How to Have an Impact

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Do you want to make a difference? Do you want to influence others to take up your passion? Do you want to have a positive effect on the people in your business, family and community?

Read what Chris Brogan and Julien Smith say about this desire to have an impact:

“We want you to think about how your tribe can come from anywhere. We want you to think about how to leave an impression on those who matter and help them gather around you. We want their passion and yours to come together so that you can leave your mark in the world. In short, we want you to have impact.”

In The Impact Equation, Brogan and Smith define the challenge as this “…what’s needed to be seen is a strong idea moved across a well-built platform and into the hands of relationships you’ve built and maintained.” So they came up with a formula to explain how to have impact.

Impact = C X (R + E + A + T + E)

(C) Contrast – When an idea hits a person, it has to feel like something similar to an idea he or she has already experienced, yet it has to be different enough to get noticed.

(R) Reach – The higher the number of people you can connect with, the more influential your idea can become.

(E) Exposure – If Reach is all about how many you connect with, Exposure is all about how often you connect to them.

(A) Articulation – high Articulation means an idea is like a sword, cutting through the fog of the brain and hitting you in exactly the right place to make you understand it.

(T) Trust – Trust is a clear factor in impact, but why do we trust someone? You need to know why and we’ll show you.

(E) Echo – Echo is all about the feeling of connection you give your reader, visitor or participant.

Obviously, there’s more to the formula then what I’ve described here. If you would like to have a greater impact around your passion, then please join us on February 20^th to have a conversation with Chris and Julien.

This Soundview Live webinar is titled The Five Key Principles to Having an Impact and it’s FREE for all attendees. The authors will provide examples from their own lives and others to put some meat on the bones of this formula, and you can ask your questions along the way.

Do You Want to Think Like Zuck?

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Despite the bad press that Mark Zuckerberg has received over the Winklevoss twins, Facebook privacy issues, and the disastrous IPO, Facebook is nevertheless an overwhelming success story. Zuckerberg has overcome the odds of moving from entrepreneur to CEO, and has broken the 1 billion user mark in the process.

Just consider some Facebook numbers: 1 billion users is one-seventh of the world’s population, the site houses 140.3 billion friendships, 600 million access the site on a mobile device, 52% of job seekers use Facebook to look for jobs and one in five have been sent a job lead via the site.

But there are also many touching stories of people who have been helped in meaningful ways through Facebook. Ekaterina Walter, in her book Think Like Zuck, tells some of those stories as she makes the case for what we can learn from Mark Zuckerberg.

Walter draws out the five “P’s” that are essential to Facebook’s success:

Passion
Purpose
Product
People
Partnerships

If you would like to hear more about the 5 P’s, and how these principles might bring your company added success, then please join us for our next Soundview Live webinar, The Five Business Secrets of Mark Zuckerberg with Ekaterina Walter. Bring your questions and fill your conference room for this intriguing look into Facebook’s success.

Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries

THE IMPACT EQUATION

AN EQUATION FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

Bloggers Chris Brogan and Julien Smith burst onto the publishing scene in 2009 with their social media marketing best-seller Trust Agents. They return with a new book, The Impact Equation, which delves deeper into how to be heard and noticed in an age when everyone is connected.

Brogan and Smith know their subject. As the authors explain: “Anyone can write a blog post, but not everyone can get it liked 40,000 times on Facebook and not everyone can get 75,000 blog subscribers. We’ve done these things, but it isn’t because we’re special. It’s because we tried and failed… We tried again and again, and now we have an idea how to get from point A to point B faster because of it.”

How to CREATE

The authors’ secret to getting from Point A to Point B is encapsulated in the equation:

Impact = C x (R + E + A + T + E)

The “C” stands for Contrast, which is another way of saying positioning or differentiation. A successful contrast, according to the authors, offers both similarity and a noticeable difference.

The “R” stands for Reach, that is, how many people you connect with in as many channels as possible. At the heart of reach is your platform, which is basically, the authors write, “a combination of all the tools you use to reach others.”

The “E” stands for Exposure. This is a tricky area: Too much exposure and you just become more spam. The authors offer several strategies for building your exposure, including: start with like-minded people before trying to raise awareness; tell stories that make the buyer a hero; and help others first.

The “A” stands for Articulation. For the authors, the key with this attribute is to use small words and connect the dots.

The “T” stands for Trust. A prerequisite to successful impact is understanding why we trust others. Credibility, reliability and self-interest are the key elements that generate trust.

Finally, the “E” stands for Echo, which, the authors write, is the “feeling of connection you give your reader, visitor, or participant.” The best way to create this feeling of connection is to find common experiences and use these experiences to show people that you understand them.

Guiding Principles

The Impact Equation is divided into four sections that give a guiding set of principles for moving forward with your high-impact initiatives. First, begin with your goals, exactly what you are trying to accomplish. The next set of principles is built around the concept of ideas, and covers the Contrast and Articulation attributes. As mentioned above, platform, the next category of principles, is a key component of successful social media Reach and Exposure, while the attributes of Trust and Echo are grouped under network.

Every hour of every day around the world, people are striving to connect with each other. Most of them are no more than grains of sand on the beach, unnoticed by others. The Impact Equation offers solid advice from two veterans of the social media arena on how to break through.

How Businesses Are Using Video

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries

I recently ran across a great article written by Jimm Fox of One Market Media on the many business uses of video. I’ve listed his main categories below, and you can check out the full article for more details.

Customer Reference – video helps with collecting and showing customer testimonials, case studies and interviews.
Product & Service Promotion – companies use video for product presentations, demonstrations and reviews.
Corporate – corporations provide their company overview, executive highlights, facility tours and more with video.
Training & Support – video is the latest thing in employee training, sales presentations and maintenance support.
Internal Communication – video is now being used for business plans, company achievements, event coverage, employee orientation and health & safety education.
Marketing – video promotions can take the form of commercials, viral video, content marketing and landing pages.
PR/Community – video press releases are becoming more popular, along with video PR materials and community relation pieces.
Events – at an event, presentations, roundtable discussions and Q&A with experts can all take place in video.
Other – videos are also being used for recruitment, vlogs (video blogs) and research/surveys.

On the internet search side of the equation, research shows that a webpage with video is 30% more likely to end up on the first page of search results in Google then the same page without video. Google is now giving preference to video content in their search algorithm.

At Soundview, we are following this trend carefully, and have expanded our own offerings to include video. Our iPad format of each business book summary includes a video introduction from our Editor-in-Chief Sarah Dayton. We now produce Executive Insights, a series of videos which interview active executives regarding key business skills. And we’re developing additional video content to be released soon.

Video increases engagement time, deepens emotional connections, and gives your company more trust and credibility with your customers and other stake-holders. And the cost of entry is becoming less every day with new technologies and web tools. If your company or organization is not currently using video, now is the time to jump in.