Harmon Creative x 2

Lately I’ve been deluged by people advertising themselves as social media experts. It’s overwhelming! How do you even know where to start? Should you hire one of these people? What will you get for your money and your time?

My background is not in social media. Sure, I use it. Sure, I like it. Sure, I think it’s a great tool, but I’m not going to lie: it’s not going to save your business single-handedly.

I’ve been giving small business owners help and advice for years, first as an accountant and tax preparer, then as a marketing consultant. In the past few years, I’ve gone from setting up blogs and making suggestions for marketing plans to getting more involved in implementing strategy on social media platforms like myspace, facebook, and now twitter.

But I still am relying on a lot of “old school” techniques for marketing and PR, as well.

If you’re interested in how social media can help your business in this current recession, get in touch. I’d love to hear about your particular needs and work with you on coming up with a new strategy. My rates are very reasonable, and your first consultation is always free.

And, hey, if you need photos updated (and who doesn’t?), get in touch with the other half of HCx2, Stephen. This is a great time of year to do some environmental shots of your operation, and of course those things can be worked in as your company jumps on the Cluetrain Manifesto and begins to work with some level of comfortable transparency.

Get in touch. 502.445.6029

Would you like a little help untangling the mystery of social media? Why is it all the buzz? Why is everyone so into “twittering” and what is a “tweet?”

I’m Leslea M. Harmon, and I am available for education and consultation on how social media can help you. Establish a presence, which channels are desirable, how often to update, and with what content–my experience is at your disposal. I have personally tutored regional brand names, as well as employed these strategies for clients over the past several years of evolving web 2.0 technology.

My rates are fair, and you will definitely not benefit from delaying. Social media is not a “bandwagon.” It’s a channel for disbursing information about your company’s products, services, and corporate brand. It’s also a great way to get important direct feedback from consumers.

Give me a call at 502.445.6029, or shoot me an email at Leslea.Harmon@gmail.com and let’s set up a meeting.

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You

21. You don’t have to read every tweet.
22. You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
23. Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
24. Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
25. 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
26. If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
27. If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
28. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
29. If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
30. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

31. Twitter takes up time.
32. Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
33. Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
34. There are other ways to do this.
35. As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
36. Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
37. Twitter is just for technonerds.
38. Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
39. Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
40. Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back

41. Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
42. Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
43. Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
44. Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
45. Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
46. Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
47. Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
48. Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
49. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
50. Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

The above ideas are not mine, but those of the great Chris Brogan (used with permission). Read the original article here.

If you’re interested in using twitter to promote your business, please get in touch with me. I’ve got some great ideas, and know how to build your audience online, so your customers and biggest fans can begin to do the work of promotion for you.

It’s not an expensive service, and it has huge benefits.

Get in touch.

Steve and I have kicked this idea around for a long time. A year ago, we tried pretty aggressively to recruit clients into the fold–visionaries, people truly interested in the long-term success & image of their company. Some of the larger regional brand names in the area were interested. They could see that what we were proposing was working for major corporations serving Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and other major metropolitan areas in the country.

So why were we the first to try it in Louisville? I guess we’re just creative thinkers. (That would be the “C” in HCx2, right?)

Anyway, it’s been a year and we’ve been busy paying the bills by pursuing the path of least resistance. There’s plenty of money to be made writing and photographing for the core base of clients we’ve put together over the past seven or eight years.

For us, though, in the long-term…this idea of corporate photojournalism is still what we want to do.

We’d love to tell you more about it, if you’re seriously interested in penetrating online media in a wholistic way–and bringing transparency to your business in an aspect that you can live with.

This is what we do–and what we’d like to do for you. If you’d like to work with us, get in touch.

For business purposes, myspace just doesn’t cut it. On a personal level, it’s fine. But for business networking, it was a total bust. Good riddance!

If you’ve set up a profile on a social networking site like facebook or myspace, are you using all the tools that come with it? Chances are slim that all the friends you’ve added are making daily stops by your page. If you have news to share, shout about it!

Time’s short for me right now, so I’ll leave it at that for now–get in touch if you’d like to talk more about how I use social networking sites to promote my business and the businesses of others. My latest project is the Derby City Roller Girls. Become a fan today!

Do the users of your site have a vote in how you run your business? How should your business model change, as your customers take on a more important role? What does it matter if you make decisions regarding your pricing and level of services, without their input? What if you asked for their input, said thank you, and then did what you chose to do, anyway? Would they notice? Would they care? What would the long-term effects of these choices be?

LiveJournal is undergoing a strike from its users–paid and unpaid. LiveJournal has built a strong community in its sector of the blogosphere–and its users are voicing their displeasure with LiveJournal’s management. Personally, I find it fascinating. Read more.

Now, will denying LiveJournal new content for one day affect their revenue? I don’t know. Seems like, if they are counting on keywords and adwords and things like that to slow down, it would be more effective to take their entire blogs dark for one day, marking all posts private and clearing their pages of all those greasy keywords for a full day. But I don’t know if they can do that.

Anyway, we’ll be watching!

And it will be interesting to see how LiveJournal responds.

What is facebook? Have a look. It’s very easy to use. Even my mother was on it for a time.

And growing hoardes of young people are on it regularly. What a great place to put your ad, or even find a testimonial for your product. Hrm. Interested? Get in touch.

Most of the following link is going to be over the heads of all but serious web developers launching social networks, but it comes from the man who’s worked with the most: Slide’s Max Levchin, who HotorNot’s James Hong introduces with:

An interesting thing about Max’s position as the world’s largest widget/app maker is that he has data about all the social networks that nobody else has… what has made some grow, and others not. Max has more data about the social networks than anyone else in the world, and beyond that he has the mind to turn that data into information.

A mind for turning data into information is an extremely wonderful thing. It’s a hybrid of creativity and engineering, really.

So without further delay, Mr. Levchin.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Contact Steve at 502-599-8483

You want customers to find you. You want to stand out from the crowd. You want their trust.

1.) Have you posted customer testimonials?
2.) Have you posted photos of your product?
3.) Have you posted photos of yourself or your employees providing your service?
4.) Do you have a FAQ?
5.) Are your employees “in” on your promotional plans?
6.) Do you have a blog?
7.) When was the last time you updated the look of your site?
8.) Does your site play music, with or without an off button? Even if you are Enya, don’t auto-play music or sound effects on your site.
9.) Who is linking to your site?
10.) Do you provide resources on your site for people who are just getting started researching whatever it is that you are selling?

HC x 2 provides a service to Louisville, Ky and Southern Indiana businesses, and online business concerns around the country. We help you make your business better-known. This often includes work on your website, total site redesigns, or additions to current offerings. We also provide top-notch photo services, commercial photography, and environmental portraiture for corporate photojournalism. As working journalists, we are masters of crafting advertising copy that gets attention and sells your product or service.

Right now it is a very busy time of year, so the updates on this site will be fewer than usual. If you are interested in learning more, we encourage you to read more of the posts on this blog, or cut to chase and call us for coffee. We would be happy to hear about what you’d like to do with your business, and help you make your goals.

We are affordable and are happy to work with your existing ad firm, or help you begin your own advertising campaign. Whatever you’d like.

502-599-8483 is Stephen’s number.
Email Leslea at leslea@hcx2.com