Marketing Talk

As we near the halfway point of the Engagement Series, I thought it might be useful to let you know who I look up to in this arena. As I can’t possibly say enough, I am definitely and forever still learning. When I have a question or when I wonder how I can better what I am doing, these are the people I think about. I can’t recommend enough that you seek them out and learn from them, too.

Nancy Davis, aka @NancyD68. Blogs at http://nancyadavis.wordpress.com/

I’ve been fortunate to get to know Nancy over the last month or so especially. Why is Nancy an engagement superstar? Not only does she leave insightful and lovely blog comments, and not only does she bring smiles via her Twitter presence, but Nancy is the rare kind of person who takes a negative experience, learns from it, and then tries to make sure no one else goes through the same struggles. Nancy’s current mission is to let women in abusive relationships know that they are not alone and that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. How much more superstar can you get, anyway?

Jason Sokol, aka @jwsokol. Blogs at http://jwsokol.com/scc/

I met Jason via Suzanne Vara. I knew that I had met a special person when I wrote a post that referenced a quote from Ken Burns Civil War series, and Jason (I call him J-Dubs) got it right away. Jason is an engagement star for several reasons, but what I find most admirable about him is that he is always trying to up his game, and he tries to do that via learning and keeping an open mind. Jason is also an unflinching supporter, a genuinely warm person, and as a New Englander might say, “Wicked smaht.”

Kat Caverly, aka @Greetums. Company site: www.greetums.com

When I was working on my anti-bullying group last September and October,  a lady that went by the Twitter handle @greetums started visiting my weekly chat, supporting my blog, and helping me out with useful information throughout the week. Little did I know that Ms. Kat is not only intensely helpful and supportive, but she also defines ebullient. When @greetums befriends you, you know that you have a friend, and a strong one, wherever you go and whatever you do. Isn’t that what engagement is all about?

Mark Schaefer, aka @markwschaefer. Blogs at http://www.businessesgrow.com/blog/

I found Mark Schaefer’s blog last year. Mitch Joel had published a post about Twitter following and Mark wrote a dissenting post. I really enjoyed Mark’s writing style. Knowledgeable yet personable, an air of expertise yet not stuck up. Over the last several months, not only have I come to appreciate Mark’s engaging blog voice, but I’ve also come to really respect how Mark handles himself in the online world. He answers comments on his blog, which is a large community, and he doesn’t just answer them. He ANSWERS them. He is honest, at times self-deprecating, and always helpful and kind. Forget being like Mike. I wanna be like Mark!

Amber Cleveland, aka @ambercleveland. Company site: www.sterlinghope.com

I’ve written about Amber on this blog before, but the longer I get to know Amber, the more I feel like really I should sing her praises every day. If there is an interesting chat, you’re almost certain to find Amber somewhere nearby. She isn’t just passing out the cookies either. She embodies the engagement 1-2 punch. She’s smart and sweet. Disgustingly so on both counts, in fact 🙂 Even though she isn’t from Cleveland as I thought she was when I first met her, I still do my best to follow Amber’s engagement example on a daily basis.

Raul Colon, aka @rj_c. Blogs at http://raulcolon.net/

I first met Raul on Chris Brogan’s blog. It’s amazing the jewels you find over there. Not just the posts themselves, I mean, but all of the great people who comment. I started to get to know Raul a bit – I always found his comments interesting and insightful, every single time. Then, when Chris Brogan and Joe Sorge started Kitchen Table Talks on Tuesday afternoons, I started to chat with Raul on a daily basis. Boy am I lucky. This guy is always thinking, but he does so in a way that welcomes you into his thoughts rather than making you feel like you’re intruding. He’s hilarious, supportive, friendly, sharp as a tack, offers to kick peoples’ butts for you in a pinch. This I know. I just don’t know if he would really do it 🙂

Rose L. Jones, aka @maximumharvest.

Rose started visiting our #tweetdiner chat a few months ago. At first, she insisted that she was just going to lurk. Well, we soon convinced her that THAT kind of behavior was just not going to work for us. All of us chatters could tell that this was a woman we wanted to hear from. Sure enough, Rose is one of the most quietly warm people I have met in the online world. The more she has begun to engage, the more the light of her kind soul shines through. Now, I’m going to have to talk to Rose about blogging, but for now, you want to get to know this lady. She knows how to engage and be engaging, and you won’t be sorry you got to know her.

Joe Sorge, aka @JoeSorge. Running wild at: Kitchen Table Companies

So here’s the thing you need to know about why I admire Joe Sorge. He is a television star (on ThePulseNetwork.com every Tuesday with Chris Brogan, 2 PM EST). He is the head honcho at Kitchen Table Companies. He also is a business owner offline (AJ Bombers). You might think that all of these successes would go to Joe’s head. I kind of thought that when I was first getting to know him. I thought, “Oh boy, this guy is probably going to be kind of aloof, hard to reach maybe.” Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first time I tweeted to Joe (or at?) he responded immediately. If you join the book club over at Kitchen Table Companies, you get an inkling for how much this guy hustles. And if you watch him engage on Twitter, you see that he is warm, helpful, and open to talking anything from Team Jersey to hamburgers. He’s a breath of fresh air. No doubt.

Suzanne Vara, aka @suzannevara. Blogs at: http://kherize5.com/blog

Honestly, if I start explaining all of the reasons why you should follow and befriend this lady, it would turn into a whole post, and someone a little better known than me has already taken care of that. So, I will say this. Before I was really good friends with Suzanne, I was learning from her. She talked about baseball. She talked about her Jets. she talked about the weather. Stuff I didn’t think you could talk about on Twitter, actually. I thought you had to be all business, all the time. Suzanne taught me how to converse on Twitter, and I’m sure she regrets that every day 🙂 This lady is a high-intensity thinker, a big heart, and a must-have if you are building a community.

Joe Ruiz, aka @SMSJoe. Blogs at: http://www.strategicdriven.com/marketing-blog/

I met Joe when I first started participating in #MMChat. Or did I meet him at #b2bChat. Oh, I know, I probably ran into him at #IMCChat. Well, the fact is, I ran into Joe in every chat I attended when I was just discovering the wonder of Twitter chats. Wherever I went, there was Joe, leading conversations, saying hi to people, offering kind words, and exuding this warmth that you don’t come upon very often in the online world. Recently, I had the opportunity to work with Joe, among others, on our Care4Japan project. He was tireless, supportive, dedicated, and yet kept his humor about him and seemed (I don’t know otherwise) to really enjoy himself. So it is with Joe wherever you encounter him. He is everything you want to be as an online engager. And he’s pretty durned smart, too.

Dawn Westerberg, aka @dwesterberg. Blogs at: http://dawnwesterberg.com

I’ve also talked about Dawn a plenty here on this blog site, but let’s face it. When someone starts tweeting out your posts when you literally can’t seem to buy such kind treatment, you’re going to be forever loyal. And that’s just the kind of person Dawn is, not just for me, but for everyone. She is wise, kind, has a full spectrum of interests that she is always happy to share, and she just always brings a smile to my face. I would imagine it’s the same for everyone who encounters her. Like Joe, Dawn seems to populate every Twitter chat that’s worth a darn, which makes it all the more amazing that she can be a Duct Tape Marketing consultant and an excellent blogger on top of everything else.

Bruce Serven, aka @Bruce Serven. Blogs at: http://bruceserven.com/

I met Bruce awhile back at good ole #blogchat. He is always incredibly active in that chat, and he always participates the way I feel is most useful – communicating and conversing with others rather than trying to promote himself. Bruce is a steady and quiet supporter, an excellent writer, and fun to engage with on Twitter. A study of his profile will tell you what I have come to discover – Bruce seems to have a kind word for everybody. And maybe it’s his sombrero, but he just always seems to bring a smile to my face when I see him in the stream. Follow this fella, read what he has to say. He is a great person to have in your community!

These are just 12 people who are fantastic at engaging. They just know how to do it. I learn from them all every day in different ways. Won’t you try to do the same? It will be worth it, I promise. And yes, there are countless other people I could include. Maybe another of these posts will be coming down the pike. You’ll just have to wait and see 🙂

This is post #47 in the Engagement Series. Thank you for sticking with it or for joining in! I really appreciate it sincerely and truly.

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