A look at the You Tube home page will reveal that quite a bit of rearranging has been done. Instead of showcasing the most popular and trending videos on the website, YouTube has now prominently positioned a “Subscription Feed” smack-dab in the middle of the page.  You must be logged in to see this.

Is your organization ready for more video in 2012?

Is the high profile education and numerous degrees doing a better job of marketing you?  Maybe.  What if you invested in a self-generated approach to lifelong education while following your bliss on ideas and topics that really matter to you?   What if you took that time and built up a history of real life work experiences?  What if you followed what you were really motivated to do and carved out your own niche?

The mantra of new age marketing is customer centricity. With traditional marketing failing to generate adequate return on investment and people’s trust on advertisements fading gradually, marketers are looking up to social media which is continuously evolving and offers great potential for new age marketing. Social media plays a vital role in new age marketing as it has become a medium of an integrated and strategic business communications, service, and information community.

The new age marketing has gone to a different level as social media marketers have gained adequate experience and have advanced to a state of achieving the social marketing objectives and proving Return of Investment (ROI). Social media marketing takes a more human centric approach and it is becoming popular and expanding to majority of the social media avenues in a fast rhythm with more and more corporations and business undertakings experimenting this and adding it to their marketing mix.

Source: SiliconIndia

Customer centricity is key in social media.  That is why social media can work well for businesses that need to focus on the relationships they are creating with their customers.  I recommend reading the full article at the link above.

The problem with being outwardly focused is that we have no center, nothing to return to.  The problem with outward focus is that we have no center, nothing to return to.  The problem with outward focus is that there is no compass, no normal, no way to tell if we’re in balance.

Seth Godin, from Linchpin

When you get out beyond the map, into all new territory,  how do you know where to navigate?

You can not control the world.

You can control the world you create and how you perceive it.

Creating the future is filled with opportunity.

I find the pontential uses for an intuitive interface on a tablet computing device as big game changers in how we interact with communication devices.

Posted via web from Mandala Life Media

Posted via web from kalalea’s posterous

We can debate the countless intricate ways that companies can use to create a strategy of difference, but it all pretty much boils down to:
1) Better product
2) Better process
3) Better relationships

In my opinion focusing all of your strategic thinking, goal setting and actions on building a better process or better relationships is the surest and maybe simplest way to create a true competitive advantage that someone might care about. Would you rather lean on your 5% better product or price or on something so totally outrageous and innovative that people can’t stop talking about it?

via ducttapemarketing.com

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame offers up these words of wisdom in his post where he challenges businesses to stop trying to be better than the competition, the opportunity is in the ways you can be different.

Create a strategy of being outstandingly different in your processes and relationships and you create something remarkable and worth talking about. Consistently amazing customer service experiences get spread around. Innovative ways of improving your business can yield exponential results.

We we owned our salon and spa we made huge investments in people and culture with our training systems and team development. These investments kept our business way out in front and made us significantly different in our market and consistently successful.

What do you think about creating a strategy of outstanding uniqueness? Where is your opportunity to be different?

Being a small business owner and having to spend advertising $’s wisely, we used Mandala Life Media to build our Social Media.  In less than 6 months, we began to see a huge shift in the connections we have with clients and how much stronger they are.  It also has increased our presence within our community. I highly recommend it.  Mandala Life Media encompasses a full circle approach with their business ethics and are full of information on how to take your business to the next level of sustainability.

Tracey Drews – Grassroots A Salon
on Twitter – @grassrootssalon and Facebook

Get Empowered

Mandala Life Media has been empowering Tracey Drews and Grassroots A Salon to share their brilliance for a few months.  We created an easily up-datable content management system ( We love WordPress ) for Grassroots a Salon and Tracey to share great stories and images from the salon every week.

Grassroots likes to do good work in the community and now Tracey has a place where she can easily share those stories.  We are helping Tracey feel comfortable with the tools of social media and we brainstorm story ideas with her to keep her site fresh and interesting.

Grassroots is using their website, Facebook and Twitter to extend their remarkable word of mouth and strengthen their connections.

Tracey is doing an excellent job of continuing to evolve her understanding of the use of social media tools and technology to spread the word about the great quality service they provide and the amazing ways they give back to the community.

Traffic is growing to their site and their social media connections are expanding.

Locally Focused Social Media

Hair salons are by nature locally based businesses.   At most, a hair salon is going to draw customers from a 50 mile radius and most likely the vast majority of customers come from less than 25 miles away.  Why would a business with a solely local market reach use online communication and social media?

Social media is all about stellar networking and building trusted relationships with people  you know and people you can help with your services.

Quality service hair salons are definitely in the relationship business.  The relationship between stylist and client is an important one. Great haircuts, hair colors and talented stylists stories have been getting shared face to face by word of mouth ever since people cared what their hair looked like.

With the social communication tools being used on the web those stories get shared online.  Most social media communication happens between people that actually know each other and live in the same area.  Tracey and Grassroots are participating in the online community conversation. Through their continued updating of their website, Facebook and Twitter they are making their stories easily sharable.

Wealthy Resource

Grassroot’s stories and information create a rich resource and history that helps build their quality reputation.  Now potential new customers wanting to know more about Grassroots A Salon have an online resource to access from any internet connection 24/7.

Tracey Drews and Grassroots A Salon are creating a good example of what the tools of the web and social media can do to extend a small local businesses word of mouth.  And we’ve been honored to help guide their way.