Here is their official site with pricing and all the features explained.

Presentation highlights:

• Social media for business is completely over-hyped. For most businesses social media should be way down on their marketing plan. They should have invested time and money in many other foundational places first.
• Social media is good for certain things but it’s very time consuming to do well. You should skip social media as a marketing tactic if:
  • You don’t have time to maintain relationships online.
  • You just want quick wins.
  • You have a highly transactional business and you don’t really want anything except transactional relationships.
  • You have no digital assets (articles, photos, videos, podcasts), no interest in creating them on a regular basis or no cost effective way of getting them made for you.
• I’ll be presenting a pre-launch workbook, checklist and a roadmap to guide you.
• I’ll explain how tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Yoono and Twilert can help you.
• I’ll explain how to use social media for competitive research.
• I’ll give you my best advice on creating and promoting your content.
• I’ll examine several common social media tactics including:
  • Following lots of people on Twitter,
  • Gated content and contests on Facebook
  • Starting LinkedIn groups
  • Foursquare, Google Places and Facebook Check-In.

You’ll leave with a much clearer understanding of social media and whether to invest your precious time in it or not.

Full Speaker List

You can download a brochure of all the Oakville Chamber’s Small Business Week speakers here.
You can read more about the Oakville Chamber’s Small Business Week here.

Where is it?

The event is at the Holiday Inn Oakville Centre – 590 Argus Road, Oakville.

View Larger Map

Social media expert Marc Gordon shared this example at the Constant Contact sponsored “Get Down To Business” Social Media for Small Business conference a few weeks ago in Toronto.

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com, an innovation and strategy consulting firm in Burlington and Oakville.

How do I know my Social Media efforts are working?

ANSWER: Social media is working for you if it leads to quality face to face meetings with potential prospects or referrers OR, if your prospects are not local, then an email address and opt-in.

Nicely put Marc!

Therefore your website must capture leads with an offer and an email opt-in. I know you have heard this before but if your website still doesn’t have this then take the time to make a compelling offer (like a downloadable whitepaper or video) and put up a lead capture form. If you haven’t signed up with one of MailChimp, Aweber, MadMimi, ConstantContact or Infusionsoft then do so and use their tools to create the email capture embed code and put it into your site. If you use WordPress or Joomla, there are free plugins from these email providers that make integrating it easy.

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com, an innovation and strategy consulting firm in Burlington and Oakville.

It’s estimated that more than 50% of corporations don’t allow their employees to access Facebook from the office. But they do allow access to Google. So this could give the Google +1 button a huge advantage over the Facebook Like button.

I would be wary of immediately thinking of how you can get all your employees to like your company page and send it to the first page of Google search results. But try it  I’m sure the google engineers are smarter than us and have or soon will figure out how to prevent people gaming the +1 button.

Quality content is still the key. That’s what intelligent people want from the web and Google only has value if it can keep showing you quality content and weeding out the junk produced by people hoping to just get traffic without real work or talent. The +1 button is just another tool that google hopes will increase it’s ability to show you quality content.

Expert articles on the implications of Google +1 for SEO

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-1-and-the-rise-of-social-seo
http://www.searchfuel.com/2011/04/how-google-1-could-impact-your-seo/
http://www.findandconvert.com/blog/2011/google-plus-1-big-news-for-seo/

Implementing the Google +1 sharing tool

You can implement the tool from google directly, but you have to know how to implement a code snippet: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

WordPress Plugins for adding the Google +1 button

My personal favorite social sharing plugin is the AddThis Plugin and they just added support for the Google +1 button.

Google +1 integrated into AddThis WordPress Plugin

Google +1 in the AddThis WordPress Plugin admin

Some stand-alone WordPress plugins:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plus-one-button/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/plus-one/

Known Issues

There is no support for the +1 button in Internet Explorer yet and I had some minor troubles viewing it in Firefox for Mac. It showed up fine in Chrome for Mac.

I am excited to announce that my website for Internet Marketing Courses in Toronto, Oakville is now live. People having been telling me for years that I should launch a formal training program to teach small business owners and marketers about internet marketing and there has always been a big project or business in the way. But I’ve finally done it.

I’ll be partnering with a well known GTA area online marketing expert to offer an amazing course for small business owners in November 2011. More details to follow.

American overconfidence vanishes once consumers try a new product, and it’s replaced with exaggerated self-doubt.

In a study published in the February 2011 issue of Journal of Consumer Research, Billeter reports something that he suspected all along: American overconfidence vanishes once consumers try a new product, and it’s replaced with exaggerated self-doubt. “The bottom line is that before people try a new product, they think that it will be easier than it is,” Billeter explains. “And after they’ve tried it once, they think they’re going to be worse than they actually will be.”

So how do you keep users from abandoning your new product before they get the benefits?

Four strategies to help companies improve product adoption rates:

Billeter recommended four strategies to help companies improve product adoption rates:
1. Design products to feel familiar,
2. Hire a guide for your demo,
3. Take advantage of technology and timing, and
4. Buy time with bundled pricing incentives.

These might sound a little fluffy but read the details of their points – they have some very good ideas many companies could copy.

I love a good 60 second screencast on a product

Related to their points 2 and 3, I think software products and web tools should all have very well made screencast videos that act like guides to walk consumers through getting past initial setup and usage confusion to the wins.  Even relatively simple products can benefit from one.

Here are some of my favorite product screencasts:

http://culturedcode.com/things/iphone/ and click on the video or http://culturedcode.com/things/screencast.html
http://skitch.com/features and click on the “Skitch in 60 seconds” video
http://www.marketcircle.com/billings/iphone/# and click watch video in the centre right (small icon)

Enjoy!

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com, an innovation and strategy consulting firm in Burlington and Oakville.

Many of the CEO’s I have worked with are fundamentally sales guys. Not always, but often. They were frequently phenomenally successful sales guys in the past and their lone-wolf talents sent them off to start their own business which, because they could sell, avoided bankruptcy, beat the odds and became very successful.

Not surprisingly most of them love incentives and bonus plans – because most sales people are paid some sort of  commission. They figure that since it worked for them it should work for others. And it’s an honest mistake – one I’ve made. But I have often had this nagging doubt that just because it worked for this person in that circumstance, something doesn’t add up to it working now, in this role. But I could never convince myself and so I often lined up behind the driving force of the sales guy CEO.

I’m leading a startup at the moment, a B2B SaaS product. We have a staff of 4, soon to be 6, and 3 shared resources. So I’m thinking about compensation and incentives at the moment.

This morning I watched this TED talk: Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation. (I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post.)

His thesis is that consistent data from reputable universities shows that while incentives may work for well-defined, linear, mechanical roles, they are counter-productive for roles that require creativity and problem solving or have high degrees of ambiguity. Now I’m not a genius but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a startup whose work is primarily linear and well-defined. In roles that require creativity and problem solving and that operate in ambiguous circumstances, Dan argues the 3 key motivators are: AUTONOMY, MASTERY and PURPOSE.

Based on my huge respect for the work Gallup has done on engagement I think he’s very close but that he’s over-simplified it slightly. Gallup would argue that engaged employees can say yes to each of their famous Gallup 12 Questions, or Q12, or in short: are operating in an area of talent and passion, with a manager who cares and sets clear expectations for them.

Whether you go with Dan’s top 3 or the Gallup Q12, incentives or monetary rewards are strangely absent. So what is the leader of a start-up to do?

My plan for motivating my software startup team:

Here’s where I think I’m going as far as my plan for motivating my team:

1. Make sure they have great front-line manager. For now that’s me but we’re hiring a new team leader so I can transition into an advisory role and I have to make sure I get them a first class, Gallup Q12 style manager. And while I’m their manager I need to focus on the next 3 items:  (I have to admit that even as I write this I’m thinking that I need to lift my head out of preparing the VC presentation and running financials and make sure I am doing what I just wrote.)
2. Make sure that each of them is operating in their areas of talent and passion. Which means you had better have a way of figuring out their talents and passions.
3. Set clear expectations. In writing, because the spoken word gets forgotten and becomes vague over time.
4. Make sure that each of them know that I care about them personally. Which takes time doesn’t it. You have to slow down long enough to ask questions and listen and remember.
5. Pay them well enough that money isn’t an issue. I generally aim for 70-80% of the salary range for that job in that market (assuming you can get your hands on a recent compensation survey report.)
6. Give equity to the most senior leaders so that their success become inextricably linked to the long term success of the business. Where necessary give equity to some of the key people who take risks and sacrifice early on.
7. Avoid a short term focused bonus or incentive plan.
8. If the business generates profit, pay out decent bonuses to your team, but don’t link it to a linear “if you do X I’ll pay you a bonus of Y”. In fact, because of this TED talk, I don’t think I will promise a bonus at all. Instead I’ll be talking about “the team achieving its goals” and how we’ll all feel when we do because being part of a talented, successful team is very fulfilling for the kind of people I want on my teams. So when we do generate some profit (and we will), we’ll share the wealth in an appropriate way, but it will not be a focus of how we motivate it our team.

If you are leading a startup I’d appreciate your thoughts on the subject. Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

Over the 7 months from May – Dec 2010:

• I led a cross-functional team in creating the dynamic business plan. We wrote it on a wiki rather than in Word.
• I led the competitive research and industry analysis.
• I led a cross-functional team in scoping the initial releases of the product as well as a 12 month-out feature set.
• I oversaw our 6 person Development Team which built a from-scratch working beta of the software in 4 months.
• I managed the overall project through weekly team meetings and made sure we hit our key release dates.
• In Oct 2010 we went live with our first internal customer, a startup within the Fusenet parent company. We have been processing live transactions for them for 3 months now.
• I built a very complex financial model that allowed us to fully model the business from an investment and return perspective. We also used it to model the impact of different pricing strategies.
• I met with several potential investors to discuss a potential Series A round of VC financing.

Despite Sanjay’s offer to have me run the business, I knew that I wanted to keep building some of the other businesses I’m involved with and I also felt that the project needed a leader with more SaaS Product Management experience than I have.  I spent the fall of 2010 interviewing candidates for this plum job – and got to meet some excellent people in the Toronto and GTA tech community. In early January 2011 we hired the former GM of e-commerce for Grand & Toy as our new CEO.  I will be spending the rest of January onboarding him and transitioning out of the project. I’ll miss the team – they were a great team to work with – but I know they will go on to build an amazing business and I’ll enjoy watching from the sidelines while I move on to put my energies into the other businesses I am building.

Here is a simple roadmap to get you off the ground and starting to use LinkedIn to build your personal brand or the brand of your business. If you are a sole proprietor then you will need to do this yourself. If you are the leader of a larger business then your thought leaders, marketers and sales people need to be doing this. And you can’t force them to because their LinkedIn profile is theirs, not a corporate asset, so you’ll have to cast a compelling vision as to why they should do this that connects your company’s interests to their interests.

Get your LinkedIn profile up to date

• It should not read like a resume. People don’t expect it to be quite so formal.
• People like short, succinct stories.
• You can view my profile here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/001jonathanburns I’m not by any means suggesting it’s one of the best but it may give you some ideas.

Do I need my photo on LinkedIn?

• Yes but make sure you don’t put up a bad photo. No photo is better than a bad photo. But a good photo makes you more approachable and helps you to stand out in lists.
• A good photo: Consider black and white or sepia – it can look very professional.
• A bad photo: blurry, cluttered background, too dark, back-lit, too many colors.

Build your network on LinkedIn

• Define who is a good network prospect for you: a potential customer, someone who could refer people to you, someone influential who could write a recommendation about you.
• Go though your mental Rolodex (or whatever equivalent you use) and write out a list of your past contacts that you’d like to connect with on LinkedIn and begin inviting them. Write your own invitation note – don’t just use the default.
• Every time you meet someone who is a good network prospect, invite them on Linked In within hours, definitely within 24 hours. After I go to an event the first thing I do when I get back to the office is sit with a pile of business cards and invite people on Linked In.

How to write a good LinkedIn Status Update

• Write out what brand you want to personally own in the minds of the members of your network.
  • Pretend that you are a colleague you worked with 10 years ago and haven’t seen since. They reconnect with you on LinkedIn and begin seeing your status updates. Based on those updates they form an impression of who you have become and what you are doing now and what your niche or specialty is. What impression do you want them to have of you?

• Suggestions:
  • Give mini press releases when you have an announcement you want them to know about.
  • Ask for help or advice. People like giving advice and on LinkedIn it’s quick and easy. This can be for you personally or on behalf of a member of your group who needs help.
  • Setup a twitter account and check the “Publish to twitter” checkbox
  • If you have a website or a blog and you care about its organic search rankings then use carefully chosen keywords that you are trying to rank for in your status update

• Examples:

• American overconfidence vanishes once consumers try a new product, and it’s replaced with exaggerated self-doubt. 4 tips for improving new product adoption from Marriott School professor Darron Billeter. http://lnkd.in/Q3mume
• Excited to announce that FusionCom (one of my businesses) has just hired a new CEO – Mark Taylor from McKinsey.
• Heading to SXSW Conference this week – anyone else from Toronto going? Ping me!
• Trying to find an affordable ad agency with specialty in clean tech – any suggestions?

• Watchouts:

• • Confidentiality is a cornerstone of business. You can’t violate that here – so stay away from including details when you think the people involved would not want you to.
  • However, it’s the details that often make the posts more interesting so ask the relevant people for permission so that you don’t become “the bland update guy” on LinkedIn.

Recommendations on LinkedIn

• Don’t ask unless you recently got great unsolicited feedback from someone – then it’s OK to ask them.
• Give to get. Start by writing recommendations for people from whom you’d like to get a recommendation.

Pulling prospect lists using LinkedIn

• The advanced People search allows you to pull all the people with “the likely title of your ideal prospect ” (or whatever) in their title who are within X km radius of a given postal code/zip code. This is an extremely useful feature.

LinkedIn Groups

• Consider making a LinkedIn group for a group of your prospects as long as you have a clear vision of:

• What this group of people have in common in terms of interest and needs
• A clear vision of how they will be able to and WANT TO help one another
• A clear vision of a role you can play that adds value and positions you how you want to be seen

• If you ask your group members whether they want a Linked In group, most will say they don’t know what they would use it for. You’ll have to show them how you intend to use it so that they see the value. Some groups may not engage and then they won’t get value from it.
• Establish a clear purpose for how the group will be used and how to keep it from become useless in the eyes of your members.
• Make it invitation only.
• Commit time to moderating it. Read what’s on it. Use what you read to help the members.
• Pick up the phone and call a member based on something they wrote in the group’s Discussion section. Show them that you are reading and responding.

Doing research on LinkedIn

• Once you find a prospect you may want to find a list of their coworkers using the Company tab. The Company tab also gives you some rich detail about the company that might be helpful, especially new hires and recent alumni. People are often much more open to talking to outsiders when they are new in a role.

More LinkedIn training

If you’d like in-depth training on how you can build you personal brand online, consider attending one of these full day courses in Internet Marketing in Toronto or Oakville.