The Biggest Reason You Should Become a Content Creator (and Why I Started this Podcast)

Take it take take take enjoyment. Welcome to Social Business unplugged, helping you understand in plain English how to best leverage social media for your business. And now, here's the founder of windmill networking. Neal Schaffer greetings from wherever you are in the world. This is Neal Schaffer founder and president of windmill networking and welcome to the very first edition of social business unplugged my new podcast that I am really, really excited about. Because this is the first edition I guess I should talk about why podcast why Social Business unplug. So first of all, the term social business is something that I plan to cover in a blog post. In the very, very near future, you're gonna see windmill networking transform into a new site that prominently uses the word social business that I had planned for over a year. So I've actually seen the trend emerge. And just going beyond that the definition of the term, which I promise you I'll I'll be addressing shortly in my blog, unplugged. You know, the idea of a podcast, there are many, many different ways to speak to people to, for lack of a better word, engage with people, there is video, you have YouTube videos, there's text, you have blog posts, you have books, if you think of content marketing, and all the different ways of providing content, all the different formats, audio is a pretty strong format, considering that we all have smartphones now that we probably already have iTunes or similar type of software plugged into. And a lot of people have downtime in cars on trains. And some people prefer to listen to audio fed, many people come up to me after my speeches saying, hey, Neil, I'd love to get a copy of your book, do you have an audiobook version out. And actually, I just invested the money to create an audiobook version for maximizing LinkedIn for sales and social media marketing very recently. So I think audio is a great way to engage. I enjoy speaking as a speaker, it's only natural for me to speak to you in this way. And many of you don't have a chance to hear me speak, obviously do a lot of free webinars and windmill networking, which gives you the opportunity. And I hope you'll join those as well. Unplugged. So, you know, when I consult with companies, let's say I'm on Facebook, well, we want to create a Facebook page. Well, why what's the business objective? What are you trying to achieve? And my advice always comes down to, you can't just do the same thing on Facebook, you do everywhere else, you have to have some sort of exclusivity, some sort of uniqueness, a differentiator that says, I want to like your Facebook page, I want to come back to your Facebook page, because you're doing something special on there. That benefits me. And it's the same with the podcast. Now, I did this with my newsletter very recently. And I actually I have every month I talked about the what I call the state of the social media union just give you an overview of it. And what ended up being was a preview to a blog post that I was working on that I released to my newsletter subscribers before actually put it on the blog. And in doing so I'm hoping that in the future, those that subscribe to my newsletter that saw that the last time will be eagerly awaiting the next edition. And now I need to deliver on that with another sort of preview. So the idea about this podcast is the same, it's unplugged. I'm not trying to be nice to anybody, although I think I'm generally an okay person out there in social media. But I'm just trying to tell you about the world of social media, whether it's clients that I'm working with speeches that I've given blog posts that I'm working on, or just thoughts that don't appear on my blog or anywhere on social media, I think that the podcast is just a great avenue to share that with you. And therefore that term unplugged. Now, the term unplug also refers to MTV Unplugged acoustic concerts, I'm only going to say this one time. But that music that you heard in the intro, and that you're going to hear in the outro is actually from a band that I played. And when I lived in Japan, I'm actually drumming and that very, very first line where I say take take take enjoyment, that's my voice as well, a younger Neal Schaffer. So it's also sort of aligned with my brand. So why the podcast why the sharing of the content is really the topic that I wanted to talk about, I want you to have some concrete takeaways. Every time I give this podcast, I really want you to be waiting. And I do plan, quote, unquote, plan to be doing this on a weekly basis. And obviously, in social media, it's all about the consistency and staying with the plan. So thank you for joining me. You know why share? It's funny. I spoke at a large health insurance company in Florida. This was maybe two years ago, I spoke at their diversity conference. And they brought me in because they bring in a lot of small business owners and what have you wanted to learn more about LinkedIn? And since they were having their diversity conference, I said, Neil, you know, let me show you what's going on in the floor. Here. We have an exhibit hall, and they had a number of different diverse groups, basically various, you know, ethnicities, religions, that were all talking about the incredible diversity within this huge health insurance company. And I noticed that one of the groups there was a diversity group called Gen Y. I thought, well, that's strange. Gen Y doesn't strike me as being you know, a group that you would normally include in a diversity conference. But as it turns out, and I could go on lot of different ways talking about the conversation I had with the head of this Gen Y committee, he said basically, in companies, especially in old school companies, maybe, you know, financial insurance, certain industries, the people at the top who have all the power and all the decision making always have an older generation, but the people that are actually meeting the customer firsthand, are of a younger generation. Therefore, over time, the older generation or the people, you know, in the executive and management level, get out of touch out of tune with what their end customers really think about their products and services, what have you. And therefore, by enlisting this Gen Y group, they were trying to use them to actually better feed in the customers voice to the executive team, which is pretty fascinating perspective, I thought not about idea. Obviously, every company is going to be different. But it also lets the Gen Y and the younger demographic within the company feel empowered, which obviously is an excellent thing to do. Now, the conversation we had was really interesting. And the head of the committee shared a few things with me. And another thing you said is, you know, your generation and I'm a Gen X are not a baby boomer Gen X, or maybe I look younger, my photos, but I'm a firm Gen X or believe me, he said, you know, people in your generation believe that knowledge is power. And this is something maybe that you heard a lot, maybe in the 80s or 90s. Knowledge is power. And he says, you know, my generation, knowledge isn't power, I with the flick of my fingers on the internet, I can find I can Google I can search on YouTube, any information that I want. People that sort of hold on to their knowledge, have nothing to gain from it, because it's an open market for knowledge right now. And that really stuck with me. And in fact, it really comes down to why I blog I originally started my blog as a networking vehicle. But obviously, with the advent of social media marketing and inbound marketing, at the end of the day, your blog is not for self promotion, it's for you sharing resourceful content that's going to create the magnet that's going to bring people back to your blog back to your website to create a trustworthy relationship that's going to lead them to become a buyer of your product or service, whether it's a blog, a video, a podcast, if you're not providing that information, if you're not sharing it with them, your blog post has very, very little value. And it's something that I need to keep reminding myself that for all the consulting and coaching that I do with companies, you know, recently I look at my blog posts, and I'm thinking, wow, I really haven't been sharing a lot of those nuggets of knowledge. If you're reading my blog posts, you wouldn't even know that that's pretty much what I do for a living. At some point. I thought as I created my own blog strategy for the year, I realized that wow, you know, if I'm going to be publishing once a week, I need to make sure that every month I have a solid social media strategy blog post out there, which is why at the beginning of the year, I wrote a post, which was the preview of my newsletter on 10 questions to ask yourself to help audit your social media strategy in 2013, which has already been one of my best blog posts to date. So whether it's blogging or anything else, it's always about becoming your end customer, understanding what they're looking for and providing them the information. And I will say on an ending note, speaking very much from b2b perspective. You know, from a consumer perspective, I don't think it's much different and if you're a consumer facing brand, but sometimes for consumer facing brands, it's less about becoming more resourceful and more about becoming fun or engaging or sharing tidbits about your customers. And it's less about your own content and more about repurposing the content of your customers and your fans. But I will end on that note, I promised to try to keep these as close to eight minutes as possible, which is the maximum amount of time and an audio file that you can record using the iPhone microphone application and send us someone via email which explains why this will be an eight minute podcast in the future. But forgive me for my first one for going over a minute or two. I do hope you found this valuable. I do plan on doing this every week. So be on the lookout I hope you'll subscribe. We'll have an iTunes link up very very soon. And I welcome any feedback anything you want me to cover. Let me know Neil at windmill networking.com. That's ne Al. And that is it. Make it a great day and to your social business success. Bye bye, everybody. You've been listening to social business unplugged with Neal Schaffer, social media author, consultant, speaker and university professor. If you'd like any specific topics covered on future episodes, or if you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, please connect with me by email. Neal at windmill networking.com on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/neal Schaffer and on Twitter at Neal Schaffer. Please also visit windmill networking.com for daily Social Media for Business updates. Thanks for listening and make it a great day.