I’ll give you a hint… it’s NOISE.

Wanna cut through the clutter? Find out how in the video…or skip ahead and sign up for my FREE Coffee & Convo calls that begin this Monday morning. Yes, start your week off right and wrap your head around your social plan for the week.

So, will you join me?

Filed under: Advice, blog, blogging, brand, Coaching, Facebook, foursquare, marketing, social media, Social Networks, Twitter, youtube

 

 
An old college friend of mine Brett McLaughlin helped write this song with J. Rice. If you haven’t heard of J.Rice you should check him out. He is a YouTube sensation with over 100,000 subscribers. This song – We Pray For You – is a written to support the aftermath of what has happened in Japan. All the money that is coming in via – itunes or merchandise is being given directly to Red Cross to benefit Japan. They are also going to be giving some of the money to the Red Cross for the Alabama relief efforts. I hope you like the video as much as i did. If you do please HELP spreading the word by sharing the video on twitter, facebook, or anywhere else you can think of. Let’s help get the word out that there and let people know that we still can do something to help!

Story behind this song:
I sent out an email on April 1st to a lot of my youtube friends with a very rough mix of this song with only one verse and chorus. I had no idea if anyone would even be interested in singing it with me, but within 24 hours 90% had responded saying they were in. A week later I sent everyone their parts. Luckily I was familiar with each individual voice, so I tried to pick parts that would showcase their vocals and also be the perfect match for mood in the song. 3 weeks later, (50 hours of editing/mixing)… all the parts were in and the video was completed. This project has been an amazing experience and we all hope that a real difference can be made with it.

We, Social Deviants, started with a blog — this blog, but on Blogger, not WordPress. Within two months we had clients. Again, with 0nly a blog. We had our personal Twitter and Facebook accounts, but, unless you’re a close friend or family, you don’t have access to my Facebook account. I reserve that for the obligatory pictures and posts of my son as he achieves every milestone or trivial “kids are a hoot” moment. My twitter account is definitely more business-centered, but only because it’s passion-centered, and the two often cross paths. We did go ahead and grab our @SocialDeviants Twitter profile just so we could stake the claim on the name (Unlike my personal account, which was my full name until I got married. However, there must be a lot of Janet Wallaces out there because I could only grab my nickname @Jae_Wallace after I tied the knot.).

Social Deviants has been around for a year now, and has only just begun to get our Facebook page and company-branded twitter account off the ground. Some might consider this a travesty against all things social media. Yet, we have spoken at conferences, and we have just wrapped up a six-month signature series called Drinks & Apps, which was sponsored by the Nashville chapter of Ladies Who Launch, where we demystified social applications for entrepreneurs. Personally, I was invited to join the faculty of the Room to Write program at Scarritt-Bennett Center here in the heart of Nashville, speaking and working with published and aspiring authors on how to build their online marketing platform. I will also be hosting a workshop at the Writer’s Loft at MTSU (Middle Tennessee State University) in mid-January, and there’s plenty more on tap in 2011.

How can you call yourselves a social media company without having a Facebook page or a dedicated Twitter account? Well, we don’t call ourselves that. We’re a social marketing company. However, the answer to that question is that timing, luck and generosity played their parts, but it boiled down to doing more of those spokes on the marketing and business wheel I mentioned earlier. It sure wasn’t because we had some magic formula that we sprinkled over our social media spaces. That being said, now with the month slowing down just long enough before the explosion of the new year is upon us, we are spending more of our time on Facebook and Twitter, as well as on our blog. And, in the new year, we’ll be adding videos, webinars and more to our offerings. The bottom line is — we can share with you more than a dozen links of high-quality marketing information from people way more qualified that us. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel. We just need to make sure it keeps spinning.

So, if people tell you that you need this or that or your business is doomed, take it with a grain of salt. Be prepared so that when luck, timing and generosity find you, you’re able to share and serve. But a wise man once told me (Scott Stratten of @UnMarketing), “If you’re going to have a presence, be present.” And if you’re not ready, not prepared, don’t have anything to say today or are just plain slammed doing all the trillion other things you need to do to get your business going, then please, for the love of the social marketing gods, do not create a page a blog, a newsletter, a profile or any other account.

Are people talking about your product or service? Probably. Do you need to be there? Probably. However, when and how you get there and when and how you deliver your content, may take a different path from what “they” say you should do (and I’m including me in that ‘they’). There’s nothing worse better than being a social deviant. Blaze your own trail.

Filed under: Advertising, Advice, blog, blogging, Conferences, Facebook, marketing, social media, Social Networks, Twitter, youtube

Apple released a statement about the decision to “legalize” jailbreaking iPhones saying that it still violates the end-user license agreement and will void the warranty. Users that have already ran out of their Applecare might choose to Jailbreak for cloud music services like Grooveshark, which is currently not allowed in the US. Of course there are tons of Apps users could enjoy, like GV Mobile which allows users to utilize Google Voice rather than their carrier. If you already started jailbreaking your phone and want ideas of what to do with it, read about these ten apps.

Video remixing is now allowed for non commercial purposes. This means a lot of the videos removed for copyright infringement on YouTube may find their way back as users test the new limits. Musicians may be able to push this boundary, too. We might even see AutoTune the Movies as a successor to AutoTune the News.

E-Books without audio versions can now have their DRM legally broken to allow a text reading application to speak the book. The law states very clearly though, that if an audio version exists a user cannot legally bypass the DRM – no matter what the cost of the audio version is. Time will tell if publishers test out raising the prices of audiobooks, or if users simply don’t care if there is an official audiobook and would rather save money.

Gamers will also have an excuse to break copyright protection under the guise of “good faith testing”. Supposedly, this will help increase security. The hackers will also be allowed to legally hack computer programs protected by dongles that are no longer for sale in the marketplace.

Fran Vincent – Retro Island Productions/MySpace for Musicians
Katherine Stimson – Bennett Law Office/Suman Entertainment Group/Farm to Market Music
Janet Hagan – Social Deviants/Naxos of America
Tony Grotticelli – TOGA Entertainment

Each panelist I invited has exceptional experience in social media marketing. Fran even wrote MySpace for Musicians, and the 2nd edition is about to go to print! (Highly recommend the book for anyone looking to get into MySpace – she even has medium-advanced HTML code and actually EXPLAINS what it means in lamens terms. I do own the 1st edition and have used it for many projects).

The questions I had for the panelists were all questions that Janet and I receive on a nearly daily basis. You have profiles – now what? What are the tools that you use to maximize your time spent online? What is the next big thing?

Now what? – Have a plan. Know why you’re on the networks. If your fans aren’t there, why are you wasting your time? If your fans are there and want to interact with you (as evidenced by their timid interaction on your profile), then how do you interact with them? Every company should have a marketing plan in place – social media is no different.

Helpful tools? – Tools I use to help streamline my social media initiatives are:
Twitter: Hootsuite | Posterous | Bit.ly | Ad.ly
Facebook: Hootsuite | Mashable has great articles on what applications to add to your facebook page that will not only enhance content you post, but will keep fans coming back
MySpace: MySpace for Musicians (disclaimer: I know Fran & bought the book!)
Discovery: Search.Twitter.com | Technorati | Google | BlogCatalog
Blogs: Google Analytics | IceRocket.com | Digg | Delicious | StumbleUpon | Technorati