I am so pumped about Social Media Camp 2013 starting May 6, 2013 here in beautiful Victoria, BC. We are about to embark into Canada’s biggest Social Media Conference. Below, I’ve assembled lists of some of the awesome sessions available. You can “vote up” the ones you’re looking forward to, or let me know in the comments which ones you’re excited about! If you see me, come and say hi. I am jazzed to connect with you in the physical world.

Sessions That Are Going to Rock

Social Media Island Style

Socializing Human Resources

Special thanks to Chris and the team from The Web Advisors for the ticket to the conference!

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Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post It’s On Like Donkey Kong At Social Media Camp 2013 #SMCamp appeared first on Social Media Sean.

Your HR department, along with the powers of social media, is your most valuable asset today.  Marketing and the human resources departments must work together to socialize the workforce both internally and externally. C’mon! It’s time for marketing and HR to quit this “dating” thing and get hitched.

The turtle still won right?

Many organizations have unrealistic expectations of their Social Media Strategy. They have high hopes that using Social Media to promote their business will get them an instant ROI. Unfortunately, this seldom happens because it is really difficult to leverage Social Media for marketing if you’re not a Social Business first. Social Media Marketing can lead to more business but it needs to be an extension of your company culture. It’s not just for marketing and promotion. Taking the necessary steps may be slower, but it will help you win the race.

Start at first base.

Start by utilizing your human resources to implement social media internally. There are many platforms available where you can collaborate and share with your team. Be sure to demonstrate the type of posting behaviours you would like your people to model. This is a process that needs to be nurtured with lots of training, feedback and clear expectations (Social Media Policy). If you don’t have someone internally to do this there are professionals you can hire to help make this a successful and positive experience. This will help to grow and develop a social culture.

Resistance is Futile!

It is a MUST to get your CEO or (Company Figure Head) on twitter. Even if it means you type on their smart phone or computer and tweet their dictations as they speak. Stephen Colbert recently did this for former United States President Bill Clinton by getting him signed up on twitter and sent his fist tweet for him as he dictated. This can be duplicated in a company setting very easily.

Connection happens when you are real.

Your story is who you are, what you do and why you do it. Which is probably not your mission statement or a bunch of garbally gook from your marketing materials. Your language should be like discussing your passions with a friend. A relaxed personable tone with a level of certainty and excitement is key. Remember, we are people doing business with people. Sharing your culture this way helps to engage your valued customers and build loyal brand advocates. These are the people that aren’t afraid to talk to you online and share your story. Put faces to your brand to demonstrate that on the other end of the line, email or tweet there is someone they can get to know, like and trust.

Change can be difficult, but “If it doesn’t CHALLENGE you, It doesn’t CHANGE you.”

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Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post Relationship Status Update = HR and Marketing “Married” appeared first on Social Media Sean.

At one point or another, we are all challenged to sell ourselves, our ideas, products or services. Whether it’s pitching your start-up to investors, selling your technology software application or applying for a job selling yourself does not need to be scary or difficult. Let’s jump into how I, and many people just like you, have been able to make sales fun and profitable.

1. Pricing for the Win #FTW

If you think what you charge is expensive, so will your prospects. Do not set your prices based solely on what your competition charges, what you could personally afford to pay, or give massive discounts. Relatively speaking, your products or services may cost a lot but that is not the issue. When the value of what you provide is more than what you are charging than that is the definition of “cheap” or inexpensive. Believe it or not, sometimes the more you charge the easier it is to sell because people perceive money as value. If you charge too little, people may struggle to see the value. For your clients to benefit from your services they need to commit financially. Your time is invaluable. Think of whatever you charge as a token of appreciation from your clients for your commitment and expertise.

2. Practise like a Professional Athlete

Entrepreneurs and professional athletes have a lot in common. When you think of your favourite athlete in the world do you think they go into competition and try new techniques for the very first time? Of course not. Professional athletes spend hours upon hours practicing their skills so that when it really counts they can count on themselves to execute with precision and confidence. Go into every meeting prepared and not only will your results be much better, you will have more fun because you feel more confident.

3. If They Say NO, You Say NEXT

For most people rejection is the least fun part of sales. When people say no to you, do not take it personally. They are not saying you are not good enough as a person but just that for whatever reason they won’t buy today. Also, the reason they give you for not buying is seldom the truth. Do not let yourself play the pity game if you get a NO because it just does not matter. Take inventory of the meeting. Assess yourself based on performance, not whether the prospect said yes or no. Shift your focus to the NOW as you may be moments away from your next big sale.

4. Schedule Your Time

Business, like life, is a journey not a destination. It’s the little things we do every day that determine our success. Decide and commit to exactly what time each day you are going to dedicate to your sales and marketing efforts. Use this time wisely. No excuses. Use a CRM (contact relationship management) application to keep organized and efficient. Every time you take action, write it down so you can keep track of exactly where your prospect is in the sales cycle. Make this part systematic and work from a check list. Create a list of steps you will take from the time of first contact, to the close and to the follow up. You will love yourself for having this all written down when it is time to start training your team how to be successful selling for you.

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Can you feel a positive shift behind this approach to sales?

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Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post Entrepreneur’s Guide To Make Sales Fun and Profitable appeared first on Social Media Sean.

Do you use Instagram? Does a massive amount of “Likes” and engagement interest you? Fantastic, I imagined so. Today I will show you a very simple way to Super Charge your Instagram presence. Oh, and the good news it takes less than 60 seconds.

Instagram Image Example (Feel free to join in the Fun and like the PHOTO)
Referenced Post “Don’t Hide Behind Your Need to Look Professional”
Tag For Likes (iPhone and Android App)

Author information

Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post Super Charge Your Instagram Presence in 60 Seconds appeared first on Social Media Sean.

One thing I experience and know to be true in my world is this: By consistently being and thinking positive we attract the people and opportunities into our lives that will help us reach our goals, experience success and live a happy life.

What it means to be positive on purpose #PonP

Our days are made up of a whole bunch of conscious decisions. From what to wear, to what to eat for breakfast all the way to how you choose to treat people you encounter.

We have free will and the power of choice, which means we have the ability to choose how we treat ourselves and the people in our lives. Therefore being positive on purpose simply means to deliberately choose to be positive, regardless of the situation or how you feel in that moment.

Not all attention is good attention

Sure, there are famous comedians and actors that can get away with acting negatively and inappropriately in public, but those rules only apply to a select few. Online attention, likes, comments and retweets from your friends validating your negativity is not the kind of attention that will help people to know, like and trust you. It may appear that you have a high Klout score or lots of followers but that does not mean the professional world or your customers will take you seriously. Focus your social efforts on meaningful engagement and when interacting, just be positive on purpose.

Lurkers are real people

Recruiters and possible future clients love to lurk. They may not be engaging with you, but that doesn’t mean they are not watching everything you do and say. They use this to determine, over time, whether or not to contact you. The sales cycle of social media is long in nature. This means that people may take longer to hire or purchase from you, but when they do they are usually very qualified and ready to buy. This can dramatically increase the chances that the relationship will work out well for both parties.

Perception is reality

Today, more than ever we live in a public world. Our actions are being recorded and uploaded to the cloud. This includes all your Twitter updates, Facebook posts, photos and videos. You will get to/have to live with your social/digital footprint for the rest of your life.

We are all in the people business

A brand needs much more than a great product or service to be successful. We live in a world where we do business with people we know, like and trust, right? Looking through your past social network updates, are you likable, would you trust you? Are you demonstrating the type of attitude where people could be drawn to your energy? You and I have the opportunity to set the example and treat people like they matter. Because they do – We all do.

Author information

Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post Positive on Purpose = Social Media Success appeared first on Social Media Sean.

I had an awesome opportunity this week to do a Social Business presentation for the RBC Royal Bank and some of their valued business clients. I thought I’d share with you my presentation and some of the highlights, in hopes to provide some value and insight into the wonderful world of Social Media.

Beautiful RBC Royal Bank new retail design concept store in the historic Hudson Bay Building
Built for conversations that matter
Victoria BC Canada

A special thank-you to Howard Liptrot, Jennifer Willard and Art Quon from RBC Royal Bank for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation about the exciting new ways you are engaging with and helping your clients.

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Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post Leveraging Social Media For Your Business appeared first on Social Media Sean.

Hey, it’s Social Media Sean here. Sean is my name, and social media is my game! Today, I’m going to be talking about how to become a social business and why that’s so important.
Audio podcast:

Podcast Transcript:

The first thing to look at about becoming a social business is Social PR – Social Public Relations. More than ever now, your image and brand awareness isn’t something that you have time to sculpt. Back in the day it was so easy you could sculpt your press release, take your time and have it edited a kazillion times and put it out into the world with your perfect marketing message. Well, most of that type of literature is ignored these days. Social media, and online, is about a conversation. So you need to look good, not just on your website – but on your twitter, your facebook and blog. If you haven’t updated your blog in the last few months, right off the bat you lose a little credibility points. If your twitter stream is really inactive or the tweets are kind of sporadic or only self promotional, again you’re going to lose more points. If your facebook page has no, or little engagement and nothing of interest again you’re losing points. You could be a super established company, and have a ton of customers, but first impressions matter. So the first way is to really nail the social PR.

The second thing that is really important is to have thought leadership in your industry. In order to have thought leadership, you need to really clearly identify what it is that makes you, your company or your products and services stand out. Let people know that you’re the go-to person for that type of information. So not only talking about your particular products and services, but about the industry as a whole and getting the message out there. You can do that through podcasts, videos and pictures. This, again, is a really easy way that when people come across your business they can see that you do know what you’re doing, you’re not just self promotional, that you care about your industry and what it is that you do. So that’s a really important one.

The third thing to look at about becoming a social business is really leveraging your community online. To be a social business, that means that you have the opportunity to interact with your customers before the buying process, during the sales processes and after. By having a strong community online, you’re really able to help keep them better engaged. Better engaged means longer term customers. For the most part, it’s always cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one. Building that community can really help increase the value of each and every one of your customers.

Now to become a social business, you really have to train your people what it’s like to work in a social culture/social business. So employee training is a big one. What that means is training your employees how to use social media in a way that is fun and empowering but also represents the company in the way that it is, what it is about and the true culture of that company. We’ve really got to educate and train the employees on how to use social media in a responsible way, but to build their own personal brands and their own corporate brands at the same time. Through training and monitoring, these are the really important things to be able to be successful. If you just give them twitter accounts and tell them to post about the company, or do this or that with little to no instruction or without a policy you’re looking for future fires. So employee training is really important.
Now with that employee training, one of the things is to train them how to use internal social media. One example is Yammer. Yammer is like Facebook, but it’s private for just the people in your company. With an internal social network now we’re getting into new ways of collaborating and getting workflow improving. Having that internal social network is a way to keep the culture connected and the employees more engaged. Most of your employees are probably using social networks in one way or another during the day. So why not get them spending some time on the internal social networks? Collaborating about projects, talking and sharing about them and it’s also great practice for them to learn how to do it in public. So the second part of that is teaching them how to use these platforms and making it exciting for them.

There are a few thoughts on how to become a social business. I hope you’ve gotten some value out of this today. I look forward to any questions or comments at the end! Thanks for stopping by!

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Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post Social Business: Love At First Sight? [Podcast] appeared first on Social Media Sean.

Today I’m going to be showing you why I think Twitter is one of the best pre-qualifying tools ever. Whether you’re in HR, recruitment, sales, marketing, business development or a business owner, it’s more important that you recruit and build relationships with people that fit with your culture and your beliefs. I’m going to show you how, with a few easy steps, you can gain valuable insights from twitter that will help you make better decisions.

Audio Transcription:

Hello! It’s SocialMediaSean and today I’m going to be showing you why I think Twitter is one of the best pre-qualifying tools ever. Whether you’re in HR, recruitment, sales, marketing, business development or a business owner, it’s more important that you recruit and build relationships with people that fit with your culture and your beliefs. I’m going to show you how, with a few easy steps, you can gain valuable insights from twitter that will help you make better decisions.

For today’s example I’m going to be using the twitter account: TweetSmarter. This is a great account and a great example of what you could be looking for when you’re doing your qualifying. The first thing I want to do is take a look just briefly at their bio. What are they choosing to say to the world and why does it appear they’re on twitter. The next thing is I want to check out their links. I’m going to quickly do that. A lot of the time it is to their website, personal or corporate. When I get to their website, blogging is where I want to go. I want to look at if they’re writing influential articles in their field, are they posting regularly, is the content relevant, how does the site look…etc. Those are the two ways to get started.

Next, I want to take a quick look at their followers compared to their following. Now this is to be taken lightly as you can actually buy followers on twitter and mass follow people… things like that. What I like to see is that people ideally have more followers than they are following. That can show credibility when you see that. A lot of people are interested in them, not only because they are following them back, but they have good content.

After that we want to take a look at their tweets. Just to go through and see the kind of things they are talking about. See if they have the energy and/or professionalism you’re looking for. Also take a look to see if they are actually talking to people and not just tweeting out. This shows they have the ability to have a conversation and can give you a feel of what they’re talking about. You can see the conversations by the tweets starting with the @ symbols.

Another great tip/trick is to see what people are saying about them! So I can easily just do a twitter search here at the top. Once I get to their twitter handle I’m going to click ‘All’ and what this is going to show me is if people are actually sharing their content. We can see that a lot of people talk to them, they are retweeting them, which shows that they have credibility. They have an audience on Social Media. The neat thing about these guys in particular is that even though they are such a big account, they really have a lot of 2-way conversation. That is really ideal for any field, no matter what type of person you’re looking at hiring, recruiting or doing business with.

From there, the next thing I can look at is there social capital and influence. There are quite a few tools, things such as Klout, Kred and PeerIndex. These measure the person or organizations influence on social media. In this case, I have a Klout plug-in that I got the extension for, for Chrome. I can quickly and easily see their Klout Score. Once on the Klout website, I can take a quick breeze through and see the other social networks they’re on, see what they’re influential about…etc. This is not perfect, but it is definitely something to take a look at. In this case they fit perfectly. This is a good example for if you’re recruiting someone for a technology job, and you see that topic here – that’s great! If you were to see knitting and soccer here it may not be a big deal, but it definitely gives you some great insight into the person or business.

After all of that, the last thing to do is to start a conversation! So we can go ahead and tweet them and see what type of person they are! To get to know them a bit better as a person, company or organization! I hope that was helpful for you. If you have any questions or comments, leave them at the end. Thanks for stopping by. Bye for now!

Links:  Klout Extension for Chrome

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Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post Twitter: Discover. Decode. Connect. appeared first on Social Media Sean.

Have you ever tried to do a Twitter chat from your iPhone? Some of the apps certainly don’t make it very easy. The good news is that I’ve gone through and found what I think is the best app for twitter chats and what I’ve been using for quite some time. That’s Echofon, or Echofon Pro for the iPhone. I’m going to get into details today about why I think it’s the best and a few key features that will help you have successful twitter chats from your iPhone.

 Echofon Pro for Twitter (iTunes)

 Audio Transcript:

Hello it’s Social Media Sean. Have you ever tried to do a Twitter chat from your iPhone? Some of the apps certainly don’t make it very easy. The good news is that I’ve gone through and found what I think is the best app for twitter chats and what I’ve been using for quite some time. That’s Echofon, or Echofon Pro for the iPhone. I’m going to get into details today about why I think it’s the best and a few key features that will help you have successful twitter chats from your iPhone. I look forward to your comments at the end. Thanks for stopping by.

Echofon is a free download from the iTunes app store. If you want to get rid of the ads, just simply download Echofon Pro for $4.99 and you’ll have an ad free experience. Once you have it installed, you’ll notice that one of my favorite parts of it is that is has a really clean interface. I love the white background, and at the end of the day I want to make sure that it’s easy to read tweets and to send tweets. Jumping ahead into the chat features, what’s really important here is that it has a really good search function. Not all search functions on these apps are the same. So what I can do is go ahead and search one of the chats I’m about to do. For this example, of course I want to search #TChat. #TChat is one of my favorite chats where we talk about World of Work, Social Media, HR and Leadership. It’s awesome! If this chat were on right now, when I refresh, you’d see lots of new tweets coming through.

Let’s give you an example of an awesome feature. Let’s say I wanted to engage on a tweet in the chat itself of do a retweet. When I scroll down, we’ll say I want to retweet Kevin Grossman. So I’ll go ahead and click on his tweet, hit Retweet with Comment, and you can see it’s so easy to use. I can add a comment at the beginning if I choose, I can go ahead and retweet it, and I can edit it really easily. A cool feature of the iPhone itself is if I want to Undo, I just have to shake the phone and hit ‘Undo Typing’. From there, I can easily just send it off.

Another great feature is for uploading pictures. Echofon allows you to upload to Twitter.com, TwitPic or Lockerz. The nice thing about those 3 is that they show in stream previews. Let me show you what it looks like. If I go back to my main timeline here on my Echofon, I can show you that as I scroll through these tweets here, there is an example of what the image preview looks like. Unlike when you upload an image through Hootsuite, you’re not going to get a preview. For click through rates and engagements it’s really nice to have that preview. Which means Echofon is great for uploading pictures during a chat or really anytime for that matter. One of the things to point out as well is the mentions work great for a chat. One of the reasons for that is I can just quickly hit reply and mention everyone that I’m talking to with one click. When you’re in the middle of a chat, speed does matter.

So for those reasons, I’ve really enjoyed Echofon. I think it’s one of your best bets. It’s also a great app for beginners. I’m curious, what are your favorite twitter apps for chats? If you have any questions or comments, go ahead and leave them below. Thanks for stopping by! See you soon.

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Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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The post How To: Rock Twitter Chats On The Go appeared first on Social Media Sean.

If you love Pinterest, then you just might love pinning from the iPhone Pinterest App as well. In this weeks video tutorial I show you how you can be pinning like a pro while surfing the mobile web in no time. Enjoy!

iTunes Pinterest APP
Pinterest Bookmarklet 

Audio Transcription:

Today we’re going to dive into Pinterest for the iPhone. So if you love Pinterest for the desktop, now you’ll be able to pin even more from your iPhone. There are a few tips and tricks you’ll need to know to make it work properly, but in no time at all you can be pinning from Safari – right on your iPhone. If you have any questions or comments, don’t forget to leave them at the end. Enjoy the tutorial!

Pinterest is available in the iTunes store, it’s a free app and just a quick download. Once installed, the app is great! You can just beautifully scroll through images and it’s easy to like an image. Just right underneath you can hit like. One of the things you can do just like the web is you can do a repin. If I wanted to repin let’s say, an infographic, what I can do there is just right under the image hit repin. You can edit the description, choose the correct board or create a new one, and choose to share on Twitter and/or Facebook. One of the things that isn’t easy to do on Pinterest for the iPhone is pin images from the web using Safari. So I’m going to teach you how to do that! When you go into the account, it says “Install Bookmarklet” – when you click on that, unfortunately appears that the directions are incorrect. It says that the best way to use it is to install it in your Firefox or Safari ahead of time and then sync it. From my experience, Internet Explorer works with iTunes for the PC – not Firefox. That will be one of the things I show you how to do, and then how to sync it to your phone through your computer – It’s really easy!
Start by going into your settings on your iPhone. In the settings you need to make sure that in your iCloud, the Bookmarks are turned off, because we’re going to manually sync them through the USB cable. So once you’ve got those bookmarks turned off, the next thing you’re going to do is plug the phone into the computer through the USB cable and launch iTunes.
Now open up your Internet Explorer and go to Pinterest Bookmarlet, right click the ‘Pin it’ button, the bookmarklet and click Add to Favorites. When I add it, I’m just going to keep it in the main folder and click “add”. Just do a quick double-check that it is in your Favorites and we can move on from there! Now go to your iTunes, you should already have your iPhone hooked up and ready to go. You’ll want to be on the Info tab, scroll down to ‘Other’ and make sure that the box is clicked to “Sync bookmarks with Internet Explorer”. You’ll see that you could also use this with Safari. The last step on the desktop is we’ll hit “Sync” down at the bottom right. You’ll see up at the top that it’s syncing.

So I’m back on the iPhone now, I can just jump into Safari and do some browsing! I’m on the Apple iOS6 page because it is something that is really interesting to me. While I scroll through it I can look for something that I want to pin to Pinterest. The maps is something that really interests me so what I’m going to do is grab a little text ahead of time which is a good idea so you can have a description for your pin. Now I can go into my bookmarks, and voila! There it is – ‘Pin It’. Click ‘Pin-It’ and just like the web version it will give me the choices of what I want to pin. Click on the image that you want to pin and it will open the Pinterest iPhone app automatically. I’ll edit the description and paste the text I grabbed. Depending on what you’re pinning, you’ll want less text or more text. That’s a whole different conversation. This board I want all the details. Now save it, choose the right board – you can see I’ve already started a board for iOS6 features I’m excited about. You can share it on Facebook or Twitter if you want to, and then just hit ‘Pin It’. Once you refresh, you’ll see it right at the top! The description text looks nice below it and it links back accordingly. So if I click the image, it opens to the Apple website, where I actually grabbed the image from. It’s getting the proper link back and accreditation to the site.
That’s how you pin from Pinterest! I hope that was informative for you. If you have any questions or thoughts of your own, leave them below! Let me hear what you think. Thanks very much.

Author information

Sean Charles (@SocialMediaSean)

Social Business Technologist at Social Media Sean

Free style social business entrepreneur that is positive on purpose. I help businesses be and look awesome. #Bam!

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