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Unstrapp’d Episode 110 – Fireworks, Fame & Fixing Problems

Chris Record — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:18:35 +0000

The Social Spin team celebrates the July 4th holiday by watching four fireworks celebrations from the deck of their Southern California home. John Stippick has a last minute request from a big client that needs heavy programming done, so he gives Russell the challenge and offers a great reward if he can finish it one time (watch to find out…)

One of the reasons for celebration is that the company was featured in the Sun Post News, San Clemente Times, and OC Register all within a week and the publicity is starting to land more large accounts and move the company forward. Things are starting to look good for Social Spin, but can they keep the momentum going???

Click here to watch a playlist of the entire first season of Unstrapp’d!

Unstrapp’d Episode 109 – Surf Lessons in San Clemente

Chris Record — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:23:08 +0000

The Unstrapp’d team goes out surfing for the FIRST time since moving to California and they decide to make a bet over who will be able to stand up for the first time! Bradley Will and Kyle Garrett are the top two contenders, so who will it be???

In this episode we see the parallels between business and surfing as the guys struggle to stand up on their boards, similar to the struggle of launching their new start-up company. The reward of finally standing up and catching their first waves is what makes it all worth it.

Have you ever been surfing before? Do you remember what your first time was like? Leave your thoughts in the comments and enjoy this awesome episode!

Click here to watch a playlist of the entire first season of Unstrapp’d!

Unstrapp’d Episode 108 – Lessons in Raising Startup Capital

Chris Record — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 02:37:55 +0000

Bradley Will, CEO of Social Spin shares the story of receiving the company’s first $50,000 check from an investor. We flash back to footage months earlier taken from his webcam where he opens the mail and receives the check for the first time. This is a priceless moment in the history of Social Spin and allowed the company to secure a home and office in Southern California as well as keep their business going for several months.

Then we flash back to the current day where the investor takes his first trip to California to see how the company is doing, and to consider investing more now that he has seen the early success. Social Spin’s master affiliate, Ben Dixon shares how he first met the investor and talks about his passion for being a purpose driven entrepreneur and finding ways to support charitable causes in everything he does.

The episode draws to an end with Bradley Will on the beach in San Clemente during a beautiful sunset, telling the story about why the team chose to live in one big house rather than living individually, as well as what it’s like to be “bootstrapping entrepreneurs“.

Be sure to watch to the end to see another bonus flashback clip of Bradley Will on his webcam lighting up with passion as he realizes the dreams of his partners becoming a reality…

Click here to watch a playlist of the entire first season of Unstrapp’d!

Unstrapp’d Episode 107 – Social Spin featured in OC Register!

Chris Record — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:07:38 +0000

The Social Spin team starts gaining momentum with their new business and gets interviewed by the Orange County Register! In this episode we find out how all the partners first met and came together as business partners, as well as some more details about the company and what their vision is.

The OC Register (California’s third largest newspaper) snaps several pictures of the team and features them on the front page of the business section! This episode also covers tips on how to effectively promote your company using local newspapers and national PR connections. CEO Bradley Will shares some of the techniques he has been able to use to get media coverage for the company…

Unstrapp’d Episode 106 – Extreme Makeover Day

Chris Record — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:36:32 +0000

In the Extreme Makeover Day edition of Unstrapp’d, the Social Spin crew finds out that they will be featured in the Orange County Register business section (the third largest paper in Orange County)!

So the CEO Bradley Will barters a deal with Mars Studio in Costa Mesa to hook the team up with makeovers for the upcoming photo shoot.

Be sure to watch this video to the very end for special bonus footage of Kyle Garrett getting his chest waxed as part of a dare! If you have seen the 40-year old virgin chest waxing scene, then you will laugh your tail off when you see it happen in real life to our own business partner!

We post daily episodes of Unstrapp’d to our channel on YouTube so that you can travel along our journey with us as we build up a social media marketing company from scratch to hopefully a $100M+ company. Enjoy!

Chris Record
President
Social Spin, Inc.
http://socialspin.com

Unstrapp’d Episode 105 – Prosper in Long Beach!

Chris Record — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:53:29 +0000

Prosper in Long Beach is an episode where the Social Spin team attends a networking event in Long Beach, CA called Prosper Now. The event was hosted by Brad Axelrad and featured dozens of guest speakers and top business authors.

Chris Record was invited to be a guest speaker on a panel about emerging social media trends and the team made some amazing contacts that have since resulted in big business deals.

This episode is filled with networking tips that will help you increase your effectiveness at making connections at large events, and is definitely worth watching! Enjoy :)

Unstrapp’d Episode 103 – Catalina Island Zip Line Adventure!

Chris Record — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:14:20 +0000

In this 2-part episode the Social Spin crew decide to reward themselves after putting in consecutive 18 hour days, with a trip to Catalina Island!

A prank is played on Kyle Garrett where he is lead to believe there is a 1 in 1125 chance of dying on the new zip line tour at the island! Kyle falls for it and prepares himself to face the reality that he might actually die!

Sure enough the guys do just fine on the zip line, and enjoy picture perfect weather on Catalina Island while adventuring around town on golf carts, exploring caves, and enjoying great food.

Click here to watch the first season of Unstrapp’d on YouTube

Comment below or on the YouTube video if you have ever been scared that you were possibly going to die at an amusement park or some type of scary ride or situation. Skydiving? Jumping off tall structures? Can you relate to Kyle?

Unstrapp’d Episode 102 – Business on the Back Nine

Chris Record — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:39:43 +0000

In episode 2 of Unstrapp’d, Social Spin President Chris Record gets an opportunity to play a round of golf with CFO Bill Dully and his investor friend. Chris get’s a little impatient and starts pitching the investor right off the bat, which may end up killing the deal. In the process Chris learns a valuable lesson about “Saving Business for the Back Nine“.

Meanwhile, the team back at the house are brainstorming how to get sales videos edited on time for the launch of the Free Blog Factory. The deadline is literally the following day so Kyle Garrett has to stay up the entire night editing the videos and is a little nervous about hitting the deadline.

The goal of the early episodes of Unstrapp’d is to help viewers get to know a little more about each character as well as give a real behind the scenes look at building a $100 million dollar company. Some scenes will be more exciting than others, but every single day will be different and will be REAL.

There are no professional actors here, just a group of entrepreneurs willing to let their lives be shared publicly with the world in hopes to teach through mistakes and successes.

In this episode there are some obvious lessons learned from mistakes on the golf course, and sacrifices being made to hit deadlines as part of the cost of being a startup company.

Click here to watch the entire first season of Unstrapp’d on YouTube!

Unstrapp’d Episode 101 – Hello World!

Chris Record — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:59:49 +0000

In this first episode we introduce you to the main characters of Unstrapp’d. We start off with Bradley Will and Gabe Strom arriving at our new 7,000 square foot mansion in San Clemente, CA for the first time.

Bradley and Gabe then cruise down to the beach and pier to meet up with the rest of the guys (Kyle Garrett, Russell Yermal, Arthur Tubman, & Ben Dixon). They hang out on the beach and talk about the most difficult parts of relocating to California.

Chris and Vanessa Record decide to stay in for the night while the guys are out, and they discuss their roles with Social Spin and give insight as to what viewers can learn from watching Unstrapp’d on YouTube.

The purpose of this first episode is to help you understand the characters in greater detail, and to help set the foundation for episodes to come.

You do not want to miss this episode!

Please comment on the YouTube video with your thoughts and feedback. The more comments, the more popular the video will be in YouTube so it’s also a great way to support us.

Click here to watch Season 1 – http://youtube.com/unstrappd

We truly appreciate you for being a fan and we hope that we can entertain, educate, and inspire you with our new reality show!

Chris Record, President
Social Spin, Inc.
http://socialspin.com/

10 Easy Steps to Get 5,000 Friends on Facebook in 90 Days!

Chris Record — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:25:59 +0000

As most of you already know, Facebook allows users to have up to 5,000 friends on their personal profiles, and once you reach that coveted benchmark, you will no longer be able to add more friends without deleting some first. Many Facebook users that reach that limit then start focusing on building an unlimited following at their Facebook fan page.

While building your fan page is definitely an important step and a great long term play, there are tremendous benefits in reaching the max of 5,000 friends on your personal Facebook profile, and if those friends happen to be the target audience of your products or service, then this can give you a tremendous advantage in the marketplace to promote your business.

Having 5,000 friends on your personal Facebook profile is going to dramatically assist you in Promoting your Pages, Groups & Events as well as Branding & Credibility. In this article I am going to teach you 10 simple steps to increase your Facebook friends list to 5,000 in as little as 90 days.

I hope you take this seriously and make it happen! Enjoy :)

Request 30 New Friends Per Day
Have People Suggest Friends For You
Provide Massive Value
Create A Social Media Signature
Add More Content To Your Info Page
Create A Great Profile Picture
Import Your Entire Email List
Create Viral Facebook Videos
Start Targeted Facebook Groups
Comment, Comment, Comment

1. REQUEST 30 NEW FRIENDS PER DAY:

The most obvious way to increase your Facebook friends list is to send friend requests to other Facebook users. While this might seem like an extremely obvious concept at first glance, I can assure you that there are some important steps you must follow in order to grow fast and effectively without being a spammer or getting your account suspended.

I have 2 simple rules when it comes to requesting friends

Only send friend requests to my target audience of like-minded entrepreneurs.
Avoid getting suspended from sending too many friend requests per day.

Facebook does not publish the exact number of daily friend requests that they consider spam, but I have found the sweet spot to be right around 30 friend requests per day. I know that some of you are going to test the limits and request 40-50 per day or more and many of you may never even have a problem with that, but I stay safe with 30 requests because I do not want to spend a couple of months building something just to have it taken away.

There is a common misunderstanding about sending friend requests and receiving friend requests. I am suggesting that you send around 30 friend requests per day, but you can have unlimited people request to be your friend per day.

Let’s assume that you request 30 new friends per day every day for the next 90 days. That would be 2,700 friend requests, and let’s assume that for whatever reason only about 50% accept your friend request in return. This will generate you roughly 1500 new targeted friends and you would be over a quarter of the way to your goal already.

The easiest way to find these new friends is by searching for Facebook groups related to your target audience and browsing through members and adding them one at a time. For example, if you are looking to network with Realtors, you would find a group for agents and go through the list until you have added 30 members for the day. Then the next day you would repeat the process until you have added everyone in that group. Then you simply find another group and start over again.

It is OK if you miss a day or two here and there but if you want 5,000 friends in 90 days you have to learn how to make this a habit!

2. HAVE PEOPLE SUGGEST FRIENDS FOR YOU:

Since you are limited to how many friend requests you can send out per day, the key is to get other people to request your friendship. One of the easiest ways to do this is to have your friends suggest their friends to you. They can do this by visiting your personal profile and clicking the link on the bottom left hand side of your profile where it says “Suggest Friends For…”.

Your friends can select all of their friends by clicking on them, and then click "Send Suggestions"

Hopefully they refer ALL of their friends so that your friends list grows quickly! I helped one of my clients get to 3,000 friends in one week just through this strategy alone! Here are a couple of tips to assist you in finding someone who will suggest friends for you.

Offer to exchange services or provide something of value for them
Suggest your friends to them in exchange for them suggesting their friends to you
You can “help” them by sharing these tips in exchange for them promoting your profile :)

Come up with unlimited creative ideas to make it a win-win situation…

3. PROVIDE MASSIVE VALUE:

One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make on Facebook is that they request friends and then spam them with their latest and greatest opportunities right off the bat. My suggestion is that you create as much value as possible for your friends before talking to them about your business. When you share quality content it will motivate your friends to comment on your posts and updates and perhaps even pass them on to their friends. The more that you can create this viral activity, the more exposure that you will gain and the more friends that will request you.

The first step in providing massive value is to find some awesome content that you can share with your target audience. I would recommend bookmarking a list of blogs that offer relevant content and sharing their articles with your users. For example, you are on my blog now, which means that you are finding this content useful. The next step would be to share this article on your Facebook profile to provide value for your following.

There are generally two easy ways to share articles on Social Networks. First off you should start by looking for a Facebook icon on the page. If the blog has one, then you can simply click on it and it will automatically share the article to your website. This same process can work for Twitter and any other social networks that they feature.

At the end of my articles, readers can click these links to share my post on their favorite social network

If they do not have an easy shortcut link to share the article then you will need to copy the URL of the page and visit your Facebook profile and share it as a link. You will be given the opportunity to edit the title, description & picture then leave a personal note about the article and share it! Here are a few pictures to explain the process:

If you are learning a lot from the posts on my blog, then instead of “paying me back” you can “pay it forward” by sharing my articles with your Facebook friends. This is the ultimate win-win situation because I am taking the time to create the quality content for you to share, and you are helping to promote my articles, and at the same time you are providing value for your audience and increasing your friend base at the same time!

For a full listing of all my articles, visit: http://chrisrecord.com/topics/recent/

4. CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA SIGNATURE:

Most of you have an email signature that you already use, but do you have a Social Media Signature? It is the same as your normal email signature but it includes links to your social networks where people can follow you. A typical social media signature will usually include links to at least the following social networks:

TWITTER – FACEBOOK – LINKEDIN – YOUTUBE

The easiest way to implement this is to just add your social media profiles below your existing signature. You can start with a line that says “Follow me on my social networks…” and then include your top profiles. I highly recommend finding the “shortest” link to your profiles that you can find. For example, if you are linking to Facebook you should set up your Custom Facebook Username and link directly to it.

Here is an example of my Social Media Signature (with my email and phone number changed)

–
Chris Record, CEO
Record Investments, Inc.
888-555-1212 Cell
example@email.com
http://www.chrisrecord.com

Follow me on my social networks…

TWITTER –> http://twitter.com/chrisrecord
FACEBOOK –> http://facebook.com/recordbreaker
YOUTUBE –> http://youtube.com/facebook4business
LINKEDIN –> http://linkedin.com/in/cashflowchampion

* Tip: You always want to include the http:// before every link so that it will become an active link that your readers can click on.

Another powerful use of a social media signature is making a habit of adding a link to your Facebook emails. This is a very clean and professional way to always be promoting your networks without it coming across as spam. Another cool benefit of this feature is that you can always mix up the link that you are promoting, and even target the link based on the email you are sending.

For example, when I send an email on Facebook I will often ask myself if there is a relevant article on my blog that I can promote while I am at it. The key to growing your networks quickly is to always be promoting them in a way that doesn’t take too much time and effort.

Here are some screenshots to explain this process:

5. ADD MORE CONTENT TO YOUR INFO PAGE:

The more content that you have on your “info” tab of your profile, the easier that people will be able to find you when they do keyword searches on Facebook. This same rule also applies to how many status updates that you have, because those are now searchable on Facebook as well.

Some people feel that this step is a waste of time, or they lack the creativity to come up with answers to these questions, but if your goal is to grow your friends list to 5,000 people in 90 days, then I feel this is an important factor in making that happen. Your answers should have two primary purposes:

BRANDING – This is a chance to brand yourself. When other Facebook users consider adding you as a friend they might want to see what your interests are before making a decision.
KEYWORDS – The content that you choose to feature on your info page is also searchable text so think of books and interests that your target market also like.

In a nutshell, it is always important to take the time once to fill in this content, and then forever receive the benefits of it…

6. CREATE A GREAT PROFILE PICTURE:

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”

Most Facebook users do not understand the true value of a great profile picture. Think about it for a second. Face-Book. It is ALL about your face, and you only get one chance to make a great first impression! When other Facebook users are browsing through friends of friends they will first look at your picture before anything else. You want to make it stand out from the rest with something original if possible, and make sure that it is very professional with good lighting and of course a great smile!

Here is a screenshot of the current picture that I am using on my Facebook Fan Page. You might need to start out with a simple cell phone picture for now, but it should be your immediate goal to get a better picture as soon as possible. It’s as simple as dressing nice and asking a friend to take a few pictures of you for your profile. If you don’t mind investing a few bucks, then have a professional take some pictures. You can get 4-5 quality pictures and then mix it up every once in a while with a different version.

Sometimes we wake up and get dressed and we just feel really confident about ourselves for that day, and I will be that there are many other times that we don’t feel confident about our looks at all. The next time that you have a day where you feel great, you should remind yourself to grab a camera and have someone take a few pictures of you. I know it doesn’t seem important, but it really is! You ARE the brand that people are looking at, and the way that you carry yourself and display yourself is what people will first take in. If they feel comfortable with you, then they will be much more likely to do business with you.

Please make a commitment to upload a quality Facebook profile picture that clearly shows your face in a happy mood in a well-lit environment. Feel free to use something temporarily for now until you find the right picture.

7. IMPORT YOUR ENTIRE EMAIL LIST:

When you first set up your Facebook account you are prompted to invite friends from your email account to look at your pictures. Many people skip this option because they don’t understand it, and when they first join Facebook they are usually pretty cautious about who they want to become their friend. Believe me, I felt the exact same way when I first set up my profile.

Assuming that you now have your profile set up professionally and you are looking to grow your friends list to 5,000 people, it would be very wise to revisit this option and invite everyone from your email account(s). To do this you simply click on the “Invite Friends” link located under the Friends tab on the top navigation bar on Facebook.

Here is a direct link (http://www.facebook.com/invite.php).

The process is extremely user friendly. If your email provider is Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail then you simply click on the logo and follow the instructions. If you use a different email provider then you will need to click on the link that says “Import Email Addresses” and then click on the link that says “How to create a contact file”. This process may seem a little difficult for non-techies, so if you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to help you through the process.

* Tip: This email importing tool is a great way to import a database of emails that you may have a collection of. I am not recommending that you spam people to invite total strangers, but I am suggesting that there is some flexibility here for the creative marketer that has a quality email list. Also take note if you are importing more than a few hundred emails at a time, that Facebook may stall out and it will force you to retry the process again. The key is to break your database down into groups of about 300 at a time, and also try not to invite more than about 1,000 people per day, this way it doesn’t come across as spam.

8. CREATE VIRAL FACEBOOK VIDEOS:

Did you know that Facebook is now the #3 video site behind YouTube and Hulu?

The reason for this dramatic growth is because Facebook Videos can go viral very quickly. You have the ability to upload the video to your personal profile or fan page, and then tag any relevant friends that may be in the video or that want to see your latest videos.

* Tip: If you just randomly tag people in a totally irrelevant manner, they may get ticked off and remove you from their friends list, or write you a nasty email, so be sure to be as relevant as possible in everything that you do.

So think of some awesome videos that your target audience would love and create them, edit them, and upload them to Facebook! Now you can easily share them on your profile, and share them on the profiles of your friends that want to see them. If your video has enough quality to it hopefully your friends will want to post it on their profiles as well and it will start spreading rapidly across Facebook.

The perfect example of a viral video done well on Facebook is the Grasshopper Campaign (Public YouTube Version). They created a motivational video for entrepreneurs and it had hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook as it was passed along. They simply put a plug for their website at the end in a non-sales type way that made it very easy for people to want to pass it around. I am sure that it drove a ton of traffic and business for Grasshopper, not to mention the awesome branding they received as well.

Every time that your video is spread virally, people will see a link to your profile as the user who uploaded the video. This will cause people to check out your profile and request you as a friend. Get creative and come up with some cool ideas for Facebook videos and encourage your friends to share them! Also, you can use this same process with YouTube videos that you create as well. The only downside is that you lose the ability to tag your friends in the videos, but you can still share them on your friends walls and via private messages.

9. START TARGETED FACEBOOK GROUPS:

Now that your personal profile has a professional touch and your friends list is growing like crazy, it is time to start creating targeted Facebook groups and fan pages. For example, let’s say that you are a Real Estate Agent. You may want to create a group for real estate agents in your metropolitan area, or perhaps even more targeted just for your city. Then you can invite other real estate agents to join the group where you can all discuss changes to local laws, and related real estate matters.

But the hidden benefit of being an admin of a group or page is that you have the ability to message the entire group. So as your group grows, it will quickly become more than just your existing friends who supported you at first. You can now add a line to the bottom of all of your updates to the group that says “Add me as a personal friend on Facebook” and supply them with a direct link to your profile.

While you might not think this will do much for you at first, believe me that as some of your groups grow into the thousands you will start receiving dozens of friend requests with every single message. And how difficult is it to add that simple line to the bottom of a message that you were planning on sending anyways?

There are obviously a ton of additional benefits of Facebook pages and groups for your business, but for now I just wanted to point out the valuable benefit of encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to add you as a friend with a simple email signature :)

* Tip: For some of your creative readers out there, why not joint venture or partner with somebody in a related industry to you that already has a group or page with several thousand members? If they add you as an admin, you will be able to send out an email with your signature to thousands of people instantly without even having to create or promote a group yourself. Get creative and this can be a goldmine for increasing your friend base!

Here are some example Facebook groups and pages that you can join and study from:

10. COMMENT, COMMENT, COMMENT:

If you have attended any of my live Social Media Marketing trainings, then you already know that I hate wasting time on Facebook. While this is an amazing resource for professionals it can also suck you in big time! That is why I take so much time to write articles like this to really teach people how to actually use Facebook for business and not just for pleasure!

However, if you can spare just a few minutes each time you log on to quickly comment on recent posts from other people it can actually go a long ways towards giving yourself exposure and encouraging other users to add you as a friend. Basically, every time that I log in, I quickly check the “news feed” on my home tab to see what my friends have recently posted.

When you only have a few hundred friends this is pretty easy to stay on top of, but when you have 5,000 friends it gets a little out of control! Just do your best to quickly skim through and find quality posts that you find valuable. You should respond with a very thoughtful comment and do it quickly so that you don’t waste too much time on this step. The more that you get yourself out there, the easier it will be for people to find you.

For example, if your target market was people who were interested in social media, and you provided training for social media marketing, then you may want to scan through updates to see where you might be able to offer people advice or troubleshoot their questions. You will quickly brand yourself as a social media coach and people will recognize and respect you for it. The same thought process can work no matter what industry you are targeting.

BONUS TIP!!!

Make sure you set your profile up so that EVERYONE on Facebook can view it! There is a section on Facebook that allows you to adjust your Privacy Settings and if you want more exposure, make sure that you are not limiting the number of people that can view your profile! Other Facebook users are much more likely to add you as a friend if they can see more information about your first, rather than leaving it up to their imagination :)

These screenshots will help you through this process:

If you have learned a lot from this article and you feel that it is exactly what you needed to grow your friends base quickly, then please comment below and let me know your feedback! If you have ANY QUESTIONS at all about any of the points that I made in this article, please ask and I will take the time to answer. I truly appreciate you taking the time to read this post and I encourage you to SHARE it on Facebook to help me spread the word! This is extremely valuable content that I am giving away for FREE, so pass it out quickly before your friends pay for it somewhere else :)