AdamCovati.com

Right now I am at Social Fresh listening to @DavidBThomas talk about integrating social media without adding headcount. He just mentioned that he had better uptake of his social media policy when he highlighted successes of the policy. For example, sales people listened when he told them how use of the policy had helped close deals.

I agree. But let’s not stop at getting people on board with a social media policy.

Often times you need to get people on board with social media in a much broader sense. Whether it’s to try out twitter, to take social media to the next level in marketing, or start paying for some useful social media tools.

The way you get people on board is to show them that you can and have been successful with the idea at hand. Just make a strong case, you know you can do it.

Successes don’t have to be big either, start with something anecdotal that people can get behind. Creating an emotional connection to success is a fantastic start.

So remember, don’t just ask people to do something, explain to them how you have already seen successes with something and how they can too.

Everyone wants your most valuable content. It’s a constant battle and it’s easy to understand why. If you have the info you have the traffic.

While “Content is king” has had its heyday that doesn’t mean it’s not still not true, though there is a strong argument for Curation is king, but that’s another blog post.

I’ve spent about an hour this evening answering questions on Quora.com (a site I invariably spell wrong every time). I’ve derived quite a bit of fun and insights from reading through questions. I also managed to give myself that atta-boy feeling for answering a few as well.

It made me remember Linkedin Questions, Ning forums, and even my blog – all places that at one point in time were a favorite content repository for me. Lately Twitter and Facebook have taken over as one-stop shops for this information.

But is that the best place for it? Scattered through the morass of facebook comments and twitter musings are nuggets of extremely useful information. But there’s a large problem with that – too much uncategorized data. There is no taxonomy or filing system for Facebook or Twitter.

The most valuable information on most social networks is virtually inaccessible.

Maybe that’s a bit extreme, it’s easy to find value every day. But go back and try to find the best of twitter from a week ago. Or the best facebook comments about love or astrobiology – good luck pal.

Does this mean that there is a huge opportunity for sites like Quora to jump in and own good information on the social web? I think so. Will facebook just try to ‘me too’ its way into that market? perhaps.

So what?

Well for right now, it’s just circular reasoning that proves you need to own your own content in a searchable place (read as: Blog).

However, the large amount of interest we see in organized question & answer tools means that people are still interested in working through a long term solution to making that information more collaboratively created and less corporately owned.

An important part of my brand

I was in LinkedIn updating some information and seeing what was going on with my network when I spotted this question “How can personal branding help entrepreneurs?” After reading through the responses, I decided to weigh in with my $0.02.

I have reproduced my response here, please feel free to weigh in in the comments here, or on the LinkedIn question itself:

I echo many of the sentiments expressed here. Having just launched my first entrepreneurial effort I have seen, first hand, some of these benefits.

However, I believe that anyone who interacts with an industry or business community already has a personal brand. There may be a question as to how you have maintained it and if you have groomed it.

Having a name and a brand has already been immensely helpful to my efforts. Not only has it provided exposure, but it has helped to grow my network and provide more credibility to my work.

So I would say that if you call yourself an entrepreneur, then you *already* have a brand, just maybe not a good one or the one you want. Get out there and introduce yourself to the world.

With respect to business brand. I firmly believe that it is something you need to think about out of the gate. You don’t need to invest serious time and/or money in it. However, you need to think about how you will be perceived by the market.

Understanding your target market can greatly influence the brand you attempt to build with your early efforts. It can take quite a bit of work to dig yourself out of perceived position if it’s not where you want to be.

Again, I can’t stress how helpful my personal network of business contacts has already been in working on ArgyleSocial. That network was created and maintained as part of my personal brand. It’s one of the best investments I’ve made over the past few years.

So what do you think? Where does brand fit into start ups and entrepreneurial efforts?

Last week marked my last day at Bronto, while this week saw a kick off of my efforts in Argyle Social. Starting a fresh new company is quite a feat. I’ve never done this before, so I’m learning as I go.

I have a strong desire to build a prototype app – something we can start to play with, something we can start to show off, something we can start to get feedback on. All of those are extremely important as we strive to build something brand new, both in terms physically and conceptually new.

However, I’ve had to push back on that urge and get my thoughts in order. No small task given my love for hacking together a prototype. For those of you who’ve followed me for a little while, you may recall I threw the first iteration of idek.net together in a weekend.

So what have I been doing? Well, a good few years of product management have taught me that you can’t build a good product without a design. Also that you can’t build a good design without a conceptual model. Of course, none of this is possible at all without some goals.

Right now we have no product, no customers, really nothing but some great ideas, a lot of motivation, and some great goals. This week was spent revising those goals to ensure that we know what we are heading for and that we know what we want to reach.

So, yes, I’ve gotten more work done than just a boondoggle in the land of goals. But I know that the time and effort that Eric and I have spent on thinking through the fundamental needs of clients will pay off in spades. Delaying the launch of the first iteration of our app by a few days is definitely worth the price of improved focus and a better understanding of what will make us and our clients more successful.

A new year provides a chance for a fresh prospective and a fresh start. Like your putting your full effort into your gym routine – I’ll be running twice a week, I swear. Or maybe setting your mind to learning a new language – not French, but Objective C right Mike?

However, this year is also bringing another type of fresh start for me. I’m going to be heading out from my current postion as Product Manager at Bronto. Bronto has been great to me, providing a place for me learn and grow, and to guide their product into position of a solid player in the email marketing field. But knowing that Bronto is in capable, caring hands I am looking elsewhere.

Starting in February I’ll be working on a new product offering with my friend and new business partner Eric Boggs. We’ll be combining our expertise, knowledge, and experience to launch a social media analytics application. Interested in learning more? So am I, so in the mean time you can check out Argyle Social to get a taste.

The next few months are bound to be exciting; full of lessons and surprises. I’m looking forward to it with a fresh prospective on things. Happy New Year everyone.