Stephen Covey is a remarkable author and leadership/management consultant whose best-seller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is known worldwide.

Amazingly enough, these seven habits fit perfectly within a social media campaign.

Request our e-book: Social Media A to Z.

1)      Be proactive. There are two types of clients who need help when it comes to social media: those with enlightenment who know the benefits and those in crisis. Obviously, it’s best to be the first rather than the latter. Knowing social media is the most affordable way to reach your audience and your potential audience is the right direction to head when being proactive.

2)      Begin with the end in mind. This is what we identify as purpose. What is your purpose for being on Facebook? Your purpose for Twitter? Blogging? Videos? Contests? Once you have your purpose, your end result becomes more of a reality.

Become a brand ambassador on Facebook.

3)      First things first. You need a solid foundation of a website before you move forward with social media. That’s so important, I’m saying it again: You need a solid foundation of a website before you move forward with social media. Having 6,000 visitors a day go to your website means NOTHING if you do not convert them into warm leads.

4)      Think Win/Win. This pertains to conversion forms on your website (you know, the boxes in which people leave their names and e-mail addresses for newsletters or e-Books.) In this win/win situation, think e-Book. Give them something of value (like an e-Book), for their something of value (like a name and e-mail address.)

5)      First to understand, then understood. It’s a basic business principle – understand their needs before you say you can help them. Forms are a great way to understand your website’s visitors and potential customers.

Follow us on Twitter.

6)      Synergize. This is certainly a way to handle your brand management. Let’s say you have an irate customer who decides to use a vehicle like Google or Yelp to “get justice” and rant about your business or service. They’ve gotten your (and the world’s) attention. Foster that critic to appease him or her and you’re on your way to developing a potential brand ambassador.

7)      Sharpen the Saw. If there’s one thing this economy has taught us, it has to have been not to keep all of your eggs in one basket. Much like Covey teaches us to develop physically, spiritually and more, we, too, must develop our business using a variety of tools (not just social media) to assure our success.

Jay Rodriguez is founder of JayRodChicago.com, a social media company based in Chicago. He can be reached at (312) 515-9459.

Pete Cashmore, founder of social media authority site Mashable.com and contributor to CNN.com, made a great point when he analyzed the fall of Bebo.com – a social networking site similar to MySpace and Facebook.

Become a brand ambassador on Facebook.

He pointed out that Bebo was bought in 2008 by AOL for $850 million and the business went downhill. Why? Bebo failed to innovate and now faces a shut down this year or a sale.

How fitting that this happen to a social networking site in the day and age of social media. The message is clear:

Re-invent or die.

Follow us on Twitter.

What better time to re-invent your company’s offerings than a time where inbound marketing is taking over. It’s a time where the cost to relay a message to consumers is at an all-time low when businesses opt to use Facebook, blogging, Twitter, YouTube, e-Books and more instead of a full-fledged outbound marketing campaign like newspaper ads, TV and radio.

Request our e-book: Social Media A to Z.

The time to re-examine and re-package your offerings is now and the vehicle choice, though complex in its parts, is simple: social media.

Jay Rodriguez is founder of JayRodChicago.com, a social media company based in Chicago. He can be reached at (312) 515-9459.

Many of us have heard the saying: “It’s not what you know, but who you know that makes the difference.”

Become a brand ambassador on Facebook

Take that age-old saying and apply it to the modern day business world and you have come up with the best slogan in social media that really sums up how successful your business will be. As businesses venture to broil the perfect concoction of reaching the “right audience” and affordably engaging that “right audience” in a productive and profitable conversation, there’s one slogan that comes to mind that can be used in every presentation or consulting session done on social media:

Relationships matter.

Yes, LinkedIn’s slogan deserved its own line of text.

Now, not everyone participates in LinkedIn because it is not intended for everyone. Moreso, I would venture to say that a percentage of those who use LinkedIn may not even know that’s their slogan. Just because it’s not as widely used as Facebook and Twitter doesn’t mean its principles are not as widely important.

Follow us on Twitter

“Relationships matter” is one of the simplest, yet most powerful statements for business and for life.

Essentially, what we’re trying to do in social media is develop these relationships with current and potential customers. We nurture the relationships to build trust and accelerate the business process.

We contact new Facebook fans to find out why they followed us, what they do and how we can help them. We follow new Twitter followers and engage them in conversation. We blog to show expertise and to start conversations. All of these lead to better relationships. Better relationships lead to increased trust. Increased trust lead to more sales. It all boils down to nurturing the relationships that matter.

Jason M. Rodriguez is an Internet Engagement Strategist and owner of JayRodChicago.com.

Beginning April 17 through April 24, 2010, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago observes Money SmartJay Rodriguez (312) 515-9459 Week – a full push to educating Chicago-area residents on all aspects of finance.

Let’s take this opportunity to show how a wise business person would use their marketing budget in the day and age of social media.

Traditional media channels have their own variations in the social media world. The differences are cost, accessibility, eternal benefit and the indispensability of content.

Become a brand ambassador of ours on Facebook

First, let’s look at cost. In this blog’s model, what would have cost a business $31,600 annually through traditional means would cost them $9,005 to send the same message via social media.

Now look at accessibility. If I want news, I Google it, and no longer need a print newspaper. Television advertisement? Haven’t seen one since I got my DVR. Radio ad? I listen to my mp3 or a CD in the car. “Junk mail”? That’s precisely where I put it – with the junk.

How about eternal benefit for my buck and indispensability of content? Let’s look at social media. An effective campaign using a variety of tools will draw traffic to your site and increase the credibility of your site in the eyes of search engines. That reputation sticks with repetition, as well. Only social media is more affordable and comes without the pushy ad salesman!

Do you like what you see? Receive an e-mail every Monday when our blog is published!

Newspapers are thrown out or (hopefully) recycled within three days of being read. Television and radio ads are forgotten without expensive repetition and junk mail, well, you know how I feel. With the Internet, your information stays online and sometimes rides the popularity wave to remain there for years to come!

So, there’s my pitch in less than 300 words on why social media and inbound marketing will eventually replace traditional outbound marketing efforts. Now let me get to the crux of this blog.

Hear about us on Twitter by following @jayrodchicago

Here is a comparison of a traditional marketing campaign versus a social media and inbound marketing campaign:

Print                                      Compared to                                     Blogs

$750 per month                                                                             $220 for two blogs per month

Junk Mail                                                                                         Social Networking

$300/month (or $850 quarter)                                                       $425 Social Networking & coupon page

Television ad                                                                                   YouTube

$1,000/month                                                                                  $450 to produce and publish a film per month

Radio ad                                                                                          Twaudio (Twitter audio)

$600/month                                                                                     $45 per month/promotion

$31,600                                                                                 $9,005

Jason M. Rodriguez is an Internet Engagement Specialist and Founder of JayRodChicago.com – a social media, marketing and public relations firm in Chicago. You can contact him for social media consulting or creation, implementation and maintenance of your social media campaign.

Unless you were secluded on an island somewhere, you heard about the earthquake that measured 7.2 on the Richter scale.

I scoured social media sites in an attempt to get personable accounts of the earthquake as opposed to manufactured mainstream media accounts. Here's a taste of what I found:

YouTube

Here's a video of an average person's account of the quake.

StumbleUpon

This stumbler gave me every location detail (and even a map) to locate the quake.

Mobile Phone

Because of this social-savvy digital citizen, I was able to see the potential for mayhem at Disneyland

Twitter

There are all kinds of Twitpics out there. Here's already one of the more famous ones that went viral.

Facebook

Believe it or not, there are already several "Easter Earthquake" fan pages on Facebook. Responsible digital citizens will keep those of us who are not going to watch the news about this issue informed.

Click on the bunny for a link to the Easter earthquake fan page.

Suggest more digital citizen awesomeness of the Easter Earthquake below.