Archives for May 2011

What is your favorite Star Wars film? I know a lot of people love Empire Strikes Back the best, but my favorite has always been The Return of the Jedi. However, there’s one particular part of Empire Strikes Back that I hold close to my heart, and that’s the part where Yoda (one of my all-time heroes) trains Luke on Dagobah. As a Little Person, let’s face it, it’s hard not to love a movie scene that includes the line, “So, judge me by my size, do you?” Which reminds me, if you want to learn more from Yoda, visit Laura Click’s post on Pushingsocial.com called 5 blogging lessons we can learn from Yoda. But I digress.

One of the last tests that Luke endures in his Jedi training is a journey into a deep dark cave, where Yoda tells him he will encounter his greatest enemy. At first, Luke sees the figure of Darth Vader. However, he soon realizes that under that mask, it’s his own face. His greatest enemy is himself.

So it is in the world of Social Media. You may think that you have a bully, an arch-nemesis, a troll, a “hater,” or even an enemy, but in almost every case, unless someone begins to threaten you, you are the only person standing in the way of success.

This doesn’t mean that achieving success is easy or even possible for everyone, and it doesn’t mean that if you aren’t able to find success you’re a total lost cause. What it means is that the thoughts you carry about yourself to the online world are the thoughts that you will *think* you see coming back at you.

How does this work?

Let me give you an example straight from my own brain, because I know my brain a lot better than I know yours. I recently came upon a post that admonished bloggers for doing certain kinds of posts. I have a lot of respect for this person, and I thought that I actually write the kinds of posts they were saying to avoid. I began to search my soul. “Man, maybe this person is right. Maybe I shouldn’t blog that way. Oh man, what a dummy I am!”

Had I continued on that pathway, I could have ended up in all sorts of scenarios. Maybe I would have entirely changed the way I blog. Maybe I would have driven myself so crazy that I would have stopped blogging entirely. It’s hard to know, but in any of those cases, the fault would not have been with that other blogger. The fault would have been with me. Because you see, that blogger wasn’t talking to me. They may not even have been thinking of me when they wrote what they did. But something in my brain put up the alarm system. Something in my brain made me internalize what I was reading.

Have you had an experience like that before? I bet you have.

Don’t be your own hater

The world of Social Media is a scary space when you stop and think about it. You’re flashing your brain around. You’re flashing your personality around. You’re telling people you’re an expert in something, and then you have to back that up day in, day out. It’s exhausting. It’s hard. It’s super easy to let fatigue get the best of you sometimes. It’s easy to go into that cave of doubt and end up battling no one but yourself.

Don’t go down that pathway.

If you are doing something and it feels right to you, why should you doubt that? If you want to blog about unicorns and you feel it’s doing you good, who am I to approach you with cocked eyebrow and questioning brain? It doesn’t matter. It’s easier if people are on board with what you’re doing, but handing out tickets to ride is not your job. Accomplishing what you need or want to accomplish – that’s the whole point.

Don’t stand in your own way. Clear the path, take a deep breath, and know that you are the best you there is. No one else can lay claim to that. And that’s pretty darned good. Yoda and I say so.

On Saturday, #tweetdiner launched the “How to build your brand online” series with a discussion of LinkedIn. The first question I asked everyone was whether they felt LinkedIn was a necessary site to use if you are trying to build a brand online. There was quite a lot of debate about that issue, but the reason for the debate was very interesting. As it turns out, to a lot of people, LinkedIn is simply a resume site and nothing more.

I’m on the LinkedIn Fence

Three years ago, I had the great privilege of seeing Lewis Howes speak at the SummitUp conference in Dayton, Ohio. If you’ve heard Lewis speak in real life before, you know that he is engaging, funny, and a huge supporter of LinkedIn. That speech, in addition to a break-out session that focused tons on what a great tool LinkedIn is, convinced me that I really needed to dig in a bit more.

When I got home from the conference, I started filling out my profile, and just like on Twitter, I started looking for the big names to connect to. That didn’t seem to do much good though. I had a lot of  uncertainties on my mind too. LinkedIn kept prompting me to get some recommendations to flesh out my profile. Well, that’s kind of awkward, especially if you’re just reconnecting with someone after years and years. Do you post status updates on LinkedIn the way you do on Facebook? I tried importing Twitter last year when I first started tweeting and discovered, after I started joining chats, that ALL of my tweets were being dumped into LinkedIn. That made me feel bad. Oddly, no one yelled at me. Was my profile that invisible?

For all of the raving and praise I had seen LinkedIn receive, I was not seeing much action myself. And in fact, that’s still the case today. As a person who loves online engaging, LinkedIn is quite the conundrum.

How to engage on LinkedIn

For people who are strong supporters of LinkedIn, nothing I said above really makes any sense. There are two super easy ways to engage with other people on LinkedIn.

1. Groups: Groups can offer the same kind of interaction that Twitter chats do, only you don’t have to worry about the information flying past your head at 90 miles per hour. You find a group that is relevant to your industry, you join, you start chatting. Boom. Done.

2. The  Questions & Answers section: The Q&A section of LinkedIn is a bit hidden as it’s under the “more” tab. However, if you know that it’s there, it can be a pretty easy way to engage with people. There are questions divided up by all sorts of industries and then sub-divisions within your industry. Fly around in there, offer insightful answers, and you might even become the top consultant in that category.

What could be easier than that?

I don’t know about you, but so far, I haven’t found either of those options particularly easy to build on.

Groups

My experience (and keep in mind, this is just me talking) with groups has generally gone 1 of 2 ways. Either the group is essentially dormant (I think I saw tumbleweeds roll across one) or every thread is a promotion of someone’s blog.  The groups haven’t really been places where I have found it easy to engage with people.

The Q&As

I know a lot of people have had great experiences in this segment of the site, so maybe it’s just the particular areas I’m interested in, but it seems like a lot of the questions are asking for huge chunks of information that aren’t really realistic for a venue like that. For example, one question I saw was something like, “Please outline for me all of the steps involved in creating a marketing campaign, including how you make your decisions, how to choose publications, and what the campaign theme should be.”

Um, no. I love ya, but I’m not going to give away what I do professionally.

So again, even though I know a lot of people love engaging in that part of the site, I haven’t had much luck with it.

So where do you fall in the LinkedIn spectrum? Do you believe it’s just a static resume site? Do you feel like engagement is possible but like me, you haven’t had a lot of luck with it? Or do you love LinkedIn and think I’m a total nut now?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

This is post #47 in the Engagement Series. I hope you are finding this series useful, really and truly!

Image by S Brumley. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/LilGoldWmn

So, now that Social Media is kind of coming of age, at least in technology years, people are starting to kind of look around and say, “Hmm, so this is what revolution looks like, eh? Seems like a lot of work.” The honeymoon phase may be ending. People who were on Twitter when it first started may be on year four or five of tweeting. People on Facebook may be fluctuating between wanting to use it to post pictures of the kids and wanting to have their company logo for their avatar. These are, in the life of Social Media, some crazy times.

I have been thinking a lot about Social Media as a sort of entity lately. I’ve been thinking about things I’m noticing, trends that seem to be forming, and there are ten things that frankly just make me sad. Maybe you have experienced some of these, too.

1. People are forgetting from whence they came: People who a couple of years ago were all about “the people who got me here” now seem to be leaning towards a different mythology. “I got here because of lots of sacrifice and hard work. I don’t owe you anything.” This is not to say that becoming successful on any level in the online world does not in fact take a lot of sacrifice and hard work, but forgetting all of the people who helped you along the way is a rather sad state of affairs.

2. People are losing track of who real friends are versus who online acquaintances are: I have noticed this both on a personal level and in watching other people. It’s easy to act online as if everyone is your friend on an equal playing field. After all, you’re just typing words (or not). But sometimes, people take their relationships beyond the online world, and yet still treat those people as if they are just online acquaintances. I think beautiful relationships can bloom on sites like Twitter and Facebook, but once those friendships start to grow, you can’t just go back to treating that person like another distant contact. Or, well, I guess you can, but that can be hurtful.

3. People are not giving each other the benefit of the doubt: It seems like even a year ago, when I started blogging and tweeting, there was a lot of leeway. The first assumption was, “Oh, you’re new and you don’t get how this works.” Now it seems like people are more trigger happy. “Oh, you did that, clearly you’re malicious and/or stupid.” Patience is a virtue that seems to be on the endangered species list.

4. People are gossiping incessantly: Jason Falls wrote about how this happens in real life at conventions. You see traces of it online too. “Oh, did you hear that…” I suppose that gossip is a natural by-product of gathering lots of people together, but the problem is that some people are using what they hear via the grapevine to access powerful people or to get attention. That is a major bummer.

5. People are threatening each other online: I don’t know if you have heard about what is going on with one particular lady in the online world – Erin Kotecki Vest (@queenofspain). Geoff Livingston wrote a post about the death threats she has received a couple of months ago. I really don’t have anything more to say about this. It’s so disturbing that the story speaks for itself.

6. People are speaking without thinking: Or maybe they are just not thinking clearly. After the earthquake in Japan, lots of people essentially tweeted, “Well, they deserve it.” People who have differing political views talk in extremely offensive ways to people whose views differ. It confuses me, because you know that anyone can see you acting that way, and yet people continue. Go figure.

7. People are trying to stir up big fights: The other day I was skimming through Twitter and someone was clearly trying to get two big names to go at each other. They posted a blog post from each person and said, “Hmm, I wonder if this person was attacking that person.” What is the point of that kind of thing? Would a fight between two big names do you any good? How?

8. People are forgetting their manners: There are so many basic, easy to follow HUMAN rules that people aren’t following. When someone does or says something for/to you, say thank you when you can. When someone is in a conversation, don’t barge in with a link to a blog post you wrote about something entirely different. A couple of weeks ago I found myself on a list called “People who didn’t follow me back.” Really? You want to try to guilt people into following you?

9. People think that it’s all new or nothing: I am biased on this issue because I come from an agency that works in “traditional” marketing as well as the new wave of marketing channels, but it is absolutely stunning to me how so many people are convinced that anything older than five years old is useless now. It shows a sort of myopic vision – a capacity to hold in your head only what is going on right now. I find it not just sad, actually, but also worrisome.

10. People are not understanding the power of the medium: There are so many easy ways to use Social Media to accomplish great things. You can spread the word about a charity marathon, a charity event, a chance to volunteer. Never before has it been so easy to shine the light on important issues. I worry we are missing this opportunity in favor of talking about Bieber Fever. If that doesn’t make you frown, I don’t know what will.

Of course, there are many more things that I enjoy about Social Media. Otherwise I wouldn’t be hanging around, would I? But these ten things have me furrowing my brow.

What do you think? What is worrying you these days about the online world? Anything? Nothing? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

1st Image by Peter Mazurek. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mazwebs

2nd Image by Gabriella Fabbri. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa

For some reason, one of my most favorite moments at a concert is when the lead singer introduces the rest of the band. “So and so on bass guitar!” Then the bass player does a nice little solo. “So and so on drums!” And you get a hugely explosive drum solo. Why is that moment so thrilling? Maybe it’s because I enjoy hearing actual names for those guys and gals playing in the darkness behind the big rock star. Maybe it’s because I really like just hearing that one instrument all by itself. Maybe it’s because it shows that everyone in the band appreciates each other.

Whatever the reason for my adoration, the introduction of the band has been on my mind lately. I think it’s a tradition that folks in the world of Social Media could find quite useful when building engagement with others.

[Read more…] about Are you introducing the members of your band?

Have you ever seen Fiddler on the Roof, with Chaim Topol playing the paterfamilias who doesn’t understand how much the times are changing? It’s a stunning play. I had the great privilege of seeing it live once, and Topol himself was there.

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about “traditional” marketing or “traditional” agencies, and almost always, these words have been used kind of like swear words. Like, “Ew, a traditional agency. Gross.”

It seems like many in the Social Media world are as stubborn as Tevye, the father in Fiddler on the Roof, only instead of stubbornly clinging to tradition, they are plugging their ears and insisting that tradition is no longer needed.

“A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask, why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous? We stay because Anatevka is our home… And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you
in one word… Tradition.”

[Read more…] about What the Social Media World can learn from Fiddler on the Roof

A lot of times, people think of those who interact in the world of Social Media as being kind of self-centered. After all, Twitter asks you what’s happening. Facebook asks you what’s on your mind. Your posts are things you’ve written. Your tweets are updates about your life and what you’re up to.

However, when we talk about engagement online, it’s usually a thought process that has more to do with other people, not ourselves. While I’m not really advocating you becoming completely self-involved, there are a few things that you really need to internalize, be aware of, and monitor as you prepare to engage with other people online. Think about the following:

[Read more…] about six things you need to know about yourself before engaging