THIS IS IMPORTANT BOOK

I’m sitting in a McDonald’s in Dewitt, MI and I’m re-reading Gary Vaynerchuck’s book, The Thank You Economy.  This is probably one of the most important books I’ve read in recent years outside of the Bible.  Why?

Why would I make such a strong statement about a book written by a thirty-something wine merchant from New Jersey?

WHO SHOULD READ IT

He has good, necessary answers for anybody who relies on communicating a message.  Who would that cover?  Small business.  From the person with a local lawn service to the person who sells Great Lakes Red.  From independent local restaurants to the small auto repair shop.

Who else?

Local churches and ministries who rely on dealing with real live people to local city council and township board members who form the bedrock of our governmental system.

Do you fit into one of these categories?  And how do you deal with the people you serve?  Do you rely on phone calls, mail, websites, face-to-face contact?  What else?

SHARE MY NOTES

As I re-read Vaynerchuk’s book, I want to share my notes and point out his important points.

Open up Chapter 1 and read the few pages and you get his major point about the importance of having relationships with the people you serve.  He says relationships are central to life and a metric for the quality of your life is the depth and quality of your relationships.

EXAMPLE FROM CAPITAL HONDA

Think about what that means.  For me, it meant that the car dealership that sold me my Honda Civic almost three years ago bent over backwards to fill a car need that I had before my wife and I went on a short vacation this summer.  Capital Honda in Okemos, MI, could not figure why a set of CDs of sermons that I got from my church would not play on the car’s CD player.  They would play on other Honda models at the dealership.

Knowing that I was leaving on vacation the next day and that I really wanted to listen to the CDs, they picked up the discs from my home, researched the problem and burned the sermon recordings in a format that my Civic could handle.  They met me to see that I got them in time.

They went out of their way to help me.  Did that help my relationship with them?  You bet.

Vaynerchuck’s point in the first 15 or so paragraphs is that business is built on personal relationships.  And that doesn’t happen with one way communication.  The same goes for the other organizations I mentioned.

How do you maintain this kind of two-way communication with large numbers of people.

He points to social media which he describes as more than neat computer tools.  Social media, Vaynerchuk says, represents a big cultural shift in the way we interact with each other.  It’s a mindset.

That’s the very first section.

More notes to come as I re-read more.

Discussing social media with my business partner

Some important questions:

Do a survey of Lansing, East Lansing and the rest of mid-Michigan about the difference that social media has made in daily life and what would you find?

How has social media affected the Michigan Legislature? Members of the State House and State Senate?  Interest groups?  Voters?

Has it been a difference-maker for businesses in the state? Manufacturers?  Auto parts suppliers?  Insurance agents?  Retail stores?  Restaurants?  Lawyers?  Real estate agents?

Have local units of government been able to grab onto social media and get citizens involved and keep them informed about issues that affect people right where they live everyday?  City councils?  Mayors?  Township boards?  County government?

What about churches in the area? Do they use social media and how do they do it?  Have pastors embraced it, as well as members?

Why the questions?

I’ve been watching social media grow from just about nothing in this area when I started taking it seriously in late 2004.  When I met an old work crony after I retired, he asked me what I was doing.  When I told him that I was blogging and that I was helping others learn it, he laughed and suggested that I get serious about using my time.

That was more than six years ago and I’ve tried to stay with the changes in social media.  There were audio podcasts, video podcasts, Twitter, Ning, UStream, Tumblr, Skype, Facebook, along with many, many more.  The changes and the transitions just keep coming.

So what?

That’s the right question and it’s one that I want to take a look at in this blog in the weeks and months to come.

Is social media making a difference right here in the middle of the Great Lakes State, an area where communication and community-building has never been more important.

As I post about this, I invite your feedback.

A wine guy from New Jersey provides the template for how potential public relations nightmares can be turned into a positive through the use of social media, including blogs, and by being transparent and truthful.

Gary Vaynerchuk who has brought wine appreciation to the masses with his Wine Library TV podcast and who has grown a family wine store into a $60 million business faced a potential PR disaster when his community wine review site-Cork’d-was hacked by an adult site.

In this video, he describes his response.  It serves as a real life pattern for anybody dealing with touchy situations that could go sour with plenty of backwash and potential for damage.  Those who could benefit would be politicians, pastors, business people and anybody else in the public eye.

Notice how he jumped on the problem and got his wine community informed and how they mobilized to help him deal with the problem.

Are you on Twitter?

Thinking about getting on Twitter?

Looking for Twitter connections?

For an example of a business person who’s providing good information to a growing national network, check out my friend David Porter, a retired mortgage broker, who has been coaching mortgage brokers trying to build and rebuild their businesses in this challenged economy.

He’s a person of integrity and set the bar high for ethics when he had his mortgage practice here in mid-Michigan.

His Twitter address: http://twitter.com/MtgBrokerCoach

I wonder if there’s an online cemetery for dead blogs where their owners started and then discarded them.  I’ve seen it happen plenty with all sorts of people who wanted to cash in on the lure of blogging and the Internet.  Then something happened.

They forgot that a blog is just a tool.  It’s not magic and it won’t bring you fame and fortune just because you created an account with Word Press or Blogger and published a few posts.

It’s a tool like a hammer that you see in Home Depot which you can buy, take home and put in your tool box and take it out everyonce in a while to use.  Unless you have a plan and know how to implement it, the hammer it pretty worthless to you, other than to say you have one.

The same principle applies to blogs and other social media.  You have to know how to use it and you have to hold to certain values and be motivated to exercise them.

The first two are:  1) the desire to build and nurture relationships with others; 2) the desire to communicate to those you have a relationship with or who you want a relationship with.

Each situation has its own peculiarities and needs to be thought out before you start the blog.  Perhaps, you pastor a church.  You could be a candidate running for political office.  You might be an elected official or you could be a buisness owner.

Just remember:  A blog is just a tool.  Time spent learning how to use that tool can pay dividends and can keep your blog from dying a quick death and cluttering the online blog cemetery.

It was almost five years ago that I read a blog for the first time.  The blog mentioned in a story by Detroit Free Press religion reporter David Crumm grabbed my attention and stoked my interest in this new media and the growing role that it plays.

Since then my interest in blogs and the social media has only grown.  I’ve seen firsthand how mainstream media has changed and how more and more people are getting information from the new media, rather than newspapers or television.

I’ve started blogs.  I’ve helped others learn about and start blogs.  I’ve talked to state legislators about blogging and to business people and to pastors.   I’ve worked with private school teachers to start blogs and have spoken to university classes about blogging.

Along the way I’ve learned about the growing role of new social media and about how they’re used in building communities.

This blog is to share what I’ve learned and to provide a place where questions and experiences can be shared.