One of my very good friends is a prominent business owner in the North East, who is just getting acclimated with using social media for business. Awesome for the company, as it obviously increases exposure. Not so awesome when he decides to have a meltdown on Facebook about the stability of the company!

Ok, ok, it wasn’t so much as a meltdown as it was a questioning of the future. Tomato. Tumato.

He uses Facebook for fun AND business, so pretty much all of his friends saw that comment. Granted, he didn’t realize that his momentary lapse in confidence would spark a 10-day whirlwind of phone calls and emails to me abotu his situation, but that’s what happened.

I can guarantee that he’ll think twice in the future, but that really could have jeopardized his credibility as a business owner. When branding is a huge aspect of your target audience’s buying style, why would you give them a reason to second guess you? Especially when there are 25 contenders waiting in the shadows for even a chance at capitalizing on reasonable doubt.

When  incorporating social media in your marketing and PR plan, it is essential you maintain the upmost positive attitude. Even if behind closed doors you’re putting out 1000 fires, don’t make public cries of despair, unless you want a handful of new issues to address. Or, if you’re at your last phase and are ready to go public with the problem.

Otherwise, you risk destroying that brand your PR and marketing team workes so hard to create.

(Image source: www.lawyermeltdown.com)

Some with whom you speak will say no. They say, once it goes viral, measuring goes out the window. See, this is a problem for me.

I can’t go to the board of a multimillion dollar company and tell them that, “Yes, we’re seeing great success with our campaign. Umm….We just don’t know how much.” Are you kidding? Ha! As a professional in the business, you’ve just committed integrity suicide. You might as well leave the room at that point and keep on walking.

Numbers matter. Evidential support of your efforts matters. Progress matters.

I do agree, on a certain level, that it’s difficult to determine every single person who’s heard your message. A book club leader may share the information with her group, but no one acts on it. And until they do, that information might as well not exist. However, you can measure the action your message inspires.

Here are a few ways, though seemingly simple, can help determine if your social media efforts are worth their weight:

• Twitter — How many additional followers do you receive every month? How many messages and mentions?
• Social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook — Again, how many people comment on your page? How many friends do you have? Has that number changed in the last month?
• Blog — How many people are following you? How many comments are there? Do people email you with questions, concerns, proposals? What is the communication?
• Website — How many people came to your website each month? How long did they stay? How deep into the pages did they get? Did they sign up for any of the free information you offer? Did you capture their contact information?

There are a lot of programs you can use to capture this information. Sometimes, all it requires is sitting down and tallying the numbers. Other times, I like using Google Analytics, because it’s fast and easy. But whatever you end up chosing, I guarantee, your boss or clients will be happier when you can show them where their money is going and what progress you’re having.

(Image source: www.jmorganmarketing.com)

(Right up front, I have to say that my post may very well upset those folks at PETA and other animal lovers. I can only swear up and down that I love my dog, and hope everyone realizes that, though I take full responsibility, this was an accident.)

How do you handle a crisis? In PR, a client or reporter calling at all hours of the night screaming about whatever fire of that minute is pretty standard. It’s the nature of the business, really. But not everyone really knows how they’d act until presented with a situation that tries your nerves at the least opportune time. This is especially true when the crisis is personal, increasing the possibilities that one could lose his or her head tenfold.

On Saturday, I was tested, twice, and came out with the answer of what I’d always known about myself under pressure.

With blue skies, a light breeze, and shorts-warranting weather, a Jeep ride to the beach with my Bodhi seemed perfect. I dropped the top, loaded up the puppy, filled up water bottles for the two of us, and tied him to the Jeep bar so he wouldn’t jump out. He really loves to stand towards the edge and stick his paws on the inside, right near the edge.

Well, I don’t know what happened, but I turned the corner to my neighborhood, only going about 10 miles an hour , if that, and somehow he must have slipped and fell out of the car, dangling from the car just by his collar! I was mortified and slammed on the breaks to unhook my 135-pound puppy! Luckily, he’s very big, and I hadn’t made the leash too short, so he reached the ground, and wasn’t choking, and wasn’t hurt….just a little stressed out (he gets stressed easily). Though I was extremely upset, I calmly unhooked him, apologizing to him the whole time, and got him situated in the car and chilled him out.

But all I could think was, what if he’d fallen out on the highway? I only could imagine, so to prevent any further issues, we drove back, got his car harness (which is what I should have done first off), and continued our trip.

Not more than ten minutes later, as if to retaliate for the previous incident, Bodhi left me a present on the back seat, and climbed up front with me, while we are driving on the highway at 65 miles an hour. The fact is that he’s relieved himself in all three of my cars, numerous times, so, I wasn’t all that surprised, especially since he was stressed early. But with my puppy, stress=diarrhea. And let me reiterate, he’s a big boy. Needless it was a mess and a simple trash bag wasn’t going to do the trick.

Normally, I keep paper towels, plastic bags, and a scrub brush in the truck, just for this situation, but unfortunately was SOL. All I had was the brush, some Tupperware, and a couple of towels. After pacing up and down the street, to which I’d pulled off, considering how these three tools could factor in, I finally broke down and knocked on the door of the house I’d parked in front.

Barbara, probably the nicest lady in the world, invited me, offered me her hose, let my puppy play in her back yard, and even offered me Woolite Pet Stain Remover…an added bonus that takes the smell out of things.

While addressing the issue slopped in the back of my car, grateful for the generosity I was fortunate enough to receive (what are the odds?), all I could do was laugh. My nerves were at an all-time high, after being so racked with stress, that I had nothing left, but humor.

Just with this crappy situation (yes, that’s an intentional pun), life both in our personal and business worlds offers daily challenges in which we have to decide how to react. Our choices have direct repercussions to how the rest of the situation will play out. I’ve found, both in my personal and business dealings, the best way to handle difficult, sometimes messy, situations is to take a breath, address the problem directly and immediately, try to find the humor, and take away the lesson.

My lesson from this situation? Before leaving the house with Bodhi, always cover the seats in a tarp and pack supplies.  How do you handle conflict?

(Dear PETA people…You can rest easy…the puppy is back to his normal ways of destroying my home with the same exuberance and zeal as pre-incident.)

Time and time again, new clients will come to me in need of marketing and PR help. More often than not, it’s after spending a ridiculous amount of money on advertising, without ONE response. By shelling out so much cash for an ad in the newspaper, they think leads are guaranteed. As many of us know, this is not so, especially if your company is not branded properly.

After this happening a number of times, I think I’ve figured out the problem: they’re in a rush and feeling anxious to increase their revenue stream. So much so, that they just jump in and try out a few ideas without setting themselves up properly.

One company brought me in to assess their current situation, and after reviewing all their efforts, budget, etc. I suggested we sit down and set up a marketing plan. It didn’t even have to be very time consuming or daunting, just a simple description of their goals and a generalized plan of how to move forward. Nope. The guys just wanted to move forward with some programs as quickly as possible, not taking into account the current economic forecast and their target audience’s psychographics and demographics. Pretty key if you ask me.

I’m a pretty spontaneous person, so I’m not against throwing up a Hail Mary, and seeing what comes of it. But not repeatedly with no vision or direction. Frankly, that’s a bad choice.

As with anything, if you want to achieve a goal, you first have to know what that goal is. Then, you need to outline what tactics are involved to achieve it. Yes, this means writing out each step-by-step detail of what you’re going to do and how. This is crucial because not only does it allow you to measure your steps, but it keeps you on track without feeling overwhelmed. When you’re wearing multiple hats for your business, streamlining your life with processes and defined purpose is key!

And, really, a marketing plan doesn’t have to be all that scary. For some reason, you add the word “plan” to anything and people run, as though it’s an impossible task. Even if you did extensive research, coming up with a viable marketing plan won’t take up all that much of your time. If anything, it will save you time, AND MONEY, by preventing thoughtless actions that amount to an empty wallet and meager clientele list!

Get started today, you won’t regret it!

During a speech I gave this past weekend on PR secrets and techniques, we touched on the importance of business owners’ participation in the social media stratosphere. As we were discussing the issues with which many people are faced, one attendee brought up a different problem related to this subject. It wasn’t her ignorance or fear about using these platforms, but her inability to step away! More often than not, when she sits down in the morning to log on, hours fly by, and her husband has to send a search party to go in looking for her. The more people I talk to, I learn that many have this issue. There are endless blogs and tips on how to use these sites effectively, yet I’ve not run across too many articles concerning how to walk away in a timely manner. Thus, I thought of the following tips to help pathological users find freedom and a new world beyond their computer. Notice that I’ve kept the tips to a minimum for a reason!

1. Define Your Objective – Before jumping onto Facebook, determine what it is you wish to accomplish. Are you logging on for personal reasons or business? Do you intend simply to respond to your messages and send a few off to your friends or will you also respond or begin a thread on a specific topic? Knowing what you want makes it easy to remove your hand from the mouse once you’ve completed the task.

2. Establish a Schedule – Allotting an amount of time every day, at a specific time, will help you control how much time you spend Twittering. If you are like me and running in 20 different directions at the same time, it’s hard to get anything done without living by a daily planner. Make this tool work for you by picking some free time (what’s that? Haha) and setting half an hour to an hour aside for social media

3. Manage All Your Sites from One Platform – Scan my blog for my article on Flock, but I’ve been using this for a couple weeks now, and it saves me so much time and energy. I love (!) having everything right in front of me all at the same time

4. Set a Timer – Go to the dollar store and pick the loudest most obnoxious timer there, bring it home, and set it for the time you’ve decided in #2. It’s easy to say “Oh, I’ll just stay on for twenty minutes.” But more often than not, twenty minutes turns into thirty then an hour, and then two. The timer will remind you when to remove yourself from MySpace and serve as your source which to direct your resentment…I’m sure all loved ones will be happy to relieve themselves of this role! J (Thanks to Shelby, who suggested this one)

5. Write Down Your Plan and Stick with It – Nothing works better to ensure we follow through with a desired task or goal than to write it down. I have mine on a large Post-It in the back of my daily planner, again the keeper of my life, so I don’t lose it, and I see it every day.

Now, I understand this may be painful at first, but think of all the benefits that will come from it! Your family will revel in all this free time you have, the house won’t look like a tornado stopped by, and your skin will rejoice from being a ghostly white to slightly beige color once you reconnect with the sun. Try this for a month and see how it goes. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much you accomplish without spending days in the social media black hole!

(Image source: samerowdycrowd.wordpress.com)