I did want to take a minute to mention the Social Metrics plug in for you. It’s not a tool for deep metrics analysis but it is a great tool for quick content analysis – seeing what’s working for you as a social network, as well as what’s emerging as sharable topics on your blog. For example, you can see that Digg, as a whole, is not a social network where we see a lot of shares here at M2. You can also quickly see that our readers are very interested in changing the face of education right now (as they should be).

I haven’t tried the Social Metrics Pro version yet but it gives you some nice Excel like features that the free version doesn’t. However, the free version is adequate for Magnitude’s needs right now since we have such deep analytics running elsewhere.

What’s your favorite metrics tool for your blog?

Video inspired by this post on Facebook today and this post on Google Plus

When I started working for myself in the 90s I just wanted to work on something I loved doing and am great at. As my business grew I found my time increasingly divided between maker and manager and the budget strained (I talked about starting my business with no cash flow here).

But I also found success for my clients, for me and an ever-growing love of what we do at Magnitude Media. I found that I never tire of my job – a blessing. I found that we can make our clients money, build their brands, teach them what they need to know to grow and help them be better at being a business in an emerging media driven marketplace. I get to work with clients of all sizes, from mom and pop stores to huge brands. I get the privilege of writing books, articles and other content. I am a lucky, lucky lady.

The past two months have been a real challenge, however. We had reached a certain level of rapid growth after years of hard work and happy clients, and had also accumulated certain financial reserves. I had a chance to grow the business again, which meant making some big decisions and taking a few calculated risks. I brought more staff on board, spent significant financial resources ramping up for a product launch, and then – one bad apple syndrome struck.

What is one bad apple syndrom? It’s my name for that one instance of non-payment of such a significant level that it can create a ripple effect of problems for a small business. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much you prepare, that one bad apple can still cause challenges. The bulk of my clients are amazing people that pay right on time and who feel like family. Then I had two jobs back to back that payed slowly (one is still out for collections 100+ days later). This meant downsizing some staff, slowing down some plans, and awkward conversations with vendors about payment schedules.

How can this scenario be prevented for you so that you don’t have to enact plan B and drain financial reserves to right your business ship? What can you do when a carefully calculated risk doesn’t pan out? Do a few things that I usually do but didn’t in the last 6 months, at great cost:

1) Have a ready-cash reserve three times larger than you think you need for your business.
This is a huge one for me. Underestimating business reserves needed means having to make cuts I shouldn’t have to be making at this stage of business ownership. One of these cuts was to not be able to go forward with the additional staff on board. Will I make this mistake again? Heck no. Failure is one path to success. I learned to treat my own reserves with the same care and caution I give to my clients.

2) Qualify your clients better.
I let the desire to work with a certain client because the large job sounded fun (it was) cloud my judgement on my normal qualification and deposit process. By skirting the process, I have no one to blame but myself for the fact that this client has yet to pay me after 100+ days (which is causing interesting financial times over here, let me tell you).

3) Qualify your project partners from outside of your business better.
This one has now come back to bite me in the ass twice. One of my weaknesses is a desire to trust people. For the second time that tendency has caused me financial pain in business. I’m not sure how I’m going to change my process here yet, because I don’t want to become an untrusting person, but this is an internal tendency I need to change – and fast. Choosing the wrong people to partner up on a project with can cause so many issues, whether the person doesn’t carry their weight on the project or is a slow payer or whatever the issue or combination thereof is.

4) Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Asking for help is incredibly hard for a lot of us, especially those that have the temperament it takes to start a business or launch a product. It feels like weakness. That’s another personal trait I need to work on in 2012, because I am finding it is essential to overcoming challenges like these. Instead of the relentless ‘act-as-if’ cheer often seen in social media maybe we should all be more real. Life is amazing and my business is something I love, but sometimes it’s challenging. It helps no one to avoid discussing that part of life and business also.

Have you been in a similar situation where one bad apple spoiled your bunch? How did you overcome it?

I’ve given a few presentations to universities and high schools on using social media in the classroom and in the organizational structure of the school itself, but those presentations largely focused on the mechanics of “school” and “tactics”. It is my opinion that we need to move beyond the institutional thinking and institutional process to really ride this sea change in education. While most are focused on the process, people in their infinite thirst to learn are building a new global process for eternal, immersive, self directed, multi-faceted learning and knowledge that will leave the traditional school system far behind.

Take a look at Twitter, for example. This super simple service has been making its way into the classroom a little at a time since 2007. Twitter has a long history of varied use at the administrative and classroom level (here are 60 quick examples out of thousands), and still makes headlines each time a new school like Wise High School finds a new way to adopt the service. Twitter makes learning accessible in a school environment, and is part of the overall change in the face of education itself. Access to knowledge in your pocket can break the institution of “school” out of the concrete, rigid shell it lives in and turn it into organic knowledge that students yearn for.

Everyone wants to learn something. It’s human nature, this quest to know. Some folks want to learn a new language (the BBC is one of many places offering free immersion language courses), some want to know more about Snooki’s life beyond the Jersey Shore sitcom and some want to learn how to fix a car or quantum physics, but we all yearn for more information and deeper understanding of something beyond ourselves. Innovative schools like MIT, with it’s new free online education program, are beginning to deliver a future that takes knowledge and sets it apart from “school”, putting us in control of what and how we learn, and what quality of learning it is.

Even our search tools are starting to cater to this quest for knowledge – for good, vetted knowledge. Take a look at MentorMob (“Learn what you want, teach what you love”), for example – bringing you knowledge from around the web that is then sorted by trusted sources and people who have demonstrated topical savvy. Will it work? That’s not clear yet, but it definitely stands as one result of this new thirst to know everything, anywhere.

My takeaways from obsessing about education are several:

1) Education will become multi-media (and richly cross platform, moving fluidly from PC to phone to tablet to augmented reality and more not yet imagined)
2) Education will become portable (leaving the rigid institutional “school” structure far behind)
3) Education will become free (eventually)
4) Education will become completely student driven (gone are the days of the rigid, semi-applicable “core curriculum” concept)
5) Education will have two clear and more divergent paths: immediate ROI (job training, trade training) or life enhancing (broad knowledge based)
6) Teachers will become more like mentors or knowledge sherpas than the current system of educational drones chained to the ideas of a school district far removed from the needs of its students

7) Education becomes game-ified

Just think, education is going to be changing so much that the days when you can plug in to the Matrix and learn like Neo are nearly here. Are you as excited as I am for where this is going and how we can teach and learn from each other?

What did I miss? What other cool things are being cooked up in education that aren’t mentioned here? How did I do on my predictions? What are yours?

Updated to add this video from RSA, a unique look at the education system:

I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments. It’s such a vague phrase so casually bandied about, and so open to a variety of interpretations by everyone.

We have openings in 2012 but they are filling up fast. We really want to work with you, so we decided to give you a little present for the holidays: HALF OFF our retainer if you become a client in December 2011. Just mention that you read this blog post!

We have worked hard to make working with us as easy as 1-2-3. If you want to work with us in 2012 contact us by clicking on the brightly colored button that suits you best on the right of the page and filling out a short form, or call our founder Leslie’s direct office line (603) 766-1970 this week, any time. We’ll chat by phone and discuss your options. We want you to feel comfortable with the team and make sure our vision is in line with yours so we can help you reach your dreams and goals.

After that it only takes a simple, small retainer to become a client (and remember: it’s even smaller until December 31, 2011!)

So contact us now and be part of our client family.

Tell me your thoughts below!

We need beta testers to make sure everything works, so if you’d like to put our site through its paces before anyone else gets to see it, make sure your name is on the list at SocialMediaAccelerator.Net

The credits are first come, first served. How to get them is in the video – good luck!

Sharing videos of yourself will make you a rockstar -
Be the face of an event’s social media presence. 

A week leading up to World AIDS Day Detroit I started sharing 30 sec videos on Facebook. Each video was a small tidbit of information on how fans could help support us on social media. One unplanned affect was how approachable it made me during the actual event. Many people recognized me as “The Guy From Facebook” and already had an understanding of how we were using social media to share our story. By beginning a conversation online, I was able to collect with more people during the event and receive more stories to share.

Some followers are more influential than others
Connecting with your most influential fans in person will benefit your social community. 

During the month leading up to the event we quickly built a community on Facebook and Twitter. Within our communities one of our most influential followers was the NOH8 Campaign. Their 200,000+ followers were passionate about sharing NOH8′s mission and any World AIDS Day Detroit information that NOH8 Campaign shared.

As they were setting up the day of the event, I made sure to stop by and introduce myself to their founders and event staff. I wanted to thank them for their support and also compliment them on how they are engaging their Twitter fan base. Before leaving I let them know that World AIDS Day Detroit would be tweeting all day using the hashtag #WADDetroit, and it would be great if they could share any information to their fans.

The day went on and the evening program began with a keynote from Jeanne White-Ginder, Ryan White’s mother. During the evening I tweeted a quote from Ryan White, “People aren’t listening, and we need to make them listen.” Out of all the tweets from the day our followers connected with this one and began resharing this tweet with their community. At some point the NOH8Campaign RT’ed our message. It was instantly noticed by their fans and World AIDS Day Detroit and our hashtag was shared with over 1/2 a million people. People around the world now knew that something special was happening in Detroit.

This had been the first time all month that the NOH8Campaign had shared one of our messages. Because of taking the time to identify them as an influential follower and meet with them in person, World AIDS Day Detroit was able to reach a huge audience .

Get people excited for the future
Our 2012 poster competition provided an opportunity to connect with new fans even after the event.

World AIDS Day Detroit hasn’t wasted anytime getting people excited about 2012. The day after their event they opened a Facebook poll for their 2012 poster competition. It spread like wildfire and their community continued to grow. After just one week they had doubled their fan base and had received over 2,000 votes, all because they gave a reason for people to stay connected after the event.

From all the work leading up to the event, the communication during the event, and continuing the conversation afterward, World AIDS Day Detroit has a strong social network foundation to build on for 2012.

Event sharing is a blast, and I look forward in continuing to work with events and helping them connect with their community. Just in case you missed it here are 10 ways you can use social media during your next event.