Status Social Media's Blog

What Social Media Tools Do You Use?

Clayton Balch — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:30:44 +0000

It seems there are thousands of social media resources out there today. It’s good to keep up on what’s new, but it’s more important to become an “expert” on just a few.

Here are some of the tools I use:

Google Analytics — Tracks web visits, bounce rate, demographics, along with a host of additional statistics.

TweetDeck — Allows you to manage multiple accounts into one consolidated application. You can view tweets, mentions, searches, and much more without moving to different screens.

Twitter Search — Does the same job as the regular search on Twitter, except the advanced search allows you to filter the results.

Lithium Scout Labs — Analytical tool used for finding customer sentiment, keywords, company buzz, and much more.

This list covers search, monitoring, listening, and analytics which are the basics of any quality social media campaign. While these are all great resources, there are still many more. What are some tools you use for social media? What am I missing?

Think BIGGER

Clayton Balch — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:56:03 +0000

You Are Thinking Too Small

What kind of job do you want? What kind of career interests you? How do you plan to pay your bills? What vision do you have for you life?

Most people would give these type of answers: “I want a career I enjoy” “I’d like to be financially stable” “I need more hours.” What’s stopping you from doing something big?

How They Did It

What would have happened if Mark Zuckeberg thought small? He was faced with a decision, in the early stages of Facebook’s development, whether to go back to Harvard or continue to grow his company. With a little help from Sean Parker, he came to the realization that moving forward with Facebook was the best thing to do. With Facebook now being valued at around 33 billion dollars, what the hell would have happened if he thought small?

What if Bill Gates thought small? He infamously took royalties on the operating system he developed back in the 70′s. What if he sold that system for a one time fee? Where would Gates be today if he did this?

It Starts With You

You are the one making the decisions for your life. Why don’t you do something big? But before you do anything, change your thinking. If you think small, you may become small. If you think big, you may become big. There are no guarantees, but there is no harm in trying.

Your Blog is Too Long

Clayton Balch — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 23:02:25 +0000

Keep It Simple Stupid

We have all seen an article or blog post that has a catchy title and starts out with an attention getting first paragraph. This leads to you surprisingly looking forward to reading the rest of the words on the page. But after 2 minutes of reading you look over at the scroll bar, on the right hand side of the screen, and realize (insert scary movie sound here) THIS THING IS LONG! And so we skip ahead or stop reading completely.

Communication is instant now. We live in a world where we need short quick information so much that our texts and tweets have character limits. I’m not taking 10 minutes to read a blog post, and I don’t know who would. If you can’t get your point across in less that 500 words, don’t bother. No one is reading.

What’s Inside Your Brain?

Clayton Balch — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:53:38 +0000

How You Used to Be

I teach a lot of golf. I’m currently in line to get my Class A PGA certification in March, this is in addition to starting a marketing company.

Sometimes, I have doubts about whether I will be able to accomplish everything I am striving to do in life. I remember never having self-doubts when I was a kid. So it confused me as to why I have doubts now. What changed? I was on top of the world growing up. Probably the happiest most energetic, perhaps too much, kid you would meet. I am by no means sad or depressed now, but why do I have doubts?

Start Observing

On Tuesday, I was teaching a junior clinic for The First Tee. I made it a point to observe each kid very carefully. I watched how they interacted with each other and by themselves. What were they thinking in certain situations? If they hit a bad shot, did they get down on themselves? Embarrased?

What I realized was that they just wanted to play. They just wanted to have fun. If they hit a bad shot, it was on to the next one. No other kids cared what the other was doing or how bad they were messing up.

Inside My Brain

I came to the conclusion that the reason why most people have self-doubts is because of outside perception. As a kid, nobody was saying you couldn’t do something. Nobody was questioning your ideas, your goals. I have my ideas and goals questioned all the time. Why should I let that effect me? I didn’t have self-doubts when I was younger, why should I now?

Favorite Videos of the Week — Animal Edition

Clayton Balch — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:32:17 +0000

Number 1 –

Number 2 –

Number 3 –

Take Our Poll

This is Social Media. Are You?

Clayton Balch — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:58:53 +0000

This is How You Connect

Connecting with people on social networking sites is the point of social networking (obvious, I know). These connections create value for you as a person and/or for your brand. The people who understand this value not only garner a large following, but positively affect other people’s lives. Take for example, Chris Brogan, notice how he is interacting with people? He abides by the 12 – 1 rule, which allows him to create relationships with other people and at the same time, easily promote his services through these connections. If he was only talking about himself, how many connections would he make? How many people would tune him out?

This is NOT How You Connect

You would be surprised by how many people do not know how to use social networking sites. The name does have “social” and “networking” in it, so the tools should be obvious, right? Well using social networking sites like this is not the right way. They may have a large following, but there isn’t anything “social” going on here. Which begs the question, how much business do they attract from their twitter page? I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Find the Balance

You know what social networking looks like, and you know what it doesn’t. Find the right balance for yourself. But remember, the more interactions the better. As you can see, my Twitter page reflects that I am social media, are you?

I’m a Conversationalist.

Clayton Balch — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:51:52 +0000

Or so I pretend to be.

I was having dinner with my sister yesterday and we started having a really interesting, intense conversation about our goals, dreams, and future success. She was telling me things about her that I have never known before. Well, not that I didn’t know how ambitious she is or how she is going to make herself successful, but the way she was describing it was almost identical to how I describe the passions in my life. It kind of freaked me out because I have never had a conversation like this with my sister. I’m so used to us getting impatient with each other and fighting after spending more than a couple hours together.

It was a conversation that I was really into, and I LOVE conversations like that. It’s just funny that it was with my sister. Someone who I talk to every week and know (or so I thought) very well. I find it easy to connect like that with some one I am first meeting, but who knew you can still connect with close family members?

When was the last time you had a meaningful conversation with a relative?

What’s On Your Radar?

Clayton Balch — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:31:29 +0000

How do you handle the things you have to take care of in life? Are you prioritizing the projects currently on your desk? What happens if you don’t immediately respond to the “targets” closest to you, and don’t keep an eye on the “targets” further out?

We all have different goals in life, but if you are trying to succeed at anything, you have to work hard towards those immediate goals. If you don’t, that lack of focus will hurt you on your path to success. At the same time, if you are constantly working towards completing immediate goals and pay no attention to long term goals, that lack of focus will ultimately lead to your demise.

If a fighter pilot had that same mentality, how long would that person stay alive? A fighter pilot is always focused on taking out those immediate “targets”, and at the same time, keeping an eye on the “targets” further out. If he/she didn’t their career wouldn’t last very long.

This is the approach I take to my life.

Food Review — Black Shack Burger

Clayton Balch — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:45:16 +0000

I was in NYC yesterday, meeting with my good friend Lisa Weiss, http://www.elitetraveler.com/business/staff.html. Afterwards, I stopped by a burger place, Black Shack Burger http://blackshackburger.com/, located on Lexington between 38th and 39th.

It gave me an In N’ Out Burger vibe at first, because of their simple menu, but the quality of food was completely different. I only had the Black Shack burger (because I was having dinner shortly after), which is a hamburger with: lettuce, tomato, and pickles. The (relatively) in-expensive price (5 dollars, we are in NYC) coupled with the great tasting food, was all you can ask for.

Oh and did I mention they sell over 10 different kinds of beer there?

I was sold.

Kaaraaazy ultimate frisbee catch!

Clayton Balch — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 16:33:45 +0000

This video is about week old, but I had to post it. This catch almost looks fake because it is that good. I showed you one of the best sports celebrations the other day, so I have to ask: Is this the best catch of all time? Take a look……

I’ll give it a 9/10, just because nobody watches Ultimate Frisbee.