Final Piece Consulting, LLC

The first question we all ask ourselves when choosing a line of work is – “How much does it pay?”

We all need to make a living, and no matter what we want to do we also have to get paid enough to live, eat, and maybe take out a nice lady

I started Final Piece because of my love and belief in social media. Plan and simple.

Just like many other smart marketing professionals, I believed that small and mid-sized businesses could compete with companies larger than them despite the lack of marketing dollars.

Now there are actually job titles with “Social Media” in them and employees across the United States that are making good money in those jobs.

Onward Search recently put together a social media jobs salary guide that outlines just what those jobs pay in various job markets across the U.S.

It’s beginning to look like you can get a great social media gig without having to start your own company to create said gig…

Although I can’t say it’s a bad way to go.

© 2012 Onward Search

Everyone knows the real estate market has been in the proverbial crapper for more than two years. So of course my wife

and I decided to put our house on the market in February (a cold and dreary month in NC) of 2011.

After 91 days and 10 showings we had an offer and accepted that offer early this month.

Why do I bring this up you ask? Because I am confident that an integrated social media strategy helped sell my home.

But first, let’s bring it back to 2010.

Choosing a Forward Thinking Real Estate Firm

I began to work with 1st Signal Realty (Disclaimer: 1st Signal Realty is a client) in September of 2010 when their owner, Will Dyson, and I sat down to discuss

his business model moving forward. Will has been a successful entrepreneur in a few industries and he wanted to meet with me because he understood

the importance of social media but simply didn’t have the ability to implement a strategic plan.

We spoke for a few hours and I came away with the feeling that I could come up with an integrated strategy across the web that included website updates, a local blog and a local focus on a few specified social networking sites.

Since that meeting, Will and I have been working together to not only help sell homes but to create a community of friends and clients online. It has helped grow 1st Signal as well as encourage home buyers and sellers to choose a real estate firm that is progressive and always evolving for their clients.

How Social Media Helped Sell My Home

Fast forward to late January of last year when my wife and I decided it might be a good time to sell our home in order to take advantage of the low interest rates. Will counseled us on how we should approach this decision and we had our home on the market by Super Bowl Sunday.

Since 1st Signal had a strategic and integrated social media plan in place for 5+ months at the time I knew my home was, at the very least, going to be in the upper eschelon of local homes in that prize range as far as visibility goes.

Because we had already created a community, when our house became available it was shared everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Real Estate Forums and more.

We didn’t beg folks to buy our home or even ask them to “please, please tell everyone about our home!”  Instead, thanks to the commitment 1st Signal made to social media – our home was able to stand out from the rest of the pack.

Do Your Research

Make sure the next time you decide to buy or sell a home that you find a local real estate firm who is offering a marketing strategy that includes an integrated social media plan. There may be a bigger real estate firm that has more agents or a longer list of achievements – but I can almost gurantee that won’t sell your home.

How do I know? Social Media sold my home, that’s how.

My first intern at Final Piece Consulting just scored a full time job at a great firm in the Triangle.  I’m not going to lie, when she told me about landing the job I think I had my first ever “proud father” type moment. The purpose of hiring an intern to work with me was not to simply lighten the workload or to have someone around just to do busy work. I wanted someone hungry to learn and absorb information about social media that I could teach while refining my skills as a leader.

Based on what she sent me after the internship – not only was I smiling and proud – I felt like I had bettered the lives of two people, teacher and student.

As someone with a full-time job and out of college for two years, I’m sure I wasn’t the typical candidate who would apply for a part –time internship. However, after two years in a job where I felt creatively stifled and after months of receiving rejections from jobs I applied for, I found the posting for the Final Piece internship.

Although I had experience in journalism and public relations, I realized that I didn’t have extensive experience in social media. Through the interview process, I discovered that this particular understanding was something that many potential employers were looking for. Final Piece offered me this and more!

Right of the bat, one unique attribute I noticed with working with Matt was the flexibility with not only my schedule but also my workspace. Despite my full-time job, Matt was able to work with me on both meeting and assignment schedules. Furthermore, our meetings and discussions did not take place in stuffy conference rooms but rather in the comfort of the neighborhood bookstore.

From our first meeting, Matt was very open about wanting to educate me on what I was interested in; whether that be the ins and outs of Google Analytics or the vitality of search engine optimization. I was also given the opportunity to participate in projects relating to each of Final Piece’s diverse and exciting clients which enabled me to understand, not only WHO the target audience was but HOW to reach them. These projects included media outreach, handling and maintenance of social media accounts, social media reporting, and various writing projects. In fact, I now have a wide variety of writing samples (blogs, web copy, etc.) to provide to future employers.

One of the key things I took away from this internship, especially in regards to social media, was the importance of generating interesting content that is relevant to the intended audience. So many times, there is a tendency to post or tweet just for the sake of consistency without giving much thought to the quality of the posted content.  This can, in turn, disengage those that you are trying to reach.

Wrapping up, everything I set out to accomplishment with this internship, I did. But it was only through the hands-on experience and guidance provided to me by Matt. Now, after adding my newfound social media and marketing experience to my resume, I’ve actually scored the job that I was looking for – talk about paying off!

I’ll go ahead and admit this is shameless self promotion before I even start. But more than that, it is a man proud of something he has nurtured since inception and seen grow and become something he is supremely proud of.

While I have been working with a bunch of great clients already – this is the first major project under the umbrella of Final Piece to officially launch.

The great people at Mate1.com and I came up with a comedic concept to build their brand online. As everyone in this industry knows, ideas and concepts come and go, so when you get one that sticks and you think it may have legs, there is a certain thrill and excitement to it.

That idea then generated a partnership (with the Weasel Pauly Shore no less), video storyboards, awesome creative,  PR strategy, a website and many late nights at the office.

While the contest has just begun and doesn’t come to a close until 1/15/2011, meaning there is a ton of work to still be done, I thought talking about how proud I am of the launch would not only be therapeutic as I prepare for step 2 but also allow me a second to sit back and make sure I enjoyed what has already been done. Too often we race, race, race and never take a chance to appreciate ourselves and the people around us.

So if there is anything you can do for me – just check out the website and let me know what you think.

At the very least, take this opportunity to appreciate some work you’ve done recently and are proud to have worked on before racing to your next project.

It’s funny how one of the main social media tools you are an advocate for can fall to the back burner when you get too busy.  Being a business owner is certainly not easy and effective time management is truly the key to success.  But even when you feel great about all the client goals and deadlines you’ve met – you can still forget to look out for your own business.  I’m speaking about blogging of course, and not only its importance, but finding the time to do it for yourself and not just your clients.  I spend a large portion of my time building blogs, creating content for blogs and measuring the success of blogs.  This makes it hard for me to find time to blog for myself anymore.  This poor blog died a quick death almost right after it started and my personal blog hasn’t been updated in months.  I love writing and miss finding the time for it.  I’m hoping this post is therapeutic and I force myself to schedule blogging into my calendar right along with everything else.

I miss blogging.

My website misses the benefits that come from blogging.

My mind misses speaking for the world (or my mother) to hear.

I know and sell to businesses the importance of blogging, social media and really all inbound marketing. I need to get back to it and I hope you can help me. Otherwise I might forget what got me here and turn into one of the morons who responded to the survey below.

My industry news intake has suffered drastically over the last few weeks thanks to a good deal of new business.  Now don’t get me wrong , new business is a great thing for my livelihood and more specifically my wife’s shopping habits, but it can make it hard to blog when you are a small start-up company. 

I did however have the opportunity to check out a few very intriguing articles and wanted to share them with you in this week’s edition of Monday Links.

1. Google TV Announces Its Programming Partners

Google continues to do everything they possibly can to turn America into 1984. I kid, I kid (kind of).  They plan on launching Google TV in the next few weeks and have signed contracts with HBO, CNBC and Turner Broadcasting (TBS,TNT) to name a few.  As with anything Google does, they hope to be the “leader in the growing industry of Internet-connected television sets, which Forrester Research expects to be in 43 million United States homes by 2015.” What do you think about turning television screens into bonafide web portals?

2. 4 Reasons The Social Media Industry Has a Credibility Problem

We need to stop talking about what we are going to do and actually do it.  We need to stop thinking our time is more valuable than someone else’s. Most of all we need to help others that don’t get social media instead of lashing out at them.  Basically just a great post from a great blog to help put things in perspective.

Just because some of us may be on the right side of a revolution doesn’t mean we are better than anyone else.

3. Why are Social Behaviors Plateauing?

Are we done acting as creators and instead shifting towards consumers?  And better yet, if we as communications professionals aren’t focused enough on creation – what will there be to consume?  One thing not changing – joiners. Joiners are the people that decide to test the waters with a social network presence meaning there are still more and more engagement opportunities out there.

 Where will the next shift be?

I’ve been working with a company for the last few months putting together a video contest.  I realize everyone attempts to do video contests nowadays simply in hopes that it will (gulp) – “go viral.”  Truth be told though – it is much more difficult to create a David after Dentist video or an Old Spice Body Wash campaign than you think.

Please, Please, Don’t say “Go Viral” ever again

First things first, stop saying “go viral” and just focus on coming up with a great idea.  Once you have that idea you have gotten to the point where you can flesh out the details and, with a lot of hard work, hopefully create something great.  Whether or not people actually see it is an entirely different story all together, and for the most part, out of your hands.

I could go on and on about the creation and implementation of a video campaign forever (and plan to create a comprehensive case study on this campaign after the fact) but really just wanted to talk specifically about the partner selection process.

Does any care about C-listers?

The company I am working with has a decent sized budget for this project (something similar to this awesome contest maybe?)and is investing the money to build a contest website and pay a C-list celebrity to be involved.

Did you just ask yourself why you would this idiot want to push his client towards this? 

I did somewhat initially, but now firmly, believe that the right relationship between a brand and a celebrity can be very fruitful no matter how large the name of the talent.  AdAge just recently showed us that celebrity endorsements, although sometimes hard to gauge value, are still very important in pushing product and growing brands.

Once my client decided they wanted to share the details of the contest with some comedians, writers and experts I got to work figuring out how to contact their agents and begin negotiations.  Without getting into too much detail, I spoke with an author whose book was made into a movie, a few regulars on Chelsea Lately, a regular on Jersey Shore and some 80s movie stars. 

After a few were taken out of the running based on cost we narrowed it down to about five.  This was when the ball fell squarely in our court. How you ask?  Because it’s impossible to hide what your online influence is.

Online Influence Matters – Even for Jwoww and The Situation

I researched ever corner of the Internet to figure out what kind of following the celebrity had and how often they were spoken about or mentioned by bloggers, media and the general public.  I looked even deeper into their engagement with fans online and how adept they were at working with social networks themselves. Did they have a Twitter and Facebook page? Did they have videos on the web they created? Did they have an interactive website? A cult following with power in a specific market?

After all the questions were answered we narrowed it down to two and then went with a gut decsion based on who we thought would make the most sense for the company’s brand, and more specifically the theme of the contest.

I don’t want to tell any comics, movie stars or reality stars what to do since they make 100 times what I do, BUT, seriously people get someone on your team that understands the power of online influence and next time maybe you’ll get the deal.

Starting this Monday and running until the end of time I plan on posting 5-10 of my favorite links from the previous week on social media, marketing, public relations and business. Some of this may have already appeared in my Twitter feed, but for those of you who like your coffee served with a nice mix of RSS straight to your Google Reader or inbox - this is for you.

1. Top 11 Free Resources to Improve Your Blog’s Content

Some fantastic links from Harry Hoover that cover the blogging gamete to make sure you are creating compelling content targeted at those people you want to read your blog.

2. There, I Said It: Screw Viral Videos

Although I don’t agree with the overall idea of the post – this is a great read from Jim Louderback.  I personal think the main problem is simply the word – viral.  Great video content is a necessity online it’s just your expectations and initial investment that need to be in check.

3. See How They Did It: 104 Social Media Case Studies

Just like it sounds and just as glorious. The Conversation Agent has used her blog to review 12 case studies specifically and then link to another 92.  Not too shabby. Enjoy.

4. Wake Me Up When Your Press Release is Over

Extremely true take on why boiler plates are so awful and how companies can move away from the traditional way of ending a press release from Jonathan Grieb at CEC Insider.

5. 60 Proven Ways to Increase Your Online Marketing Influence

60 sentences taken from The Influencer Project from the good people at HubSpot.  Special shout out to my buddy Kipp Bodnar who is currently crushing it up in Cambridge!

6. The 10 Worst Business Books of All Time

Great topic and hilarious entry all around from Geoffery James.  Either don’t read these books or read them and decide whether or not they made you dumber

What links did you enjoy last week?  Help me out because I can’t read everything!

I use a lot of different tools for a lot of different clients in a lot of different ways.  I just wanted to give a quick shout out to those tools whom I use every day and couldn’t live without. Most of you probably use these already, but for any of you that don’t – I’ll be here all week

1. TweetDeck - For awhile there TweetDeck had me worried as it seemed like I was having issues with old mentions and DM’s for a solid week about 6 months ago.  Then came version 34.2 and I fell in love with the dashboard all over again.  It’s ease of use and simplicity had me at hello and I’ve been an avid user ever since.  I have a girlfriend on the side in HootSuite, for some clients, but have never fallen for her like I did with TweetDeck. 

2. Social Mention - I can search user generated content across all social channels for free? Yes, please. I’m a big fan of anything that makes me more efficient and Social Mention analyzes content from almost all social media platforms and even offers up some basic insight and statistics.  It may not get the job done for extremely specific tasks but it sure does cut down on time for others.  And it’s fun!

3. Alexa - This site is sort of like the Griff Tannen of these five sites but it can sometimes be the most helpful in a application sense.  Alexa offers up a ton of great insight on any web properties you own and even some on ones you dont.  I especially love the comarison tab and top queries data.  I treat Alexa along with Google Analytics like they were part of the family.

4. Addict-o-Matic - Not only an awesome aggregate of social information, but it lets you create custom pages of the terms you are searching for! I love the name because this site is just that – addictive.  I view it as  my morning paper for each of my clients as I have that first cup of coffee.

5. YouTube - That’s right I said it – YouTube. I said this list was 5 Free Social Media Tools that I use everyday and to me it is a very valuable tool.  Just because it isn’t some site used only by social media nerds like myself doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a daily visit.  Whether it be for humor, ideas, tutorials or old sports clips – I’m there.  I think YouTube wears many hats and I am certainly an avid watcher.

What 5 Free Social Media Tools do you use everyday?

I had the pleasure of being interviewed via email over the last few weeks by a young up-and-comer in the social media realm, Cole Watts.

I previously worked with Cole when he served as an intern at 919 Marketing.  Now he spends his time putting together great blog content while looking to land that great social media job that I know is out there for him.

Below is a brief excerpt from our conversation, and feel free to travel over to his blog IDreamInTech to read the entire interview.

Most of us know you as the Social Media presence behind 919 Marketing, but you recently left to start your own company.  What can we expect from your new company “Final Piece Consulting”?

 First of all, I’m excited to hear that “most” people may know anything about me since I’m just a guy that loves working online. At 919 Marketing, I did my best to integrate social media marketing into as many client accounts as possible while still handling day-to-day PR tasks and account management. After spending the last 3 ½ years working at Triangle firms, keeping up with emerging trends and working them into my everyday tasks, I finally had a “Eureka” moment and thought – maybe there is something MORE I could be doing with all this great knowledge I’ve been able to soak up.

That moment was when I decided to start Final Piece Consulting. I view the company as place small businesses that can’t afford large retainers can turn to for help in social media marketing with a splash of traditional marketing, public relations, event planning and copywriting. Small Businesses are the lifeblood of our local economy and many of them flounder because they can’t afford high quality marketing help.  With the emergence and effectiveness of social media marketing I firmly believe you can propel your small business to success with the right guidance and expertise.

I also realize that cash flow and the bottom line is even more important to a small business than a larger entity able to take financial risks. That is why I will come in to your organization and make sure I fully understand it before I will even create a plan or offer up any inclination as to what you can expect if you work with me. Once I understand your goals on a holistic level I’ll head back to the Final Piece “cave” and create a full-scale 3, 6 or 12 month strategic plan.  The plan will include everything you need to achieve those goals, from what tools we should use and how we should use them, to what complementary PR and traditional marketing we need to elevate the campaign. Most importantly it will involve metrics of measurement (financial and non financial) that can be tracked so at the end of our (hopefully) long partnership you can see how your investment in Final Piece Consulting has paid off.

You’ll also be able to expect an honest guy who can sometimes be a little too sarcastic and is passionate about what he believes in. That belief can range from his approach to social media marketing to why the 1999 Virginia Tech Hokies were the greatest team to not win a National Championship.