Life spins around us pretty fast. It’s astounding that when we sit down to write, create, work, or whatever; the world comes to a screeching halt. Of course the distractions, the annoying emails, the tweets and post alerts seem to continue, but when creating really matters, you freeze. My last post talked about the need to conquer this writer’s block. If you don’t want to click back to read the whole post, here’s an excerpt:

It kills me every Wednesday night. While I’ve known all week that I have a personal deadline set to post every Thursday morning; I wait until Wednesday night (or later) to actually start writing. I take notes, jot ideas, scribble and doodle all week, but when it comes to Wednesday, I open TextEdit and just sit.

CRAP…

Suddenly, tonight, a voice in my head said “What the hell are you doing? Just start writing, you moron!” So I did. I wrote, “You’re going to die anyway.” and POW, the words started rolling.

So I challenged you to write the title of a future post for me – to kick-start some of the juices. And to my surprise, you stepped to the challenge (yay).

Now we – more to the point, YOU – get to vote on which title will be my next post! Read the entries below and vote for your favorite. You have until the end of the day (6:00 pm CST) Monday, June 21st to make your decision.

I will take the most popular title and interview the person that submitted it to get “the full story.” Who knows? It may reveal something about one of our fellow community of readers or it may just be cool to hear how they came up with the title. Any way we look at it, it’s going to prove to be interesting and challenging.

So, vote away! I look forward to seeing the results!

Keep Cooking! (free-flowing creative that saves the world!)

Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

There are a lot of positive signs that small businesses are starting to adopt social media marketing as an integrated component of their overall business plans.  One significant change, based on a February 2010 Small Business Success Index report, is the fact that social media usage among small business jumped from a meager 12% in 2008 to 24% in the following year (Yes, doubled).

Of those using social media, 69% post regular updates / articles of relevance to sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn. Two additional stats that made me smile were: 54% monitor positive / negative feedback via social networks, and almost 40% of the small businesses author a blog pertaining to their field of expertise.

OUTSTANDING!

But hold on, that’s still only 1-in-5 of those surveyed.

So, let’s address some of the restraints keeping small businesses form jumping on board?

According to the report, 50% of the users say it takes more time than they expected.

This is a surprise? Okay, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but the reason they may have been caught off guard is a result of one or a combination of following:

1. Some “Social Media Expert” duped them with dollar signs and drummed up statistics, set up a Twitter account and a FaceBook page and then ran off with  little to no strategy or support.
2. They took it on by themselves with little to no understanding of building a social media community or marketing.
3. They underestimated how little they knew about their brand, the audience and the business.

Of course social media marketing takes time! Just like scheduling  time to check voice-mail or email, small business owners need to adapt to make time for a little proactive community engagement. It pays off in the end.

Then there’s the statistic that made me laugh the hardest.  17% expressed that social media gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet.

Do they actually think criticism won’t happen if they stay away?  Go ahead, try it.  Then, call me when the business folds.  I know Realtors that need the square footage.

***

Come on, folks, this should stand as a call to action for all small business owners (as well as those that market to/for them).  Social media is not going away any time soon.  And the quicker you figure out how to use it to your advantage, the better chances you’ll have for surviving the years to come.

Here are 10 starting questions I like to ask those looking into social media for marketing.

1. What will make you stand out among the others “yelling into the chasm?”
2. Who is your target audience?
3. Who are your direct competitors?
4. What could be some indirect inhibitors?
5. Do you have a marketing plan – written down with goals, strategies, tactics and a reasonable budget?
6. Is there a strategy or tactic within your marketing plan that social media could compliment / support (Public Relations, etc.)?
7. Do you have the manpower/ time for social media marketing?
8. (If not) Do you have the budget to outsource components of social media marketing?
9. Do you know how to carry on an engaging conversation?
10. Do you have patience?

As with any marketing tool, social media has a unique profile in each company’s marketing plan. While a blog is a great core component to a social media marketing strategy, Twitter, YouTube and FaceBook may not always apply. Heck, If your target audience isn’t active online, don’t be a fool and put your time into broad social media integration. Just make sure to do a little research before jumping in and you’ll know what’s right for you / your company.

Where does your small business stand when it comes to integrating social media into your marketing plan?  Is it an add-on that will eventually fade away?  Or do you have the plan and vision to make social media work for you?

If you’re a small business that hasn’t embraced social media as a marketing tool, then I have two things to say:

1. You’re losing out on a fantastic way to extend your marketing message as well as build brand equity.
2. You’re probably not reading this and I’m writing for my already savvy followers and this is pointless.

Food for thought.

Keep Cooking! (Purposeful, results-oriented decisions)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

Today is a landmark date for The Brand Chef, a true anniversary to be recognized.  Can you guess what it is?

No, it’s not my marriage to the beautiful Mrs. BrandChef.  It’s not the anniversary of being hired at Love Scott. Nope.  Not even the anniversary of my first kiss.  Nope.

But it’s almost as exciting…

Today is the 15^th anniversary of my induction into the elite club of mobile device users. YES!  On this day in 1995, I was given a “Work cell phone” as “a perk” while working as creative director at a local advertising agency.

While I knew it was really so my boss could call me, guilt-free at 2 a.m., I didn’t care.  I HAD A FREAKIN’ CELL PHONE! I was on cloud nine.  I could drive down the “hustle-bustle” of I-235 while drinking my Jolt Cola and talk to clients, vendors, my wife, my mom and my boss… all on my bitchen-cool cell phone.

Momentous? Heck yeah!  It was my personal introduction to the most revolutionary change in communication since grunts and cave paintings.

Well, okay, maybe there were a few other more significant milestones, but this was MY revolution…

Think of it… (and this is just a snapshot!)

• 45,000 to 10,000 BC: Grunts and cave paintings
• 1450: Guttenberg uses block printing press to print a love poem
• 1841: The advertising agency is born (Then all hell breaks lose!)
• 1860: Pony Express carries mail between St. Joseph, Mo. and Sacramento
• 1865: Atlantic cable ties Europe and U.S. for instant communication
• 1877: Edison invents the phonograph
• 1887: Montgomery Ward mails out a 540-page catalog
• 1914: First transcontinental telephone call
• 1926: Permanent radio network, NBC, is formed
• 1939: New York Worlds Fair shows television to public
• 1940: Disney’s Fantasia introduces stereo sound to American public (Tom Brokaw is born)
• 1949: Magnetic core computer memory is invented
• 1959: The microchip is invented
• 1968: FCC approves non-Bell equipment attached to phone system (I was born)
• 1971: Wang 1200 is the first word processor (just fun to say)
• 1975: The microcomputer, in kit form, reaches the U.S. home market
• 1976: Apple introduces the Apple I to the Homebrew Computer Club
• 1981: The IBM PC (meh)
• 1984: The one-megabyte memory chip
• 1991: Baby Bells get government permission to offer information services
• 1994: Prodigy bulletin board fields 12,000 messages in one after L.A. quake
• 1995: Andrew B. Clark (The Brand Chef) gets his first Nokia 6100 cell phone -AND life changes forever!

Simplistic?  Dreamy?  Sure… but technology is evolving faster every day, and I’ve been trying to keep up since THAT day.

The vision of the future is in the palm of your hand – figuratively and literally.  If you take into consideration that my first cell phone (sporting capabilities like incoming & outgoing calls as well as all the dropped signals I could manage) was less than 15 years ago, and today I can create this entire post (excluding graphics) on a BlackBerry mobile device that hangs right beneath my love handles; think of what the next 15 years will hold!

What was the first technology experience that you consider to be “Life altering?” Was it a cell phone?  Was it an electric typewriter? Or was it the recent iPad?

What ever it was, I bet Twitter still crashes on it…

How does your technology future look?

Keep Cooking (with the latest and greatest)!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

Hello, my name is Andy…  I’m a Social Media Addict. (all together now…  Hellooooo Andy!) Can you see it – some big, mental-ward-like facility filled with a circle of gray, plastic chairs…  smoke hanging heavy in the air like some support group meeting (enter Nurse Rached)?  Is this what we’ve come to?

Sure.  I AM a social media addict.  I’m also a procrastinator.  I’m a last-minute Marty.  If I have 12 hours to get a post written, I’ll start it on the 10th.  If I have a week’s worth of vacation, I start planning events on the 5th day of it… (like now) It’s a sickness…

And then entered SOCIAL MEDIA…

(Da, Da, Duuuuuuuuuuuummmm!)

The BIG time-waster…  How was I going to read or educate myself / my family / my clients when there was Farmville and Mafia Wars to manage? Who was going to manage my clients’ marketing plans, media buys… OH THE HORROR…

I had tweets to read! Now I’m REALLY going to get behind…

I say, “Horse pucky!”

Social media and productivity CAN go hand-in-hand. As a matter of fact, they can help support one-another.

Six years ago, I read maybe a book a year (maybe).  Today I read about a book a week (give or take the occasional audio-book on the way into work). Can I attribute that to social media?  Not entirely, but I can say, if I didn’t start educating myself pretty quickly (reading, researching, engaging) I was going to be left behind!

Social media works.  You just need a plan.  You need to be diligent about tasks that make you “productive” versus distractions that make you “mush.”

So, how do I manage in intake of information with my propensity for procrastination?  The answer is simple. Tasty, bite-sized, manageable “Edu-tizers.”

Instead of taking on books, movies, articles as a “gotta-finish-it-all-right-now” type Mega Meals, I’ve taken my diet of books, newspapers, magazines, social media and television (yes, I still learn from television) and broken it all up into small, but frequent portioned snacks that I take in throughout the day.

Appetizers to Edu-tizers…  easy to remember and fun to say…

Yes, just how your trainers tell you to maintain higher metabolism with food intake, I’m doing the same with media, social media and education. With this approach, I avoid the mind-numbing coma of a 200 page marathon read or a 2 hour span of The Discovery Channel to more manageable segments of information that my brain can digest and still be nimble enough to move on throughout the day. I also avoid hours upon hours of social media time-wasters… (you know who you are).

Simple? So, how do you start?  Or better yet, how do you cut back to a manageable level?

Below I’ve listed a few “best practices” that have worked for me.  It’s better to set up your own program, but maybe this will help those that can’t seem to manage time and intake with logic and diligence.

#1 Where book stores and libraries fall short, there’s social media!
SHOCK, GASP! — okay get that out of your systems.  I buy books – at least one every week.  But the social media wave/tsunami has hit.  If you’re not in a boat that floats or at least a dingy with a good compass, you’re going to be left back in the devastation.

There are volumes upon volumes of information being put out into the social media waters every day.  Why not tap into the biggest wave of information known to human kind since the discovery of spoken word? When I can’t get my “fill” from books, television or any number of publications at the local magazine rack, it’s just a click and search away.  You just need to be willing to look. It takes less time than you think.

#2 – All good things in moderation! (VERY IMPORTANT)
Facebook, MySpace, et al have their attractive (and addictive) features, but remember that social media is about the sharing of information.  If you spend hours a day on one site, you’re bound to lose contact with your productivity, your interests, your LIFE.  Diversification is key!

I use Facebook (for instance) strictly for social and business-social communication.  I get on to post what I’m up to, to learn what friends, family members and coworkers have going on in their lives, respond (only if necessary), and then I move on (about 10 minutes of my day).  No games. No surveys. No nonsense.

#3 – You must feed the monster.
I had a professor that, during the first week of classes, would get to know which students over-engaged (raising hands on every question, writing 20 page compositions instead of the requested five, etc. – you know ‘em…), and then, for the rest of the semester would ignore them. Why?  Because it was his intention to drive the conversation to those that needed it the most. The quiet ones.  The ones that sat in the back of the auditorium hoping to learn through osmosis (me).  If you don’t participate in the conversation, you’re not going to get anything out of it.

With that professor in mind, I spend about a half hour each day (often more) sorting through blog posts or comments that I intend to add value to (sometimes marked days/weeks before to come back to later).

Is it presumptuous to think that what I have to say is important enough to post it to someone’s blog or Facebook page?  Heck no! That’s what SOCIAL media is all about. With that single post or comment, I’ve started a conversation that will, in turn, further the learning process and be of value to both parties.  Does it happen every time?  No.  But for those that really know how to engage, they are some of the most educational conversations I’ve had since… college!

#4 – Find your “Happy Place” (then file it away).
When I first started this “journey,” I subscribed to every feed and every alert under the sun.  From “Bob the Australian Cat Wrangler” to “The Marketing Gods of Melrose Place,” I wanted to read it all!  But I learned one important thing…  time is an unforgiving bitch!

Sure, I’m “friends with” or “connected to” thousands of people via social media, but I have no question that I can’t absorb all of the conversations going on at all times.  Nor would I want to. I honestly couldn’t care less about Bob from Australia’s cats and the huge dingo they devoured last night (okay, maybe THAT would make me pause).

Break your input streams up into logical lines of conversation. While I have access to thousands of stories, I only read the ones that will make a difference in my life, my career, my well-being.  So, I have my feeds broken up into the following categories:

• News
• Branding
• Marketing
• Leadership
• Management
• Education
• Personal Fun
• Music
• Photography
• Feed-Specific (generally client-based)

The only categories I read (thoroughly) every day are “News” and “Feed-Specific.”  Otherwise, I skim, mark for future research or commenting and I move on.  This takes me about a half hour every day.  It’s a great way to start the day and a great way to wake up my brain.

#5 All posts have their place:
The social media waters get pretty muddy from time-to-time.  It’s constantly churning and dredging up things that, well, just don’t need to be seen / read / heard.  Think of it this way, if you don’t want “it” displayed on a billboard in the middle of the town square, delete, delete, delete!

Do I use Facebook for business?  Certainly.  But I separate what I do for my company and clients from what I do personally.  Don’t bring your work home with you and don’t bring your home to work with you.

***

God knows how many blogs / online publications I read on a yearly basis (right now, my Google feed reader has 1,373 RSS feeds pumping knowledge through my keyboard and into my brain…).   And without social media, I wouldn’t be able to provide my clients (or my family) with the quality information and support that I do today.

Don’t get me wrong, social media can be a slippery slope. But with the right plan and just a little discipline, you can make it work for you.

How does your social media diet stack up?  Are you a lean, mean fighting machine or has the weight of the social media tsunami washed away all hope? (please make the metaphors stop)…

Hope to see you in the social media stew!

Keep Cooking!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

Music is part of my personal brand.  I’ve written about it before. But for the last six months I’ve created quite a significant illustration of that particular personal brand trait.

As a little joke/hat-tip to my friend, Terry Starbucker, I started tweeting about what was rolling off of my iPod.  Some times it was in the middle of the day.  Some times it was after lunch.  But after a few weeks, I realized most of my melodic tweets took place first thing in the morning.

Why?

Music DRIVES me.  I don’t care if it’s the classic William Tell Overture or a smooth George Michael track, or even the mind-bending, screaming Velvet Revolver; music is never far from my ears.  It’s part of my brand.

So, virtually every morning, from early September 2009, to this morning, I have turned on my iPod and the first song (sometimes the second or third – ’cause who wants to get going to The Wiggles or Raffi?) that rolls off the virtual turntable becomes my “Get-Going groove of the day.”

Music moves me.  And strange enough, I’ve found many of YOU have responded as well. Countless times, I’ve been asked to provide play-lists of my grooves.  I’ve burnt a quite a few of CDs for friends. And I realize The Get-Going groove of the day has touched more than my own personal brand.  Heck, I get emails and direct messages if I’ve forgotten, or the groovy tweet has been delayed even a half hour, so someone has been affected…

So here you go.  The first volume of The Brand Chef’s Get-going groove of the day is listed below. (Tracks/links and Tweets!)

ENJOY!

Piggies – The Beatles:
My Get-Going groove of the day (Saturday Edition): LINK – I’m not sure what’s more disturbing… the song or the video… WOW.

Brick House – The Commodores:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK – Lionel before he went to the dark side… WHAT A GROOVE FOR FRIDAY! Have a GREAT DAY!

It Hurts Me Too – Eric Clapton:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK – Great attitude tune for the gloomy day! Grrrrrrrr!

Jump Jive An’ Wail – Brian Setzer Orchestra:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK — came up on the iPod on the treadmill Sunday… So, I cranked the pace to 9! (dumb)

Carry on Wayward Son – Kansas:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK — great 70′s “rock your soul” motivation —> ’nuff said…

Soul Vaccination – Tower of Power:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK Since my arm STILL hurts from yesterday’s flu shot… Time to get FUNKY!

Here I Am – Lyle Lovett:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK – only album I’ve ever purchased that is remotely close to country… The guy has STYLE!

Life is Wonderful – Jason Mraz:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK – One of my new favorite songs… Something to remember EVERY DAY!

Battle of Who Could Care Less – Ben Folds Five:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK — Okay Monday, take that…

Pump It Up – Elvis Costello:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK – the week is almost over… Maybe Elvis can help us get there?

Rock and Roll is Dead – Lenny Kravitz:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK — A little gritty groove for the Monday blues… Get up and get moving!

Basket Case – Green Day:
My Get-Going groove of the day : LINK A little pop-punk in the hope that this will clear the gloom from the morning. And GO!

Working Man – Rush:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK … kind of appropriate on a day like today?

Bicycle Race – Queen:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK — so much innuendo for so early on a Monday morning… ?

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m yours – Stevie Wonder:
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK — Classic Stevie…

Something – Paul McCartney (Concert for George):
My Get-Going groove of the day: LINK – From the Concert for George … Watch the whole video… Heartbreaking & inspiring.

I’ll continue to post the Get-going groove of the day – every day possible – to my Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Why?  ‘Cause every day needs a little groove… So stay tuned (every day around 8am) for more!

Until next time…

Keep Cooking! (tasty tunes to tickle your tail lights…)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef