I started following Shelly Kramer on Twitter, gosh, more than a year ago because she is F-U-N-N-Y! One day I get a tweet from her that says, “Do you know Mattie Dietrich?” Um, yes…she’s my sister-in-law. Mattie and Shelly’s daughter, Katherine Meyer, went to college together. And so endeared her to me forever and that is why today’s #FollowFriday is Shelly Kramer and her fabulous blog (that is part personal, part business, and part pure craziness) V3IM.

Shelly is kind of a big deal, though she’d never tell you that herself. She’s on the Forbes list of 30 women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter, she was named a top small business mom by American Express, and the blog was named by Forbes (it looks as though she and her partner may be paying Forbes – jeez!) as a best social media blog by a woman. Continue Reading »

Guest post by Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland.

We’ve all heard the expression you are what you eat. As a columnist and author, I’ve come to understand in many ways that you are what you write. But social media has given us an entirely new way of understanding our personal brand image: You are what your followers say you are.

Currently, more than 100 of my Twitter followers have put me on a list – not as many as @ginidietrich(!), but enough to give me a sense of how @WhenGrowthStall is positioned in the Twitterverse. Simply scanning the titles is an enlightening exercise. Continue Reading »

My good friend Angelica Colantuoni asks, “How important is it to unplug? How often do you unplug to refresh?”

My answer is in the video. What say you?

(If you can’t view this in your RSS feed, please click here).

During a recent chat with Gini Dietrich, we were talking about how the majority of leadership resources and articles are geared toward CEOs and other upper level executives and managers. What about Generation Y? Are we supposed to sit back and wait to see if our career leads us to CEO level in order to be a leader? I don’t think so. Level 5 leaders need level 5 employees, and there is a lot that Gen Y employees can do to help lead their organizations forward.

Last year, Gini wrote an article on CEO Leadership Skills: What Does It Take To Be Level 5? Level 5 leadership, coined by business consultant Jim Collins, refers to the peak of a hierarchy of leadership characteristics. I read a couple of Collins’ books in graduate school (“Built to Last” and “Good to Great”) and learned all about how CEOs can achieve “tip top” leadership status. Fabulous, but I am not a CEO. Most of us are not. I challenge each of you to rephrase Collins and ask yourself what it takes to be a level 5 employee. Continue Reading »

On Sunday afternoon, because of a comedy of errors that included Joe Thornley pouring himself a glass of scotch and wondering what he was getting ready for (and not remembering what it was until Monday) and my being so tired after the big ride with my dad in Oregon that I was asleep at 5:00, we had to reschedule our InsidePR recording for this afternoon.

Getting ready to get on Skype with Joe and Martin Waxman, I tweeted, “Hmmm…about to record @Inside_PR. What should we discuss this week?”

My friend Petya Georgieva suggested Seth Godin’s decision to give up on traditional book publishing.

Great idea, Petya! The problem is, we STILL haven’t recorded episode 2.18 because we all got on Skype and my sound wasn’t working. So Joe and Martin were talking to me and I was typing back to them. Really, really funny (maybe you had to be there), but it definitely does not work for a podcast. Continue Reading »

I keep seeing these long lists everywhere on how to use social media for business purposes and although a lot of them touch on some important factors, they are usually too complicated so I’m breakin’ it down for you.  It doesn’t matter if your company is B2B, B2C, or A2Z, online marketing programs all have the same four elements.

RESEARCH.

This element seems to be lost in most social media campaigns.  Without research, how do you know where your customers and prospects are playing online?  Are they on Facebook?  Are they on LinkedIn?  Once you find them, dig deeper and find out what they do on the social platforms.  Are they participating, looking for leads themselves, or not active at all? Continue Reading »

There is no way around it – I’m behind. Traveling and speaking these last two weeks truly got the best of me. I’m behind on coaching my team. I’m behind on client work. I’m behind on reading my RSS feeds. I’m behind on Twitter. I’m behind on LinkedIn. I’m behind on Facebook. I’m behind on comments here on the blog. I’m behind on laundry and grocery shopping. I’m even behind on my time trial training.

Therefore I have nothing to share with you today. I was riding this morning, trying valiantly to come up with a topic for today’s blog and my mind was blank the entire time (well, that’s not entirely true – I was thinking, “Don’t get dropped. Don’t get dropped. Don’t get dropped”). So my apologies, but I’ll be back at it tomorrow!

But while you’re here, help a girl out…what do you do when you get so far behind you’re overwhelmed and nearly paralyzed?

Guest post by Joey Strawn, president of Empty Jar Marketing and blogger at JoeyStrawn.com.

I’m about to take you back to the future of social media. Because the future is here. Now.

Growing up, my favorite movies dealt with how the future would turn out. I would watch and re-watch “Logan’s Run,” “Blade Runner,” “Star Wars,” and of course, “Back to the Future, Part II.” When I was 11, I wanted nothing in the world more than a hoverboard. Continue Reading »

Now that Facebook Places (a location-based tool that is likely going to compete with Foursquare and Gowalla) has been in full force for a few days, have you tried it? It’s kind of a fun little tool, from a personal perspective, and we’ll talk here about the business implications, but I say be cautiously curious.

Several weeks ago, Facebook opened the platform to search engines, which means a few things:

* When someone tags you or your business on Facebook and you don’t already have a page, it creates one for you. Continue Reading »

If you own a business, lead a business, want to own or lead a business someday, or are in sales or business development, then The Fast Growth blog is a must read. And that’s why today’s #FollowFriday is Doug Davidoff.

I met Doug on Twitter more than a year ago and, when he was in Chicago last fall, we met in person. He is great fun – he has a big personality, he’s strongly opinionated (which I love), and he is, by far, one of the smartest people I know (without the ego to go along with it). We quickly became real friends and then decided to work together, as well. Continue Reading »