As many of you are aware, I am a big exponent of social media. I see it as the future of business and marketing.

I attend many different meetings and talk to many different people about this relatively new phenomenom that now accounts for over 15% of all global internet traffic.

One of the most common things people say to me on this subject is: “I don’t have time to engage with social media. I’m too busy!”.

Well, in my book, that’s a bit of a self-defeatist answer. You can find time. Would you find time to go and collect winnings from the lottery?! Of course you would! Would you find time in your busy day if a long-lost friend phoned you for a catch up chat? Yes, you would. Time is far more elastic than most people appreciate. You always make time for the things that matter to you and the things that bring results. That is why you can find time to engage with social media.

In fact, I believe that you must find time to engage with social media. You see, business and the way people communicate is changing at a faster pace than ever before in the history of commerce, and no one knows the new rules of the (business) game … yet. However, those that are engaging in social media are on the pitch, limbering up, ready for the ball to be thrown in. Those of you that are not, are not even on your way to the stadium to watch the match!

I was at a meeting last week, and the discussion was about “time management” and making long lists at the beginning of the day about what you wanted to achieve. Then work through that list, and ignore all distractions including email, phone calls etc. What an out-dated way of thinking! One person even recommended a book called “Do It Tomorrow” which recommends that you put off everything that is not a “priority” until the next day! That in our book is a sure-fire recipe for disaster!

Social media dictates and demands instant results, instant feedback, instant and consistent action to be successful. Whether you like it or not, we are living in an “instant” world, where people expect an instant response. If you do not engage with people quickly, they will take their business elsewhere.

Example: I sent an email to my solicitor instructing them to start conveyancing on a new property transaction. I did not receive a reply straight away. I then began to wonder if the person had been made redundant, or had left the company. Meanwhile, I sent another email to another solicitor who answered straight away, so I instructed them instead.

In business, you can and should act with imperfect information. Start the ball rolling immediately. Even if it’s just a quick email to acknowledge the communication and say you will revert back later. Remember: everything starts with a conversation. So, the sooner you start a dialogue with someone, the better the business outcome for you.

It’s also vital to embrace the random-ness of social media. I like to say that I didn’t know that I wanted to marry Vanessa before I met her! You have no idea what a conversation can lead to, so don’t close your mind to it. A closed mind is the most expensive thing you will ever own! Be open to everyone and everything. It is the people furthest from you in your network, who will have the greatest influence on your success! We have people that we have never met recommending us to others! How amazing is that? And it’s all thanks to social media.

Taking that off-line, I regularly get emails from people asking me if it is “worth” them turning up to our networking event. How could I possibly answer that? It depends who turns up on the day, and who they engage with. The famous actor Woody Allen once said “80% of success is showing up”. So true! If you are not even in the room, how could you know that there are people there who would love to know about the service you offer or who could share with you a nugget of information that saved you money, or who could connect you to someone who you could JV with?

This is why Twitter is so effective. Twitter is like being at a world-wide cocktail party. You’re in the virtual room, engaging with all sorts of people who can influence or contribute to your business success. So dive in and join the conversation! Who knows where it might lead. Places that you never imagined is my bet.

So when is the best time to start a conversation? The answer is NOW. Successful people take sustained and consistent action. That is the key to making social media work for you.

Three years ago, I started writing his blog . At first, only two people read it. Then 4, then 8, then 24, then 50, then 100. Now, nearly three years later, he has over 30,000 readers. But he had to start. His today was nearly three years ago.

The brilliant American marketeer, Seth Godin, recently wrote:

“This is my 3,000th blog post. (In a row).

Within a week of starting this blog, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be giving it up any time soon. It’s a difficult habit to develop, but an even harder one to break.

The impact of having one’s own personal long tail is huge. It’s not about googlefu (at least it shouldn’t be) but your footprint expands nonetheless. Do a google search on seersucker suit and there I am, listed third, with a vaguely relevant post. Do one on advice for authors and there I am again. Drip, drip, drip, it adds up. The hard part, as you can guess, is the first 2,500 posts. After that, momentum really starts to build.

Of course, given the lack of ads here, traffic isn’t the goal, spreading ideas is. With that in mind, if you’d like to celebrate this milestone (there won’t be another like it for three years or so) please go ahead and start a blog. If you already have a blog, please go ahead and post something really interesting today”.

Seth is spot on, as usual! Do a search on Google for “Ikea in Cyprus” and you will find my blog in the top ten on the FRONT page. This is something he wrote nearly three years ago, and yet it reaches a top spot in the natural listings. Pure, organic content. Not paid for. There in perpetuity. Drip, drip, drip … it all mounts up to a long “tail” on Google that leads back to you and your business.

Ironically, it was almost to the day five years ago, that Vanessa and I were a couple of property green-horns attending a property seminar to learn how to buy our first BTL investment. The rest as they say is history ….

So, please do not put anything off until tomorrow. The only time any of us have is NOW, as tomorrow never comes.

• Write your first blog. (typepad.com) It’s free to use.
• Join Twitter. (twitter.com). It’s free to use.
• Use Google calender to schedule the next three months of networking events you want to attend. Free to use
• Set up a Facebook account. Free to use.
• Join ecademy. Free to join.
• Join and contribute to our forum propertytribes.ning.com. Free to join.
• Set up a Google Reader as your “content filter”. Free to join
• Join my “geek” forum at nicktadd.ning.com to learn more about social media. Free to join

But do it TODAY. In a year from now, you’ll be glad you did.

Nick

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Why it’s so important to “get” social media and “apply” it well.

Transparency:

I was on another forum when it was noted that some chap was copying “written content” and “paste-ing” it without any recognition for the original writer.

I think this is “bad form” for 2 reasons:

Firstly, not recognising the original writer is bad manners.

Secondly, I as a reader would want to know where the content came from.

This was his reply to my challenge: “If it is good information that can benefit – who cares where it comes from?”

Of course people care where the information comes from!  How are they supposed to know if it’s any good or if it came from a trusted source?

People care where the information comes from so they can do their own “due diligence” on them (the owner of the info not the purveyor (or possibly why the purveyor is using it!!)) otherwise we all could be sending around all this info to readers that have no idea where it is coming from.

Respected Investor, Gerald Ronson said recently – “The problem with this opinion is that the current situation was caused by amateurs who were trying to make out that they were professionals. This worked out find for a while but as the banks began to get a bit edgy; their house of cards began to topple down, until we see a situation like now.”

Some of us are selling wealth creation. Some of us are selling safety through education.   Some of us are just wanting to learn – either way, surely the reader has a right to know where the information is coming from so they can do their own checks – otherwise it exacerbates the problem that Mr Ronson highlighted above.

So it would seem that using information without crediting the owner (if done on a consistent basis) could be seen as mis-use and, therefore, damaging to your on-line credibility. Whereas letting your audience know where the info came from would raise your credibility and trust as a learned person or news-gatherer (like Social Median).

We (Vanessa and I) have always tried to follow what we would regard as the 3 main attributes to “on-line” credibility – Leadership, Authenticity and Consistency.  Therefore, “transparency” kicks in and with transparency you have to care where your content is coming from – don’t you?

Click here to go to our forum to discuss this topic.

The Web:

The Web is a fantastic “organism” that, at best, can only be described as “evolving”.  And at its heart is the vague heading “social media” or so it seems at the moment.

The problem with the web is most of the “business users” were not born within the digital age.   Therefore, they  are still applying “analogue” thinking – and this is destined to fail.

Take the chap I was referring to above. I would hazard a guess that he has spent some time working within corporate institutions.   The reason I can deduce this is his lack of ability to “credit” someone else for their work and use it to “bolster” his own.

What he does not understand, and this is the important thing about the web, is that you can’t do this anymore without getting caught out. You could hide within corporations and apply “spin” to get you out of a hole. However, no longer is this avenue of escape available and this internet shines a light into places previous unreachable.

“Spin” has no place on the web … this is why IMHO Politicians must be shaking in their boots.

By default, using the web only enforces that you leave a “long tail” and, subsequently, transparency follows  … Look at what I have found on the web about a “certain company”:

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following employee statistics:

• 29 have been accused of spouse abuse
• 7 have been arrested for fraud
• 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques
• 17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
• 3 have done time for assault
• 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
• 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
• 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
• 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
• 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year

Which organisation is this ?

It’s the 635 members of the House of Commons!.  Yes, it’s the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line!.

Fantastic isn’t it? Now a few years ago there would be no way us “mere mortals” could have found this, and if we did “spin” would have been the politicians’ answer. Now the boot is on the other foot.

This is why I have admiration for Barack Obama. Not only did he embrace a completely new method of marketing, he laid himself open to transparency. Moreover, he is the first politician to NOT BE sponsored by corporations!!

This is fantastic news, moreover, this is why we all need to embrace social media AND how to use it.

If we get it wrong we could end up like the chap at the top of this post or the entire staff of the House of Commons.   But if we get it right we could end up as well respected as Barack Obama.

Whether we like social media or not it’s here to stay and being as though the web is only 15 years old, starting your on-line strategy now would seem to be a good idea – don’t you think?

Nick

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