GenXmanager: Leadership for the Generation X Manager

This is the second video in the social media strategy series. In it I walk through the first step in the social media strategy process which is to determine prupose. I stress the importance of looking at the overall organizational strategy, goals, and objectives. From there, you select a few goals that will lend themselves to a social media solution.

This step in the process is not about social media but about strategic thinking.

Social media strategy. To implement social media properly you need a plan. This is the first video in a series that will discuss social media strategy. The strategy process involves seven steps listed below the video. This entire series will discuss each of these steps in greater detail.

Social Media Strategy: The 7 Steps

1. Determine purpose
2. Choose the platform
3. Integrate and enhance
4. Set the budget
5. Sell the idea
6. Implement
7. Measure

I am going to start vlogging. I’ll be publishing on both YouTube and Viddler to reach two different audiences. When I do produce a video, I’ll post it here on the blog as well.

My vlogging topics will be:

• Leadership
• Business
• Social Media
• Organizational Issues
• and other items of interest to me (which I hope will also be of interest to you)

My first video is below. I turned my blog post ‘Top 10 reasons to ban social media access at work‘ into a video. I hope you enjoy. The style of all my videos will likely be the same. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. Enjoy!

Please note: This video and my previous post about banning social media are sarcastic rants. I actually believe organizations should embrace, not block social media.

I was randomly messing around on YouTube last night after conducting a webinar and noticed a news item that read “1080p Launches”. That’s right, YouTube is going from 720p to full 1080p HD starting “next week” (December 20th I assume). I applauded YouTube’s move to widescreen, HQ, and eventually 720p HD. YouTube raises the bar and I again, applaud their efforts.

I urge you to take a look at the Toy Story 3 trailer and go full screen. It is amazing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f-MYl-HzNw

Though I welcome the move to 1080p HD, I hope that their servers can handle the load. I have a fairly fast home connection and a peppy laptop but I find playing HD videos on YouTube is an exercise in patience. The HD videos load slowly, buffer, and skip.

I’ll admit that there were no issues watching the Toy Story 3 trailer in full 1080p HD. So I hope that is a good omen of what to expect from YouTube.

Tweeting great content is essential to gain followers on Twitter and engaging your audience. The question is, how do you find great content to tweet? Look no further. Here are a few ways to find great content.

1. Business Exchange by Business Week

Though not a robust social media platform, I’ve found wonderful, tweetable, content on Business Exchange. The home page presents you with a cadre of topic areas including the Banking Industry, Business Innovations, Social Media Marketing, and even MBA Admissions. Click on a topic and there is a list of articles submitted by Business Exchange users. I’ve found the content quite good.

2. Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Reddit

I use Digg more than any of these other social bookmark sharing sites because the content is well organized. I’m interested in tweeting content about business, the economy, social media, and innovation. Digg let’s me go right to those categories and browse what’s available. StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, and others are okay at listing what’s trending and hot at the moment but I find their categories unorganized.

3. Subscribe to great RSS feeds

Subscribe to your favorite blogs and news sites via RSS. You can download an RSS news reader or simply use Google’s newsreader. You’re newsreader will give you the latest content from every feed you subscribe to. If you see something interesting, tweet it out!

4. Google News

Google news serves up-to-the-minute content from major media outlets. I like the way the content is organized and enjoy the newsworthiness of all the articles.

5. Facebook and LinkedIn

You can’t rely on Facebook or LinkedIn for consistent Twitter content but I’ve had friends post articles on their wall that I’ve tweeted on multiple occasions. So, pay attention to what your friends and contacts are posting. You might find a great nugget of wisdom to share on Twitter.

6. YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo

Most of the folks I follow on Twitter don’t tweet video content. I’m not sure why. I love video and enjoy watching great quality, relevant video to my area of interest or job responsibilities. You can subscribe to users on YouTube, Viddler, and Vimeo who produce video you like. If they publish a great video, tweet it. You can also search these sites for video content.

7. Newsletters in your email

Pay attention to those newsletters you get in your email. Most companies, educational institutions, research foundations, and bloggers produce weekly, monthly or quarterly newsletters. Subscribe to them and read them! Oftentimes the content in these newsletters is not found easily on their respective websites or blogs. So, if you see something interesting in the newsletter, click the link to read more and then tweet that article.

 There are many more ways to find tweetworthy articles but these are some of the ones I use. Share yours in the comments below.