Archives for December 2010

As I reflect back on the decade that was, a few bright and shiny faces came to mind who really made a difference in my life. Beyond the realm of my family, who are just always there and always wonderful, these people did all kinds of things to let me know that they cared. Whether they were just available when I was going through hard times or whether they were the first to congratulate me during the good times, they kept my ship sailing, they kept me up, and sometimes they even offered a well-placed, well-timed kick to the hiney.

There are a lot of motivational quotes out there about what true friends are. But I have learned, thanks to this last decade, that a lot of those flowery sayings are not really getting to the core of the matter.

The people who matter are your strength when you are running low. They are the purchasers of the champagne (or ice cream) to celebrate your victories. They don’t run away from bad times, and they don’t run away from your success.

Today, in my opinion, is a really good time to tell the people who made a difference in your life that, “Hey, you made a difference in my life.” I have let the people who fall into that category in my life know that they have impacted me in ways they might not even have realized. They made a difference. It’s a chance to be Clarence the angel from It’s A Wonderful Life.

It’s also a really good time to think about how you can be a difference maker for someone else. What better goal is there to strive for as this year and decade come to a close? It can be as simple as being around. We all can do that, can’t we?

Happy New Year to you and yours. I’ll see you next year.

Imagine this scenario. A kid is having a birthday party and it’s time to open the presents. Everything the kid asked for appears under beautifully colored wrapping paper. At the end of the present-opening extravaganza, under a mountain of everything cool, the kid looks around and lets out a big sigh. “This is just too much stuff,” the kid laments. “How can I possibly play with everything I ever wanted? I don’t have enough time, even!”

What thoughts would go through your head?

Well, in the world of Social Media, it’s easy to come across as a kid like that. It all comes down to one simple fact – a lot of what you receive in this online world is a gift, and if you don’t really make a point of remembering that, you can come across as ungrateful.

What are these gifts I speak of?

We all know that we’re busy, and if we’re all busy, then we know everyone’s busy. In that kind of environment, any investment of time is extremely valuable, and in this online world, any response that you get represents time someone took to respond to you.

So, for example, the fact that you are taking the time to read this post? That’s a great gift. If you take time to tweet out a post or comment on a post, those are great gifts. Taking the time to tweet with or to someone meaningfully is a gift.

It seems like sometimes people groan about gifts that are in the grey territory. For example, a lot of people tend to not appreciate it when people ask for free advice. To me, this is a great grey zone that needs to be considered individually. If a person wants you to do their work or thinking for them then yes, that is not something to get excited about. However, if someone is asking for your advice, or is asking you to review something, to me that is a great gift. It means they are willing to open something up to you, which can really be hard to do online. It also means they value your opinion and feel you know enough to be able to help others beyond yourself.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water

Just like all facets of Social Media, accepting gifts with grace is something you need to do consciously and conscientiously. Often, this involves a bit of censoring. For example, let’s say you’re getting really bombarded with blog comments (awwww). People are giving you all kinds of good insights for the most part, but it’s just a lot to respond to. If you say, in a moment of frustration, “Man, I just can’t keep up with these darned comments,” what message does that send to the people who took the time to comment on your post?

This logic carries on to all sorts of interactions. If you complain about people asking you for advice, you are making everyone who has asked you for advice wonder if they are more a burden to you. This can be especially damaging if you are making an effort to come across as helpful and engaging. If people asking for your opinion seems like something that drives you nuts, you will soon find that your key channels of communication will have disintegrated.

It all comes back to courtesy

You’ve seen me talk about this before if you’ve been here for awhile, but so much in Social Media revolves around basic manners and courtesy. What do you do when someone gives you a gift? You say thank you. Maybe you do something in return. So it is here. And if it is someone asking you to be a resource, take it as a compliment, not a burden. They are, in essence, calling you an expert in that particular area. Say thank you, and help as best you can, or direct them to someone else.

Bad News Bears versus the Good News Gnus

I know, I know. It’s easy to complain. You have a stage all to yourself, and few things are more dramatic than saying, “Oh, woe is me. So busy. Drowning. Ayeeee.” However, I will tell you a little secret I have learned. The Bad News Bears online may get attention for fleeting moments, but it’s the Good News Gnus who find themselves immersed in long-standing communities and relationships.

So how are you responding to your gifts?

Take a moment and look at your blog community, your Twitter community…take a look at your Facebook updates and your posts to LinkedIn groups. Are you whining in the face of wealth? Are you groaning under the weight of what you are working towards? Let me know what you find out in the comments section, and let’s talk about it, shall we?

Image by David Duncan. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/D-squared

Today, Chris Brogan wrote a post about how to manage distractions to get the job done. Oddly enough, what caught my attention was not the meat of the post, but rather the first part, where Chris talks about how he “phoned it in” at various times and did or didn’t get desired results.That part really got my attention.

A bit about me and my phone

When I was in oh, fifth grade or so, I was phoning it in hardcore. I would wait to work on my homework till the morning it was due, and if that didn’t give me enough time to finish, I’d race to get the work done while the teacher was taking attendance. I’d work while the teacher was collecting everyone’s work. I hated that feeling – that cold sweat, that pulse racing. When I would wait to write my papers, inevitably the printer would run out of ink at the last minute. I’d run out of paper.

It just was not working for me. So I decided I’d start doing things that would lead to a higher quality of work. Then I realized that working as hard as I could was really rewarding. I made fewer dumb mistakes on math tests. I bumped all of my grades up. Phoning it in became a distant and harrowing memory.

Replace Phone with Fire

As I got through high school and college and into graduate school, my passion filled and overflowed the place where my phone had been. Not only did I not miss phoning it in, but I actually was driven to go as hard as I could and do the best that I could simply because I cared. It was important to me. I was striving for good grades, sure, but as time wore on, I also just wanted to learn as much as I could. I wanted to immerse myself in the experience. I wanted to make me proud of myself.

As I endeavored to do so, a lot of people looked at me funny and told me I was doing things wrong. In high school, a lot of the smart kids would brag before a test about how they had read the entire book the night before. When I’d tell them I’d finished the book 2 weeks earlier, they’d roll their eyes. In college, friends would always tell me my papers were too long. In graduate school, I was picked on because not only did I read every word of every book, but I also took painstaking notes.

“You don’t need to do that,” my peers would say. “Just read the first and last sentence of every paragraph.”

Most of my friends in graduate school finished their theses before me. In college, most of my friends got better marks on their independent study projects than I got on mine. I was never valedictorian.

I have no regrets, though. I learned as much as I could. I put everything I had into the work I did. While the grades and ratings were measurements of a sort, ultimately, they are not the measurements I care about.

Don’t back down and don’t give up

There are a lot of people out there who are ready to offer you advice. I only have one overriding piece of advice. Be guided from within. Use a compass of your own devising. And once you have that, don’t let other people or other pressures tell you that what you are doing is “wrong” or “crazy” (unless you are trying to cut a tree down with a herring or something like that). It can be hard to do things this way. It was hard to be the last one to get my thesis done. It was hard to be rated lower than my friends on the magnum opus of my college years. But I clung to what I believed was most important. They did so for themselves, too, and that’s how things ended up. I doubt that any of us have any regrets. We stayed true to ourselves.

What really matters to you? Protect that like you would protect a tiny lit candle on a windy night. If your readers aren’t digging your blog right now but you know that what you are writing is what you need to write, stick to your guns. If you are tweeting a certain way and people say, “Ew, why are you doing that?!?” don’t be swayed if you really believe you are doing it right for yourself.

But keep your ears and your mind open

This doesn’t mean that we should fence ourselves off from other peoples’ opinions and advice. There are always things we can add to our arsenal. We can always add another bit of fuel to our inner fires. And if you end up shifting course as a result, don’t let people tell you that you’re dumb for doing that either. We are like flowing streams, always changing yet always remaining the same.

And let me tell you a little secret. Are you ready?

The only advice that you’ll carry is the advice your ears and mind are ready to gather for you.

What really matters to you?

Are you on a path that you know in your heart is the right one, yet all you are encountering is pointy fingers and cackling laughter, doubt, maybe disappointment…things that are standing in your way? Hang in there. It’s hard. It’s really hard. But you will not regret fighting for what matters to you.  Make sense?

It seems like today is the day that a lot of people are using to post resolutions and plans for 2011. Not being one to swim against the tide (I love to eat salmon but couldn’t live as one), I thought I’d follow suit.

Chris Brogan often talks about picking 3 words that you want to use to encapsulate your goals for the new year. I’ve been thinking about this for about…2 months now. You know how verbose I am if you come here often, so choosing just 3 words for such a big topic is a major challenge. Still, the words in the title are the words I came up with after all of that. So let me explain a bit more.

Teaching and Learning

You may or may not have noticed, but a few weeks ago my blog started to change a bit. Certainly from my brief interlude in attempting to pull 27 blog posts into my own blog every day, but also from what had come before. I’ve begun to approach this blog as a chance to pass on what I have learned and learn what you can teach me in response.

In 2011, or, well, starting now (I am always running early), this trend will continue. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, there will be a blog that will be published with the fervent hope that it will be helpful. On other days, I may post about other marketing type things because I just can’t quit those.

I believe firmly that a blog post is not a place to preach. Rather, I think it’s the spark that can ignite a conversation. I don’t want this blog site to become a place where you read, absorb what you want, and then go away. I want to hear from you. Because that’s where I can learn. I’m definitely still learning. Always will be.

Because I want to make sure that what I’m blogging about is useful and interesting to you, I’ve created a page here on my site where you can ask questions and suggest topics for me to blog about. I will do the best I can to keep up with that section because, after all, I’m writing this for you.

I am also hoping to increase my reading. There are few more enjoyable ways to learn than to read. Books, your blog posts, e-newsletters – I need to absorb more than I send out. Otherwise, I’ll just end up writing about bananas or something.

Live

This may seem kind of obvious, but I want to explain what I mean.

There are a lot of things I am hoping to accomplish in 2011. I want to learn how to cook a lot of new dishes. I want to get back to a specific weight. And I am set to go to my first real-life marketing conference in June, which I’m VERY excited about. I want to add a lot of new experiences into my reservoir of experiences. I want to continue to grow and improve myself, a journey which will never end. I also want to make sure I take a bit more time to smell the roses (and geraniums, and pansies, and petunias). It’s so easy to let work, in real life and virtually, become a huge blanket over everything else you do. I have a ball at work. I have a ball here. But I also love sunlight, and so far, that doesn’t come out of my computer screen! For the next 3 months it won’t be coming out of the sky in Northeast Ohio, either, but that’s a different story.

So that’s what’s going on here. Teaching. Learning. Living. Maintaining a balance between these and other subsets of my goals for the coming year.

I can’t wait.

Hope you will stick along for the ride!

Image by Billy Alexander. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ba1969