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The real truth: What business owners need to know about social media

When you work in social media regularly, one of the best things to have on hand is a book that you can hand to business owners that don’t recognize the benefits of social media. One of my favorites Eric Harr’s recent book entitled The Real Truth About Social Media.

Despite it’s modest size (about 100 pages), Real Truth is filled with actionable insights that are easily understood by traditional marketing executives and business leaders, without time-wasting jabber or hollow social media evangelism.  Real Truth answers the most common question that business leaders have about social media: Why bother?It’s not about social media. It’s about customer service.

“If you deliver old-school customer service to your customers — if you care, listen, and have humility, and if you put people first — you will reap rich rewards from social media. You will build a volunteer army of passion-driven, newly-empowered marketers,” Harr said. “The brands that are winning in social media do it old-school.”

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Social Pro Files: an Interview with Sam Espinosa

We recently had the opportunity to interview Sam Espinosa, Director of Marketing for stickK.  Sam  is a Social Pro, so we wanted to share this entire interview with everyone.  Enjoy!

Stickk.com is a tool to help people meet their life goals.  Can you explain how stickk.com can help someone meet their goal?
Espinosa: stickK.com helps you reach your goal by utilizing the fundamental tenants of behavioral economics.  Put simply, money and reputation are powerful motivators, and we use both to positively influence your behavior.  By combining incentives and third party accountability to your goal, stickK nearly triples your chances for success.

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Men Behaving Badly: Leverage Social Accountability to Meet New Year’s Goals

Want to succeed with your 2012 resolution? Consider using social media as a way to keep yourself accountable — in front of witnesses.

‘Accountability’ can be the key to  eliminating bad habits — or achieving personal goals — especially when it’s combined with the power of social media.  stickK.com helps people use negative incentives (loss aversion) to positively influence behavior.  It allows you to pledge money that will be forfeited to friends, charities, or anti-charities (organizations you HATE) if you fail to meet weekly goals. Stickk boasts nearly 150,000 stickK users and over 120,000 Commitment Contracts.

I’ve been using the site since September to track my goal of losing 30lbs in 30 weeks.  So far, I’ve lost more than 20lbs with mixed success. I’ve reached 75 percent of my weekly goals.

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Want to be ‘likeable’? Stop TALKING about yourself… and DO something!

When it comes attracting followers, fans, and friends to social media channels, too many marketers focus on the ‘laws of attraction’ instead on the ‘laws of reciprocity.’

The laws of attraction, popularized by 2006 film The Secret (and the subsequent book) suggest that the the path to being liked is mastering ‘likeability’.  If you act like a ‘likeable person’ — or offer a ‘likeable brand’ — fans, followers and friends will flock to your door.  Using the laws of attraction, marketers seek success by creating a strong, likeable brand and promoting it with a large marketing budget (AKA mass marketing).

That doesn’t work in today’s world… where ‘likeable’ is akin to ‘forgettable.’ Actions speak louder than words– and that’s what the laws of reciprocity are all about.  Two concepts drive the laws of reciprocity: 1) Treat people well (the golden rule); and 2) perform likeable acts without specifically requiring an in-kind response.

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Social Media ‘To Die For’: Preparing for a zombie apocalypse

What makes  the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta more approachable, and more effective at one of its core missions?  A  hoard of zombies.

When CDC staff from the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response asked Twitter users what types of emergencies they were prepared for, answers citing tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes were numerous.  Answers were also humorous, prodding the CDC about the Zombie preparedness.  With this in mind, the team decided to boost their 2011 hurricane preparedness campaign by adding some deadpan  content to attract readership.  The result? A blog post entitled ‘Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse .’

“We realized this wasn’t the typically health message a federal agency like CDC might put out, but we really wanted to grab people’s attention because disaster preparedness is an important and simple way to save lives and property,” said Maggie Silver, a Health Communication Specialist for the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “To make sure people realized we were being tongue-in-cheek, we continually referred to ‘real’ emergencies like floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes throughout the course of our blog and social media outreach.”

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