My Dad Has a Legacy.

Dad at Christmas 2005 with his new calendar at home

Today is May 18, 2012 and it has been exactly five years since the last time I visited my ailing dad, also a ‘Julian’, in his dim hospital bedroom. Today I’m working hard, positively affecting people, growing my business and learning as much as I can because that’s how he lived every day of his life. Today I am grateful for my Dad, Julian.

During that time in 2007 I was deciding what to do with the rest of my life, figure out a career path, and meanwhile the one person I had always leaned on for support was in fact on life support and could barely speak. I felt lost sometimes. There were days I really needed some great advice and I couldn’t ask him. There were days where I just wanted to share a tough days work and enjoy a late night dinner and conversation, and I couldn’t. Along the journey I needed to find myself a new set of mentors, conversationalists and friends just to make up for such a good friend in life.

What am I thankful for?

1) In the late-1980′s my Dad moved us to Puyallup, Wash. where I had the opportunity to attend schools that were conducive to students getting a quality education, sense of community, support for athletics and academics and a goal of getting kids into college; it was a smart move. I was lucky enough to squeak out a 3.0 average and earned a scholarship to compete in the Pac-10 for track and cross country at Washington State University where I earned my B.A. in Business and Marketing and got to experience so much life has to offer. Because we moved away from rural California I would be one of the only cousins in my extended family to attend and graduate. For this opportunity I am thankful.

2) “You can do ANYTHING you want if you put your mind to it,” were the words often uttered to me in confidence growing up. “Don’t let ANYONE tell you you’re not good enough!” My dad was boisterous, overly confident and had a heart a mile wide.

Today I can hear these words in the back of my mind and even in his voice that would often echo. While running races I would often be able to single out only his voice out of hundreds of screaming spectators…really! I always felt like he was right there with me in the toughest moments in my life, on the track, in the classroom, in real life. Thanks!

Dad and I getting ready to catch some big fish in Canada at 6am! Good times!

3) My Dad was an entrepreneur at heart. When I give talks on branding and connecting I often share the story of cleaning out his desk where I found over 2000 business cards, numerous albums of contacts and an actual rolodox (the old spindle kind) where he kept his contacts. Today we have CRM systems, email accounts and Facebook to assist but I learned the old school way of keeping in touch with people, meeting new and interesting folks and always seeing an opportunity to create and build a relationship. For this, I thank you Dad.

Enjoy your Dad while he’s here.

To all my friends, colleagues and family who may read this, please reach out and give your Dad a call, a quickie text or email with some new pics or good or bad news. Cherish the time you have now because someday it may not be the case. Thank you to all who are a great support to me, I am grateful.

*****

You can reach Julian via email or Twitter to comment or share your story.

Find me at @kreateconnect online or julian.michael (at) kpronetwork.com

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Enhance your social media communications/marketing strategy by using these four techniques for publishing new content

Hi there! Thanks for reading.

“It’s all about being ‘authentic’,” is a quote to live by in today’s marketing mix when referencing social media and networking platforms. One of the easiest slipups for personal brands (i.e. YOU) is to consistently (or mostly) post un-meaningful content that doesn’t sound original and has no connection to your company’s branding message, your business or personal philosophy, or simply, is boring.

Your best bet is to post to your social media sites with some regularity, even if it’s just a simple bit you copy-pasted from another platform, but with some consistency. For example, posting once every two weeks is pointless. Posting twice or three times weekly might be a better idea if you’re strapped for time and/or ideas. Obviously posting daily, if not a couple times daily to Facebook with clear visuals is the best course.

Best types of content to publish to your Facebook page (make sure it’s engaging and relevant of course!) Some examples include:
1)  Video clips: either from you or something you copy-pasted from YouTube, but is relevant to your company’s or your core values/principles. For example, if you really stand for ‘integrity’, search for this on Google or YouTube until you find something you like, then copy the ‘URL’ atop your internet browser and paste into Facebook (or other).

2)  Inspirational/Funny photos with a tagline and/or your opinion: People like to see VISUAL, however they also like to know what YOU think about this! Keep it simple. A good resource is to use ‘Pinterest’ www.Pinterest.com. Find a great image or clipping there, copy-paste to your computer, then post the image to Facebook with your opinion.

3)  Personal/Business photos with a short story: Visual, yes. Personal to you or your business, yes. Providing the story to go with it, priceless. Keep it simple but add key details that make it about YOUR brand…we the people love this!

4)  Links to great articles/other people’s content: Just make sure you add your opinion about the article as well. In Twitter, for example, they say people are 8x’s more likely to ‘Retweet’ (RT) or ‘Share’ content if there’s any opinion with it.

Just a little Monday crash course on using social media more effectively as a part of your communications and marketing strategy for your business.

Learn more in future articles coming soon!

TGIF BIGTIME for Social Media!

Anyone else excited for their Friday’s even moreso than a couple months ago?

It seems that having some sun, less clouds and more clients ready to rock and roll makes us SUPER excited for a very social and networking-rich Friday! Just recently I was in touch with over a dozen social media marketing industry friends who were all on Facebook or Twitter (or both!) sharing that they couldn’t wait to get out and have some fun tonight.

There’s ultimately no better feeling in our week than that of ACCOMPLISHMENT…and Friday’s somehow bring this out as we start to summarize what we’ve accomplished that week…that month…this year, etc!! So be sure to ROCK your Fridays and ‘get ‘er done’ for sure!

Julian Michael

Kreate Social Marketing

Social Media Strategy and Consulting Can be Pretty Darn Fun!

At least last time I checked I really enjoy what I do. However, in talking with many of my friends at their ‘jobs’ or ‘careers’ their first reaction is not to instantly share how much fun they’re having. Is this YOU? One amazing thing to keep pasted to the inside-front of your forehead: “I have ONE life to live…that’s it! Make the VERY BEST of it!!”

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For those of you still in the dark about Facebook business pages, or for those who are in the ‘know’ but not sure what to do, hopefully this little tidbit will help with your social media strategy.

1) Facebook wants people and businesses to utilize the power of ‘visual’ branding.

Instead of relying on lots of busy text, ‘action buttons’, corny messaging, etc, in your new Facebook timeline ‘cover’ design, think about how you can speak about your brand ‘visually’.

Collages are nice, but need to be tastefully done and very clean and consistent with your design. We recommend 1-3 powerful images with a logo embedded somewhere. Check out Coca-Cola’s or Starbucks for example of big brands doing it very different.

Use this area to really make a visual statement about your brand and business…this is prime real estate that takes up nearly half of the visual space above the fold.

2) It’s even more vital to share company history than ever!

Think about your company’s ‘milestones’ and document them religiously on your new timeline. One of the new features for brand pages is the ability to add ‘milestones’. You’ll find this button where you would make a post. Be sure to add at least a few milestones for credibility, if not more.

3) Be wary of putting any contact information or huge ‘like me’ arrows in your timeline ‘cover’ design.

Within Facebook’s user guidelines they are applying some very stringent policy to be applied for all timeline designs for brand pages. See below:

From ‘item III. Page Features’ from Facebook:
B. Cover (i.e. your Timeline cover)
All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines.
Covers may not include:
i. price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “download it on socialmusic.com”;
ii. contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your page’s “about” section;
iii. references to Facebook features or actions, such as “like” or “share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features; or
iv. calls to action, such as “get it now” or “tell your friends.”

Stay tuned – In our next article we’ll discuss how to improve visibility for your landing pages and some other Facebook business page goodies.

Kreate Social Marketing is based in the Seattle, Washington area and works with small and large brands to effectively communicate their core messages to their target audience. We offer services within marketing strategy, social media and brand reputation management, search engine optimization, website design and infrastructure and branding.

LinkedIn IS Your Virtual Business Resume

by Julian Michael for Kreate

LinkedIn profiles are a key touch point in social media for businesses searching about you. There are so many times I see a business professional’s social media profile, specifically their LinkedIn profile, that looks like they threw it together in five minutes just to ‘get something up’!

One of the best things you can do is at very least use the same wording and bulletpoints for your job history as you would on your resume, and in your ‘summary’ section at the top, make sure to spend some time here to create 2-3 paragraphs and an itemized bulletpoint list of your best qualities and specialties. Bottom line is that your online social media accounts need to look good!

Seattle Social Media Marketing Consulting | Kreate Media Agency

Spend an hour to attend one of Kreate’s free online social media workshop webinars, or attend of our live training events for more hands-on, interactive learning.

by Julian Michael for Kreate

“Julian, is social media and Facebook something that will really be important to driving new clients to my business,” one former colleague just asked me today. My answer was, “You can’t think about Facebook as an immediate sales-tier strategy, but instead as a great area to find people that are interested in what you have to say and will potentially share your information or take action on something you shared or posted. Then it’s more about the sales funnel you have created, if you actually have one.

Facebook valuable for businesses? Especially small business and solopreneurships!…oh yes!

See more of this story in next week’s edition of my weekly Facebook post beginning the first week of May continuing through the summer.