Margie Clayman

For better or for worse, it seems like I am stepping into the very modest wardrobe of Ms. Emily Post when it comes to the world of Social Media. I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately regarding proper etiquette or how I approach certain situations whilst avoiding hurting anyone’s feelings.

Really, what it comes down to are some pretty basic rules. I thought I would outline some here, and then you fill in any that I miss.

1. If you don’t G2G, then you’ve G2G: In other words, if you don’t give to get, you’ve got to go. I don’t mean that you have to pay it forward in a cheesy movie kind of way, but, for example:

• If someone retweets your post, go to their blog and leave a nice comment or tweet out a post for them

• If you ask someone for a favor, try to do them a favor around the same time frame

• If someone refers a person to you and names you as a good resource – be a good resource

Can this seem mechanical sometimes? Maybe. Can you get away with not giving to get? Probably. But giving to get also has the added benefit of helping you feel helpful and squishy, which is almost always nice.

2. Hold the Ham: Everyone wants to be the star of their own Social Media reality, and let’s face it, when all of these sites are asking, “What are you doing,” “What’s on your mind,” and “What’s new” it’s easy to think that everyone cares an awful lot about us. However, sometimes it’s a good idea to step back a bit and let someone else take the starring role. This can mean:

• Promoting someone else’s project, even if you have a project in progress

• Inviting someone to guest post on your site

• Contributing a guest post to someone’s site

• Retweeting someone else’s post or tweet

3. Remember that time is the ultimate gift: One thing people really appreciate is getting an acknowledgment that they have a lot on their plate. This can be done in any number of ways. For example:

• Don’t throw a tantrum if someone doesn’t read your post Right-A-Way!!!!!

• If you ask someone for a favor and they say no, don’t ask 27 more times

• If you ask someone for a little time and they do give that gift to you, be appreciative.

Bear in mind, whenever you write a blog post and tweet it out or post it to Facebook, you are asking people for time, and when people comment or share your post, they are giving you that time. Show appreciation via comments or tweets.

4. Extrapolate how you feel on to others: Even though so many of us experience Social Media in different ways, we often encounter experiences that create the same kind of sentiments. Try to keep your eyes and ears open for situations where you can sympathize with or applaud a person. This means:

• If a person announces that they have just started blogging, give them a round of virtual applause. You know what a big step that is and how hard it is to get going

• If someone is new to Twitter, reach out, lend a hand, and introduce them to some of your friends

• If someone posts really good news, retweet it and congratulate them, because you know you’d love the same thing

5. Be a hunter, not a gatherer. In other words, don’t search out information so that you can store it in a bin (like your brain, for example). Hunt down information, chats, useful people, and good resources and share the bounty with your community. It’s not about controlling information, it’s about spreading information.

Here’s a bonus one, and it’s the one I am always surprised people miss. Are you ready?

Say thank you. Say thank you when someone says something nice about you. Say thank you when someone tweets out your post. Say thank you when someone comments, either by literally saying thank you or by replying to their comment in kind. Or if you think saying “thank you” would get old, act out your thankfulness. Be human. It’s not just about voice, it’s about being civilized.

What are your “be nice” tips?

How do you define Social Media good manners? What rules do you use to guide your online behavior? Do you have your own list of five? Let’s talk in the comments about how to be nice in Social Media through words and/or actions. It’s the right time of year for being nice anyway, right?

About a month ago, I wrote a post about how to be a blog promoter. I said at the time that my methodology was to post a link to my blog once in Twitter, *maybe* twice, and then that would be it.

I’m going to write three words now that you don’t see very often in the Social Media world.

I was wrong.

I’m prepared to eat some crow, too.

What I’ve learned in the last month

I often say that time in Social Media moves quickly and slowly at the same time. We can communicate instantly, so we can get a lot of thoughts out there, but we’re also building a knowledge base and relationships, which can take time. I’m not sure if a month in this world is a long time or a short time, but I’ve learned quite a lot since I wrote that post. Namely:

• In Social Media, you have to be proactive. You can’t depend upon people to spread your tweets around or to build up your blog following. If you want people to read your stuff, you have to ask them. Nicely.

• Silence does not get rewarded. A month ago, I was noting that I didn’t promote my blog posts a lot because I’m not after blog traffic or a certain number of comments. That’s still true. However, there are reasons to send your work out there that extend beyond Klout or your “social influence number.” I am proud of some of the posts I write (I try to only hit publish when the post meets my own standards) and I think that what I am sharing could be of use to people whom I wish to help (at least that’s my hope). These reasons are enough to motivate me to spread the word a bit more about what I have going on here.

• People are around at different times. Around the time that I wrote the post, I had debated with Dan Perez (@danperezfilms) during a blogchat about the promotion issue. He said he tries to post links to his blog as often as possible. When Dawn Westerberg commented on the post, she noted that she also will tweet a post more than once. As I’ve gotten even a bit more familiar with Twitter (the learning never stops) I’ve come to realize that it’s really true – you start to see what times are good for posting links and what times are dead as door nails. And guess what? It varies day by day. There is no set, fast rule.

A symptom of not owning it

I am a pretty darned humble person when it comes right down to it. Maybe it’s my Midwestern sensibility. I feel awkward when someone’s opening a nice present I’ve given them. I don’t like to make a big deal out of good things that I’ve done or that happen to me. If you are like that, let me tell you that while you don’t need to be an egomaniacal jerk in Social Media, you have to come to a half-way point where you can at least invite people to judge your work for themselves.

I was not doing this.

I was meekly going over to Twitter and saying, “Um, if you happen to be around *right now* it would be kind of okay if you went and read my, well, I wrote something, and *shuffle shuffle*, er…uh..”

This was symptomatic of me not owning my mission. This was symptomatic of me thinking that maybe what I was saying was really just…not that important in the end.

You have to at least believe that your work – on your blog, in your business, in your Twitter stream – is worth talking about. Not bragging about. But talking about.

An even balance

That being said, there are still a lot of things I said a month ago that I stand by. I don’t schedule tweets that blast out 3-4 blog posts throughout the day. I want to converse with people and engage. Blasting out a broadcast isn’t the way to get there. I don’t tweet out my post every 7 seconds. Depending on when I write a post, I’ll probably not tweet it more than 4 times before I write my new post. That’s still not a lot. There are still a lot of people who won’t see it. But I’m careful about when I time things and I have certain goals to shoot for now in terms of blog performance (rather than feeling inexplicably happy or frustrated with each post I write).

I’m also trying to do a better job of promoting people who take the time to comment on my posts. I’m inviting people not just to talk with me, but also to talk with the people who are in the conversation. Talking to 1 person can get boring. Talking to lots of new people about lots of different topics seems a little better.

Don’t be shy

If you are investing time and effort into blogging and working and tweeting, make sure people see it. Own it. Show that you believe in what you are doing. If people smell that you are hesitant about promoting your own work, what will drive them to help you build your community? Nobody wants to help build a village in the bog of eternal stench, right? You can promote yourself without being a jerk about it. You can drive traffic to a blog post without being a braggart. It is not a black and white choice. It is not a this or that scenario. That was the mistake I made a month ago.

Does this help you?

Where do you stand on promoting your work? Do you find it hard, as I was finding it hard a month ago, to get out there and talk about what you are doing? Talk to me in the comments about how we can help you find your blog promotion balance.

A couple of months ago, Jonathan Fields wrote a fantastic post for MyEscapeVelocity.com called The Fine Art of Chunking. If you are feeling overwhelmed, or if you have a really big project in front of you that just seems to grow the more you think about it, you should definitely give his post a read. As a preview, what Fields talks about is that instead of trying to take on a project or a huge goal all at once, it can be helpful to “chunk it.” Do this little thing, then that little thing. Before you know it, you’ve accomplished an awful lot.

Do you find yourself “chunking” when you’re on Twitter? I know I do. And I know we’re not alone.

The big picture

Let’s talk about Twitter first as the whole network. The whole enchilada. There are hem hem hem millions of people using Twitter every day. We are getting news from Twitter. We are getting advertised to on Twitter. We are following celebrities on Twitter. And most likely, we’re trying to get our voices out there in that mess too.

If you are using Twitter for business, it can seem like the prospect of you getting the word out about your specific business, not to mention your specific industry, is pretty small. It can feel like you are a drop in the ocean. We’ve talked before about how so often, no matter who you are, you send out a tweet and get an extremely small fraction of a response from your followers.

Some people are finding this very discouraging and are searching for other ways to get their business in front of people. However, there seems to be a growing trend out there. People are chunking Twitter so that they can be seen and heard and so that they can promote their businesses.

What do Twitter chunks look like?

If you haven’t joined a chat on Twitter yet, I highly recommend that you give it a try. Here’s a whole list of Twitter chats. Pick one that looks interesting. What you will find is that in chats, people are geared towards engaging with other people. It’s a conversation rather than a broadcast, right? Well, slowly but surely, it seems like these chats are developing into communities. Now, for me, I keep meeting new people via the chats I participate in, and I am privileged to be able to add many of them into my network of interactions. Other people use the chat hashtag even when the chat isn’t happening so that people can go in and see what else people are saying and doing.

Another really interesting Twitter chunk is the #usguys community. Perhaps you’ve seen that hashtag being used in your stream. It’s tough to say exactly what #usguys is, except to say that I think it might be the missing link between the Twitter of the now and the Twitter of the future. It’s an ongoing hashtag that evolved into occasional “official” chats. It’s a way for people to see each others’ tweets all the time. It’s a growing community floating on the stream that is Twitter at large.

The small town and the big city

Chris Brogan uses outpost terminology to describe places where you are communicating beyond your blog or website. Well, I think these Twitter chunks might become outposts within your Twitter outpost. In a great conversation I got to share with a lot of great people this morning, including Sean McGinnis, Tom Moradpour, Carl Sorvino, Chase Adams, and more, we discussed the fact that in the case of #usguys, the community under the hashtag has become self-sufficient. Members can always share ideas and be heard. Members can always introduce new people. Members can always tweet a post in and get feedback. Friends are there. Supporters are there. If the rest of Twitter is the big city, there isn’t a huge incentive to travel there. Out there, you are just another drop in the ocean. In a chunk like #usguys, you’re a person who gets heard. All the time. And not just heard – you get greeted warmly. You get to joke. You get to be yourself. And you get to get your message out there.

Can business grow in chunks?

Here’s my question. Whether you are trying to build a personal brand or grow a business on Twitter, the goal, ultimately, is to use Twitter as a tool to reach a lot of people, right? You want to meet new people, you want to build relationships, and you want to get the word out there to people who might not know you or your company.

If everybody starts gravitating towards chunks, or outposts, or small towns, is Twitter really going to remain a tool that can be used to grow business or brands? If you keep talking to the same group on a daily basis, and if you don’t find the at-large Twitterverse to be particularly lucrative, is Twitter really helping your business grow? Are you growing your brand if you are building deep relationships with a few people rather than passing relationships with thousands?

Here’s where you chime in

What do you think about the world of Twitter right now? If you are using it to grow your business or your personal brand (or both), are you finding that it’s more useful to stay out in the big stream, or do you find yourself gravitating towards the same people, the same Twitter chunks, on a regular basis? Do you feel that is helping or hindering?

I’m truly excited to converse about this. I’d love to discuss this topic with you!

Image by Robin Utracik. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/RobinUtrac

Is there something about your Social Media experience that you aren’t enjoying right now? It could be anything. Maybe your blog is frustrating you. Maybe Twitter is making you crazy. Maybe Facebook is making you want to flip out.

Let me ask you something if you answered yes. Have you gone out into the Social Media world and tried to change what’s bothering you? Be 100% honest. Asking for help doesn’t count. Reading blogs doesn’t count. Attending webinars doesn’t even count.

Maybe you’re waiting to be served.

There’s not a lack of cooks

Social Media is full of cooks. It’s kind of like a festival too, because there are all kinds of cooks out there ready to serve you their delectable morsels. Even better, these cooks will not just hand deliver you their creations. Some of these cooks will literally stuff their food into your face until you say “uncle.” People are cooking up savory Social Media campaigns for you. There are cooks making delicious Digg observations. There are sous chefs specializing in SEO. It’s easy to let all of these cooks come to you and serve up whatever they’ve got, isn’t it?

But what if none of that food is hitting the spot? What if something just keeps gnawing at you?

There are three options, as so often is the case. Option One: You just keep letting the cooks serve up what they’ve got cooking. Option Two: You yell at the cooks and say, “Hey, this isn’t doing it for me, man! I am not fulfilled!” Or Option Three: You leave the table and go to cooking school.

It’s so easy to wait

Because there are so many cooks, it’s extremely easy to get comfortable with the idea of option one. If something is bugging you about your Social Media reality, maybe you visit five blogs of really influential people and you read everything they’ve written for the last week or so. That’s active, right? Maybe you go to a webinar or two. Maybe you even go to a big event. It feels like you’re moving, right?

But really, what you’re doing is walking from one restaurant to another. You’re sitting down, and without looking at the full menu even, you’re saying, “Serve me your best. Whatever it is.”

What are you hungry for?

The first and most important question you need to ask yourself before you make that order, or before you let someone feed you, is “What are you hungry for?” Or, a slightly different way of asking the same question – why aren’t you feeling full right now?

Here are some symptoms of Social Media hunger that I have seen here and there.

You leave a chat because you can’t keep up

You don’t blog because you can’t keep it going

You hate Twitter because you can’t engage

You don’t like Facebook because you can’t get it to work for you

People often talk about buzz words. Well, “can’t” is the most attention-grabbing buzz word out there. Bloggers and experts and jedi knights and gurus and wizards and ninjas – they search for that word. They gravitate towards you and they say, “Hey buddy, couldn’t help but notice you look famished. You want something to eat?”

Don’t feed the cooks. Be a cook.

A couple of days ago, we talked about expectations, right? Well, what is your expectation when you blog or tweet that you just can’t… xyz? Are you expecting someone to swoop in and solve that problem for you?

Here’s the thing. The world of Social Media is not a place where you can be passive and happy for long periods of time. It just doesn’t work. That’s not bad news though. It just means that at some point, you have to gently put down your menu, stand up, and say, “You know, I think I’m going to start my own restaurant.”

Once you do that, the Social Media world is your oyster. If you are feeling lost in a chat, cook up your own conversation with someone about something you both find interesting. If you are finding that your blog isn’t doing what you want, change it up. Add something wild, like cumin or saffron. If you aren’t having a good experience on Twitter, go out and make the experience that you want. Don’t depend on a cook popping by with exactly what you want. Learn how to cook it.

Let’s get cooking

Was there a point where you found yourself waiting to get served? Are you doing that now? What’s bothering you about your Social Media presence right now? Let’s talk about how you, yes you, can actively turn that thing on its head and leave it far behind. Put that cook’s menu down. It’s time to go to cooking school.

Image by Michal Zacharzewski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha

Remember when you would go up to your mom or dad when you were a kid, and you’d say something like, “My finger really hurts when I bend it this way!” You would be expecting some sympathy. Maybe a cookie. Instead, you’d hear, “Well, I guess you’d better not bend your finger that way then.”

This post – it’s going to be kind of like that.

Let’s turn your thinking inside out

A lot of bloggers in Social Media, including yours truly, talk about how to create and exceed expectations for yourself. There is a lot of talk about goals. There is a lot of talk about metrics and benchmarking.

There’s something I’ve noticed though, and maybe you’ve noticed it too. A lot of the problems that people bump into online are actually caused by expectations we have of other people, and their willingness (or not) to live up to those expectations. So let me ask you some questions. And let’s talk about it.

What do you expect your followers to do when you tweet out your own post? Do you expect that they will retweet your tweet? Do you expect that they will click the link and read your post? Do you expect them to read the post and comment on it? Do you expect them to do everything above?

What do you expect a person to do after you have tweeted out their blog post?

What do you expect a blogger to do if you comment on his or her post?

If you think about these questions, you probably have some sort of answer for them. I know I do. When you think about that a bit more, what we’re really saying is that we have a lot of expectations that we place on people. Often, these expectations are not verbalized. Sometimes we don’t even realize we have these expectations. But suddenly, when our expectations are not exceeded, or when we feel discouraged because people aren’t doing what we expect, we may act out, throw a fit, lash out, or otherwise lose our online cool. That’s not a good thing.

The bad news

OK, I’m a bad news kind of person, so let me lay some hard truths on you first.

1. People do not dwell inside your head. They do not saturate themselves in your thoughts and feelings.

2. People do not keep track of everything you say, blog, tweet, or write. A quick reference to something you said six years ago today may not register with some people.

3. People cannot know what you expect unless you tell them.

4. Even if they know what you want – people may not do it. People are silly that way.

The good news

Now here is the good news. We can get our expectations under control so that we don’t end up feeling like we’re running into a brick wall.

If you have expectations of people, you first need to come clean with yourself. If you expect people to comment on your blog posts, you need to admit that to yourself. If you expect a blogger to respond to your comment, you need to be honest with yourself and say so.

Then, you need to come to terms with those expectations and determine which ones are realistic and which ones will just lead you to disillusionment.

There are some common expectations that I see evidence of on a regular basis, and they almost always lead to frustration. So, if you carry these expectations with you, it may be time to rethink things a bit. There are a few expectations people carry that I think almost always lead to frustration or disappointment. For example:

Do you expect that irritating patterns of behavior will cease if you always draw attention to those that present that behavior?

Do you expect that people will continue to build you up if you never build up other people?

Do you expect that a blogger who receives 75 comments per post will always be able to answer you?

Do you expect that a request for a significant amount of time will always be met just as you wish?

It might be hard to admit that we carry these expectations. We might not be proud of them. But we need to identify them. And we need to address them.

So, what do you expect?

When you sign into Twitter, or when you write a blog post, do people walk in knowing what your expectations are? Do you know what your expectations are for each action that you send out? Are you paving the way to frustration for yourself and others, or are your expectations more aligned with your end-goal?

Let me know what you come up with in the comments.

And no, I don’t expect you to. I just am glad if you do.