Maximizing Social Media with Founder of Windmill Networking - Neal Schaffer.

“…only through experimentation and failure do great things come” Neal Schaffer.

Neal Schaffer is recognized as a leader in helping businesses and professionals embrace and strategically leverage the potential of social media. An author, speaker, and social media strategy consultant, Neal has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, Yahoo!, and the American Express Open Forum. A graduate of Amherst College, he is also fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese and currently resides in Irvine, California, where he proudly serves on the marketing committee for the United Way of Orange County.

Neal’s first book, Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn, was a recipient of multiple industry awards and continues to be one of the best-selling books in its genre. In July, 2011, Neal published his second book, Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing. He is currently working on his third book, tentatively titled Windmill Networking: Maximizing Twitter, which is expected to be published in late 2011.

As President of Windmills Marketing, a social media strategy consulting practice, Neal has led social media strategy creation, educational workshops, and implementation coaching for a range of B2B and B2C companies including a Fortune 50 software company, a multi-billion dollar nutritional supplements enterprise, and a popular Mexican-American musician.

Services provided by Windmills Marketing include:

• Social media audit and strategy planning

• Social media implementation and strategy coaching

• Custom social media workshops

Neal is also a frequent social media conference speaker and is passionate about educating his audience with content that is custom created to help them truly understand, leverage, and maximize social media for a variety of objectives. Through his speaking engagements, he helps companies and professional associations reach the next level in understanding and strategically implementing social media with compelling content and concrete takeaways. Neal has spoken in front of thousands of professionals at nearly 100 national and international events.

You can learn more about Neal at windmillnetworking.com

Do you think the education you’ve invested in helped you on the road to success?

Without a doubt education has played an integral role on my road to success. My father was an elementary school teacher, so this deeply influenced the role that education would have in my life. I ended up traveling from my native Southern California to receive a liberal arts education at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Amherst is a school that does not have a business program per se, but they preach that through taking a wide variety of basic humanities classes, you will be prepared for any future challenge. After all, understanding how to analyze and interpret situations, perform scientific experiments, debate on subjects, communicate your opinions and understand people and cultures that don’t think like you do are all key skills that are required in any business environment. The net-net is that this education prepared me not with the specific business tools but with the right mindset and core human skills to be able to communicate with various types of people from a variety of cultures and logically interpret and react to the plethora of business situations that I have faced, and that has undoubtedly been the basis for my success.

What was the “break point” or an AHA moment in your career that made you decide to build your own brand?

It is common that unfortunate events are the sparks for greater and positive things in life. I decided to build my own brand when, for the first time, I was let go of a position. I had always been the one deciding on when to leave a company and had always been the one in demand, but when happens when they decide they don’t need you – and it happens only 14 weeks after you were hired? You feel hurt, that no matter how much you invest in time, energy, and passion, that a company can, at any time, simply pull the plug on you. That was when I had my AHA moment which was that I needed to build something that no one could take away from me – and that would be my own brand. That helped propel me to become who I am today.

As a young professional, what were some of the mistakes that you made and what did you learn?

One of the first mistakes I learned was actually that I was too complacent in a career situation that I should have relieved myself from early on. A long-term approach to success is important, but if you wait too long opportunities can slip and there is potential of a greater opportunity loss. I think it’s important to always monitor your goals and objectives, and if you find yourself not growing at a particular point and time, you might need to either reset your goals or move elsewhere. Maybe a monthly or even quarterly review to make sure you’re still on the right path.

How do you measure success?

I believe that success is measured by how many people you positively touch throughout your life. When I started blogging and writing my book, I never thought of myself as a local boy and instead had a global vision, realizing that with the Internet words and relationships can travel across borders. One little nugget of information that I produce or share could be a godsend to someone else somewhere. The more people that I can empower to do great things with my knowledge and experience, the more successful as a human being I will have become. Becoming active in social media makes it easier for me to share and touch people globally, 24/7, and thus it is the perfect arena for me to play in! It’s also why I continue to blog and write books, so that I can “touch” as many people as possible – hopefully, in a positive way, of course ;-)

What is one advice that you can offer to your readers?

This may sound simple, but decide on what you want to do and do it. Many are afraid of success. I say dream big and pursue. Sure, you might fall down, it may hurt, and you might think that you’re crazy doing what you’re doing (and so will everyone around you). But only through experimentation and failure do great things come. You will slowly find yourself becoming more smarter and able, and what you are dreaming for becomes more realistic as both you and your dream evolve.

What do you do for fun?

For me, family is fun, so I try to spend my “fun” time with them. We enjoy traveling, going out to eat (usually Japanese, Korean, or Chinese food – in that order), playing sports, and just being goofy. Networking and socializing with others is also fun, and I enjoy meeting a lot of people over coffee or drinks to see how we can help each other in developing new and growing old relationships. I also love long drives to clients where I can get caught up on the latest music as well as jogging when I have the chance to do that and put everything in order in my mind. Did I mention that I’m also a huge Lakers fan and will go through the season without missing a game?

What is your favorite gadget(s), software(s), website(s) that makes your life easier and more productive? Are you Mac or PC?

I was PC since the days of DOS (oops…that aged me ;-) but made the switch over to a Mac almost 2 years ago and have never looked back. Therefore, you can imagine that my favorite gadgets are my MacBook Air as well as my iPhone

Since I am active in social media, the websites that I use tend to be ones that help me stay more productive on them. With that in mind, here would be a shortlist of a few of them:

Evernote - This is not a social media tool but helps me keep organized on strategic items as well as blog post ideas.

StumbleUpon - Recommends me good reads that I might have missed on other channels. Use their iPhone app all of the time if I have a minute or two where I need to wait in line.

SEE ALSO:

How To Leverage Virtual Assistants. Interview with Dean Soto
How To Start Successful Entrepreneur Networking Service. Interview w/ Syed Shuttari

CoTweet - Allows me to use Twitter like my InBox and helps me stay very productive tweeting.

BufferApp - A simple little application which helps me easily schedule my tweets throughout the day.

Tweepi - This is a Twitter management tool that I am still experimenting with but I am loving a lot. Their motto is “make sense of your Twitter account” so it helps me better understand my current followers and find new ones that might be of interest!

Who would you like to see featured here and why?

If you haven’t you definitely need to contact Dean Soto as well as Tim Tyrell-Smith. You can find them in social media – I can also help make the introduction if necessary.

Ways to Connect with you:

Email: neal@windmillnetworking.com

Phone: (888) 541-3429

Web: http://ping.fm/i8K0f

LinkedIn: http://ping.fm/oWA83

Twitter: http://ping.fm/tbZVi

Facebook: http://ping.fm/rSzLd

From: http://ping.fm/5NZQf