We were officially selected as one of only 20 Certified Inbound Marketing Educators worldwide. We'll begin blogging at the forthcoming inboundmarketing.com blog. More information to come.

When choosing a web host, please don’t pay attention to popularity or commercials. GoDaddy is one of the most advertised hosting platforms that is out there. Their commercials are sometimes controversial and people talk about them. That does NOT mean that they are a good hosting company, they’re not. Their platform is incredibly difficult to navigate and I would not recommend their services.

Another that people often use is NetworkSolutions. Again, don’t believe the hype, NetworkSolutions has been around for a really long time but their platform is overly complicated and overpriced.

The host that I always use is Bluehost.com, they’re not the most well known of all web hosts but they’ve been silently growing for several years. I've used Bluehost for a really long time and I don't make suggestions for providers unless I really believe in them. They have unlimited domain hosting, unlimited GB of hosting space, unlimited file transfers, unlimited email accounts and a free domain when you sign up. All of this adds up to a winning package, especially when you note that their price is just $6.95/mo. They also have top notch tech support (and I've called them all). Here’s a link to sign up for Bluehost, if it asks, tell them that nickinglis.com sent you (they give me a little cut each time a person signs up, how nice!).

Some of you have noted that I haven't been as active on social media platforms and my blog this week. No, I'm not on vacation. My wife is in Haiti for the week and I am spending some serious time with my son. So, yes, this week you won't be receiving as much information from me, but my son and I are having some fun adventures and my wife is helping people who need it most.

NickInglis.com is pleased to announce our newest service, the Facebook Company Page Design. If you've noticed, most company pages on Facebook look exactly the same. How do you stand out from the crowd? There's a little used coding technique for Facebook Company Pages called FBML that can make your company page stand out from the rest of the crowd. FBML pages used to be the realm of only large businesses but we're making it available at a cost that's reasonable enough for small and medium sized businesses as well. Contact us to have your Facebook Company Page stand out from the rest.

Producteev is an advanced task manager tool where you can enter in your tasks, set due dates and assign tasks to other members of your team. The whole thing is really simple to use and has Gmail integration as well as an iPhone App and a Mac Desktop app coming soon. I've been using Producteev for a couple of weeks now and I've been really enjoying it's simplicity and the fact that my tasks are staring me in the face in Gmail. 

For teams, Producteev becomes even more powerful without taking away from it's ease of use. Youuu can easily asign out tasks and set due dates for other members of your team and they simply show up in their task list. You can also add tags to tasks so that if you're managing  multiple projects you can keep things separate to some extent. Task alerts can be set to go to your email, your instant messenger program, pretty nearly anything but snail mail.

Some of the things I'd like to see are recurring tasks and maybe some form of categorization, but that said, I think this is one of the easiest to use task management systems available.

There was a recent study about purchasing habits based upon referral source (link). The results of the study are simply shocking. Only 7% of general online shoppers visiting a site complete a purchase while 71% who came through social media will make it to point of transaction making users via social media 10 times more likely to buy.

That means that if you're offering products for sale online and you either a) are not using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn or b) are using them inefficiently, you are missing out on some serious income.

If you aren't utilizing the sites, I would hope that this statistic alone would help you reconsider that poor decision. If you are looking to start and want expert advice, we provide that. If you are using social media, are you a part of the 69% of users who don't have a plan (see prior post How To Fail At Social Media)? If so, you are also leaving money on the table.

The best way for 'e-tailers' to get the most income for their efforts is to utilize social media and utilize it effectively.

There was a recent study by Digital Brand Expressions (link) that showed that 78% of businesses used Social Media for their business and 69% of users did not have any strategy for it's usage.

If there's no strategy there's no metrics

Without a strategy you have nothing to measure your efforts against. I understand the average worker's desire to be free of planning and putting pen to paper to strategize before jumping into social media, but where is the management? Without strategy you have no idea what will be measured, you have no goals, you are winging it.

Winging it in other areas of business

Could you imaging your HR department 'winging it'? How about your product development? Your management? By 'winging it', you are taking away your own credibility. The only way to have success that you can show to your management with social media is to measure. The only way to measure is to know what to measure. The only way to know what to measure is to plan.

Am I the crazy one?

I see statistics like this and it truly makes me wonder sometimes, am I the crazy one? If 69% of businesses on social media have no plan, am I crazy for planning? I don't think that I am when you look at how few companies are actually successful with their social media.

As social media usage by companies for marketing purposes grows, you should know how it will change your business.

1. Your phone won't ring as often as it used to

There's a long standing tradition of those in authority telling their marketing departments to 'make the phone ring'. Well, maybe the phone shouldn't be ringing, social media allows consumers to speak directly to your company on the platforms that they're using for commication with friends, colleagues and family (pssst, it often isn't the phone any longer).

The question of preparedness is: "Is your company equipped to handle sales if the phone stops ringing?" If all of your salespeople are face to face and phone based, you may be missing the biggest opportunity that your company has ever had. Are you ready to allow e-commerce, online sales, and online trust building to prepare a sale? If not, your competitors may already be positioned to 'eat your lunch'.

2. Your customers will be complaining in real time

You should be ready to track, assess and respond to potential customer complaints. Firstly, you should be able to take note of when customers complain, whether you use a commercial social media monitoring platform or you cleverly use Google Alerts, you should be listening.

Secondly, you should have a plan in place on how to respond to customer criticism. You should have a set of standards of when to stay out of a conversation and when to respond, how long do you wait to see if any of your other customers chime in to come to your reputation rescue before you do it yourself? All of this should be set up beforehand.

Lastly, you should know how to respond and what language should be used to respond to customer complaints. This may require some assistance from whatever legal counsel you use if you desire. You may not have a perfect answer but sometimes just responding is enough to resolve a soured relationship.

A few years ago I had some issues with a company's product and I went online to complain about the functionality of this product. One of the company's representatives hopped onto my blog to explain the rationale behind their functionality decision and despite my disagreement with their reasoning I left feeling satisfied that they had responded and the client/company relationship was restored (or at least I wouldn't be complaining again).

3. You are opening yourself up to new liability

Not everything about the social web is positive for your business, the potential for your employees to leave you open to litigation is a strong concern for some businesses. Businesses that handle large amounts of personal data on their customers, this is generally their primary concern about the social web. A strong and well understood social media and information management policy is the best protection you have against issues of this nature.

4. You have new avenues of marketing available

If you manage your social media marketing properly, you have the potential to grow your business exponentially. With some clever marketing and a thorough understanding of social media you can exponentially grow your business.

If you've never heard about BlendTec, you may have heard of or seen one of their "Will It Blend?" videos. This company decided that they would make a series of videos blending items that were never meant to be blended, think iPhones and hockey sticks. Not only has their marketplace awareness grown exponentially but their sales have more than quintupled.

Social media has the power to multiply your sales drastically and in ways you never expected.

5. Your employees will collaborate online, whether you prepare for it or not

Your employees are becoming accustomed to fast and succinct communication when they leave their place of employment and have the desire for the same in the workplace. Whether you are ready for it or not, your employees will find new ways of communicating and connecting with each other and with information. There are two ways that this can happen: you establish a medium for this communication or your employees will set up rogue operations (wikis, social networks, microblogging) to do it.

You probably want to get out in front of this one and provide a set of tools for collaboration in the workplace, this is an area known as Enterprise 2.0. Managing the communications will allow you to get a better handle on how employees are communicating and provide better (and more secure) avenues than otherwise available.

The alternative is one that can be explained with an example that I came across last year. There was an employee that was sick of trying to find difficult to find information on the company's intranet and was tired of using Google rather than the intranet to find information for customers. So, he simply set up a wiki for himself and his work group to share company information more easily. The problem with his setup was that it was unsecured and living outside of the company's firewall and information security architecture.

Eventually the IS department caught wind of it all and shut it down, but before it was shut down it was moved inside of the firewall and opened to every employee. Now, the original rogue wiki is the centerpiece of the company's information sharing architecture.

The alternative scenario goes like this: the wiki is discovered by someone at a competitive company and either trade secrets are discovered or it opens the company up to potential litigation. All could be bad, but if managed properly, it presents great opportunity.

6. Your customers will become your greatest marketing asset

Sorry to your PR and marketing folks, but your customers will have a greater reach than you ever will. Each person on Facebook represents over 130 connections. So, when one of your customers says something positive about your company, they aren't just speaking to one person, but 130 people. So, if you continue to grow your reputation with your customers and encourage them to 'tell a friend' they will have a greater reach, for less cost, than your marketing team does.

1. Know Your Topic - Ensure you have adequate knowledge of your topical area. Learn before you start to write. Consider your blog an education tool, how can you educate if you aren't first a teacher?
2. Know Your Audience - Know who you are targeting with your posts and then go crazy. Hammer away at your primary topic from many different angles.
3. Stay On Top - Set up a Google Reader account and take the RSS feed from Google News on your topic (i.e. Social Media) and plug it into your Google Reader. Do the same with other industry blogs and stay on top of the news related to your topic.
4. Give Value - Please know that most people that are first time visitors of your blog want to learn something about that topic, make sure you remain educational in your posting.
5. Use Lists (But Not Every Time) - Note that this is a list, use lists, they keep people reading more often than not. Don't use lists every time or you don't look like you're an expert on your topic. Anyone can make a list.
6. Know Your Purpose - If you're blogging for business, stay on topic at least 80% of the time. If you're blogging for expertise and credibility building do the same. If you're blogging for fun, stay fun, etc. Know why you are blogging and keep to your purpose.

There was a recent post on Global CIO titled "Will Social Media Kill The CIO?" (link). It talks about information security in a newly social media infused society and what it means for the role of the Chief Information Officer.

I think the social web means that the role of CIO is infinitely more important within large organizations. What I also think is incredibly important is a governing document for social media and information management that is not only well articulated but also well understood by employees. That may mean training, JIT training and testing of knowledge to ensure understanding for large organizations.

Not only should there be an understanding of an information management policy but also a device management policy. This article does bring up the interesting topic of unapproved devices which, as a non-CIO, I hadn't often considered. There also would need to be a thorough understanding of what information can be accessed where. Since we're increasingly browsing mobilely, what information should be accessed 'on the road' and which shouldn't should also be well understood.

Does this mean the CIO is being killed by Social Media? No. It does mean that your past experience as a CIO means nothing in the new social media infused world. If you're a CIO you better start learning the new rules of information management now, or you're bound to be killed, not by social media, but by your CEO.