I’m a Social Media Consultant! In China!

uh oh! Its official, I’ve changed my email signature from “internet marketing consultant” to “social media consultant”. Changed my “job” by changing my email signature….pretty hilarious when you think about it….but we are who we make ourselves to be…or else others tell us who to be. Its our choice, I have said it not making a decision is making a decision and I have to make hard choices and FOCUS!

But life is always re-inventing yourself, adapting to the environment around you. And people are constantly approaching more more as a social media guy, integrating social campaigns, connecting people, building community and environment. People, and businesses see the importance of social media.

But more and more, I am being asked about integrating to facebook, or twitter follower management, or building traffic on a blog. This is all social media. In a way, I already have announced I’m an online social salesman, but its screaming it out loud now…from inside myself as well as from friends and business associates all around me.

But then there are those “hesitations” I have to be a full time consultant. Is that a business? Like the image I posted on this blog, it says “Consultant – If you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.” In a way, I have in my history been under the impression consultants are short term, expensive, overrated people (maybe because I have always heard it from the position of a full time staff in a company?). But I am also afraid to be measured by time instead of value. There are ways to create proposals that are not just based solely on time, I’ll get creative.

Leon Stafford has been helping “coach” me the past few weeks here in Hong Kong, with the focusing of business and IT management. Just being able to lay it all out there has been helpful. And he, as well as others are screaming my maximum value is my knowledge and I have to focus on making money from it.

Here are some bullet points to solidify my position:

• Connector – I truly love connecting people. I can do it all day long. I want to focus more on organizing my contacts. I have gotten restricted on facebook for friend requesting too many people (I had imported my business cards contact info). I love seeing the strengths in people and find ways to connect them with other people who can maximize each other’s strengths.
• Event Organizer, Community Builder – I have been organizing twitter meetups, couchsurfing meetups, somewhat complaining its exhausting but that was when I was exploring and experimenting. Now I have a purpose. I just hope to keep it “original”, I want it to still be fun for everyone.
• Story teller – I think I’ve always loved sharing stories. Heck that was a primary reason I started this blog, to share stories with everyone about my travels in business, entrepreneurship, and then to China. I do prefer to tell the stories in person, as I get to use my hands when I talk (yes, I have Italian heritage) and can jump around the room and explain how the story goes more real time.
• Motivational writer / speaker – I love getting blog comments about people who have gotten some inspiration in their daily work life, or career, or just direction in life. That makes it all worth it. I haven’t really spoken about motivational things, publicly, but I think…when I am focused….I am good at inspiring others. And have been told that multiple times. Just recently its FOCUS that is bogging me down.
• Positioning – White guy in China – Yes, its true, I am also able to play the card of a “white face” in China, and it helps me (and probably hurts me in other cases) but I have been able to speak in China about social media as well as many other internet marketing topics, building up my relationships here, and leveraging that with my friends / contacts back home in USA. So I gotta use it, right!
• Industry Changes in Internet Marketing – I’ve been blogging about the changes in SEO and internet marketing ….I knew when I came to China, and saw the industry getting standardized into link building machines…Chinese are very systematic….they will keep on trying until they figure out how to maximize the opportunity. And Google had to find ways for these massive link systems to not affect their user (searcher) experience. Now, links are people, and social media and SEO / internet marketing have combined….people vote for what they want to rank and what their friends like….and this is the future for sometime to come

I have always been attracted to the power of the internet….but I am also a guy that likes to deal with people, get outside, travel, inspire. And the new internet is about people, people are websites now, not websites are hiding companies behind cloaks. We have to come out of our shell and realize, people do business with people!