Do the People you Surround yourself with, Mirror who you are?

One of the major factors, which can limit your potential and hold you away from realising your dreams, is the opinions of other people. The secret to succeed and become all you can be is to live independently of the good opinion of other people. No one else’s opinion matters at all and in many cases the opinions, which are being expressed are coming from a place of insecurity on the part of the person expressing the opinion. They want to express their own insecurities and lack of determination, so that they can hobble you and your dreams.

Can you remember a time in your life when you shared a dream with someone else and they tried to dissuade you and told you about all the risks and reasons why you would not succeed. They came up with a million reasons why you would fail, how impossible your dream was and then proceeded to fill your head with their insecurities. The way to succeed is to explore, examine and get feedback from your environment before rushing into any new venture. The challenge is to know when the information you receive is of value and will serve you and when it is just negative regurgitated information from negative people who don’t want to see you succeed.

The easiest way to avoid the negative influence of other people is to avoid spending time around negative Nay Sayers and to rather find positive people to surround yourself with. When you surround yourself with people who are on similar journey to your own or who have succeeded themselves. They will offer support and guidance, which will bolster you efforts and help you succeed. Instead of filling your head with negativity and all the reasons why you will fail.

The people you choose to spend time around will have a huge effect on the way your life turns out. So choose these people very wisely. As you prepare to win and become the best version of yourself possible, the biggest part of that preparation, is surrounding yourself with people who will encourage and support you. The ideal people to surround yourself with on this journey are people who have succeeded themselves or who are on a similar journey to your own and are driven to realise their full potential. These are people who are willing to step up to the plate and take risks and who are able to accomplish things that no believes is possible.

These people are not threatened by your success and so when you share your goals and dreams with them, they will support and encourage you. They will be willing to share their own experience with you and offer you guidance and support, sharing their own mistakes and helping you to avoid similar mistakes yourself. How your life turns out in the future will depend on the books you read, the actions you take and the people you surround yourself with. So commit to read books, which will help you to continually grow, take inspired action every day and surround yourself with people who will support and guide you and the doors to unlimited success open up to you.

You are indeed the average of the five people you surround yourself with, so choose these five people very wisely and you will create the foundation for unlimited achievement.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

The Four Economic Seasons

History serves as a great teacher and any wise entrepreneur will look back over the past 100 years and see that there is a definite trend. There is a cycle or market fluctuation, which seems to repeat every seven to ten years. During these cycles, there are periods of easy prosperity, followed by periods of challenge, where prosperity is more difficult and opportunities are scarcer. Look back over the past 100 years and even beyond and you will most certainly see a cyclical trend, with alternating bear and bull markets.  

We as humans are a resilient species and as always we will survive the challenge we are now facing and when we look back on this current down cycle in a few years’ time. We will see that it was just a temporary downward correction, which soon moved back into another positive cycle. You have two choices right now, you can wallow in self-pity and cause yourself undue stress, where you dwell on doom and gloom or you can choose to see these challenges for what they are, Temporary. When you see them as temporary and you begin to understand how to actually use these cycles to your advantage, you will learn to welcome the next downturn, as it will allow you to make a significant profit.

Let me try to explain how to welcome each downturn in the economy and to profit from it. We live in a cyclical environment, where it is impossible to experience an expanding positive economy indefinitely. There are periodical market corrections or negative cycles, where positive economic growth is halted for a period, followed by periods of positive economic prosperity. These cycles are just the natural way of the world. We live on a planet, which goes through four seasons every year. The economy is no different. It also goes through four seasons of rebirth, growth, decline and decay. This process is not unique to the seasons every year or the economy, it is repeated everywhere on our planet.

Despite the governments around the world attempting to smooth out these fluctuations, using monetary and fiscal policy, to reduce the massive swings, which occur, natural forces always come into play and we eventually enter periods of negative economic growth. We can never control these cycles, but we can change the way we choose to respond to them.

Choice one: Wallow in self-pity, disempower yourself and live a very stressful existence, every time there is a downturn.

Choice two: Anticipate the inevitable downturns, work to exploit the benefits, which each downturn offers and grow your wealth.

Making choice number two seems like a no-brainer to me. Learn to understand and anticipate each cycle and you will actually look forward to each down cycle as it will be an opportunity to profit. The mistake we all make is to overspend during the periods of economic growth. We live in euphoria, expecting this feast to continue forever. We consume excessively and live way above our means; banks help us to do this, by extending credit we cannot afford. This puts us in a very weak position when the tough times do come, as we have no resources to call upon. We are instead over extended and unable to weather the storm.

During the easy, spring and summer times of easy abundance, it is not time to be spending and consuming, as is the general trend amongst all humans. It is the time to be saving investing. When everyone is looking to buy and consume, the wise entrepreneur is saving resources, selling his properties at inflated prices and preparing for the inevitable autumn and winter that is going to follow.

When the inevitable downturn does arrive, the wise entrepreneur has accumulated resources, which he/she wisely put away during the euphoric economic growth phase, when everyone was consuming. As prices drop during the economic downturn and everyone panics and wants to sell their properties, businesses etc. The wise entrepreneur has accumulated sufficient resources to buy everything at a huge discount. As this cycle repeats, they once again sell at a huge profit during the euphoric summer cycle, continually growing their resources. When you understand the cycle of life and you are able to use it as a powerful business tool. You will be able to make significant profits, during each down cycle.

Taking on a doom and gloom attitude and only seeing challenges and no opportunity is as effective as cursing the sun, wind and rain for everything in your life, when that is all you have. Learn to use the natural cycles to your advantage and your world opens up. Keep working against the natural cycles and you will remain a victim, rather than a victor.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Does Your Success, Depend on the State of the Economy?

I do not believe that any change or fluctuation in market conditions should have any bearing on how your future turns out. The real predictor of how your life will unfold is determined by your beliefs and consistent daily behaviours. Despite the current doom and gloom about a double dip recession and newspapers splashing headlines every day about the recession we are experiencing, I believe that you still get to write your own success story.

The long term sustainable success, which we all want in our lives, is the result of:

·         Having a crystal clear vision of what you want

·         Believing in yourself and your abilities

·         Improving your knowledge and skills every day.

·         Developing a success habit set, which supports your efforts

·         Taking daily action.

·         Measuring your outcomes

·         Consistently, focusing on your vision and thinking positive thoughts about the outcome you want to achieve.

Create a crystal clear picture of exactly what you want in your future and start to program your subconscious mind to support this vision. Research has shown that in excess of 96 % of what we do every day is controlled by our habits. We drive our cars safely through traffic, stop at traffic lights, know exactly how fast to drive safely around corners, etc. All without, even giving all the actions we are taking a single conscious thought.  We don’t have to think about how much pressure we put on the accelerator pedal or how much we need to slow down around corners. Our subconscious brain takes care of all of these decisions for us.

There was however a time when we had to think about each action we took. We had to think about pushing down slowly on the accelerator pedal and gradually releasing the clutch. As we approached a corner we had to be reminded to slow down enough to safely turn. So what happened, how come we are now able to drive through busy traffic, negotiate hazards and arrive at our destination safely, all without thinking about what we are doing.

There are two major factors at play, the first one is simple to understand, we have consciously programmed our brain through practice and repetition, to function independent of our conscious control. The second factor is one we don’t at first see, but is very obvious when it is pointed out to us. The second thing we do is we believe 100 % in our ability to drive and we allow our subconscious mind to take over completely and do what it does best, namely function alone to carry out your habits. As we drive we don’t constantly challenge our ability or technique. Criticising our driving ability, we just believe in ourselves and let our subconscious take over.

Training our subconscious mind to perform an intricate task like driving us around in a vehicle, is something we do without interfering or even giving it a second thought. This allows us to, in almost every case, drive very successfully without any mishaps from one point to another. The process is simple; we have a vision of where we want to go before we start any journey. We believe that we can do it and then we just allow our subconscious mind the freedom to do what it does best and we get where we want to go.

I am proposing that we do something similar with teaching ourselves the art of achievement and traveling down the path of success.

·         We need to get a vision of where we want our lives to go

·         Consciously supply our subconscious mind with all the skills it needs to perform these daily activities and routines

·         Believe that these skills will get us there

·         Just allow the process to unfold. Do not constantly interfere, by chastising or criticising yourself every time you encounter a challenge.

Imagine what would happen, if every time you encountered a pothole or someone cut you off, whilst driving, you immediately started chastising yourself, criticising your driving ability. You would not get very far at all, you would spend most of your journey involved in conscious thought, never allowing your subconscious mind to do what it does best.

If this will not work for a simple thing like driving, can you imagine what you do to yourself, all day as you constantly question your every action, filling your head with negative self-talk and doubt. You are wasting your most powerful resource, namely your subconscious mind doubting, instead of believing, trusting and just letting go.

The reason people like Donald Trump, Oprah and Richard Branson, get so much done each day is that they discover what they need to train their subconscious mind to do every day. They go about the business of consciously learning these skills, thereby programming their unconscious mind to do exactly that and then they trust, believe in their ability and just allow their success to unfold.

The way to achieve long term, sustainable success is about:

·         Creating a vision of exactly what you want

·         Acquire the skills you need to succeed

·         Turn these skills into a success habit set.

·         Believe in yourself.

·         Allow your subconscious to work unhindered by negative self-talk.

·         Measure your progress and see if you have all the skill you need.

·         If your behaviours are delivering the required results – take no action – just allow.

·         If your habits and behaviours are not delivering the desired results – Re- assess and discover the skills you require – consciously get these skills – Create a new habit set - just allow.

One of the most powerful times of the day, when your subconscious mind is the most receptive to programming, is the last five minutes before you go to sleep. Don’t waste this really powerful time regurgitating all the things, which did not work during your day or going over all the challenges you are expecting the next day. When you fill your mind with negative input or you watch a really violent movie just before falling asleep. You are programming your brain with negative information, which is going to serve as the input, your brain is going to soak in, for the next eight hours while you sleep and recharge your batteries.

Action Idea: Program your subconscious mind every night just before you go to sleep, by using consistent powerful positive affirmation. This will allow you to enter your sleep state, where you are soaking in your subconscious mind for eight hours, to remain in a positive state. As you percolate in your subconscious mind throughout the night you will be empowering yourself for your day.

When you consistently do this every night, you will wake up every day in a far more positive mind space, believing in yourself and that every event, which happens in your life is the seed of greater good. All the events, which cross your path each day will be seen as something that will eventually enrich you in some way, empower you or assist you to advance your cause, delivering abundance to you.  Imagine how much easier bringing success into your life would be, if you were constantly expecting everything to support you.

Once you have programmed your subconscious mind, just allow and only question your actions, when you review them daily or weekly. When you do this, the magic starts and you are allowing your subconscious to do what it does best, unfettered by your negative conscious thought. You are indeed abundant and unlimited, with an incredible tool, namely your subconscious mind. Allow your subconscious mind to do what it does best, namely to operate independent of your conscious mind and you will begin to achieve all your dreams.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Where does Integrity Start?

Integrity is similar in meaning to a word we all encountered in math class at school, namely the word integer. As you remember, an integer in math means a whole number and similarly, integrity means wholeness or always projecting one set of standards to the world. Over the years the true meaning of integrity has been refined and it has come to mean a standard of positive personal morality and ethics rather than simply acting consistently and in line with your own set of standards. Acting ethically is not something you can change relative to any specific situation; it is something, which must reflect your true positive character and high ethical standards at all times.

The thing that astounds me the most about ethics and ethical standards is that if you ask a room full of people, if they think society as a whole has good integrity and high ethical standards. Only a few people raise their hands, believing that the world is filled with ethical people, who have integrity. When you however ask the same room how many people in the room have integrity and high ethical standards themselves, everyone in the room raises their hands. There seems to be a massive gap between what we believe we see all around us, where there is a massive lack in integrity and people admitting that they are contributing to the problem.

I have asked this same question at a prison where I was doing an inspirational talk and not surprisingly, the same percentage of people (prison inmates) thought that society lacked integrity and every single prison inmate raised their hands to say they had integrity. The challenge as I see it, is that we look around our world and see what we believe to be low ethical standards all around us, yet everyone observing these low ethical standards, believes their own ethical standards are immaculate.

If everyone on this planet has unquestionable levels of integrity, yet society at large lacks integrity, then where does the problem lie? I think the answer to this is pretty obvious, yes it lies with you. Do you operate from impeccable levels of integrity all the time or do you bend the rules occasionally to suite your own needs at the time. Look back over the past week, was there ever a time that you told even a small lie, exaggerated or in any way acted out of integrity? I am sure that we are all guilty of some level of breakdown in our level of integrity over the past week.

As you know what we see around us in our outer world, is really a reflection of our own inner world. So if you are looking at a world which you feel is filled with a huge lack of integrity, maybe it is time to reflect on your own ethical standards and see if there is some room for improvement. It is really difficult for us to change the ethical standards of everyone around us, but we can immediately change our own standards. Imagine what a wonderful world this would be if everyone did in fact act ethically at all times.

I know we all hate the concept of taking responsibility for everything in our lives. The reality is that, until we all do take responsibility for our roles in contributing to the overall lack of integrity in our worlds, nothing will change. If taking responsibility seems a really challenging concept, then choose another way of looking at the same thing, namely take charge of your life and world. When you accept responsibility and you finally take charge of your life and the way you act. You begin to unconsciously act ethically in every facet of your life and amazingly exactly that same behaviour is reflected back at you from your world. If you want to see positive change in the world, it can only start with you. Stop trying to influence others with your hollow words, it is time to take the lead and to stop telling and start showing. Become a role model and show everyone around you that you are ethical, by means of the daily actions you take and the words you speak.  

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers                                     

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Achieving any level of sustainable success in life requires you to commit to a lifelong process of growth and development. Your personal development relates to any new knowledge, ability or skill you will introduce into your life, which will better equip you to achieve the outcomes or results you desire. Anything, which expands your horizons or makes you better in any way, from a cooking course you, may attend or a journey to a country, where you can experience new culture, is contributing to your personal growth. The process I am offering you below will help you to get the most from any personal development program you may want to follow.

Crucial Elements for Success

There are three crucial components, which need to be in place, so that you can get the maximum from any personal development program.

1.    Consistency

2.    Patience

3.    Teach What you are Learning

Consistency

Sustainable success is the result of consistently taking small almost insignificant actions every day. These tiny actions over time compound and add up to an incredible outcome.  If you wake up every day and instead of pushing the snooze button and snoozing for nine minutes, you rather wake up and read an educational or inspirational book. You could read about 5 pages every day. Over a year this insignificant daily action, would add up to you having read 1825 pages. The average book is about 250 pages, so by waking up and reading for only 9 minutes a day, you could read about 7 educational or inspirational books a year. Do you think over a five or ten year period this would make a difference to the way your life turned out? Could you imagine, what you could achieve, if you turned those 9 minutes a day into thirty minutes or even an hour?

The secret to allow these small almost insignificant actions, like reading for only nine minutes every morning, to compound and add up to significant outcomes, is to be consistent and never allow anything to break your routine. I have a ritual every morning, which takes me about an hour to complete. This ritual consists of meditating, visualising and reading. I wake up every day at 3:30 am and after completing my meditation, visualisation and reading, I write for two hours. Getting up this early helps me to kick start my day and I get an incredible amount of writing done each morning.

The other day I had an early breakfast meeting, which was due to start at 6:30 am. To accommodate this early start I woke up at 2:30 am that day, so that I could complete my morning ritual and still get my writing done. One of my friends, who was attending the meeting was horrified that I had woken up that early, he asked me why I didn’t just give up on the meditation, visualisation and reading for one day, as this early breakfast was a unique occurrence. My response was pretty straight forward, unique occurrences happen more often than we like to admit and as soon as we start making and justifying exceptions, we break our routine and we kill our consistency. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. In my book exceptions are euphemisms for excuses.

There are going to be days where you break your consistency, you are only human and we do slip up on occasion. The secret is to move on and get back to your routine and constancy straight away, don’t dwell on the small slip, rather look at what you have gained due to your consistent effort over time. Anthony Robbins said it so well when he said “Sometimes we think we are losing at the game of life, when we’re really winning, simply because we are not keeping score” Never allow yourself to lose perspective and constantly acknowledge where you have come from and everything you have accomplished.

Take the time to acknowledge your successes and reward yourself for them. Keep a journal or an achievement board, detailing all your success. This journal or achievement board can serve as your reminder, during those difficult periods, when you lose momentum and feel like nothing is working out. Look at your achievement board or page through your journal and explore all the wonderful successes you have enjoyed.

The best way to use an achievement journal or achievement board is to include a blend of details on the people your actions have positively touched and all the successes you have enjoyed. Try to highlight how you have changed your behaviours, attitude, values, skills and knowledge. Invest time every day to look at all your achievements and give yourself permission to smile and feel the glow of success.

Patience

Success in anything takes time, personal development is no different. This fast paced, instant popcorn, microwave culture we live in, coerces us into believing that everything should be instant. This creates unrealistic expectations around how quickly things should happen in our lives. Personal development is a lifelong commitment and as such do not expect instant overnight results, from any personal development process. Personal development is a commitment you make to yourself, to consistently take action every day to ensure that you wake up every day, just a little better than you were the day before. Your commitment is not about becoming better than anyone else, but rather a commitment to become better than you were.

When you commit to a lifelong process of continual development and lower your expectations about how quickly you should see results. You put yourself in a position to gradually improve. This allows you to stay committed to any personal development program you undertake and gives the process time to work in your life. You have a lifetime to keep growing and developing, so have patience, keep working on your development every day and within a reasonable time you will begin to see consistent improvement, in not only your level of skill, ability and knowledge, but also in the results you will enjoy.

Teach what you are Learning

It is astounding how much you can learn yourself, if you commit to teach the skills or knowledge you are learning from any personal development process, to someone else. As you share the new insights with other people you are better able to conceptualise and understand the information yourself. When you are articulating information to someone else, your brain absorbs the information and it becomes more believable and applicable to you. As you learn something new and teach it to others, you are exposed to the same information, over and over again. This repetition is one of the most powerful tools to help you learn anything new. Teaching also helps us to endorse and prove the importance of the new knowledge to ourselves. When you share information with other people you also get valuable feedback and a different perspective.

Any personal development process you start and consistently use, will transform your life. Learning and growth is a lifetime commitment, so constantly look for new ways to grow and expand. As you learn, grow and become more, you will most certainly attract more into your life.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

Are you Better Today than Yesterday?

I was sitting with a client the other day discussing a really difficult situation, he was experiencing in his company. He had been in various managerial positions for over 20 years and the challenge he was facing was caused by his naive approach to leadership. The error he had made was a really basic mistake; which he had made a few times before and I would have expected to have observed in a person much younger, with very little business experience. Someone who had been in business for over 20 years should have learnt, from his mistakes by now and have graduated to a whole new level of mistakes.

This client serves to highlight the challenge we all face as we invest time into our businesses. Are we just going through the motions every day, where we are so busy working in our businesses that we forget to stop long enough, to look at the challenges we face or errors we make and learn the lessons they have to offer? We invest 20 years into our business, but we never pause long enough to learn the lessons, so we just repeat all the mistakes we made in our first year, 20 times.

The secret to keep growing in your business and honing your skills is to continually explore experiment and try new things. Experiment with new pricing structures, new marketing channels, such as social media or try new management approaches to inspire your team members. These changes are not always going to result in the positive outcome you expect, the pricing structure may not deliver the desired results or the new leadership approach may be met with resistance. The way to gain as much as possible from every experience in your life is to, learn the lesson offered and explore where possible discover different or better options. Keep repeating this process, until you realise the improved result you are looking for.

Experience is something we earn; it is a process, never an event. Improving and growing as a business professional is firstly about experimenting, exploring and learning from these experiences and secondly about learning from each error you make or challenge you overcome. Wisdom comes from taking all these experiences and turning them into a pool of experience and understanding (wisdom).

We turn all our experiences, both positive and negative into wisdom, by closing the learning cycle. This is achieved by identifying a challenge your business is facing or an area in your business, which needs improvement. The whole process starts with allowing yourself enough time to pause, explore and discover the best possible solution to the issue. You then put a plan in place on how to proceed and start taking action, applying the solution you have discovered. The secret to turn this process into wisdom is to add one more crucial component to the process, namely review or assessment. Once you add reviewing or assessing to the mix, you are allowing yourself the opportunity to actually learn from the process.

If you just follow the cycle of explore and then take action, which is the norm for most people. You are just getting into a cycle of Think – Do, Think – Do Think – Do and you never allow yourself time or opportunity to learn grow and expand. When you add the crucial component of reviewing your actions and assessing if they are delivering the required result, you are allowing yourself to convert this process into something you can learn and grow from.

The very process of constantly reviewing your actions and looking for ways to improve, when looked at differently is called practice. As you know perfect practice makes perfect. Any sports person, who wants to improve, will engage in constant daily practice, until they achieve the level of competence they want. We as business professionals should be following the same concept of practicing or reviewing our actions daily, so that we can constantly improve.  This will turn 20 years of business experience into 20 years of growth and development rather than 20 years of the same mistakes repeated 20 times.

Your strategy to grow your wisdom should be a structured and planned process, where you include time in the process to review and see what you can learn for the actions you have taken. After adopting a new pricing policy, hiring a new staff or any challenge you have overcome, pause, review and learn all the lessons offered. Review your plans, walk through the actions you took, explore and see what worked and what didn’t. This will equip you with valuable experience going forward. You will know what will work and what won’t, when faced with a similar set of events in the future.

The process of including a review during and after every major event or process in your life or business enables you to close the loop and turn experience into wisdom. You are effectively using every experience to grow your wisdom and knowledge base. This process will never stop you from making mistakes, but if you follow the process, it will most certainly help you to avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Each lesson learned will effectively lock the door on that level of mistake and open new vistas to you, to expand, explore and become. It is in mistakes and practice that you gain the most benefit. Wisdom is about consistently growing and becoming more every day, where you use every challenge you have overcome, every new process you have introduced, as learning and growing experiences. Actively look for opportunities to learn and grow in everything and everything will become an opportunity for you to grow.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za

 

Listening and Communicating with Your Market – Using Social Media

Unless you are a naïve, entrepreneur with blinkers on, you must have seen the incredible transformation and massive shift, which is going on in the online world. There are constant conversations going on around all sorts of issues, including customer needs and expectations. These changes have given the wise entrepreneur a very effective medium to listen in on conversations, which could tell them what their market is thinking and really wants. This new technology also offers a wonderful opportunity to not only engage in one way communication with their target markets, but to receive feedback almost instantly as well. This feedback is a fantastic way of getting to understand the needs within your market and to get to understand new or changing trends that you can turn into opportunities.

The transformation in the online world has seen numerous new opportunities appear via the new social media platforms, which allow customers and prospective customers in all markets, to communicate with the person behind the product or service. Any smart marketer will use these new platforms to provide relevant communication with their market, directed at the soft triggers within their target audience. This strategy when carried from a perspective of sharing and giving, where the entrepreneur constantly adds real meaning and value to the various forums, will help get the people in your target market to know, like and trust you and your product or service.

Social media has made it possible for prospects and customers to get involved in on-going two-way conversations with a real person. Should they need assistance they can communicate this via the social media platforms or should they need support which cannot be offered using any online option, they can communicate with someone they trust and who can assist them, either by phone or email. This two way open communication via public social media forums has put immense power in the hands of the customer. They can endorse your product or service and assist your marketing efforts or they can express concerns about the quality of your product and service and damage your credibility in the market.

If you listening in on the various social media platforms and there is a real concern about your product or service, you can quickly respond. This quick response, when done properly, can turn what may have been a damaging situation into an opportunity for you to show how good your company really is. A quick response, in which you show your companies willingness to sort out any customer concerns, can become one of the most powerful marketing tools possible. Other potential customers in your target market will quickly get to know, like and trust you.

The other great opportunity to exploit, is when one of your competitors, has a challenge and it is spoken about on any social media platform. If your competitor is not listening in and they miss the opportunity to sort out the issue, it gives you the chance to step in and to shine. You can comment on the various posts and provide solutions and answers, which will help promote your products and services. If you want to survive and thrive in this new technological world, it is crucial to have your ears and eyes in all the relevant places where your customers and prospects hang out. There are really powerful tools available, which allow you to do key word searches, which will help you to discover anyone speaking about you or your competitors.

I was having a challenge getting the local satellite TV Company to address a challenge I was having with their service. On calling through to their help desk, I was told by their representative, that they could not help me at that time, as their computer system was down. I asked if I they could call me back once the fault was corrected, his response was less than satisfactory, he stated that it was a call in help desk, not a call back service. I immediately posted a comment on Twitter about the lack of service, stating the companies name and how unhappy I was. The conversation really got going and within minutes, there were a number of people participating in the conversation.

Someone at the satellite company was listening in and within a few minutes was participating in the conversation. They were very slick and quickly resolved my issue and many of the other customer concerns, who joined the conversation. They did a great job of fixing what could have really damaged their reputation, by listening in and then sorting out the mistake made by a disgruntled employee. This fast response by the satellite TV Company, gave me and everyone else, who had joined the conversation a new found respect for them. They turned a potentially damaging situation into a great customer relations exercise.

Turning Social Media into a Business Tool

The real art of using social media to market your business is not about starting a Facebook page, writing a daily blog or tweeting throughout the day. It is about emotion, listening and communicating to a select few people in the right place, who want what you have to offer for sale. Building massive lists of people, who do not need or want what you offer, is pointless and will merely consume your valuable time. Success in social media is not about the size of your lists on Facebook, twitter and your blog. It is all about how you manage to convert the people on your lists into long term customers. Use technology to speak to the right people, in the right places and awaken their emotion. Get them to know, like, trust and see value in what you have to offer, by communicating relevant meaningful information and joining conversations, which are relevant to your products or services.

When building your strategy to incorporate social media into your marketing mix, it would serve you well to take a look at the corporate trend setters such as Kodak, Dell computers and Starbucks. Take a look at what they are doing with blogs, Facebook fan pages, their strategy on twitter and YouTube. They are all doing a pretty good job of using all these forms of media to promote their companies. Observing what they are up to, will give you a great background and feel for what is working right now.

Dell for example uses their Facebook fan page to build loyalty with their customers. www.facebook.com/DellSocialMedia. This page was created to offer a social media resource that allows Dell to target a demographic outside of their traditional market. The Coco Cola fan page on Facebook is run by two people not employed by Coca Cola. www.facebook.com/cocacola. This was a page started by two fans of Coca Cola. Instead of shutting the page down for using the Coca Cola brand without permission, they rewarded the two people that started the page with a free trip to Atlanta, for their efforts in starting the page. This free trip was widely publicized as Coca Cola was hoping that more people would become loyal fans too. The coca cola page now has a massive following of loyal fans.

If you are to succeed with the social media strategy, you must be authentic, passionate and you must be transparent in all your communications. When you commit to make social media work for your business you cannot just dip your toe in to the conversation pool and hope to become successful. You must commit to become a leader and be viewed as an expert in your field. Constantly provide good quality content and lead your conversations with integrity.

Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za