OK I confess. I’ve only recently become a massive fan of Lady Gaga. The person. And The Brand. I’ve loved much of her music for a while {especially Poker Face and Born this Way}, and have been in total awe of her voice and her sheer musical talent, but was not sure about the woman herself. Or even, if I’m to be completely honest, Gaga as a brand.

The last 24 hours has completely changed that for me. Interviews I have heard {with Fifi and Jules}, seen {with Tracey Grimshaw} and read {in The Weekend Australian} have completely changed my perspective. I’m becoming one of her “Little Monsters”. So what I hear you say. She’s just a pop star. Well, um, no. She’s not. She is actually a musical – and a marketing – phenomenon. And these are a few reasons why:

• she taught herself how to play piano by ear when she was four years old. By 13 she had written her first song, by 14 she had begun performing at open mic nights
• she is the only artist in the digital era to top the 5 million sales mark with her first two hits
• she has over 1.3 BILLION views of all her hits online
• she has more than 11.5 million twitter followers
• she has more than 40 million “likes” on facebook
• the single “Born this Way” set music industry records when released in Feb 2011 – it reached sales of 1 million within 5 days of release, on iTunes it debuted at #1 in 14 countries and hit #1 in all 23 iTunes countries within 1 week of release
• total sale of 15 million albums and 51 million singles worldwide
• 12 Grammy nominations – 5 Grammys won
• her music was the focus of a special 90 minutes episode of hit TV show Glee
• AND in May 2011, Forbes Magazine nominated Lady Gaga as the #1 most influential person in the world.

(source: www.ladygaga.com, www.forbes.com)

WOW. All this and she is only 25 years old. And 3 years ago practically no-one knew who she was.

So, I hear you ask. Why exactly IS she a marketing phenomenon? And what can we all learn from her ability to market herself? Well… she uses all 4 c’s of social media BRILLIANTLY  - consumer (customer), content, channel and community.

She knows who her fans {consumers} are, she respects them, she values them. She has even named them – her Little Monsters. Importantly, she gives her Little Monsters what they want {content} and she goes where they go {channel}. And most importantly, she ENGAGES with her fans. Check out her twitter stream – loads of conversations. And her fans have helped her create a massive community by engaging with each other.

She also:

1. has an absolutely MASSIVE talent as a singer, songwriter, entertainer, fashionista
2. knows who she is, what her brand is and what she stands for
3. is completely focused on her brand – when was the last time you saw of photo of Gaga NOT in an outlandish outfit?
4. has a VERY unique selling point (the music and the fashion – both a bit bizarre and weird) which generates a lot of hype. Remember the meat dress? and the egg?
5. appeals to a VERY broad audience
6. is authentic – just listen to the B105 or the Grimshaw interview for a lot of raw honesty. Or follow her on twitter. Not a lot of false pretenses
7. has embraced the digital age and uses social media brilliantly. Seriously. Look at the stats above if you don’t believe me.
8. builds anticipation for what’s next – remember the frenzy that was built up when she tweeted some of  the lyrics of Born This Way in the weeks prior to its release? Actually, just look at the massive lineups outside Sydney nightclubs ARQ and Nevermind last night when she posted this on facebook and twitter yesterday “Thinking of going out in Sydney tonight. How I wish we had a show. NEVERMIND, don’t listen to me. Maybe I’ll just go for a walk in the pARQ”
9. {mostly} keeps her private life private. Which helps her stay on message. No mean feat with such huge celebrity {just listen to the B105 podcast to see what I mean}. But I think this makes her even more beloved. I LOVE how she refused to name the boy she had her first kiss with for fear of making his life tabloid fodder.
10. tackles brave issues and stands up for what she really believes in {including gay marriage, sex trafficking, bullying, to name a few} through her lyrics, her video and her answers in interviews.

We can all learn from the marketing juggernaut that is the Lady Gaga brand. Especially how she uses digital media to create a community of raving fans. What do you think?

LinkedIn has the capacity to be a powerful networking tool as it connects users to trusted contacts and helps them exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals. LinkedIn shows the connections between people, but it’s real power is in the 2nd degree – who your network knows.

Today I’m just as likely to run a LinkedIn search as I am a google search for someone I’m about to meet or do business with. It’s a great way to find out how they perceive themselves.

In the last few weeks I’ve met a lot of people who have been curious about LinkedIn, but uncertain in how to use it effectively to build a network. My top tips are:

1. Sign up for an account at www.linkedin.com – click on the Join Now tab at the top of the screen. On the next screen you will need to fill in your first and last names, email and select a password. LinkedIn is for individual use so use YOUR name, not a pseudonym or company name
2. Follow the guidelines and complete each of the sections of LinkedIn. Make sure you use a professional photo. Of you. Not your kids, not you with a drink in your hand, not with your pet {unless of course you are a vet}. LinkedIn represents your professional image so make sure your photo reflects that.
3. Make sure you provide details {not just job titles} about the various jobs you have had – at least for the last 10 years. Talk about key outcomes you have achieved. Be succinct.
4. You can add up to 3 websites and 3 twitter accounts. Examples of what you might include are your company website, your personal blog, a link to a specific landing page for people who click through from LinkedIn.
5. Once you are happy with your profile it’s time to start connecting. The easiest way is to upload your address book from Outlook, Google, iCal etc which matches by email address who you know with who is already on LinkedIn – you can then choose who you want to connect with. You can also invite people who are not already on LinkedIn to join.
   QUICK TIP – don’t just use the default invitation LinkedIn offers. If you want to connect with someone who may not know who you are {and don’t assume they will remember you if you met them at a networking event 8 months ago…} tell them why – such as you met at such and such a place, you talk on twitter, you have loads of shared connections, you like their profile etc etc…. Give them a reason to connect.
6. Join groups. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. The benefits of groups are many – I like them to ask questions, find out out what other people are up to, and to help others with answering their questions. Answering others questions on LinkedIn can be a great way to position yourself as an expert on a topic.
7. Look to see who your contacts know. And if they know people YOU want to know, ask for an introduction. For me, this is the most powerful aspect of LinkedIn as it really allows you to see who your contacts know. Asking for introductions, recommendations and referrals of other people’s contacts is a GREAT way to build a network in a way that is more likely to instil or generate trust.
8. Give recommendations and referrals. I try and regularly give recommendations to people I’m connected with on LinkedIn {and yes, I can certainly do more!}. While I am happy to connect with most people on LinkedIn, I’m very selective about who I give recommendations to, and I only give them to people whose work I have personally experienced. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for someone to give you a recommendation – the worst that can happen is that they will say no! AND say thank you when you do get one!
9. Use the status update. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn has a status update. But please, whatever you do, don’t link your twitter stream to your LinkedIn status update. TRUST ME no one wants to read all your tweets on LinkedIn. Yes,  you can selectively post the OCCASIONAL tweet, but twitter and LinkedIn have very different purposes so pretty please, keep them separate.
10. Check for other people’s status updates on your home page at least once a week – this is a great way of finding out what your network is doing. Are they changing jobs, getting promotions, have more of your contacts joined twitter?

I’d love to hear how you use LinkedIn to build your network. And if you’re not LinkedIn, please sign up! And invite me to connect with you - http://au.linkedin.com/in/melkettle – just make sure you tell me why you want to connect!!

YES is the short answer. But the longer answer is WHICH social media is right for my business.

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE social media. And, personally, I especially love twitter. For so many reasons {and I might blog some of these another time}.

BUT, not all forms of social media are right for all businesses. There. I’ve said it. And you DID read that correctly.

However I firmly believe that at least one form of social media is right for every business. You just have to work out which one is right for you. Just like not everyone can wear red – not all businesses are right for Facebook!

Social media today takes many forms with the best known being:

• Facebook – Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Over 10m users in Australia, over 500m worldwide
• Twitter – 140 characters to tell your followers what’s happening
• YouTube – video sharing site, 2nd largest search engine after Google
• LinkedIn – often called Facebook for business, but soooo much more than that!
• Blogging – allows users to post their opinions, thoughts or comments on a website, that others can then comment on.

Many organisations with little social media knowledge are overwhelmed by choice. Which is expected when faced with something new. My advice is:

• pick 1 form of social media and start with it
• once you are comfortable with that, then pick a 2nd and use it
• then pick a 3rd form etc etc.

However, as I said, not all social media is right for all businesses. Before deciding how to venture out, you need to look at:

• who your target market is – what social media do they use?
• how much time and money do you have? While in theory social media is free, it does take time. And if you use YouTube there may be some costs associated with getting a video camera and some basic editing software (although if you have an iPhone and a Mac you’ll be sorted for basic video)
• who is going to look after your social media? Pick someone who wants to do it and make sure they do it consistently
• if you are a small business or a sole operator, then what suits your personality? If you hate writing, blogging is probably not for you. If you are fairly time poor then twitter will be a great option as it takes just a couple of minutes a few times a day to find out what is going on and post updates. If your business is very hands on or visual then look at posting video blogs to YouTube.
• if your business needs a lot of customers to keep it going (maybe it’s a product or a shop or a restaurant) then look at how you can set up a Facebook business page.

The other ESSENTIAL thing you need to consider when starting out with social media is how you can incorporate it into your existing marketing activities. Facebook and twitter are tools to help with  your marketing. Not stand-alone strategies. You should weave its use into your goals and objectives, key messages and evaluate how they are working for you.

And once you decide to go down the social media path make sure you incorporate the urls of all your social media in your traditional marketing (such as on brochures/websites, stickers on products, point of sale materials and in your email signature).

What is your social media tool of choice? And why?

I’m giving a few presentations over coming weeks on how to use social media, and specifically twitter, for business. As I draft my presentations and seek out case studies – yes, using twitter – key themes are emerging. It’s a hard world out there, especially if you are a small business owner, and everyone is looking for that competitive edge. Knowing your clients and your market will give you that edge. Actually engaging with these people will add a greater dimension to the relationship they have with your brand. And in competitive times, people are more likely to spend money with someone they have a positive relationship with rather than someone they don’t.

If you want to successfully engage with your clients, customers, suppliers, broad market, and yes, even your competitors, you need to do at least some of the following – and preferably all of them:

1. be interesting. Don’t just tweet about yourself and your product – nobody likes an ego. Share interesting links, articles, and information that OTHER people have written.
2. use the retweet function. It’s NOT all about you! Retweeting other people’s tweets is also a great way to get more followers.
3. have conversations with other tweeps. And if someone tweets you directly, acknowledge that. Especially if they ask you a question or comment on something you’ve said. After all, no one likes to be ignored.
4. ask for help. Most people like to help others if asked. My tweets that generate a lot of chatter are those that ask for advice or help. Especially if it’s technical. And to do with computers. Lots of techie people are on twitter. Go figure
5. give referrals and recommendations. I am a big believer in the whole giver’s gain philosophy and I aim to give at least 1 referral a day. Twitter makes this easy as a lot of people are often asking for advice (see #4). I now get asked directly for a lot of recommendations, especially for food related advice.
6. ask people’s opinions. Asking for an opinion makes people feel valued, and really, who doesn’t like that feeling?
7. promote other people’s stuff. This may be through retweeting or it may be promoting people who are not on twitter. I especially try and promote other people’s stuff if it involves fundraisers or other charitable activity
8. DO NOT SEND AUTOMATIC DMs. This is one very quick way to seriously annoy other tweeps and one guaranteed way to be quickly unfollowed faster than you can say Auto DM Spam. Yes, acknowledge a new follower with a DM, but please make it personal. Along the lines of “Hi Mel, looking forward to reading your food tweets!”
9. say thank you. This is just basic good manners. Especially if people regularly retweet you or help you out.
10. give praise, acknowledgement and encouragement . You’ll know when the time is right for this. A tweep I follow FINALLY ditched her ghastly boyfriend. There was a lot of praise and encouragement flowing that day.
11. have empathy. My most amazing twitter experience was when my mum died last year. The outpouring of sympathy and empathy from hundreds of people I didn’t know in either real life OR on twitter was mind boggling. This support helped me (and my family, none of whom actually “get” twitter) through an incredibly difficult time. It symbolises why I love twitter.

OK so that was 11. Not 10. Yes I can count. And I even live with an accountant. Let’s thank GST for the bonus.

What are your top tips for using twitter for business? I’d love to hear them.

I sat down last night to pull a few stats together and to reflect on the emotions of the last 10 days. Of course I’m talking about the phenomenon that has become Baked Relief (or #bakedrelief if you are following on twitter).

My personal involvement began on Tuesday 11 January 2011 when my hubby called at 9am to say his office was being evacuated in preparation of the floods that were due to hit Brisbane from the following day. I popped along to the shops to stock up on a few essentials – extra milk, more fruit and veg, and some ingredients to bake a couple of chocolate cakes, sausage rolls and a few sandwiches to help feed some of the volunteers that I knew would be helping with preparations to stem the flow of the rising river.

Wednesday 12 January 2011 – hubby {Shaun Leck} popped along to help fill sandbags to fill sandbags at our local Council Depot, and landed his first media appearance – an interview in the Age.

Since then Baked Relief has exploded. My friend Danielle first used the twitter hashtag #bakedrelief on Tuesday 11 January and blogged about it on http://digella.blogspot.com. Offers of help and baking have come flooding in {couldn’t resist that one }.

Baked Relief is now providing food to thousands of people, including those that were flood affected; Volunteering QLD; the SES; QLD Police, Fire & Ambulance workers; the military helping clean up; and so many others who are helping with the massive clean up.

To me Baked Relief symbolises what can happen when the power of social media comes into play. Primarily due to the reach and influence of twitter, facebook and blogs, support has been generated, sponsors have come forward, money has been donated and people have been fed. Would this have happened without social media? Yes, of course it would have. Would it have happened with the same speed and volume, now that’s highly unlikely.

Baked Relief quickly crossed over from social media to mainstream media, with mainstream media picking up the story and first mentioning Baked Relief on Sunday 16 January 2011. This generated an increased number of people getting involved {and a HUGE increase in emails in my in-box as people wanted to know HOW they could help}.

The Baked Relief website was launched on Monday 17 January and had just under 2,500 hits in its first 12 hours.

I also launched the Adopt-a-family program on my food blog, The Cook’s Notebook, on Monday 17 January and we have had nearly 300 families already volunteer to help feed a flood affected family for possibly up to a year! We have now partnered with Flood Aid to coordinate this program.

A few stats (as of Thursday 20 January) and other interesting things about Baked Relief:

• Baked Relief has had significant national media coverage with 5 print articles and 14 interviews on radio and television, including the high rating national breakfast TV show, The Today Show (you can watch us at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/video.aspx?videoid=82710eac-1c30-4790-bcb5-45170616ef55)
• Countless blog mentions and web-posts
• 4,230 mentions on Google when you search on #bakedrelief
• Thousands of facebook and twitter mentions
• Reached #2 in trending hashtags in Australia on Tuesday 18 January (on previous days was #3, #4, #5
• While we haven’t been able to effectively measure how many people are baking for Baked Relief but we assume it’s at least 1,000 in South East Queensland (not just Brisbane). It’s grown too organically for us to count!
• People are driving from over 2 hours away to deliver food, and we know of at least one group (Funky Pies) who drove up from Sydney (about 1,000km and 12 hour drive) to deliver their pies to people working at Volunteering Queensland, Queensland Police and an evacuation centre.

Baked Relief is changing the way people are using social media – and in particular twitter. Yesterday I tweeted “I wonder how many people have signed up to twitter just because of #bakedrelief”. About 20 people replied saying that they had either joined twitter SOLELY because of Baked Relief or they joined ages ago and are now only actually using it actively because of Baked Relief. WOW.

Yesterday I also tweeted social media guru David Meerman Scott to alert him to the real-time communication that led to such a massive response for Baked Relief. When he messaged me back to say he’d love to blog about it I danced around the car park I was in at the time! My excitement was off the scale! Read David’s blog. And THANK YOU David!! I hope I can buy you a beer when you are in Brisbane in April.

For more information on Baked Relief or how you can contribute go to www.bakedrelief.org.

Like many Brisbane-ites my life has changed this week. Not because my home was flooded, but because I am so proud to witness the outpouring of love and friendship that is {bad pun alert…} pouring out of Queensland.

Like many, I want to help. My friend Danielle Crismani has instigated a food revolution. And as a food-obsessive, I had to get involved! Danielle {@digellabakes on twitter} needed to do SOMETHING to take her mind of her boys being stranded in the Lockyer Valley {with her mum, whose property was affected by flooding – they are all safe}. She came up with the idea of baking some relief for the State Emergency Services volunteers who were sandbagging around Brisbane.

Word quickly spread – via her blog Digella Emporium and via twitter – and now it is bigger than Ben Hur!

Baked Relief – ADOPT A FAMILY is now taking registrations from people who are prepared to provide a meal once a week {possibly for up to a year} to a family who has lost their home to the floods.

For information and to register go to my food blog The Cook’s Notebook.

I am often asked by clients, friends and colleagues what the best way is to increase their fee, without alienating or losing the client. There is no easy way to increase your fee, especially if you charge an hourly rate or a standard fee for service, and it is obvious to your client that you have increased it!

My recommended way - and this does depend a bit on the type of business you have and your relationships with your clients - is to send your client an email or a letter spelling out that the fee is increasing, by how much, when it takes effect, and why you are increasing it. Then, depending on the client (and this includes how many clients you have, how much business they give you and your personal relationship with them), follow up with a phone call, or raise the subject when you next meet with them.

Below is an excerpt of an email I sent to a client a little while ago:

Given the increase in costs I have had over the last 12 months, I have unfortunately had to increase my fees. You will be aware that this is my first fee increase in over two years. Please be advised that my hourly rate for [your company] is now $xx per hour plus GST. This will take effect from [date - at least one month or one billing period from the date of correspondence].  Thank you again for your support over the last year. I look forward to continuing to work with you.

My client’s immediate reply was: No problem you are still worth every cent! And thanks again for all your glorious work

However if that hadn’t been the reply, and if my client had complained, I would have sat down with my client and reminded him of the value I provided to his business (with actual outcomes).

This blog post has been prompted by an email I received this morning that has left a nasty taste in my mouth. It was a somewhat abrupt email from the accountant of a person I engage on a regular basis to provide a service (and no, I’m not going to name names, because despite the execution, this person is also a friend). Given the nature of our relationship, combined with our regular communication (I am in regular email, twitter and phone coversation with this person) I was a bit shocked. I was also disappointed, for the following reasons:

• the email came from the accountant and said that if I had any concerns I should talk to the accountant, not the owner of the company, who is also the person I have the relationship with
• it was a group email (fine) but all the recipients were listed in the TO box (not fine) without any of us being BCC’d – I have major issues with this from a privacy perspective
• there were only 9 of us – why not email us individually or discuss in person or, better yet, send the email from the business owner.

I fully understand that business needs to increase fees over time, and I have no problem with that. But what gets me is the execution. It’s making me feel that my business, and my money, isn’t valued.

I’d love to hear how you inform clients of a fee increase. Or if you have had particularly good – or bad – experiences.

As I was tweeting about a very bad customer service experience at dinner on Saturday night, it struck me that customer service is even more important than ever in this era of social media and mobile technology.

With the growing popularity of smartphones combined with the massive increase in the use of social media (twitter, facebook etc), businesses really need to make sure they are up to scratch, otherwise they could see themselves splashed on the first page of a Google search for all the wrong reasons.

Recently released research from Nielsen shows that over 43% of online Australians now own a Smartphone (such as an iPhone or a Blackberry) and that mobile social networking has increased significantly in the last 12 months.  Nielsen’s report found that 26% of social networkers participated in mobile social networking in the past year. Facebook is the most popular social networking site accessed via a mobile (92% of mobile social networkers have visited Facebook), followed by YouTube and Twitter (18%).

However, more than half of Twitter’s mobile users visited the site daily, and 36% of Facebook mobiles users visit its site daily. And this doesn’t include the use of third party sites such as Twitterberry or Tweetdeck or any of the others available for mobile devices.

So as a business owner, think about what this means in terms of getting immediate feedback. While it’s great when you provide excellent service, think of the potential damage to your brand if your customers tweet about what they really think when you fail. Particularly if the person tweeting has a lot of followers.

When do you tweet about a good – or bad – experience?

So far my two networking posts have been about going out to networking functions. While I LOVE networking face to face, and meeting new people, I find that these days I tend to do even more networking from my desk. How you ask? Well mostly via Twitter and LinkedIn.

The basic principles are the same – you connect with people, build a relationship, share ideas, thoughts, referrals and maybe one day do business together.

What I love about using Twitter and LinkedIn for networking is:

• it’s not restricted to my desk – I can network anywhere – as long as I have my laptop or blackberry
• I don’t need to make myself look “presentable” – you know, hair, makeup, clean and ironed clothes – I can network in my PJs. Or my stinky gym clothes. And I often do
• I can share things with people that are harder to share face to face – such as links to my blog, photos, links to interesting articles
• it doesn’t cost anything except a bit of time (I especially love not getting stuck in traffic!)
• it’s easier to find out more information about people, and more quickly, then a 5 minute chat at a networking function can offer - just think of all that extra info on LinkedIn and Twitter – reams of information about their personality, other followers and connections (which can say a lot about a person), and of course business and personal interests.

So how much do you network from your desk? And what do you love most about it?

So now that you have chosen which networking events to go to, how are you going to make sure you get the most out of it? There are a few things that I do:

1. Take LOTS of business cards – there is nothing more frustrating than meeting someone interesting and having to rely on them to contact you because THEY don’t have a card. Don’t be one of those people. Please.

2. Have a plan. Depending on the type of event, I generally plan to meet – and have a conversation with – a specific number of people. It might be 1, it might be 10. The actual number depends on how much time will be allocated for networking, the format of the event and my mood at the time! Try and have a look at the attendee list so you can see who will be there and where they are from – this can help you can target specific people.

3. Don’t just hang around with your friends. Presumably you have gone to a networking event to network. So go and meet people!

4. Try and learn something about the people you meet. Don’t just fling around as many cards around as you can!  You are better off meeting five people and finding out something about them so that a relationship can be established, rather than “meeting” 25 people you just give a card to. Be genuine about who you are when you are talking to people. Show interest in who they are and what they do. It’s not ALL about you!

5. Followup within a day or so. This can be as simple as sending an email saying you enjoyed meeting them. Or perhaps sending an interesting article you found that is about something they are interested in. Don’t send them reams of information about your business and how you want to work with them – unless they asked for it.

6. Don’t drink too much alcohol at a networking or industry function. It doesn’t take much to ruin a hard-earned reputation. 

7. Have fun!  

What do you do to make the most out of networking events?