As I have put together our first two weeks of our Social Media Adventure, I’ve come across some amazing resources that are available to make our journey easier. It’s been fun trying them out and experimenting. As I’ve written them down, and passed them around, some of my friends mentioned that the material would make a great book.
In the past I’ve run into bloggers who have written their blog in such a way that they were able to create a book from the material. Since we have charted a 12 week pre-determined course, this material will naturally form organized chapters. So I took a look at the material and thought about creating a book.
Here are some ideas…
There are quite a few books on the market about social media. Some come at it from the how-to point of view, with books written specifically on the ins and outs of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There are also books on putting all the pieces together, written from a global point of view on the mash-up of multiple services. Some books take a marketing viewpoint and others come at from a communicators vision of reaching out with a specific message.
All of these fit a niche and provide great information. But where can we go that will provide something different? Something that will fit in with the personal development mindset of this blog. Something that will empower you to take on the challenge and get your feet wet in this amazing world of social media.
Here are three areas that I think will be beneficial.
A. Cover the basics, make it simple. In talking with so many of my friends, they want to know what social media is about and what it can do for them, but they are overwhelmed with the technical aspects of it. Many are afraid from a security point of view of sharing information with the world. Others have created a Facebook profile and wonder about blogging or using Twitter. Some people are out of work and wonder if LinkedIn can help them.
The bottom line is… this stuff can get complicated real quick…
- 1. Let’s offer simple, step-by-step instructions on creating basic social media accounts with graphics and diagrams
- 2. We’ll offer security guidelines to limit what information we post
- 3. We’ll provide information on how to tie everything together.
B. Create a company name and niche and set it up as we go along. Some of the best books on technical subjects, give you real world examples of creating accounts from scratch and guide you along the way to a finished project. Since we have a name from our first week of “Meedeeah",” let’s take that name and build a writers profile around it. As we progress with the book, we’ll progress with the online presence. We’ll create a Twitter profile, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn profile, and WordPress blog from the viewpoint of an author promoting a new book.
C. Filter our company through seven personal development attributes. Since this is a personal development blog, let’s take our new company name and niche and process it through some of the top success attributes. To do this we’ll look at some of the top people in Social Media, examine their blog posts, and see what they are doing that has made them successful.
Here are seven different areas along with the collective wisdom of Social Media Experts that will give us great insights into the new media world.
1. Personality: Liz Strauss is one of the top personalities in the business. She has taken her blog and opened it up to the world. Called the Comment Queen by many, she has a great tag line, “You are only a stranger once,” that really says it all. She is also the founder of SOBcon, a bloggers conference now in its fourth year. We’ll take a look at creating our own unique online personality with some of her amazing insights that she has posted throughout the years.
2. Passion: When you say the word passion, one person comes to mind and that is Gary Vanerchuk. He has taken social media by storm with his new book, “Crush It,” and a online TV show called Wine Library TV. Gary exudes passion in everything he does, and that passion is contagious. We’ll take a look at what drives Gary and how it can help us create content that people want to read and experience.
3. Purpose: Anne Jackson is an amazing and passionate person with a purpose. She lives what she writes and you will find her travelling around the world helping the less fortunate. Her nickname and blog title is Flowerdust and her true heart shows through in her writing. We’ll look through her lens and find some areas where we can reach out beyond ourselves to help others. Her posts are always insightful and have spurred hundreds of people to take action.
4. People: In the online world we’ll need two kinds of people. We’ll need readers and followers that we can reach out to. We’ll also need mentors to guide us along our journey. Mari Smith is an expert when it comes to working with people and she is an outstanding mentor in the social media field. She has a contagious and helpful personality that has helped thousands of people succeed in online media. We’ll take a look at some of her techniques for attracting followers and helping them succeed through her Twitter feed and Facebook fan page.
5. Path: Once we have discovered our own unique personality, passion, and purpose, we’ll need to follow a path to get to our destination. One of the best trail guides in the business is Chris Brogan. With his guidance we’ll map out a journey to success. Chris brings powerful business insights to social media and can help us plot out the milestones we’ll need to cover to get to our final destination.
6. Problem Solving: One of the best ways to attract followers online is to find a problem and provide a solution. To help us with this, we’ll call on one of the web’s best problem solvers, Brian Clark. Brian publishes a blog called Copyblogger, where he has helped thousands of people write better copy and overcome a myriad of technical problems. We’ll take a look at some of Brian’s ideas for creating our own problem solving niche and how to write compelling copy to guide people to it.
7. Place: Now that we have all the pieces in place we need to create a final destination for our followers. We need to create our own OZ. We’ll look to Michael Hyatt, who has created one of the most compelling destinations on the web. He has put together a fantastic blog, fed by content from a Twitter page, Facebook and the popular search engines. We’ll look at his techniques for putting all the pieces together through the lens of his top social media posts.
We’ll tie everything together with some helpful planning tools, including a keywords guide, a Twitter flowchart, and a Facebook fan page designer. When we are done we’ll have some great content for a book.
To make this even better, we’ll take some of the best comments and feedback along the way and include it in the sidebars of the book.
My goal is to take this material and add additional resources, tutorials, and overview and publish a book late this summer. My initial thought is to self publish again, but we may find a publisher willing to take us on as we progress through our journey.
As we progress, week by week, please help us out with your comments, experiences, and feedback. The best ones will be published as pullouts along with our regular material.
