| 5 Questions for Christine Bode |
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1. You are obviously comfortable with all things IT but if there was no internet what do you think you would be doing for a living? I was an administrative assistant in a variety of industries including medicine, law, city government and architecture & engineering for over 25 years so if I wasn’t working in social media, I’d likely either still be working in an office somewhere for someone else or maybe working as a writer, talent agent or tour guide because I would love to travel more. To clarify though, I’m not comfortable with ALL things IT. I’m good with the computer and especially word processing and social networking, but I don’t know how to do web design outside of a free Wordpress site or SEO optimization or a lot of technical IT stuff. I do, however, know what I’m doing when it comes to social media marketing.
2. Growing up were books, music and movies a big part of your life? Absolutely! My mother told me that ever since I was a toddler, books were always my favourite toys and because she read to me from the time I was a baby, I could read before I went to school so I skipped Kindergarten and went straight to Grade 1. I can’t imagine a life without reading and I’m always reading at least 1 or 2 books at the same time. Music became just as important around the age of 8 or 9 and among my first albums were Donny Osmond’s Superstar & Petula Clark’s Greatest Hits. I spent my allowance and any money I made from babysitting on 45s and LPs (as well as teen magazines) and was obsessed with Shaun Cassidy when I was 14. By the time I was 16 though I was listening to Bruce Springsteen, The Boomtown Rats and The Clash. My best friend in high school, Ian Wilson, introduced me to alternative & punk music because before that I was listening to Barry Manilow, Elton John and Paul McCartney & Wings. The first movie I ever remember seeing was Disney’s Bedknobs & Broomsticks and by the time I saw Jaws in 1975 at the age of 11, I was hooked on film too. I don’t watch television aside from The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson or some HBO or Showtime series on DVD, so when I do watch something, it’s usually a movie and I watch a few every week. 3. Do you think there is room for a revived MySpace in the social media scene? I’m so fed up with MySpace that I find that a hard question to answer! I don’t enjoy working with it at all but still have to for my musician clients.It’s dying a slow death. I started social networking with MySpace in around 2003 and I loved it, but it has morphed into something almost unrecognizable and the new platform is nothing but an exercise in frustration. You cannot get a human being to help you if you have issues with MySpace and no one even writes you back if you email them with a question. It’s mostly being used now by a much younger audience for game playing as well as by musicians who are trying to get everyone to listen to them and are sending out a million emails a day to try to get attention but no one seems to be listening the way that they used to. We don’t really need MySpace any more since we have Facebook and 750 million people are using it, not to mention YouTube and Twitter. 4. In your experience what do businesses do wrong with their Facebook and Twitter pages? They only use them to broadcast about themselves and/or their business and they don’t actually think about how to engage other people by starting a conversation with them. They don’t ask questions, post interesting or valuable content (using everything they have available to them including photos, videos, polls, blogs, and various other applications) or give people a reason to come back to their pages. They don’t read their timeline stream in Twitter and look for posts that they can reply to or retweet in order to actually start a conversation. Their Facebook pages don’t have professional looking image banners or slot machine (those 5 revolving photos at the top of the page) banners or customized landing tabs with great advertising offering their customers something they can opt-in for like a video, free PDF white paper or a coupon for their business. 5. Where would you like to take your business, Scully Love Promo in the next two years? I would like to be able to make a decent living (at least $40K per year) doing it full time and continue to work with exciting, interesting & creative people. I would also like to possibly find a partner to work with who is an expert in sales & marketing who could help me in the areas I’m not as strong in. I’ve also just started giving social media workshops so I hope that I’ll get to do more of them as well. And we have to know: What book is on the top your summer reading list? What music are you listening to in your backyard? I’m reading The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma and really want to read Life by Keith Richards next. I’m also looking forward to reading Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. Sivers is the founder of CD Baby and a very successful entrepreneur with personal philosophies that I really admire. My back yard is currently under construction, but in my air-conditioned apartment, I’m listening to Truth by Shaz Oye, 21 by Adele, and Songwriter by Andy White a lot right now! -------------------------------- Christine is accepting new clients and would be happy to provide a free 1 hr. consultation to assess your social media marketing needs. Email:
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To find out more about Christine read What Books,Writing & Reading Mean to Me her article that originally apeared in HarperCollins Canada's Savvy Reader website |




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