Importance of honesty in social media

Building a brand is difficult at the best of times and in 2010 where many businesses are going to focus time and energy on building their brand with social Media. There has never been a better time to focus on building a brand now with the existence of easy to use tools like Twitter and facebook being honest and clear to your audience is extremely important.

If you offer a service or product don’t hard sell people will not follow you to hear you rant about how great your product is all day that said if your product/service is something they may be looking for then at that point in time by all means suggest it.

Be honest and true to your audience because if you don’t you will not only hurt your brand but you could damage others. If you have competitors don’t bash them with comments or tweets, don’t actively promote the fact that the competition have not got the reach you do and so belittle them it’s just not professional.

Something that has annoyed me slightly recently is an action @bradburton has just started which is a hashtag of #RTbomb whereby in his own words “Doing really offensive tweets and then put and RT @ofsomeudon‘t like b4 #RTBomb” something that I personally think is very unprofessional – the idea of a RT (rewteet) is sending a message someone posted on their Twitter stream and displaying it to your followers. Now if you are (even jokingly) editing and posting an offensive tweet by pretending its from the original person then this is hurting brands the examples Brad did were not particularly harmful but misleading non the less and could damage brands.

RT @dannyrowe Apple Taxi’s of WSM announce FREE piece of fruit with every trip. To help with the 5 aday. #RTBomb

RT @noredbraces Can you help? I’m actively looking for a #socialmedia expert to help my business #RTBomb

@lanternphoto: RT @BradBurton just joined BNI, looking forward to my first meeting Tuesday. #RTBomb

RT @Tesco due to lower footfall due to weather we are discounting 25% off all items on purchases over £30 plz RT #RTBomb

You can see some of the #rtbomb / #rtbombing going on here

Im all for fun and joking on twitter but retweeting users with these changes could well be damaging and hope that professionals do not attempt to take on this unprofessional hashtag.

Keeping on top of projects with Basecamp

Keeping on top of your daily work is difficult enough on a good day but now we are returning from the festive holidays many of us will have projects to jump onto and pick up again or even new projects that have already come in fresh this week.

For myself I’m in the last stretch of finishing two client sites, writing a new web app for a new client, writing my next talk for Wired Weston a local business event and maintaining my sanity whilst helping to keep others productive and balancing regular work load.

Having several projects to manage and keep track of no matter their nature can be difficult so I recommend using a tool from 37signals called basecamp (aff. link).  A free account is available with paid plans from only $15 per month. If like my business you are managing multiple projects it’s invaluable to have a paid version for more projects.

BaseCamp is a pay as you go service and that’s great because I don’t want to be tied to yet another contract service for my business and it allows me to upgrade/downgrade accounts at any time which is fantastic because one month we may want to track 20 projects, the next only 5 and in three months time we may be tracking 30 projects and having various levels of pricing depending on projects is extremely useful.

The web interface is very nice (take a look at the tour) – extremely easy to find your way around and perform actions such as making milestones, adding different types of notes such as snippets of code, copy-writing pieces, etc. Then you have an enormous to-do list functionality which allows you to create unlimited to-do lists and assign items to them of which you can assign to individual people within your company, set a due date and assign to a milestone you have setup for your project. Upload files of all your photoshop drafts, text pieces, code files, images, audio, executable files and much more to do with your project. Basecamp also allows you to track time spent on each task so you can see where your are spending most time and bill accordingly should you charge by the hour.

Running a business depending on the size of the project we generally give our clients access to their project on basecamp which allows us to work closer and easier to meeting their needs, quick turn around and even easier to help train clients on using the new system as they see it develop and how it works.

If you work remotely there are various iPhone applications to manage your Basecamp account such as Insight and Outpost (i use the most) or if you do not have an iPhone/iPod touch you can still access Basecamp via your mobile phone browser (with javascript enabled) and then integrate with your billing systems, invoicing, accounting and more with the many extras available.

Do you use BaseCamp or a similar product and what do you think?

Let it snow let it snow let it snow #uksnow

As the traditional song goes: Oh the weather outside is frightful, / But the fire is so delightful, / And since we’ve no place to go, / Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Well MASSIVE AMOUNTS of snow has hit the UK and by that I mean a couple of inches in most areas! Apparently we have ran out of salt/grit for the roads and the whole country has shut down – what a terrible excuse for a lazy day in. But we love a day off right!

Today brings perfect oportunites – not to stay in bed this morning, not to lazy around on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle – but to grab that extra time to hustle some more on what your passionate about. If your fed up or unhappy even the slightest in your current job and want to do something you love – do it.

There is plenty of time to develop that new idea you may have and nurture your new business venture whether that be after-hours – once your home from work spend a few hours on it – don’t just leave it for the evenings of a weekend if your passionate about it and want to be happy – WORK.

Today the whole country is on lock down it would seem and snowed in – WORK – put your head down and get hustling on that thing your passionate about. If its starting a new blog – get drafting some ideas to post and do, if your starting a new business work on that, whatever it is your passionate about and want to do in life in order to be happier do it today!

Don’t make today “another snow day” where you have laid around in bed – get up, be active and crack on with your project.

Back to work today – now what?

Not only is it Monday and you will no doubtedly have “a case of the Mondays” but its also the first day back for many after the festive season, time to get back into routine, back to the daily grind of office life – or if your lucky enough to be doing something you love then its time to work hard and carry on doing the thing you love.

2009 was a difficult year for many businesses and people alike, with an enormous amount of businesses being closed down, cut back and project delayed we are all hoping 2010 brings around a much better year.

Personally you probably want to loose a few kilos of the belly, get back to the gym, maybe increase your wage packet by trying to get that position in the company you have been dreaming of. But as a company as a whole – what are your goals for this year – what are you aiming for?

2009 was the year of investing in yourself so this year lets invest in our companies and come out of the global recession with a boom!

Here are some of the things that as director of my own business I shall be aiming for:

• Growing my network – increasing my reach to customers both on and offline, attending more business events locally and interacting with local businesses more
• Last year I spoke at a couple of events regarding both Internet security and social media – bit of a difference there but this year I hope to attend more conferences to speak at
• A difficult task especially with a lot of personal tasks I will have this year to nurture but I intend on increasing the companies turnover by a great deal even though 2008 exceeded our targets!
• Not to sit back and let others strugle in the company or any of my clients I intend to do more one on one consultations both for charitale organizations and small to medium sized businesses
• Refocus and reorganize projects and developments within the company

I have a few personal and business aims and goals written down that I want to address but these are just a selection. What are you aiming for in 2010 both personally and professionally? What goals, objectives or challenges are you setting yourself or your business?

Increase your social network reach and friend me up on Twitter @seanprice and  LinkedIn /seanprice

Facing multiple projects

Its not uncommon at all for me, you or him over there to deal with multiple projects albeit professional work projects or personal “projects” but how can we deal with these better?

Well first of all what are projects?

There are two general types of projects I will cover: Professional and Personal.

Projects are S.M.A.R.T - did you know that?

S – specific, significant

M – measurable, meaningful, motivational

A – agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented

R – realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented

T – time-based, timely, tangible, track-able

Professional projects may consist of various things depending on your situation and career but it may involve taking on a new position in the work place, training someone, building a new web application, developing the internal systems or follow up last years enquiries.

So personal projects are similar they are things that need to be managed, kept on track and measurable these vary between maybe planning a Wedding, planning the birth of your next child, looking for a house, choosing your career path, writing a CV and cover letter to send out or whatever it is in your life that requires more than a couple of thoughts to process and achieve.

So how exactly do you manage multiple projects efficiently?

The answer – find it right here but on a serious note dealing with either multiple projects or multiple choices in which project to take on board can be difficult so here are five tips on how to manage this better:

Decide what factors will influence you in taking on a new project

Typically this would be financial influences more money or cheaper to take on, but for others the influences could be emotional satisfaction or beneficial to others that could improve their lifestyle.

Don’t be afraid to fail

Its all about progression and doing the best you can without worrying about failure too much – it is of course a concern but if you worry about failure and not achieving perfection then you will inevitably fail.

Have a trusted system and method of managing your projects

This does NOT mean using fancy web 2.0 todo lists that track your every move in the project or huge Microsoft Project files all of which take longer to keep updated than actually spending time working on the project. Use a system that could be as simple as pen and paper which works best most of the time as its physical and manageable remember its easier to strike off something on a piece of paper than it is to login to that cool web app and tick off the todo item and then change the colours of the status and then setup the blah blah blah.

Collaborate don’t shut yourself in

Working on your own can be great – shut out annoyances, remove the office noise, get more done ….. right? Well yes but often in projects no matter how small or large you will often need someone else to collaborate with that doesn’t mean they take all the glory, take over as “project leader” or even affect majorly the outcome or course of your project. But having a second mind to bounce ideas off, brainstorm, converse and use for testing or reference. They may never know they are part of a larger project but people can be very useful for no matter what project personal or work that you are developing.

Its all about the end – isn’t it?

Don’t focus on the end of your project otherwise you will never get there – even worse if you are tracking and working on multiple projects you will be so concerned with fixating dates, milestones and how perfect the end result will be that the actual project will never move forward or progress further.

“How do you manage projects either single projects or multiple at the same time either personal or professional ones?” @seanprice