I just heard Amber MacArthur speak for the first time.  She has branded herself as a social media expert and I can see why she has become so successful at it.

This particular session was delivered to a group of successful financial professionals.  Some were traditional financial advisors and others really focused on group benefits and pensions for companies in Canada.  None-the-less, social media has not been easy to adopt for the financial community because of both tradition and regulation.

Anyhow, I think the reason @Ambermac has been successful is because she has taken the bizarre language of social media and brought it down into her compelling 10 keys:

1.  Create a Social Media Policy
2.  Be Authentic
3.  Be Original
4.  Be Consistent
5  Choose your tools
6.  Be mindful of your digital reputation
7.  Measure Analytics
8.  Take care of your website
9.  Go Mobile
10.  Watch for the trends

A few other quick facts from Ambermacs presentation:

• Canadians spend more time on the internet than other countries
• We view 147 videos per month per person on YouTube
• There are over 17 million Canadians on Facebook (which is 51.2% of the population)
• The fastest growing user group on Facebook is 55+ women
• There are over $2 billion tweets every month
• The Motorola brick phone back in 1986 cost about $4000

My two cents

I embraced social media at the beginning of 2011 and after 6 months, I can’t help but agree with Amber’s points.  My favorite line from her presentation is: “Social Media is not HARD but it is HARD WORK. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying.”

My twist on Social media is like anything else it’s one of those things that you will get out, what you put in.  If you don’t put much into it, you probably won’t get much out of it.  But at the same time, the more you put in, the more powerful it becomes.

The way I adopted social media is I took it in steps.  Just like babies learn to crawl before walking and walking before jumping and running, Take social media in steps and learn ways to adopt the opportunity.  I started with twitter and if you want to follow me @jimyih, I’d love to hear from.  I then moved to a facebook page and now I am trying to learn and understand linkedin.

The bottom line is this . . . change is inevitable.  It’s already started and it’s not going to stop.  You can look at this as a time waster or the opportunity to evolve and grow not just as a business owner but as a parent, a friend, a colleague and a person.  Good luck in your evolution and development.