“There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

I’m writing this more for myself than anything, but if you are reading it, I hope it can give you some inspiration as well. 

My name is Beau, I’m 31 and I’m from Hawaii (although I am currently in Wisconsin now after being in Japan for two years). 

I am blessed with a beautiful wife and 11-month old son.   My young son has really grounded me, I think, and I am more focused on what’s important now more than ever.

 I recently read a really poignant newsletter/blog post from The Simple Dollar, called “Dreams, Big and Little“.  As a new parent, this post really floored me:

One of the best parts of my own childhood was the constant understanding that my mother would be there for me if I were ill. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’d be at home in a comfortable place and that I’d feel safe.

When I had my first child, it became clear to me that I couldn’t offer such a guarantee of security to my children, not with the career I once had. It bothered me a lot. I know that there are a lot of working parents who simply can’t offer such a thing, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t bother an awful lot of them.

It pushed me to start making some radical changes in my life in terms of how I spent my time and how I spent my money. I started looking for paths to a new career, not because I disliked my old job (I didn’t) and not because I wanted to earn a mint, but because I wanted to have the ability to be there during these moments.

It was that sentiment that led, in a lot of ways, to The Simple Dollar.

In the scope of things, it was a little dream.

I am focused.  I am motivated.  I too have a little dream.

I have had my own business (either on my own with partners) for the better part of four years.  While on the JET Programme in Japan, I did business part-time at nights when I got home.    Before that and since I’ve been back, I’ve spent my time on different projects and have had a fair amount of success.  However, I feel like I’ve hit a plateau professionally.  I’ve grown comfortable with what I have because it’s been enough.

I’m not going to change my career.  Rather, I’m in the process of searching for a suitable position where I can thrive and which can afford me the ability to be there financially for my wife and son – a position where “enough” is never good enough.  

I’m ready to work for an organization where I can make a significant contribution, one that will continually push beyond my plateaus, and one that will nurture and support my little dream.

Here are five specific ways to create awareness by optimizing your social media efforts.

1) Yes, we can … with social media.

While John McCain had a few more than six Facebook friends, it is true Barack had way more going on throughout the social media landscape. He had more friends, more followers, more mentions,  more engagement and more activity by far. Check out this fascinating, Barack Obama vs. John McCain Social Media & Search Engine Scorecard.  To anyone starting an awareness campaign: study and emulate what the Obama campaign did with social media.

2) Generate Buzz

Social media in the form of communities such as Facebook, microblogs such as twitter, and video sites such as YouTube are the perfect mediums for buzz generation. Also write articles and press releases and submit them to niche, relevant social media venues.

 3) Put a lot of resources into online reputation management

Social media for awareness and reputation management go hand-in-hand.   Manage your organization’s reputation online.  The very act of generating awareness will bring to light your organization’s good, bad and ugly.  See my previous posts for some tips as to the hows of managing your reputation.  Often, just by engaging in social media you will be managing and improving your reputation.

4) Go viral

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

You might not have George Clooney as your spokesperson, but you can put together something that people want to share with their friends.  Make it interesting, funny, unique, or otherwise worthy of being shared.

Notice in the video that it said nothing of what he was doing in Chad, the problems there, etc.  Just the fact that he was there and being his wacky, charming self was enough to generate substantial buzz about the cause.

5) Educate/inform

Take a look at my social media tips for small business post for some ideas on how to educate/inform with social media to generate buzz.

Five Social Media Optimization Tips for Job Seekers/Professionals

Funny thing is that I wrote the entire article without a shift key … thing popped off my laptop!

Until next time…

Here are my five Social Media Optimization tips for small businesses:

1. Create a loyal following
2. Market exclusive offers via Social Media
3. Incentivize reviews
4. Manage your reputation
5. Educate/Inform

1. Create a loyal following

Social media has the power to create and retain loyal fans and evangelists of your business. Tap into the big name sites (facebook, myspace, youtube, twitter), as well as niche communities and social media venues such as ActiveRain (if a Real Estate Professional) or TechHui (if a Techie in Hawaii).

2.  Market exclusive offers via Social Media

While expedia is no means a small business, I  encourage any business to take note of expedia on twitter.  They do a great job of mixing excellent travel tips with deals/exclusive offers.  Note the frequency of their tweets (about 4 or 5 times a day on average).  Contact your followers, friends, fans, or whatever a particular social media site calls them and show them some exclusive love.

3.  Incentivize and encourage reviews

You need to engage your customers in constant conversation.  Getting reviews (good or bad) will prove invaluable towards that aim .  Bad reviews will help you improve your business (if you choose to learn from them).  You don’t need to bribe your customers, but a survey, review or questionnaire completed for a small incentive or chance to win will bring invaluable, actionable data into the light.  Also, good reviews will do wonder for the next tip….

4.  Manage your reputation

Online Reputation Management is a buzzword these days and should be paid great attention to. Of course you should be regularly checking google and the other search engines for your names and products.  Beyond that, constantly monitor sites like yelp for reviews and feedback.  A powerful tool we went over in the workshop was twitter search combined with getting RSS feeds for related queries.  If you were Hawaiian Airlines, for example, you might want to conduct the following twitter searches:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=hawaiian+air

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=hawaiian+airlines (Smelly lounge? – What would you do if you got a similar post for you business?)

Search these type of brand terms and any keywords relevant to you (airfare hawaii, travel deals, etc.) and subscribe to the rss feeds for each query … magical stuff this, as it will let you know anytime anybody tweets anything about you!

5.  Educate/inform

Use social media to educate the masses about your industry, your specialty, niches relating to your business, etc.  In the workshop I recently gave, we used the example of a Hawaiian Taro Chips company looking to bring its chips to a broader mainland market.   The group tasked with coming up with a social media strategy for this imaginary biz hit the nail on the head with the following education/information ideas:

• Post fun, viral videos about “Taro the Purple Chip” on sites like youtube and metacafe.
• Get on facebook, myspace and other communities and create or find Hawaiian culture/food groups to educate about taro and keep in the know about your purple chips.
• Write and post articles about the history of Taro chips, the taro chip making process, or even general Hawaii themes (tying taro in somehow).
• Post pictures of taro/taro fields on flickr,  a taro chip presentation on slideshare, etc.

To conclude, I’m convinced that social media optimization can benefit any small business who creatively and actively uses it.   Get started, get those fans, and have fun!

Boost your Traffic & Success Online with Social Media Optimization (SMO)

View more presentations from beausensei.

Despite my crazy fear of public speaking … I did alright and was over the butterflies as soon as the class laughed at my first goofball joke. In fact, I think the class as a whole enjoyed and learned a lot from the workshop. I was surprised when I got to see my evaluations and got all 8/10s or better from the 20 or so students!

More than anything, the class inspired me to practice what I preach and engage in social media more. I got myself on twitter (I’ve been one of the naysayers, but my research/preparation for the class converted me). I plan to blog and tweet regularly and am excited to otherwise start making my mark on the social media landscape.

It was an exhausting day, with the SMO workshop in the morning, bodyboarding all afternoon and wedding invitation/reply postcard making, printing etc. into the wee hours of the night.

There’s a bit of a south shore bump and the waves were fun. Had a secret spot right in Waikiki all to myself for most of the time I was out. Amazing that there are still such spots in town. Don’t ask me where, I won’t tell you The UV index was off the charts yesterday and despite my thorough lathering up, I got zapped hard by the sun.

My fiancee, Kat and I decided to do our own wedding invites this year. It’s been slow going (mostly my fault) , but the end result going out tomorrow is quite cool. Funny thing was it took me like 50 tries to get one piece aligned/etc. in photoshop so that it printed right. I’m glad I didn’t get into the printing industry… I can do some cool stuff in photoshop, but combine it with printing an odd shaped piece of paper and I’m clueless…