagram in a deal that would total one billion dollars (a mix of cash and stock).

Immediately a couple of quick thoughts popped into my head, namely:

Will I still be able to share my photos from Instagram to Twitter?
Will Instagram itself, as an app, be slowly, but surely incorporated into the Facebook app?

Fair questions to ask, and although Mark Zuckerberg says that the app will remain the way it is, I have to be honest, I doubt it will. I just don’t think that they (Facebook) will be able to help themselves, and eventually it will become ‘part’ of Facebook.

Social Media is SCREAMING at Us – All the time!

I also have to be honest when I say that I’m actually getting quite sick of all these different social media platforms.

The social media landscape is just too damn noisy for me now…

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Four Square, Pinterest, Tumblr, and so on and so on. The old adage of “You’ve got to be in it, to win it!” is complete and utter rubbish, as far as I’m concerned. I only use a few of those and do quite well when it comes to building a personal brand and marketing my businesses.

I am contemplating making quite drastic changes in my social media interaction. I might even completely drop certain platforms all together.

I’ve started to dislike Facebook as it’s become more and more ‘complicated’ to work with and enjoy. Lets face it – did we REALLY need Timeline? I don’t think so. But, its hear nonetheless. Related Note: If you want a great tutorial on Timeline for Pages, then check out my buddy, Pat Flynn’s excellent post (complete with videos and templates).

However, I do enjoy the interaction on the VBL Facebook page, which currently has over 11,000 people who have ‘Liked’ it. Do so here if you want to be loved forever!

What says the VBL Tribe?

Are you feeling the same way as me….?

Or, do you love social media, in every way, shape and form?

Will Instagram be affected by this whole thing?

Are you finding yourself strapped for time when it comes to your Social Media playtime?

I’d love to hear your comments below…

3 Simple Steps to Maximizing Social Media for Your Small Business

Today I have a very sincere message for every business owner out there that is using social media to promote and market their business…

Stop having one night stands on your social media channels.

If you really want to utilize this medium to grow your business, then start getting married, instead.

Let me explain my thoughts further.

A short time back, I had marketing expert and world-renowned speaker, David Meerman Scott on the VBL Podcast. I’m a massive fan of David’s and literally read everything he puts out. The guy is my marketing Yoda, plain and simple.

The one thing that he mentioned that stood out, more than anything else, was that people have got to stop pitching and start engaging more, to be able to make social media work for them in business.

So, in reverse order, here are three quick and easy tips to start utilizing social media to help grow your business faster than you thought possible… The RIGHT way.

Tip #3 – Fill Up Your Social Media Calendar

At the beginning of February I had the opportunity to fly over to Phuket, Thailand and speak in front of 160 passionate entrepreneurs on the subject of boosting traditional / brick ‘n mortar success, by engaging the online world of business.

Throughout the course of the 3-day conference many successful business owners, myself included (duh!) presented their pearls of wisdom to the highly energetic crowd. One session was on the subject of getting your social media strategy in place – for the entire year!

The strategy is to post something, across all your channels every day of the week.

Its better to try and automate as much of this as possible, so you just have to focus on the interaction side of things, once people start replying, commenting and RT’ing your posts.

It included things like:

Video clips.
Links to blog posts.
Famous quotes.
Questions.
Useful resources.

Perhaps I’ll go into this strategy a little more in the near future, but the big eye-opener for almost all in attendance was that, with a little planning and execution, you can be everywhere, be engaging, helpful, resourceful and reap massive rewards through social media, in a non-spammy / sales-pitchy way.

So, get creative, plan your posting schedule (in the same way you would as a blogger), and then put it all on autopilot. Following this, all you have to do is pay attention and engage.

Tip #2 – The Twitter Tactic that has Transformed My Businesses

The one thing that I love about social media is that it’s instant.

Sometime last year I had issues with my hosting provider – our sites went down. I quickly went onto Twitter and discovered that there were a lot of people in the same boat, all using the same provider, just by doing a quick search.

This got me thinking. Surely if people were using the micro-blogging site to bitch and moan about problems they were experiencing, then they MUST be using it to find solutions, too.

I was bang on, right!

So, I immediately started stalking search.twitter.com, searching for people that needed help and support in my niche, and started reaching out – without pitching my company or services. I figured that if I helped them out willingly, that they would go ahead and visit my profile, click on my links and check out what I had to offer – when they were good and ready.

I was bang on, right – again!

Nowadays, I don’t do this searching myself. I leave it up to my VA, who manages all the searches via TweetDeck, and sends out pre-written responses that I produced in the course of my experimenting myself, as well as other types of interaction that she handles herself, too.

She does this with her own Twitter account, some company ones, and even sometimes using MY account, too! So, people think that they are chatting with me, as a thought leader in our niche, before they actually DO start talking to me. Smart so-and-so, aren’t I…?!!

For me, it works… Check out the tweets below, showing social proof.

Tip #1 – My Number One ‘Social Media for Business’ Tip

This is simple, yet so many people overlook it.

It’s time to minimize and simplify.

Having a presence on the major social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn is important (click at random to interact with me on these channels). However, being actively involved on them all is just unrealistic – especially if you want to make a major difference in your business and more importantly, genuinely help your customers and prospective customers.

So, stop chasing the social media dragon and start getting smart.

Pick ONE channel that you enjoy using more than any other, and then GO FOR IT in a major way. That doesn’t mean that you won’t utilize the other channels frequently (or even have a virtual assistant manage them for you), it simply means that this one channel will become your social media focus.

For me, it’s Twitter. I like to tweet because it’s quick, easy and very mobile (thanks to my iPhone4 and iPad). It also enables me to add images, videos and links to other cool and helpful resources for my list of over 40,000+ followers.

For my aforementioned buddy, Pat Flynn – it’s Facebook. Pat’s fan page is ridiculous – in a good way! The engagement he has with his fans is unlike any other Facebook page that I have seen. Why? Because he decided a long time ago, that this was the way he wanted to answer fan questions, help, support and interact with them, away from his blog. He does a great job of it, too.

I’ll leave you with this…

10 People Doing it RIGHT!

There are LOTS of people doing things right already. However, here’s a list of ten of them that I see using social media in the right way (consistently), as discussed above, to engage, motivate, inspire and educate (as well as promote their businesses!).

Check ’em out on Twitter, and emulate, people.

What are YOU Doing Right… or Wrong?!

What experiences have you had with social media in regards to utilizing it for building your brand and promoting / marketing your business?

I’d love to hear about the good, the bad AND the ugly in the comment section below.

Quick Request: If you liked this post and found it even remotely helpful, I’d really appreciate a quick share of it on your favorite social media channel. Here’s the URL, so you can copy and paste it quickly. Thanks in advance! – https://bit.ly/ygb0dO