I gave the following presentation to the Tennessee Association for Home Care fall conference on November 8, 2011 in Gatlinburg, TN. I wanted to share the content of this presentation to show the ease of publishing content to Posterous.

The six No’s

1. Cost of social media.

2. The time that social media takes.

3. I don’t want to entrust my brand to a teenager.

4. My customers don’t use social media.

5. I work in a regulated industry.

6. Legal Concerns

The Six Yes’s

1. Customer Service. – Comcast, through the help of Frank Eliason, has used social media to overcome its PR fumble created by this YouTube video.

1. Sales

2. Awareness.

1. Unification

2. Motrin

3. Egypt

4. Unify movement

5. Education

6. Creating community Many seniors feel a sense of isolation, and social networking is an easy solution to find companions with shared likes and interests through groups, discussion boards, polls and relevant articles. http://homecaretwincities.com/from-lydia/social-networking-offers-many-benefi...

You must have alignment

Inside

• Evangelism
• Social Media Policy
• Process
• Training
• Staff

Outside

• Strategy
• Engagement
• IRL Networking
• Tools
• Platforms

The How

Listening tools

Google Alerts Twitter *Reader

I need a website where do I start?

Having a web presence for your business in the modern world is a necessity, not an option. Businesses spend anywhere between $500 to $500,000 for their web site, so each business must decide the success factors before determining the budget.

1. Find a Host. If you are going to go it alone, you are a brave soul, congratulations. But, most importantly you should find a partner that speaks your language and that you can trust. Web hosts have taken much of the heavy lifting from creating and managing websites. Look at the following web hosts that make the process much easier: Slamdot, DreamHost, Media Temple, 1and1, weebly, Host Gator, GoDaddy, Rackspace.

2. Decide on a domain name. While improved search engine algorithms have made short, catchy domain names largely unnecessary, it is still important to pick a domain name that is unique and accurately speaks about your business. Names that include your industry may be

3. Plan the content. In the business, we call this a site map. Take adequate time to plan how the content will interact on your site. If you only had 20 seconds to tell someone about your business, what are the critical points that you want someone to know? The answer to that question should be your home page. From there you need to give them enough information to drill down into the content.

4. Write remarkable content. When it comes time to write your content, make it exceptional. Write excellent content that people will find informative and enjoyable. Likewise this is the information that the search engines will use to categorize you, so be thoughtful to the terms that you want people to find you.

5. Publish. If you wait until everything is perfect, you may be waiting until 2050 to publish your site. Set a date and adhere to it. Make sure that it is proofed by a reasonably competent person and publish it! Websites are like gardens, there are always things to tweak, so no need to wait to ship.

6. Final considerations. First of all, your website gives you ample resources to track visits and visitors to your site—make sure that you can collect this information by setting up Google Analytics. Secondly, setup a contact form to allow visitors to easily request information or contact you. Finally, include links to any social media platforms in which you engage.

You will definitely want to mark your calendar and review your site from time to time. What’s working? What’s not? And make the necessary changes.

Blogging Keys by my friend Mark W. Schaefer. http://www.businessesgrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/10.12_MLT_EBook_Comp...

Create a Facebook Fan Page

Create a Presence on Twitter

Use Foursquare

To help you manage your Social Media, you might try using Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, or Seesmic.

Klout uses "influential about" to determine the topic areas where you are considered most influential. For example, my twitter account @jfloyd is considered to be most influential about the following topics:

• Knoxville
• Social Media
• Legal
• Business

1. Identify 50 people that you believe are influential about topics that you want to be influential about (i.e. "Sales" "Sales Coaching" etc. using http://wefollow.com)

Here is a report of "Sales"

Then run over to Klout and check the scores:

2. Increase "engagement" with these people over the next 30 days. 

• If you register on Klout, you can click the 
  
  beside topics and it will notify them that you have given them Klout+
• Retweet them
• Respond to their questions
• Ask them to retweet you

3. Raise your following by 100 people and Klout score by 20 points in the next 30 days.

That's the task, let me know how you do!

Each season obviously has a mood and a feeling, but fall and spring have been very powerful seasons for me to express musically.
1. Dog Days Are Over | Florence + The Machine
2. Rolling In the Deep | ADELE Adele Adkins & Paul Epworth
3. MoneyGrabber | Fitz & The Tantrums
4. The High Road | Broken Bells
5. Little Secrets | Passion Pit
6. Pumped Up Kicks | Foster the People
7. Kid s | MGMT
8. We Used to Wait | Arcade Fire
9. Nighttiming | Coconut Records
10. Lions | The Features
11. Boy | Ra Ra Riot
12. Giving Up the Gun | Vampire Weekend
13. Crystalised | The xx

Most of the time I mix a bit of old with the new, but this playlist is all new music. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

...until I started eating tons of fruit. In February, I decided to lose a few pounds, so I switched my diet and replaced candy bars with apples and oranges. At first I couldn't remember whether you were supposed to squeeze the oranges or shake the apples, so I just bought them all. After about a month I knew the qualities of good blueberries, oranges, apples, cantaloupe. The experience made all of the difference.

It seems that so often in life we look for a shortcut to experience. Really, the best way to know whether we have made the right decision is to make lots of decisions and judge the outcome. Is it what we expected? Could I have done better? What have I learned from this decision? Through that experience we become more efficient, more confident, and better leaders.

Here's a link to the technology story from last night.

I used to be a Verizon loyalist. The voice network is superior, and despite claims that people have "never dropped a call on AT&T," I speculate that they don't move very much while talking on these calls. On the other side of the argument is a cadre of folks that "love the iPhone but hate AT&T," and have said for years, "I'll switch when Verizon gets the iPhone."

I switched to AT&T twice. The first time, I was chasing the Palm Treo 600, and that experiment lasted only 12 of my 30 day trial. The hardware, albeit great at the time, did not justify the poor quality network. The second switch was in the summer of 2008, and I have been a bound customer ever since. This time the hardware did outweigh the service. Apparently, I am a gadget loyalist.

So, today Verizon made the big announcement: iPhone 4 coming in February. The years of WSJ speculation has finally been fulfilled. It's here so now what do we do?

A few thoughts for the switchers:

1. Are you switching from AT&T? If you are not out of contract, you have some early termination fees to pay. How much? Depends on on when you bought your phone. If you bought it before 6/1/2010 your fee is some amount less than $175. If you bought it after, you will pay some amount less than $325. (as you get credit for time served)

2. Do you care more about apps and features or telephone quality? The CDMA (fancy-speak for the type of network that Verizon uses) network does not support voice and data simultaneously. So, talking on the phone while looking up directions, surfing the web, or checking twitter won't happen.

3. How about a Hotspot? This version of the iPhone allows a mobile hotspot with up to 5 connections. You can power your iPad, iPod, Macbook, Apple TV, and iMac with this iPhone--just not while you're on the phone.

4. Hiccups? Hate 'em or Really hate 'em, they're bound to happen. Verizons robust 3G network is going to be put to the test with this many new, heavy data users. Switching early is going to take some patience.

5. And then there's the iPhone 5. So, if you're a gadget loyalist and you switch now, what are you going to do when Apple releases the iPhone 5 this summer.

Sure, there are 100 points to analyze, but that's my shortlist. And here is my analysis. Voice is very important to me. With my business, I depend upon it, and I depend upon being on the go making quality calls. I do like the fact that I can "multi-task" on the AT&T network, but I can count on one hand the number of times that it was mission critical.

My contract expires on 6/19/2011, so I will end up coughing over about $75 to terminate early. That is acceptable. However, related to iPhone 5, I really don't lose that much by waiting until summer to make the switch. At that time, I can roll out of contract without any fees, and I should know (1) is the new hardware coming out, (2) what issues Verizon has, (3) hopefully use the 4G LTE speeds on the new iPhone.

Conclusion: I am saying today (1.11.11) that I am going to wait until summer, but don't be surprised if I switch early...because that's the way I roll. 

We have all been waiting on the great hive mind--unify our minds and the collective will generate solutions the end to hunger, create world peace, and allow everyone to sleep on a memory foam matress, right? Meet Quora. Probably not going to offer any of those solutions, but in the meantime, we can waste a few hours perusing answers and possibly even make the creation of the next powerpoint a bit painless.

You know the drill: you have been stuck on a problem all day, and you could solve in 2 seconds if you just knew the right person to call. Through its social sphere, Quora purports to do just that...put your question in the hands of experts.

Thanks to Robby Edwards, I was introduced to Quora a few weeks ago.  It was co-founded by the former CTO of Facebook, Adam D'Angelo, and Charlie Cheever and started picking up steam in June of 2010.

The site is pretty basic: people ask questions, others answer questions, and the community votes up and down the answers.

After the usual social orientation (search email, twitter, facebook for current connections), you jump right into the mix. The striking feature of Quora is the geek-chic-celebrity answers to some of the questions. For example, Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, and Gary Tan, cofounder of posterous, chime in with their answers. The executives and decision makers in organizations are within reach to ask interesting, informative questions.

What I don't like.

• The notifications are slow. An answer may post at 4:30, and you will receive a notification email 18 hours later.
• The interface is less than intuitive.
• Aardvark, at one time before being acquired, had a better approach. The software "learned" you by the questions you read and answers you posted. When a new question was posted that matched, aardvark would ping you.
• Social integration. You can post your questions as answers to your networks, but I would like to see status updates come through those channels as well.

What I do like.

• Namely, the people are there. Sometimes the cool hangout is not always the best hangout, but you go where the people are.
• Topical expertise. Whether real estate, law, or medical (in addition to the assumed tech), you can go to quora and find some very valuable information.
• It's new. If you are reading this far in my post, you, like me, are a neophiliac. It doesn't matter what it does if it is just new.

Are you using Quora? If so, let me know your thoughts.