For anyone wishing to set up a WordPress self-hosted blog, I have prepared a series of posts about this for the international food magazine site that I run with some friends, www.zomppa.com.

Check out the 3 posts here: Setting up your Foodie Blog on WordPress.

Here is a post I wrote about social media strategies for News Strategies which has also been featured on David Henderson’s blog.

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Setting up social media accounts for your brand is very easy and straight-forward … while expanding and sustaining them in the long-term is another matter.

The people at Digital Brand Expressions claim that nearly 60 percent of businesses today don’t have a strategic media communications plan in place to guide their social media efforts.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to set up a strategic communications plan for your brand’s social media outreach and engagement before embarking on this long journey.

In evaluating how best to use social media for your business or organization, it is essential to first evaluate or determine your current media communications strategy across all media platforms whether they be print, broadcast, or online social media. Start off by taking a step back and determine a clear vision of the core purpose of your business or organization. With that in place, you can then develop a credible and authentic voice to communicate this purpose through traditional and online media.

Schedule a quaint day retreat for your team and go back to the drawing board. Familiarize yourself again with who you are, how you are currently perceived by your audience, and how you would like your organization to be perceived and talked about.

Proceed to determine the resources you have at your disposal to develop and maintain a social media presence, but don’t assume that you can hand over responsibility to the intern or a junior level assistant.

Just because they are young and constantly on Facebook and Twitter posting photos of their weekend escapades and tweeting about the great coffee they just had at a trendy new coffee shop, does not make them experts. By all means, they should be involved as they will have much to contribute, but executives and senior staff also need to play an active role, as they are the ones who know their organization/business and industry best.

Once you have revised or established your messaging and allocated the relevant resources, you should develop a set of guidelines for social media. Just as you would create branding guidelines for your business, you should also develop ones for your social media presence. This will help strengthen your brand on these platforms and ensure consistent messaging.

What follows, are the general steps that should be covered when setting up and maintaining a social media presence. I add a caveat that this is not a comprehensive list, but I do believe it covers the fundamentals.

• Set up your accounts: If you have not already done this, the logistics of this process are pretty easy, but prior to setting up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, you will want to search around on all social media platforms to ensure that your chose brand name is available, and if not, you will need to come up with some alternative names. Based on the messaging that you will have already finalized, you will then go about populating the profile of each social media profile accordingly.
• Listen to what is being said about your brand: There’s an awful lot of electronic chatter out there so how do you listen? In order to do this properly time needs to be set aside for detailed monitoring. 

In social media your core tasks are building lasting relationships with your audience base and creating positive sentiment around your brand. In order to accomplish this you need to seek out opportunities for non-intrusive engagement. There are several ways to do this, but the most important is to set up a listening process and note down any mentions of brand and relevant issues and trends popping up that you feel you can speak to and help with.  

Set up Google alerts, #hashtags, etc. Put together a list of keywords relevant to your brand and industry, and just keep an eye out. During this listening process, you will also get a better grasp of the users on these different social networks as the audiences and types of engagement can vary.
• Start following the conversation: A bi-product of step 2 is that you will start identifying who the key influencers and active communicators are in your line of work. You will also identify the various stakeholders in your organization may they be clients, customers, members, volunteers, etc. Start following these people along with relevant bloggers, brands, etc, and start engaging in the conversation.
• Engage: While there is a need to establish a solid initial audience on Twitter, the thing that will really make a social media presence successful is the ability to listen and take on board what people are saying on the issues that you can speak to in the long-term. Start interacting with the people you are following, offer value to the conversation. Social media is not a one-way conversation where you just tell people what you do and how cool you are. By all means, you should share news of a new product you may have launched or the launch of a new campaign, but also make sure that you ask people’s opinions, provide assistance, call them to action, etc.
• Measure: Social Media Optimization (SMO) is rapidly becoming as important as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as the likes of Google and Bing are starting to reward those brands active in social media with higher rankings. Platforms like Facebook offer metrics for the performance of your page, and there are numerous tools out there to assist you with calculating the performance of your Twitter account such as TwitterAnalyzer and Twitaholic. I wish to stress though at this point that you should not base your analysis on numbers. Don’t make the mistake of just using automated tools to gain you lots of followers and fans. The numbers will look impressive but the real impact and quality will be poor.
• Be patient and persevere: Social Media is here to stay. Building a sustainable quality social media strategy requires time and effort. ROI will not come overnight, but as Socialnomics’ famous Social Media Revolution video states, the ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years.

In summary, take responsible initiative and invest in developing a media and social media communications strategy.  Be sure to keep it flexible in this ever changing and expanding online media world, and remember to evaluate it on a regular basis.

With a fresh new year before us, I leave you with a link to Focus.com’s report released late last month outlining Social Media Marketing Trends for 2011. The report identified 10 major trends for us to keep in mind in 2011, which include a stronger focus on global audiences and marketers and brands having to think and act like publishers and broadcasters.

News Strategies™ develops dynamic and professional online crisis management, issues advocacy and news strategies for corporations and organizations. We utilize an exclusive and unique model for timely and influential news sites. It’s real news managed by accomplished journalists … and, it’s a tangible, valuable and credible corporate asset.

In today’s world, news is the most effective method of influence. If you can place your organization’s voice at the center of the online discussion, you can achieve the greatest effectiveness for your brand, issue or in managing a crisis.

I represent News Strategies™ interests in Europe.

Zomppa.com is an international food magazine that offers a unique culinary experience for the taste-, Earth-, and community-conscious. It aims to bring food back to its rightful, central role in human life.

Get ready to be Zomppafied.

We bring food encounters and exploration from a diverse range of geographic, political, cultural, intellectual, ethnic, and emotional perspectives. Whether from the northern snows of Canada, the warm Mediterranean Sea of coastal Italy or the sunny beaches of California, you won’t find a lot of technical words or complex recipes here. At Zomppa.com, our contributors celebrate the uniqueness of their heritages, pursue culinary adventures, offer beloved recipes and share our gastronomincal thoughts and meandarings with you and FOR you!

This is my first time using the WordPress app to upload an entire post so bare with me and any formatting challenges and appropriate photo entries.

Back to Green Map! The Green Map System promotes inclusive participation in sustainable community development worldwide, using mapmaking as our medium. This is a not-for-profit initiative developed collaboratively since 1995, and the movement has spread to over 600 cities, towns and villages in 55 countries. This exciting movement has now reached Northern Ireland, thanks to my good friends Tina and Daryl, who are graphic designers and web developers. They are currently in the process of building this highly interactive and dynamic online platform which will use mapping technology to connect all things green and sustainable in Northern Ireland.

The actual Map will go live before the end of the year, but in the meantime you can register your interest by visiting www.greenmapni.com. You can also follow the blog we have set up at www.blog.greenmapni.com and find us on Twitter and Facebook.

I love my new iPhone 4 and the two of us have had so much fun taking photographs and HD video these past few weeks.  The purchase of my new phone also coincided with my discovery of the Hipstamatic app! Oh what fun I have had taking funky pictures with this app here in Northern Ireland and in Sardinia these past 3 weeks.  I have always been a keen amateur photographer through the years, and this app just makes me jump around with joy when I see some of the results it produces. Here are some of my favorite shots over the past weeks.  The app is only $1.99 or £1.29 and it will unleash a whole new creative side to anyone who downloads it.

Thistle at the Dreen in Cullybackey

Carnlough coastline detail

Rowing boat in Carnlough Harbour

One of many cafe macchiatos I had in Sardinia

Gelateria in Alghero

Wind stricken tree in Porto Torres

Cactus plants in Castelsardo

Underwear hanging device, Castelsardo

Ivy on a wall in Castelsardo

June 30 was Social Media Day.  The good folks at Mashable came up with a day in which social media enthusiasts and users around the world could come together and celebrate social dialogue and the tools and platforms enabling the “revolution” of social media.  Mikail Belicove then wrote a great article the following day on Entrepreneur.com entitled What’s Missing From ‘Social Media Day’ which essentially concluded that what businesses and organizations need is a Social Media Strategy Day.  He referred to how many businesses fall away from social media after the 90-day trial period because they fail to actually devise a long-term strategy.  I saw this in the U.S. and now here in Northern Ireland.  It seems that everyone here is now jumping on the social media bandwagon, but I can already see signs of of many of these companies and organizations running out of steam because they lack vision and a clear communications strategy.

The people at Digital Brand Expressions, claim that nearly 60 percent of businesses today don’t have a strategic media communications plan to guide their social media efforts.  In evaluating whether you should be using social media for your business or organization, it is essential to first fully determine what your media communications strategy is across all media platforms whether they be print, broadcast, or online social media. Step back firstly and determine a clear vision of the core purpose of your business or organization and then develop a credible and authentic voice to communicate this purpose through traditional and online media.  You need to go back to the drawing board again, familiarize yourself again with who you are, how you are currently perceived by your audience, and how you would like your organization to be seen and talked about.  You then need to determine the resources you have at your disposal to develop and maintain a social media presence.  Don’t just hand it over to the intern or a junior level assistant.  Executives and senior staff need to be involved in this as they are the ones who know their organization/business and industry best.

So, take responsible initiative and invest in developing a media and social media communications strategy.  Be sure to keep it flexible in this ever changing and expanding online media world, and remember to evaluate it on a regular basis. In a nutshell: planning, action, reflection…

David Woodward wrote a very interesting article earlier this month about the power of social media in bringing down a brand through negative PR, Reputations at Risk.  I concur 100% with his simple conclusion that brands can fight back negative social media PR by converting criticism into meaningful customer relationships. If you open up your brand to social media (which you have no choice but to this day and age), you have to prepare yourself to handle criticism as well as praise. If handled properly, criticism can actually be a terrific opportunity to build your brand and your reputation. You can channel the negativity and turn it into a positive.   Word of warning though, don’t depend on established/traditional PR & advertising agencies to be able to do this right for you though.  Many of these agencies are still in the pen and paper age.  David Jones, chief executive of Havas Worldwide, an advertising and marketing agency that represents Nestlé, in a statement made a couple of months ago labelled social media platforms as being “inherently negative”. Needless to say, never look at Nestlé for tips on how to use social media effectively.  They have failed woefully in this regard to date.

I believe that effective corporate communications (and this includes social media) boils down to four essential core components and these are truthfulness, transparency, humility, and helpfulness. If people see that you are reflecting these qualities on your website, in the news, in your ads, and on social media platforms, they will sing your praises. Stop trying to hide.

BTW, examples of large companies that are doing social media well include Cisco, Intel, Burger King, and Starbucks.

I have to admit that in many ways I do fall into the tendency of being addicted to gadgets.  The fact that I am practically counting down the hours until I can get my hands on the new iPhone G4 is testament to my level of addiction.  That said, I have taken very conscious steps in the past couple of months to find a balance and schedule in OFF-time from my various gadgets every day.  Gone are the days when I would sit in a meeting or presentation and check my email, Twitter/Facebook accounts regularly on my iPhone while also trying to focus on what was being said.  I used to think that I could juggle it all, that I was a master multi-tasker, but now if I’m truly honest, I realize that I wasn’t giving my full focus to any of these tasks and that really, in many ways, I was only adding to my stress levels and ADD tendencies (incidentally, I do believe that all of us suffer from some degree of ADD nowadays).  One other thing that I make a point of doing now whenever I have a particular work task to do, is log out of email, Facebook, Skype, Twitter for a couple of others to get the task completed.  Sometimes I also switch off my phone.

Learning to be more mindful and present in the moment is something that we all need to work on if we are going to survive this ever increasing digital information revolution.  I am currently reading this great book that I wish to recommend: “The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems” by Dr. Ronald Siegel.  What I love about this book, is that Dr. Siegel has done a superb job blending in science along with psychotherapy and spiritual tradition into a very easy-to-read format with lots of examples and helpful exercises.

I recently attended a conference in Rome where Paul Hughes, senior partner and creative director at Lava Design, gave a presentation on branding. Incidentally, Lava Design just won the European Design Agency of the Year Award for 2010.  To sum up Paul’s presentation, he explained that the main elements needed in effective branding strategy were: Imperfection, Incompleteness, and Impermanence. We live in an ever-changing, ever-developing world with constantly changing needs and demands placed on people and companies.  Flexibility is key in this process.  We need to recognize that in building our brand we have to leave room for improvement, expansion and flexibility.

I hadn’t quite realised that I was following this little formula when I wrote What to do when “You” are the brand.   I can safely say that my brand ticks all 3 of those boxes.  That only means I’m on the right path though, as I have to keep working on learning and improving my brand constantly as I go along.