Because the music is available for free, it does not mean that it’s the end of the business model.

Connect with fans (CwF) + Reason to buy (RtB) = Monitization ($$$)

When you’re on your deathbed, you’re never going to say you wish you’d attended more meetings. But at work, meetings are a necessary evil.

The key to an efficient meeting is a strong leader. Their job is to keep things on track, not be afraid to cut off long-winded discussions, and be willing to end things early once the business is done. Brief and well-run meetings create an organizational culture of respect for everyone’s time.

Read the complete article.

The key with social media measurement, I think, is to stand back and take a widescreen approach to measurement. Rather than focusing on the smaller, campaign-specific metrics, such as traffic from Twitter or the number of fans on Facebook, wouldn’t it be better to look at how it helps to shift the most important business KPIs, such as sales, profits, as well as customer retention and satisfaction rates?

• Driving engagement and interaction.
• The goal of any social optimisation strategy is to provide the right tools so that people can engage with your brand / people / products / services onsite and offsite.
• You want people to make a noise.
• You want people to store and share things.
• You want people to love your website.
• You want people to visit more frequently.
• You want people to refer your company to their friends.
• You want people to buy into your brand.
• You want people to buy your products.

A list of social interaction metrics / KPIs

1. Alerts (register and response rates / by channel / CTR / post click activity)
2. Bookmarks (onsite, offsite)
3. Comments
4. Downloads
5. Email subscriptions
6. Fans (become a fan of something / someone)
7. Favourites (add an item to favourites)
8. Feedback (via the site)
9. Followers (follow something / someone)
10. Forward to a friend
11. Groups (create / join / total number of groups / group activity)
12. Install widget (on a blog page, Facebook, etc)
13. Invite / Refer (a friend)
14. Key page activity (post-activity)
15. Love / Like this (a simpler form of rating something)
16. Messaging (onsite)
17. Personalisation (pages, display, theme)
18. Posts
19. Profile (e.g. update avatar, bio, links, email, customisation, etc)
20. Print page
21. Ratings
22. Registered users (new / total / active / dormant / churn)
23. Report spam / abuse
24. Reviews
25. Settings
26. Social media sharing / participation (activity on key social media sites)
27. Tagging (user-generated metadata)
28. Testimonials
29. Time spent on key pages
30. Time spent on site (by source / by entry page)
31. Total contributors (and % active contributors)
32. Uploads (add an item, e.g. articles, links, images, videos)
33. Views (videos, ads, rich images)
34. Widgets (number of new widgets users / embedded widgets)
35. Wishlists (save an item to wishlist)

Each company may have some specific requirements, but here are ten important social media metrics to measure:

1. Social media leads. Track web traffic breakdowns from all social media sources, and chart the top few sources over time. If members of your social media networks are sending referrals, consider measuring this data as well.

2. Engagement duration. For some companies, engagement duration is more important than page views. For example, if you have a Facebook application, how much time are social network members spending using it? Is per-member usage increasing over time? Alternately, if people visit your your company websites from SM (Social Media) sites, how long are they spending? (Also consider tracking which pages they visit.)

3. Bounce rate. Are visitors coming to your site from SM sites but quickly leaving? Maybe your landing page needs better, more relevant copy. Maybe the information they’re seeking isn’t easily found.

4. Membership increase and active network size. This is the portion of your company’s social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) that actively engages with your social media content (e.g., Twitter, Facebook Pages, etc.) Is your collective members, followers, fans network growing, and is there interaction with your content?

5. Activity ratio. How active is your company’s collective social network? Compare the ratio of active members vs total members, and chart this over time. There’ll always be some social network members who are inactive, but if you initiate a campaign to increase interaction, you should also measure the resulting data. Activity can be measured in a variety of ways, including usage of social applications.

6. Conversions. You want social network members to convert: into subscriptions, sales (direct or through affiliates), Facebook application use, or whatever other offerings you have in your overall sales funnel and that can somehow be directly or indirectly monetized. (E.g., subscription to a weekly e-newsletter can be monetized by giving other companies access to your list in the form of advertising.) Measure all types of conversions and chart them over time.

7. Brand mentions in social media. So, you have a highly active social network and members are talking about your company or the company’s brands. Measure and track both positive and negative mentions, and their quantities.

8. Loyalty. Are social members interacting in the network repeatedly, sharing content and links, mentioning your brands, evangelizing? How many members reshare? How often do they reshare?

9. Virality. Social members might be sharing Twitter tweets and Facebook updates relevant to your company, but is this info being reshared by their networks? How soon afterwards are they resharing? How many FoaFs (Friends of Friends) are resharing your links and content?

10. Blog interaction. This is actually more than one metric lumped together. Blogs ARE part of an SMM (Social Media Marketing) toolkit, but only if you allow comments and interact with readers by responding. If you’re doing this, encourage responses either directly in the comments section of blog posts, or via Twitter. (Use a blog widget that allows this.) If your blog’s content is suitable for social voting (Digg, Propeller, Mixx, etc.) or social bookmarking (Delicious, Stumbleupon) sites, install a blog plugin that displays the necessary sharing “buttons”, then track referrals back from those sites.

It’s that time of year again, where we set goals for the year ahead and one month later these goals are long forgotten.

Some reasons why we don’t achieve many of the goals we set include:

• To many goals. Think quality over quantity.
• The goals are unrealistic considering your current situation or mind-set.
• Goals are set without an action plan or any idea on how to get there.
• And the list goes on.

1 – Define Your Definite Major Purpose and Fulfillment Factors
What moves you in life? How do you see your life? What are your passions, your purpose in life? These are not your goals, they are the “WHY” for your goals.

2 – Review Your Task Chart
Your organizational or task chart is the framework for your business or your life. When working towards your goals there are many tasks that need to be done where you will need to wear many different hats or assign some to someone else in order to maintain the standards needed to move forward.

3 – Set Income & Life Goals
Goals can be based on financial income or can be lifestyle based. Keep in mind that almost all lifestyle goals have an associated cost, thus requiring an associated income goal. Be sure you set goals that are achievable, measurable and that they are aligned with your Definite Major Purpose.

Take some time to look at what you want in life, lifestyle, physical materials or experiences. Take a look at your current income. Set and write down your goals for 2010 and what income level will it take to achieve them.

4 – Backward Plan For Achieving Your Goals (Work Back Plan)
If the goals you set in the previous section is your destination, this is the plan or road map for the journey to your goals. Just like a road trip you need to have a plan on how to get to from point A to point B.

Define what is the step that is required or what need to happen just before achieving your goal. What action is required just before that… And so on…. Do this until you get to your current situation. The last identified step or action will be the first to take in order to move forward.

5 – Evaluate Your Projects
At this point it’s important that you evaluate all the projects in your life, projects such as your job, school, community activities, your businesses… You need to focus on what takes you closer to your goals. We often tend to be proud of our multitasking abilities, but multitasking will only dilute your quality and diminish your focus.

• Measure your passion to what you do
• What kind of emotional response do you have to what you do
• What kind of cashflow does it have

6 – Your Action Plan – The Critical Six
Now that everything is set, it’s time to take action and move forward. Here’s a very effective strategy that I do everyday and that I talked about in the past. It’s called The Critical Six and here’s a recap:

• Each day write down the six most important things you need to do to get closer to your goals. Only six per day, no more.
• Put them in order of importance.
• Start on item number one. Do not skip to item number two until you have fully completed number one.
• If you get to the end of the day and have not completed your full list of six items, roll them over to the next day as the most important.

7 – Do Not Rely On Faith & Destiny
Faith and the belief in your destiny are the greatest cop outs, great excuses to evade the need to think, evaluate evidence and take action.

8 – Just Do It
There are no secrets when it comes to achieving your goals. Get off your ass, stop reading all these “HOW TO” and “Productivity” articles & posts and take action.

Don’t Multitask And Don’t Rely On Faith & Destiny

TAKE ACTION & STAY FOCUSED

Angie decided to put together some last minute harmonies to fit the season. Hope you enjoy!

All the best to you and your family.

Jocelyn

Back in July, Twitter released “Twitter 101 for Business”, a guide for businesses to get started with using the Twitter service. It covers the basics of Twitter, how to get started, the lingo, and includes case studies. Here’s how Twitter describes its value to businesses on its new Twitter 101 website:

Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.

Check it out at: business.twitter.com/twitter101/. You may also want to check out “The Twitter Guide Book” at Mashable.

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave: 15 Features

Here’s a 30 minute video of his presentation, check it out: