I love Campo restaurant in Reno. I’ve tried both their lunch and dinner menus; the food is excellent and the service is very good and at times brilliant. Campo’s owner, Mark Estee, is more than a chef in the restaurant – he is also an active and visible leader in his business.

I have not always loved Campo. My very first visit to Campo did not go well, and I blogged about the experience in my post entitled “The Cycle of Service Starts at Your Website.”

Since finding my blog about his restaurant through a mutual friend on Facebook, Mark has left three separate comments in response to both my original observations and the thoughts shared by some of my readers. In all honesty, I was very indifferent about returning to Campo; however, Mark’s comments on my blog motivated me to give his restaurant another chance, and I’m glad I did. Mark’s responses on my blog were exactly what they should have been.

Mark gets his social media and inbound marketing advice from Abbi Whitaker of Abbi PR. Mark is fortunate to get solid advice from someone that practices what she preaches – something all too rare in social media marketing and PR. And frankly, Abbi is fortunate to have a client like Mark because he is willing to blog at his website, post simple but effective videos to Youtube, and personally participate on Facebook. Together, I think Abbi and Mark are creating the foundation for what could become one of the most effective social businesses in Reno.

I would much rather spend my money with business people that I recognize and trust, and I like what Mark is doing through his employees with his business in Reno. The next time you are in Reno, I highly recommend you give Mark and his folks an opportunity to impress you with their continuously improving operation.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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According to Ira Chalef, courage is the ability to step forward through fear. One of the manifestations of courage is pushing beyond your comfort zone.

I require every student in my social business and personal branding courses at The University of Nevada to make a brief “about me” video to post on their blog at the end of the semester. Considering how little guidance I give them, some of my students have produced impressive videos. Kendra Wilson’s video busting the myths about snowskating is the best one I’ve seen so far.

But my favorite video was made by Caitlin Durkin. Before I even hit the “play” button, I knew it must have taken tremendous courage for Caitlin to make this video. She pushed WAY outside of her comfort zone to do this, and I admire and respect that kind of courage.

Sure, it’s just a video, and not a perfect one at that. But I think it demonstrates that Caitlin understands that if she wants to have courage in the “big” things in her life and career, she has to find courage in the small, seemingly insignificant details of routine assignments. Caitlin could have sat at her kitchen table in front of a laptop and recorded a video that was “good enough.” Instead, she took a one hour drive to the shores of Lake Tahoe and spent considerable time recording this video while strangers wandered by and stopped to watch what she was doing.

Caitlin flexed her courage muscle and gave herself permission to shoot for excellence. I am very, very proud of her. As you watch the video, please feel free to shout out loud “hell yes!”

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I started a four session training course in personal branding yesterday for the great folks at ProNet Reno. In this first session, I covered the principles of personal branding and inbound marketing. In my opinion, the proper operating principles are the most important but also the most overlooked aspect of relational marketing, which includes personal branding.

In the next three training sessions we will discuss platforms, practices, and then evaluate the progress participants make over the next 6 weeks. It should be a great training session!

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I’m talking social business today at Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship (NCET). It’s a variation of some of my most recent presentations on social business with one exception. In this one, I am going to recommend the book No Bullshit Social Media by Jason Falls and Erik Deckers. A few of my slides toward the end of the presentation reflect content from the book. I’ve not officially recommended it yet with a blog, that I’ll do that soon. Here is a quote I love:

Social media marketing is about building relationships, not receipts. The receipts will come, but only if you invest the time and attention it takes to build relationships with your customers. Think lifetime value, not sale value. (p. 180).

I strongly concur. The good news is that most of your competitors are sleeping through this time of tremendous opportunity to create community and word-of-mouth marketing around their brands. It’s still early, but the clock is ticking. It’s time for you to stop making excuses and get started – no bullshit.

I teach courses in personal branding and social business at the University of Nevada, Reno. When Trey Pennington died on Sunday, September 4, 2011, a lot of conversation began to develop around that event on a variety of social media platforms. As an educator, I find that conversation very interesting.

I did a Google search on Trey Pennington the day of his death to learn more about him. His personal Facebook page, with almost 5000 followers, was ranked high in the search so I went to that site to learn more. When I viewed the site Sunday afternoon, there were already dozens of comments left by Trey’s friends on his Facebook wall. I found the original comment where someone reported Trey’s death and was personally fascinated by the conversation that developed around that thread. I took screen shots of that conversation so I could share it with my class. Trey’s personal Facebook page has been shut down, so I made this video of the screen shots to share with you.

Watch the video to see the conversation. Pause the video if you need more time to read the text. After you watch the video, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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The August 2011 Leadership Development Carnival is up! Big thanks to Jason Seiden for hosting the carnival and as always to Dan McCarthy for organizing the whole thing. My contribution this month is entitled “The Most Important Social Business Metrics.” Fellow Reno-Sparks resident Guy Farmer has a great post entitled “Leaders’ Obsessive Focus On What Employees Do Wrong.”

Lots of good stuff this month, so don’t miss it!

Can you learn faster than your competitors? If you can, you can help define what it means to be competitive in your business or industry and force your competition to play catch-up. If not, then you will be forced to try to imitate what your competitors are doing and how they are doing it.

Give yourself permission to participate personally, learn continuously, and don’t quit. Do these things to gain social business advantage over your competitors that use time as an excuse to not participate or who tried a few social media tools but soon quit when they realized instant pudding was not on the menu.

Those that immerse themselves in an opportunity or challenge will always understand more than those that hire others to spoon feed them prescriptive solutions. The depth of your personal understanding of why social business works is the key to grabbing and sustaining competitive advantage because only understanding will allow you to create methods and capabilities unique to your business and employees. The knowledge of others is good, but if you use it as a crutch the best it will ever get you is competitive parity.

Please watch this short clip from my presentation on social business to the Reno-Tahoe American Marketing Association. After you watch the clip, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Is it better for your business to pursue a competitive strategy where you copy your competitors, or where you force your competitors to copy you? Your customers and employees are embracing the ability to participate in many-to-many conversations via easily accessible tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp!, blogs, and now Google +. This is a paradigm shift in the way people communicate, and that means it’s a strategic opportunity for businesses willing to fundamentally rethink how they treat and communicate with their customers and employees.

Three years ago, if you gave someone terrible service, they might pick-up the phone and call a friend or two to vent. The damage would probably be limited to a few people and might even be soon forgotten. Today, they go online and vent on Yelp! or Facebook. Those comments you earned are now archived and shareable. When the things your customers and employees say about you online move through trusted networks, they have the power to impact the growth of your business.

Never forget that being good will always be more important for your business than getting found. If your products and services are impressive, or if they suck, the word about your business can spread faster and farther today than three years ago. Many of the customers, employees, and suppliers that touch your business today are increasingly connected and active in social networks. Make it a strategic priority to give every one of them something good to say about you. Hint: if employee and customer satisfaction are not part of your formal business metrics, then it’s not a priority.

Leverage the social connections of your customers and employees and you will create a strategic opportunity for your business that will force your competitors to pursue competitive parity. Ignore or even worse disgust your social customers and employees and you might just be sowing the seeds of demise for your business.

Please take the time to watch this brief video from my recent presentation on social business to the Reno-Tahoe American Marketing Association. In it, I discuss a few more recommendations I have for businesses that see the opportunity provided by running a social business. After you watch the video, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I was recently in the market for a photographer to take my daughter’s senior pictures. She wants her pictures taken by someone her friends have not used so that she can get a unique look for herself. She did a Google search for photographers in Reno and picked five she thought had potential. I picked up the phone and called three of the five photographers we found via Google.

Not a single one of them returned my call.

The basic fundamentals of good business are more critical today than ever.  The sale for most businesses is still always closed in real time, either in person or over the phone. Social media is simply a tool that can expose you to more people to show how impressive you and your employees are.  But if you are not impressive, it will expose you to more people that will talk about it in their increasingly connected social networks. Whatever they say about you – good or bad – you earned it.

The Google search did not help me find a good photographer, so I went to Facebook and asked my friends to recommend one. I got 14 recommendations by the end of the day, many with links to social objects for me to examine. Johnstone Studios responded promptly to my e-mails and set up a face-to-face meeting where they spent an hour describing to my daughter and I how we could make the photo shoot special for her. I was sold.

This process of asking trusted friends in social networks for recommendations is something I call social business sourcing. I’m finding that sourcing is almost as fast and much more effective than searching.

Is your business spending as much time and effort on mastering social business sourcing as you are on getting found via search? You need to be good at both, but the real prize – word-of-mouth marketing in increasingly connected social networks – is earned when you beat your competition at the social sourcing game.

Please watch this short video clip where I describe my experience social sourcing a photographer. It was part of my presentation on social business to the Reno-Tahoe American Marketing Association. After you watch the video, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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