From Windmill Networking to Maximize Social Business

Neal Schaffer: 0:01

Welcome to another edition of social business unplugged, practical advice on how to leverage social media for your business. Now, the host of social business unplugged, author of the forthcoming book, maximize your social published by Wiley and founder of windmill networking, Neal Schaffer. Greetings everybody, and welcome to another edition of social business unplug. This is Neal Schaffer. Today, I am in my lovely hometown of Orange County, California. And if you were listening last week, you'll know that I just had surgery on my knee. So I'm to the point now where I can walk around while I'm talking. And I was able to start driving my car a few days ago. So things are getting better. And it's actually given me a lot of time to really hunker down on a few very, very important projects that I've been working on for several months. And I'm really excited. Well, this podcast will be at least my first public recording of it. But I'm really excited to announce that hopefully, by the time you hear this next podcast next week, you will be able to see my website on a new URL. Up until now I have been on Winmill networking.com. And I will be moving to maximize social business.com. And I know this is going to raise a lot of questions for those of you that know me know, my brand had been a reader of my blog. And I think it's an interesting evolution of events that I see more blogs, more people, more companies doing in the future. So let me talk about that. First of all, you know, it's interesting, I started Women on networking, when I wrote my first book, which is women networking, and understanding, leveraging and maximizing LinkedIn. And when I wrote my first book, I knew that just Neal Schaffer was not a brand, I wanted to create something that was bigger than myself that could hopefully attract people. So I created this concept, as I was writing the book called windmill networking. And it was basically how I was using LinkedIn, as an open networking platform to network, get to know more people, share information with people receive information from people, and use social media in a way that has become very, very common, especially on open social networking sites like Twitter, or Google Plus, back when I was writing that book in early 2009. That was a little bit rare. You know, it's been four and a half years now. And really, the concept of windmill networking came about when I was in the shower, in all honesty, and I write about this, I think in the preface of the book, of trying to find a visual concept, if we are windmills and we plug ourselves into this grid, that is social media, we can receive and share energy 24/7 worldwide, something that, you know, maybe something trivial to us could be a godsend to someone else. And that still holds true. And that's really, you know, my base for helping businesses promote social media comes down to that concept that when you are engaging in social media as a brand, it really comes down to those people. And how do you get those windmills virally blowing in your direction, in essence, and I wrote that book in early 2009. I started my social media strategy consultancy in early 2010. Over the years, my business has definitely changed. When I wrote that first book, it was really more of a networking vehicle, a personal branding tool to showcase to the world my knowledge. And when social media didn't become a hobby, but became my business. The windmill networking brand, although it appealed to a lot of people in the Netherlands, for obvious reasons, and others, and there's still a lot of people like it. And I'm not saying I don't like the brand. You know, the branding from a business perspective was never any good. What is windmill networking? Is this a cult or what have you. And I knew that I knew that for a while. So you know, I should probably go into GoDaddy and see when I registered, but I realized I needed a new URL. It was not just from the branding that now I'm focusing on business, but also that my own personal blog has become a collaborative blog. I started just blogging by myself. And like many other bloggers, I have invited guest bloggers on my blog. And in fact, with the advent of content marketing and Google authorship, and what have you, sort of guest blogging has become mainstream. Blogs want to invite guests to blog so that they have access to content and people who want to move their way up in the chain, or in the blogosphere echo system want to be seen on blogs that offer bigger platforms that they have. But I realized, as I was doing this, and I've written about this, it was almost like a one night stand, people would come contribute a blog post, and that was it. It offered temporary value to my readers, but it didn't really offer any lasting value. And it was really in I believe this is the fall of 2011. When I brought on my first what I would call real women networking contributor, Amy Stefan out there in the Midwest United States, who specialized in Social Media for Nonprofits. So what I did was, first of all, I said, Look, I want you to specialize in a category of content, which has a natural ROI for you. If you blog about Social Media for Nonprofits, because you do that for a business. You're gonna see the ROI of continuing the blogging My other thing that I wanted was a promise that they would stick on, you know, once a month unique content for long term. And I would do my best to provide them the ROI, which is giving them a bigger platform to blog on. And as more bloggers signed on, the platform just became obviously bigger and bigger over time, to the point where I obviously now have many more blog posts from contributors than myself. So it's really taken on a whole new meaning. And I realized that because of that, I needed to create a new website that really strips the brand name from my personal brand, it wasn't fair to the other contributors, that yes, they do get value from the platform, but the platform still is tied directly to my personal brand. So maximize social business is really it's the same thing wrapped up differently in a different user interface. But it's completely taking my personal brand, any potential ego that I have, out of the play, insane, subscribe to us read our content for the content. And I think it showcases more of the actual authors of each content, because if you go to share it on social media, it's not gonna say via at Neal Schaffer, it's gonna say via at M social business, which is the Twitter handle for maximize social business, which you should all be following obviously. Now, the term maximize social business and sort of the trending topic of social business, it's a completely other story. And if you listen to some of my earlier podcast, I talked about my own definition of social business, but it's actually aligned in that, you know, if you have a company blog, you want to bring out the voices of those in your company, I want to have an advisor that is blogging on my site for any industry or any discipline that a potential company might have a problem in. And that's really the core concept, which is driven me to bring on more than 20 bloggers, and I'm still looking for more if you're interested in different industries, different subject matter experts, and what have you. But it's really taking this step of eliminating my own personal brand from the site, I now become the the founder and editor in chief. So if you go to the About page, yes, you'll you'll see me grinning there, because I'm very proud of the accomplishment. But that's it. And it's actually well, it may not sound like it, I thought it was a pretty brave thing to do. But I believe that there's bigger benefits and doing that for everybody. Because now I'm aligned with other bloggers on a site that is seen as having high quality content versus a personal blogging site. I think that's a big difference in the business world. And I guess we'll find out over time, but, you know, the advice I want to give you is, as you as a professional social media consultant, as a social media marketer, or working for a brand, or a small business owner, or what have you, you're gonna get to the point where you're going to accept the guest blogger, because you're gonna get pinged by guest bloggers who see the SEO value of blogging for you, and you're gonna have to ask yourself that question, Should I accept them? Does it really offer long term value? Or are you going to follow the model which I've rolled out, which is this multiple contributor model, which by the way, when you start looking at Google authorship, it's actually very attractive for that reason, whereas a one off guest blog, with dubious links may not be so good for Google authorship, as well as SEO your site. But I'm going out of my bounds here, because I have an SEO expert who can talk more on that. But that's really the key thing is, as you get more people contributing, then to the point where your contributors make up more than 50% of your content. Do you roll that out into its own separate entity? It's almost like when you create a LinkedIn group, do you create it with your own company name? Or do you create it on a name based on a topic which is the exact same thing here? It's not a windmill networking LinkedIn group, it says maximize social business LinkedIn group now, it's not about my personal brand. It's about people that are interested in social media for business and everything social media related for business, including social business. But I digress. So I hope that's some good food for thought maybe some of you aren't even there. Maybe you haven't even started blogging. Maybe you haven't even accepted your first guest posts. Maybe you just accepted your guest posts. But I believe with Google authorship and the trends I see out there for content marketing, and Gary Vaynerchuk, now tripling down on content, although there's some debate about that, if you read what Scott Mani said, but it leads to a very, very interesting question as to At what point do you separate your personal or company brand, from that contributing content that you have curated and fostered as well as the content you have created? So I'm gonna leave you with those final words for this week's podcast? I do hope you will check out maximize social business, make sure you update your RSS feed, you re subscribe to the newsletter and what have you. And I look forward to seeing you next time for another episode of social business unplugged. Please keep those requests coming in. And every recommendation you can make an iTunes is sincerely appreciated. That's it for this week. Have a great one, everybody. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to another edition of social business unplugged. We appreciate your subscribing to our podcast. Please help us spread the word by sharing it on social media or adding your rating and comments in iTunes. If you would like to appear on the podcast or have content that you would like covered, please contact Neal Schaffer. You You're at windmill networking.com Also please subscribe to the windmill networking blog on social media strategy at windmill networking.com. Thanks again and make it a great day.