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?

via sfgate.com

A big part of the Facebook experience is how friends and family share Web links to interesting news stories, photos, videos and Internet sites.

This “friend-casting” of information has helped propel Facebook into a major force in directing traffic around the Web.

One of the big activities on Facebook besides playing farm games is sharing interesting links to photos, videos and websites with your friends. This activity has gotten so big that Facebook has become the number 1 source of referral traffic to major internet portals and a major force in directing traffic around the web.

The activity of friend-casting is a major opportunity for businesses to engage with their fans.

Is your business creating stories on the web that your customers can help you spread?

Posted via web from Mark Gehrke’s Posterous

Renew Summit 09 – NEW END from Mark Gehrke on Vimeo.

Renew Summit 09 is a time for NEW North businesses to come and review key accomplishments throughout the year at the KI Center in Green Bay. Presented by New North and NEW END.

Debra and Mark Gehrke where asked to video blog the event.

@mmangen – Twitter Goddess from Mark Gehrke on Vimeo.

Debra Gehrke talks with Michelle Mangen about Twitter, the #newend hashtag and how to use Twitter to follow along with the NEW END event during the day and after the event.

Ross LaRocco Rocks Social Media from Mark Gehrke on Vimeo.

Ross LaRocco, a video blogger at the NEW END event, shares how he uses an iPhone w/ an OWLE video add on device to capture quick videos and upload them almost instantly to the web.  With Ross’s setup, his video blogs went live within minutes after recording them at NEW END.  Video blogging is an excellent way to share your events, create buzz on line and give your event attendees a place to re experience the day.

Interview by Debra Gehrke, Mandala Life Media

Getting More from Twitter Starts with Asking for Help from Mark Gehrke on Vimeo.

Twitter is a great networking platform to connect with your audience.  Twitter can be valuable to build stronger relationships with your customers and your brand.  Twitter’s benefits really come through continued use and building a relevant network.  When you first start using Twitter is can be very confusing.  I believe this is why many people quit the service before they see the benefits.

In this video Debra Gehrke, of Mandala Life Media, talks with Kim Sippola ( @ATWairport ) about how having help with Twitter from Michelle Mangen ( @mmangen ) made a big difference to her understanding of how to make best use of the platform for her.

A valuable thing you can do when you’re first getting started on Twitter is find a knowledge user that can explain it to you.  If you have someone show you how to make sense of the terms, technology and practices you can get a huge jump start. Tweeting can be an enjoyable and valuable experience for you with a little support.

Our Recommendations:

• Find a Twitter mentor
• If you can meet in person
• Be open-minded and curious to learn
• Ask lots of questions
• Do be afraid to try
• If you don’t understand ask for clarification
• Jump in and practice, it’s not about perfection
• Think about how you can add value
• Participate in the conversation
• It’s not all about you
• It’s an evolving medium, keep learning

Want a jump start with Twitter?  We can help.

If you’ve been using Twitter and would like to expand  your Twitter strategy we love to help.  For small businesses using Twitter, getting clear about what you want to accomplish is essential.  Evaluate your strategy up front and remember that strategy to action is a continual cycle.   Your strategy needs continual attention if you want to see results.

Outagamie Co. Airport Uses Social Media from Mark Gehrke on Vimeo.

Outagamie Co. Airport Uses Social Media from Mark Gehrke on Vimeo.

Debra Gehrke talks with Kim Sippola, Outagamie Co. Airport Marketing Manager, about how the airport uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to connect with travelers and the community.  Interview conducted at Renew Summit 2009 presented by New North and NEW END.  We love to help support the local North Eastern Wisconsin social media business community.  Social media is still very new for most businesses and navigating these ever changing waters can be challenging.  We hope this video and the story we shared recently about how Grassroots A Salon is blogging to get their story out to the community will give you a little inspiration to jump in and participate.  And if you have more questions we are happy to help.

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.

“Our immediacy and personal interaction with customers is part of the work we’re doing to make positive change for relationships with customers, getting to the root causes of problems that arise and fixing them for the long term,”  Eric Ketzer – Charter Communications

By listening to the conversations and monitoring your brand and your industry you have an opportunity to understand how you’re being perceived and fix challenges as they come up.

Twitter is one of the best tools available right now for monitoring and engaging in the public conversation around your brand.  At least if you have a business that people can talk about.

Laura Fitton ( @pistachio ) has some great additional off platform benefits from Twittering.  These are great ideas and show that even if you’re in a business that doesn’t have a lot of customers on Twitter you can still help your business through Twitter.

1. SEO – Findability on the web.  Twitter is a great service to help you move up the search results.  Use your business name as your Twitter user name to help manage your search rankings.  Bring people to your website with an active Twitter presence.

2. Research – Twitter is a great way to listen to what people are saying on the web about your field and research new ideas and directions.  You can ask questions and develop feedback loops for pretty much anything.

3. Content Generation Engine – setup a resource on your home page and use it to share and give your web site visitors a place to see what’s people are talking about.  Twitter can be a quick way to keep your customers in the loop for events and all kinds of things.  The quick communication platform is a tool with myriad possibilities.

4. Word of Mouth Pass-a-Long – Your promotions can spread beyond Twitter, even to your off – line customers if you create deals worth spreading.  A few followers could potentially share your promotion with their non twittering friends, spreading your good deals and positive word of mouth.

5. PR Gravity – sharing on Twitter can connect you to media professionals looking for great stories.  If you share great content you can become a resource for your local media professionals.  Most local media professionals are on Twitter.  You can often by-pass the press release and communicate directly with journalists through Twitter.