Mea Culpa & Sociological Side of Social Media

My sincerest apologies for letting this blog lay shuttered and gathering dust for such a long time.  As many business owners know (especially service providers), the first order of operations is to serve your clients. Unfortunately, I have been extremely busy at C3. Creating Connections Consulting, LLC assisting some amazing businesses in tightening up their social media marketing strategy; creating new training materials for our workshop series,  staying on top of the latest in the digital industry; and doing the occasional speaking gig. Throw in life and I had very little time for writing.

I have to be honest, this truly pained me. I am a writer at a heart and have been at the practice since I could hold one of those large yellow pencils and put words to lined paper as a kid. I have been published in several magazines and news stories and am a co-author of a social media book.  Once upon a time I was writing for four different blogs and working on a suspense novel.

I’m carving out time into my schedule to return to this practice that I have loved so much. I hope to continue to share my personal perspective on all things digital here in this space. If you are looking for more hard-hitting posts on social media best practices, you can find them on my C3 Blog here.  This space is for me to examine digital through my eyes and to view the world through the sociological side of social media that we are all living through.

I’m so glad to be back!

Michelle’s World in 2012 shot via Galaxy Nexus II & Instagram

Click on the link for the video.

Michelle’s World in 2012 shot Galaxy Nexus II & Instagram.

Cincinnati Social Media: LinkedIn LabTraining

Cincinnati Social Media Workshop Series with Michelle Beckham

Announcing: LinkedIn Basics Lab Class on Wednesday, 4/18/12  from 1:00-4:00 p.m. at the Warren County Career Center in Lebanon, Ohio. LinkedIn is a professional networking site with over 140 million members around the world.

This lab workshop is for those who are new to LinkedIn or who have not been active with the platform. During the workshop participants will learn:

`Overview of LinkedIn & Role in Social Networking
`How to Set Up an Account Correctly
`Personal Branding Exercise
`How to Create a Winning Summary Statement
`How to Optimize Your Profile for Search Engines
`How to Find Contacts
`The Correct way to Send Introduction
`The Importance of the Status Update
`How to Find Key Groups
`How to Actively Participate in Groups
`How to Get Recommendations and Why This is Important
`How to Search Key Company Info for Contacts, Corporate Data, Hiring Managers,  Jobs
`How to Promote yourself and your business
Understanding Premium Accounts and knowing when to use them

Each participant receives a Training Guide with Key Steps

To register, visit http://www.mywccc.org/SocialMediaWorkshops.aspx
or call the WCCC at  513-932-8145

The Warren County Career Center is located at:
3525 North State Route 48 Lebanon, Ohio 45036

About Program Facilitator Michelle Beckham-Corbin:

Michelle Beckham-Corbin, President & Chief Digital Marketing Strategist of C3: Creating Connections Consulting, LLC has over 20 years experience in the Corporate, Non-profit and Small Business sectors.  Michelle is a former Sales & Marketing Manager for Procter & Gamble and holds an MBA from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Michelle specializes in Social Media Marketing Strategy and Brand Development.  She is a Board Trustee for the non-profit group Authentic Leadership Cincinnati and is the Social Media for Business Curriculum Creator and Instructor at the Warren County Career Center, a University System of Ohio Provider. She is a member of the Steering Committee for the digital networking group, New Media Cincinnati and is an active member of the Cincinnati Social Media (CincySM) Group. Michelle is a frequent speaker, lecturer and trainer.  Additionally, she is a published writer, co-author of Social Media book, Age of Conversation 3 (Channel V Books, New York, 2010), frequent commentator and Blogger. She brings great energy and passion as well as a keen ability to deeply connect with people in order to create business building social media opportunities for her clients. (http://creatingconnectionsconsulting.com/)

When Facebook Page Admins Pull the Plug…

Beware of brewing Facebook storms....

Facebook Pages, known as Fan Pages have become an integral part of many companies’ strategic marketing plans.  What happens when the person or firm hired to create and run the page wants to dissociate themselves from the account? What if the page creator/administrator has deeper and darker motivations for the future or lack thereof for the page?  Facebook recently changed its policy on admin capabilities, assigning page deletion power to all administrators associated with the page instead of just the page creator admin.  This can have serious consequences for a business. Read more about this here.

Let’s take a look at the example of a popular Facebook Fan Page that disappeared over night after the Page Creator pulled the plug on this thriving site. The Facebook page was the Creoles (French Creoles with Ties to Louisiana) Fan Page.  The page had nearly 11,000 fans from around the world as of June, 2010 after being in existence for only 13 months. The Creoles page was run by two college students from different parts of Texas who turned a passion for Creole culture and family history into a highly successful page with an actively engaged fan base that made the page a destination point for information, discussion and genealogical inquiries.

Creoles (French Creoles With Ties To Louisiana)

The Creole Fan Page had spawned a community of people united around Creole history and culture.  The page helped to launch several books written by members, a Blog Talk Radio show, and helped to highlight Creole musicians and issues around the country.  It was a page that people checked regularly, rather than through the updates in the scrolling Facebook News Feed.  In an instant, the 11,000 fans, the hordes of albums cataloging founding French families in Louisiana, the scholarly discussions/debates, links and posts were all gone.

Page Deletion Explanation via Facebook Page Wall

Today the group is trying to rebuild, but as of this writing  the Creoles Page has only been able to regain 460+ fans, a mere shadow of its former self.

If your company, brand or group has built up a huge and valuable presence on Facebook, what are you doing to ensure that this doesn’t happen to you?

And the Anderson Area Business of the Year Winner is…..

C3: Creating Connections Consulting is Finalist For AACC Business of the Year Award

Thanks for all the well wishes via Twitter, phone calls, blog posts and Facebook comments on C3: Creating Connections Consulting becoming a Finalist for the Anderson Area Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Award. Although C3 was not the ultimate winner, I was very proud to have my new company represented as a Finalist among some very long time businesses in Anderson Township. More importantly, I am happy to shed some light on Social Media as an Industry and as a viable business to business partner for local businesses in Anderson Township.

And the winner is……..T.P. White & Sons Funeral Home. T.P. White has been in business since 1870 (long before I was born!) and has been serving and contributing to the Anderson Community in many ways, both through their financial support and giving of their time to various organizations and events over the years. Congratulations!

Key-note speaker: Brad Johansen, Channel 12 Sports Director

Michelle accepting the Finalist Award for C3: Creating Connections Consulting

For those of you preferring the audio-visual blog post. See below.

PURE ENERGY

I’M BACK!

Yes, you heard that right.  For some odd inter-galactic reason, I have been off my stride which is horribly uncharacteristic of me.  Reflection is showing me that this must have been the universe trying to put some stability back into the Tsunami that swallowed up my world recently.

2010 started off with a bang with a lot of new business, new opportunities and new people entering my virtual and real lives.  February and March flew by so fast that the weeks were sheer memories.  In fact, my hair salon called one day to remind me of an appointment and I was flabbergasted, thinking they had it wrong.  I truly felt I had just been there a week or so ago for a haircut.  Well folks, calendars don’t lie- it had been six freaking weeks!!  This was all great stuff from a business perspective and the bottom line, especially for a business less than a year old; but not so good from a personal perspective.

Attribution: Image: 'Glass 1' http://www.flickr.com/photos/85473033@N00/378984660

As they say, you can only juggle so many balls effectively until something drops and shatters into a myriad of sharp splinters on the floor.  I am not Wonder Woman, Wonder Mom or Wonder Social Media Strategist/Business Coach.  I have come to the realization that I need to do one of two things to bring balance back to my universe:

1. Scale back operations

2. Hire some additional employees and/or take on a partner

I have hit the proverbial growth point where key decisions have to be made.  If I have been fully transparent or if you happen to know me from another life, then you can guess which option I will choose.  Till then, happy trails and beware of the tsunamis that may strike your life in the night! Call me, text me, tweet me and I’ll help you through the rain…….

C3: Creating Connections Consulting Named Finalist by Anderson Chamber

C3 Named Finalist for Business of the Year by the Anderson Area Chamber of Commerce.

At C3 we focus on Social Influence Marketing and Social Media Marketing Strategy for Business and Personal Branding and Social Media Strategy in Job Search for Individuals.

Services include Consulting, Coaching, Training, SIM/SMM Project Management and Public Speaking on Social Media topics.

Want to know more?

Founder’s Bio

Speaking Engagements

Testimonials

Twitter

C3 Badge

Passionate About Writing

Happy

to be back on topic with Social Media in my World-the subject of this Blog. I have been passionate about writing since I could hold a pencil and have been consistently doing it ever since!  I was recently selected to be an Examiner.Com writer, which I am totally thrilled about, but there is clearly a difference in writing style for the Examiner.  It goes something like this:

Poetry:Novel :: Personal Blog Post:Examiner Article

I love the free flowing ability with poetry to capture my thoughts in quick phrase bytes of words which is a sharp contrast with my novel.  The novel does involve bursts of creativity and stream of consciousness because it is fiction at its core, but still I must conduct research so that the details are believable.  And so it is with posts I write for the Examiner.  They feel more like a research project for school vs. writing for my two personal blogs Michelle Beckham’s Blog and Kaleidoscope Discoveries.   Blog writing allows me to tackle similar subjects that are found in Examiner articles, but I can approach them from my personal thoughts and experiences and not from purely 3^rd person journalistic research practices.  There is certainly a need for both types of writing and I am lucky to have gigs straddling both worlds.

Here are a couple of lines from each page I reside on:

Kaleidoscope Discoveries

Destroyed

Raging storms
Like falling tides
Have a way of reappearing
Anger waxes and wanes
Like the moonlight in your eyes
And I am left with the distinct
Feeling that all was a dream…..

Dreamscape the Novel

John would take out a pocket knife hidden in his sock drawer and make quick, straight lines into his arm drawing blood.  Sometimes if the intense feelings of emotional pain hit him outside of the privacy of his room, he would use the ragged edge of a cut calling card to carve those beloved lines into his skin.  Each feeling of physical pain worked its way into erasing the emotional pain that was tearing him apart; leaving behind fading pink scars of his secret actions…..

Michelle Beckham’s Blog: Building Trust in a Virtual World

People live their lives today pressed between the flowing pages of Twitter and the back and forth banter of blogs. They connect with professionals via their profiles on LinkedIn and run them through Google search as a matter of routine background check.  Presented with rich content, they sift through the information trying to determine the desired level of connection……

Cincinnati Examiner: Cincinnati Tweeters attempt to earn a foursquare Swarm badge

Cincinnati Tweeters will attempt to earn a foursquare Swarm badge by gathering for a Friday Happy Hour Tweet-up event to celebrate foursquare Day on April 16th.  The date has significance to the event as April is the 4th month and 4X4 and 4 squared = 16. Seem a little geekish? Welcome to the wonderful world of shiny digital media toys!  Earning the group badge is a great way to bring people together for fun and networking.

See ya next time…..

Cruising at 100 mph on the Social Media Highway

Lion courtesy of: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3503/3883174121_a403bc427e.jpg

So the story about March goes something like this: “When March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb.”  Discovered it is actually an old English proverb.  I think it was created by a futurist whose crystal ball was focused on the life of Michelle Beckham in March of 2010. Hunh??!!!  Just feeling caught up in a wonderfully exciting storm with gale force winds that are whipping up incredible opportunities for C3.  It’s all about relationship management and developing the right conversations that lead to opportunities and change.  So let’s keep the coffee brewing and the search light on as we continue to navigate through the perfect storm, because when the lamb appears, the quiet begins….

Take a look at what has been going on so far in March:

One:

New Partnership with Act Three owned by Julie Shifman: C3 will present a seminar “Learn to Network On-line and Off” with Julie  and will provide hands-on computer lab classes on key social media topics for Act Three clients beginning in April, 2010.

Act Three & C3 Back To Work Seminar on Networking 4/1/10

Two:

“Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy”: anthology from 170 leading marketing thinkers from around the world. I wrote a chapter that is included in the book which will be released internationally in April of 2010. Here is a list of the authors who contributed:  LIST More book details to come!

Age of Conversation 3: It's Time to Get Busy"

Three:

Joined the Examiner.Com team and am the new Social Media Examiner for Cincinnati, Ohio.  Look for some interesting content on Social Media topics that affect all readers and not just those from Porkopolis!  Here is my first Examiner POST.

Examiner Logo courtesy of Examiner.com

Four:

Slowly but surely, getting over my reluctance to do video as I see the importance of using this type of media. Look for more YouTube videos with an emphasis on learning and sharing as well as some Interview-type pieces in which local Social Media glitterati are highlighted and businesses put under the spotlight.  Am also in preliminary talks to do some Blog Talk Radio shows.

Five:

Third Tribe– loving this Chris Brogan & company membership community, but am missing out on taking advantage of it fully due to all of the other things exploding (in a good way!) around me.  I need a vacation just to catch up on the missed audio casts…… Shout out to my new Third Tribe friend Lori Randall

Lori Randall: Fellow Third Triber- photo courtesy Lori Randall Twitter Account

Six:

First C3 Keynote Speech:  Annual Conference for the Ohio Court Reporter’s Association (OCRA) on “Harnessing the Power of Social Media: Welcome to the R-Evolution!!”

Annual OCRA Conference

Michelle Beckham's Key Note Speech on Social Media at OCRA Conference

Facebook-Is it Ever Truly Private??

Shhhhhhh

The WNKU interview on Facebook Privacy Issues aired this morning, so if you were eating your

Wheaties, blinked and missed it, then here it is:

Michelle on Facebook Privacy