You Are a Champion!

Last week, I attended Ragan's Social Media Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference was packed with big speakers from companies like NASA, Southwest Airlines, and eBay. It's hard to learn when you're the one always doing the talking, so attending conferences like this is a great way to hear ideas from others and learn from their experiences. We can then take those ideas and provide them to our valuable clients, like you.

I'm beginning to hear over and over from big companies that they didn't really have a social media strategy when they first started. Someone in the company, a "champion" (as I've referred to them in my seminars), simply started tweeting, posting or blogging. This champion is someone who saw true potential in this new "social media thing" and just started doing it. They didn't have a plan, they just started.

And people noticed.

For NASA, it was the astronaut who started tweeting about his experiences while in space. It was interesting. It was fun. It was social. The important thing is that he did it, and kept doing it. He was a champion.

You need to be a champion for your company. Sure, it's hard work. But isn't everything that is worth doing hard? Building a business is hard. Do we quit and give up the first time we don't have great success? Heck no! We push on and try something else. For NASA, that meant starting a FourSquare check-in service (complete with the first check-in from space) and local tweetups at shuttle launches. Thousands of people took notice and got involved.

All because of one astronaut.

It's time that you become a social media champion or inspired someone in your company to do that same. We all have interesting stories to share. We do business with people, not companies. Let your personality shine. At CWS, we have thousands of customers all over the world and many times they only speak with us over the phone or via email. It's very impersonal and anti-social media.

In this issue, we've included a new segment that we're calling "Meet CWS". It will be a chance to share some personal information about those of us working behind the scenes at CWS. I hope you enjoy meeting the people that make this company great. If you do, please join us on our Facebook Page and continue the discussion. Ask us questions or pick our brains. We're here to help you!