Cash Tree by GM tree courtesy iStock

You may not know what it is but you want some. Even the social currency Crunchup from Techcrunch couldn’t pin down the term long enough to define it. So the next time everyone starts talking in circles about social currency here’s one question to clamp down the fluff: “Are you talking soft or hard?”

"Soft social currency is how reliable your brand is, essentially your street cred." Click to tweet.

This means how much you share, how much you listen, how valuable you are in your online community. When businesses develop this kind of social currency, they generate influence which is what Facebook and Twitter are all about. Influence can topple regimes or drive a cash mob.  

Hard social currency is actual tokens of exchange with discrete values, but only within certain online communities. Examples are Groupon discounts, coins on game apps, and Eaves on Empire Avenue.  There is often an identifiable conversion rate between U.S. currency and hard social currency.

A great example of a soft social currency generator was the 1-2 punch of Nike and Apple with their Nike+ app and device. A pod inserted into shoes transmitted pace and distance info to an iPod, which posted stats into iTunes. Communities formed around goals, challenges and bragging rights. Even better, the updated versions of Nike+ doesn’t require special shoes, just a free app with GPS for your iPod or iPhone that runners are likely to take along anyway to listen to tunes on the run.

Did they give away the store? Well, yes in a way, but Nike and Apple don’t sell physical objects as much as they sell brands. As a brand booster, this was a magnificent idea. Now here is a three-step approach to creating your own social currency generator.

1.  Dig Deep

Dig deep into your value proposition. What do you want people to say about you? In one sentence, what is it that makes your brand quirky and memorable? This will be the basis of your next online influence campaign. You goal is to create a community of people that appreciate what you can do for them.

Visitors to your website should clearly see on your homepage or landing page why they should do business with you and the benefit of it. 

A few great examples of this are Mailchimp, Marie Forleo's Rich Happy & Hot B-School and Raw Food Witch:

Mailchimp

There are all kinds of email marketing providers out there.  How Mailchimp makes themselves different is by focusing on making email campaigns easy.

Rich Happy & Hot B-School

Marie has mastered her niche.  She has created a thriving community around women entrepreneurs.  Her recent product launch Rich Happy & Hot B-School is an online business school devoted to women who want to make money and change the world.

Marie is crushing it in her niche.

Raw Foods Witch

 

Raw Foods has a passion for helping people transition to a healthy, alternative diet.

You gotta check out the green smoothie recipe...Awesome!!!

2.  Listen and Respond

Listen and respond to what fires up your community. There are plenty of low cost social dashboard support tools, such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Seesmic to narrow the permanent flood of posts and updates down by certain keywords. Choose keywords that you are knowledgeable about and start building your reputation as a problem-solver.

Another, good, old fashion method, which you’ve probably heard of is TwitterSearch. It’s one of Gary Vaynerchuk’s favorite tools. More than likely, however, you’ve never been taught how to use it correctly.

Here are 3 tips:

• Search for new customers - Lets say you have a wine store or bar in Atlantic Canada and you want to reach out to people who like wine in this area.  Here is a search you could use on Twitter 
• Look up only the latest on a trending topic – Search with “trending topic” plus –rt –via which will exclude all the RTs.
• See pictures with trending topic – If there is a picture/s trending with the topic, search for these using the string “trending topic twitpic/post.ly/twitgoo filter:links”.

There are many other ways to use Twitter Search for your business, but these are some simple ones I see.  If I find a search I really like and want to continue to follow, I will add it as a saved search in Hootsuite.

3.  Find Influencers

Find influencers everywhere and bring them onboard through pre-release previews or guest blogs. “Everywhere” means expanding your search for influencers to places you haven’t gone before, like a video or offline. What you are building is feedback loop by helping the influencers build their influence. The more people they reach the further your social currency extends.

Digital influence is one of the hottest trends in social media.

How do you find influencers online?

One way is to use a tool like Kred which will help you understand your influence and outreach globally, but also help businesses find influencers in a transparent way.

Kred has the ability to find Influencers by community. This makes it much simpler to target influential voices by interest, affiliation or industry.

If you are just starting out, try these three steps and let me know how your currency building progresses.

If you already have built a community and strong ties to industry influencers, dig a little deeper in the links we provided above for increasing the value of your brand. We want you to share your experience because, after all, sharing is the heart of the new social economy. :-)

Look at those hairdos

Did I ever tell you the story about when I put my brother in the dryer and I turned it on?

True brotherly love!!!

It’s a true story.  I was 11 and he was 8.

I have no idea what I was thinking, but I actually convinced (the sales man in me), my brother, Adrian to get in the dryer.

I mean isn’t that what all brothers do???  Put their brothers in the dryer and see how many spins they can go before they scream.

Ahh, there is nothing like brotherly love.

If you have a brother you know what I mean...right?

Especially when you are close in age, like Adrian and I are...3 years separates us.  I won’t tell you who his older. :-)

Best Friends

Adrian's wedding in Mexico

But, even after the dryer incident we remained best friends.  Or atleast I think we are. :-)

• We used to play street hockey all day long together.  
• Walk up to the tennis courts for a late night match after watching Wimbeldon all day.  
• Play video games on Coleco.
• Play nerf basketball in our bedroom, that we shared, with our beds in an "L" shape.
• Hop on the bus with our golf clubs to go golfing at 6 AM in the morning.

For those of you who know Ade, look at his t-shirt. :-) He is a suspposed Bruins Fan.

Chris, enough already...how are you going to make amends for putting your brother in the dryer?

Ok, ok, in a bit...just a second.

• Make mixed tapes for your brothers prom date...remember Taylor Dayne, Love Will Lead You Back???
• Go to university together and try out for the same hockey team.  Even if it was only for 1 month.
• Be the best man in your wedding party.  Or should I say the Better Man...anyone ever see Steve Buscemi in The Wedding Singer?

• Drive 7 hours to Game 7 in Boston, Habs vs Bruins, then drive home right after the game.  No one said we were the sharpest knives in the drawer.   Habs did win though. :-)
• Start a web development business, when one brother didn’t even know how to open an email account.  Yes that was me. :-)  Still going strong 11 years later

Isn’t it crazy all the things you remember doing with your brother?  And this is just a short, uncensored list.

Time To Make Amends For The Dryer Incident

At Wine Library TV getting ready to film with Gary V.

Now it is 2012 and we both have families, Adrian is married to Brittany, with two children, Lily and Forrest (8 months old).  

Even though we are older and our lives have changed, he is still my brother and best friend.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 29 years since the dryer incident and I need to make up for that big time.

How am I going to do that?

Well, Adrian was recently diagnosed with a Astrocytomas Grade II brain tumour.

What is that?

It's a brain tumour that is relatively slow-growing astrocytomas, usually considered benign that sometimes evolve into more malignant or as highergrade tumors. 

Low grade astrocytomas (grade 1 and 2) can often be completely removed with surgery and have a very good outlook although some tumours may come back or change into high grade tumours after some time though.

Either way, this is serious stuff and I want to help raise funds for research and patient programs which my brother Adrian and others will benefit from.

My first effort will be Spring Sprint 2012 on May 26th, in Fredericton, NB, which my brother and I are both participating in to raise money for brain tumour research and patient programs.

Our team is called Team Begr8ful.com which is named after Adrian’s website Begr8ful.com

As a bro, I really want to raise as much money possible to help find a cure for brain tumours so he can live the best life possible with his family and not worry about what’s going to happen next.

So, I am asking...can you please donate?

Please donate whatever you can, $1, $2, $5, $20, it all adds up.  If you can't donate please share this with others who can and thank you for your help.  This big brother will truly appreciate  and begr8ful forever!  Thank you.

How do you donate? (Thanks for asking) :-)

1. Click this big long link http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=1393953&langPref=en-CA
2. It will take you to my personal page, click the Sponsor Me button, just below the pic of Ade and I.
3. Lets make it happen and thank you again!

Note:  This post was sent on Friday for a purpose.  I know it's payday and you must have some spare change you can donate to help my brother out. 

On the beach in Mexico after wedding

Over on Leadership Unleashed, I was interviewed about collaboration and change in business and how we adpated over the years with Evolving Solutions.  I realized Bruce Lee and Eckart Tolle have had a huge impact on how we operate. :-)

However, pay close attention to the conversation that has occurred on Twitter, Facebook and the blog. People have added some other tips and experiences that take this interview to a whole new level.

---->Watch or Listen now on Leadership Unleashed<----

Here are some Tweets and Facebook comments from the interview.

Tweets

@cnadeau Be 'Fearless' and 'be in the moment' - great advice from someone who lives it in business and life GREAT video. thanks @dave_veale

— Judith Mackin (@judithmackin) April 19, 2012

@cnadeau Great interview. Collaborations succeed when we take the high road, trust inner wisdom, take necessary actions. More in a column...

— Jay Remer (@etiquetteguy) April 19, 2012

@cnadeau One change I see around collaboration is seeing like-minded companies, even other coaching companies as collaborators not threats

— Marilyn Orr (@MarilynOrr1) April 19, 2012

Facebook

Need a little push today?  Feeling beaten down?  You won't after you watch this.  Enjoy!

The Urban Shoe Myth is doing a great job using the web to communicate with their customers.  I have said this before...all companies are becoming media companies and the longer we take to figure this out, the more business we are going to lose.  

Watch how the team at The Urban Shoe Myth produces their own media and continues to crush it!

Things I talk about in the video:

• Zappos.com purchased by Amazon ( I guess it wasn't for billions) :-)
• The Urban Shoe Myth
• YouTube

Resources:

• YouTube Video Training Course (affiliate link - yes if you click this link and buy the course I get a small commission...helps pay the mortgage.)
• Big Santo (this is our product and if you build a website with us, you can do all the cool things that The Urban Shoe Myth is doing and I will make more money...helps pay the mortgage as well.) :-).

Photo Credit: Michael Hawkins

Last night, The Saltys: Saint John's Social Media Awards highlighted some tremendous individuals and organizations for their social media efforts in 2012.

Like the first year, the night was an overwhelming success.   With double the votes from last year's event, it looks like this will continue to be an annual event highlighting the very best of social media and the web in Saint John. 

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Watching this video gives me the chills.

It brought back tremendous memories of my hockey playing days when I would constantly push myself to be the best I could be.  From the age of 9 to 28, I pushed myself like Giavanni Ruffin in the video below.

Working countless hours both on and off the ice to get to that next level.  

See how hard Giavanni works and practices in this video.

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Photo Credit Nicolò Paternoster

This is somewhat of a confession.  Heck it is a confession!!!

I am sharing with you the deep inner secrets that lead to my most idiotic financial loss as an entrepreneur.

How is that for transparency??? :-) 

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What is SEO?

According to Wikipedia, SEO means search engine optimization (SEO), which is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

Unless you have been without Internet for the last 15 years, you already know that Google is one of the most visited websites in the world.  

Why is it one of the most visited websites in the world?

Because it helps you find what you are looking for.

What does that mean to you as a business owner?  Well it means two things.

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Photo Credit - The US Army

No this isn't another post about resolutions!  Not that big on resolutions, to be honest.

I think people should do things they want to do and not take away things in their life that give them joy.  

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