Marketing Talk

Over the last week or so, I have become friends with @gagasgarden. Gaga is great because instead of just trying to figure out Twitter on her own, she is willing to ask questions, and great questions at that. As I have been trying to help this fine lady out, I have also had flashbacks to a few months ago when I was getting started, when I had all of the same questions Gaga has been asking me. There wasn’t really an easy-to-find resource that had all of the basic questions that I was finding horribly confusing. I was too shy to ask because I was just sure someone would make fun of me for not knowing this stuff. With that in mind, I put together this little presentation on some of the real basic steps involved in getting started on Twitter. I hope it helps! If you have any questions, just holler!

Have you ever tried to make soup? In a way it’s kind of like making salad. You throw stuff into a pot, let it boil, let it simmer, then feel all warm and snuggly. What you realize after making a few different kinds of soup is that there are a few integral ingredients you usually need, no matter what kind of soup you are making. Most soups, for example, require water. Many require bay leaves. Seasoning is often nice. And inevitably, soup recipes will ask you to add chicken bouillon, beef bouillon, or vegetarian bouillon (yes, it exists, and it’s freakin’ delicious!).

I’ve been watching a lot of people talk about recipes for making Success soup in Social Media. Everyone has their own particular point of view on how you can make the most of these sites, but, as is the case with soup, there are certain nuggets that most would agree you need no matter what it is you are trying to do (even if you think you aren’t trying to do anything but have a good time).

So, being the Working Class Hero of the blogosphere (ha ha), I thought I would show what some of the essential ingredients for Social Media Success Soup are without all of the heady concepts, interesting takes, personal opinions, etc. This would be the beef bouillon cubes before you take off that shiny red foil. Raw, uncooked, unmelted ingredients. Are you ready?

1. Know what you want to do. You know what happens when you go to the store at 11 PM to get toilet paper and you don’t really have a plan of attack? You come home with the craziest mix of stuff ever. Like, you bring home fat free sour cream and then 2 pounds of caramel apples. What is up with that? Today I went to the grocery store and I saw a box of “Smooth Move” organic tea in the candy aisle. I’m not going to detail what “smooth move” tea does, but what made someone randomly put it down? There? They didn’t have a plan. The Social Media alternative might be starting a Twitter account and then ruthlessly abandoning it.

2. Be nice. Or to put it another way, don’t be mean. I uh, well. Yeah. That’s about it for that one.

3. Read like a maniac. Read peoples’ blogs. Read peoples’ links that they post. Read peoples’ profiles. Read peoples’ tweets. How can one share data if one does not have data? How can one compliment a person’s excellent writing skills if one does not read said writing? Well, okay, you can probably fake that, but this is not “Meg Ryan from When Harry Met Sally’s” take on Social Media Success Soup. This is the real deal.

4. Do not get full of yourself. I know, the people you connect with on Twitter are called followers. As such, it’s easy to think of yourself as your followers’ Twessiah. However, in most cases, percentage-wise, people are following you because they think they are your Twessiah, and they want you to follow them. Think about that when you feel your head getting big!

5. Don’t give up. Social Media is time-consuming. It requires patience, endurance, perseverance, and lots of other words that end in either “ence” or “ance.” You will very probably not “win” within your first 5 tweets or your first blog post. It just doesn’t happen that way. Hang in there.

Really, if you want to know the truth, these 5 little cubes can be the base for really any kind of Success Soup you want. I mean, there are people who will say that you need to add exotic things like Saffron, and there are people who argue about what the most important ingredients are. Which vegetable makes vegetable soup GOOD vegetable soup? These are important questions, no doubt. But still, if you hang with these 5 points, extrapolating them to suit your own realities, I think you’ll find that you’re well on your way to having something delicious.

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/kaleff

Well friends, here we are. Lucky number seven! This is a weird week because so many people were getting ready for BlogWorld. I like to think of this as my own personal blogworld. Maybe that’s just making me feel better about not going to the real thing 🙂 Anyway, I think there are some real gems once again for you to peruse. Give these writers mass kudos!

1. I debated whether to highlight this 1st post. It was so well written, and the advice was so good, I couldn’t pass it up. The post was written by Joshua Noerr for ProBlogger and it’s about how doing good blogging deeds can actually grow your blog’s traffic. I debated only because I didn’t want you all to think that it was self-serving including it in a #30thursday post, but I hope you all know that I don’t give a care about my traffic in comparison to helping people network and share. So there it is!

2. Jason Sokol has a really great post covering 5 things about blogging he wishes he had known in the past. Save yourself some time for the future and read this great post!

3. The great thing about Beth Harte is that she doesn’t just write about the Gap rebranding debacle. She also provides you with a ton of really great resources about other Social Media missteps. Check out her post called What were they thinking. You’ll find yourself wondering the same thing!

4. Really smart post from @B2CMarketingInsider asking whether it is ever appropriate to discount. When competing, our first instinct is to slash prices, but that can get us into trouble later.

5. Dawn Westerberg has another great post up. The logic has been that if you have certain numbers in your portfolio, you’ll be a successful marketer. What happens if marketing becomes a game of trying to reach tons of individual potential customers, though? “The Power of 1” will have an entirely new meaning!

6. Oliver Blanchard (The Brand Builder) wrote a really interesting post called 6 Common habits of Highly Effective Social Media Rock Stars. It doesn’t exactly paint a stellar picture of some of those super klouty folks we hear a lot about. This was brought to my attention by my friend Cristian Gonzales. Blanchard also references a post by Liz Strauss, so in fairness…

7. Liz Strauss wrote a post called Five Signs that a Social Media Star’s Reputation is Spin. Oddly enough, I hadn’t seen either of these posts when I wrote mine called “Are you practicing what you preach.” I guess something is in the air!

8. Cristian Gonzales also recommended this post by Mack Collier. You know how I always rant and rave about numbers in Social Media? Mack PROVES why numbers are silly in this post called Too many social media numbers are completely useless. Amen, Mack!

9. Lou Imbriano blogs at RelationshipArchitecture.com. His post is about using Social Media for sports, but his wisdom extends to anyone using Social Media. Great stuff here!

10. Over at SocialMediaToday, Jon Burg wrote a post whose title says it all: “Is Social Media Child Friendly.” Short title, huge topic!

11. My friend @knowledgebishop really was ambitious this week, not only blogging but vlogging! His point: Bring your whole self to work in Social Media. Or put another way – don’t be afraid to have a wee bit of fun 🙂

12. My friend @tommyismyname did a fantastic post that is, wait for it…at ProBlogger.net! Yes indeed. It’s ProBlogger quality, too. Using Inception marketing. It will put Facebook advertising into a new and helpful perspective.

13. My new friend @gagasgarden brings a refreshing approach to her blog – funny, cute, but really useful. Check out this post about what gardening and any great job that brings success have in common!

14. Susan Murphy wrote a great post for my friend Mark Dykeman’s site, ThoughWrestling.com. Her post is called Drawing Inspiration from Others, and it’s a reminder that sometimes it’s important to take in great music, beautiful art, or a great book, just to remind you of where your own passion lives and breathes.

15. Struggling with how to get your arms around everything going on in Twitter? My friends at MentorMarketing have you covered. Check out this post, which focuses a lot on a great product called TweetGrid.

16. Sue Young snagged a great interview with David Pogue. Check out this informative post on how Web 2.0 is impacting PR and Business. Great insights here!

17. Mary Biever wrote a tremendous post explaining what can happen when a company works together in an integrated fashion. Think orchestra versus solo. Great analogy!

18. Cristian Gonzales (@galactic) wrote a really helpful post about Twitter No-Nos. For example, is it okay to jump into a conversation? How do you do that? Great post to read, especially if you’re new to Twitter.

19. Josh Chandler wrote a heckuva post about why personal advocacy in Social Media works.over at Suzanne Vara’s blog. Great stuff!

20. I am going to risk looking like an egotistical maniac…this post from Stan Smith @pushingsocial was just astounding – 29 No-Brainer Tips for Quick Blogging Success. Yes, I am mentioned. I’d love it regardless 🙂

21. MayaREGuru asks if some folks are interested in doing Social Media more than doing Social Media the right way. She writes about Real Estate agents, but it’s a good question for any industry you’re in.

22. Laura Petrolino wrote a post responding to the TechCrunch article about women and start-ups. I thought her approach was excellent. Check out Women Want to Run Startups, Have Children, Own a Farm…and they Can! Lots of interesting perspectives.

23. One thing I love about @FredMcClimans is that he always makes me realize how much more there is to learn. Fred hosted B2B chat last week and the topic was Analyst Relations. I need to learn a lot about this! To give you an example, check out Outsourcing Analyst Relations: A Viable Option, which is Fred’s latest post.

24. I adore Molly Campbell’s writing style. This post, Don’t Touch Me, I’m Sterile is so true…and hilarious!

25. I really liked this post by Amber Naslund this week. You’re Already a Community Manager. I’ll bet you are!

26. Seeing a lot of #projectpink hashtags on Twitter? Kristi Colvin explains why – and asks you to help!

27. A reminder from Geoff Livingston that the average person doesn’t care a jot about Social Media best practices. How can we use that reminder to make sure we use Social Media to do good?

28. I enjoyed this post by my friend Lisa Alexander, called off the grid. I often think how nice it would be to be unplugged, but I always seem to remember just one more thing I need to do, and then away I go. How about you?

29. Do you think better when you are walking around or even running? Running to Create, by Jonathan Fields over at MyEscapeVelocity explores that phenomenon.

30. Chris Brogan wrote a post called Start from Nothing 2011. If you feel like you’re starting from nothing, or maybe if you really are, this post will get you revving your engines.

OK, so, here’s the thing about new Twitter and me. When it first showed up, I gave it a try, and I thought, “Heyyy, this is kind of cool!”

I am no longer using new Twitter.

So somewhere in that spectrum there probably lies a logical, thought-out reaction. Somewhere, deep inside, I can segment what I liked (at first) and what ultimately turned me off.  You get to witness that thought process.

What I like

Bear in mind that I’ve never gotten on the Seemic or Hootsuite bandwagon, so I am not used to columns in my Twitter world. I think I kind of liked having columns at first because it was, well, different. And kind of neat.

If 1 of your friends is talking to another of your friends, you can jump in and reply to both of them very easily. Hitting “reply” includes both usernames. Convenient if you really do want to respond to both or several people.

I like the fact that you can see lots of recent tweets from a person if you click the little arrow. It’s really hard to keep track of people in a Twitter stream, so I was discovering a lot of tweets I didn’t know people were making (this also made me kind of sad, because it showed me that I’m out of touch with lots of people)

What made me switch it off

As you probably know if you’ve been popping by my blog for awhile, chats are a big thing for me. I really feel they are important. The new Twitter interface makes chatting really hard. Let me explain why.

When I go into a chat, I do a search for the hash tag, but then I jump over to my “replies” section to make sure I’m catching any bits of the conversation directed at me. Well, in new Twitter, when you’re “in the conversation,” your replies page link disappears. I don’t really understand the logic to this, but it was a huge turn-off to me.

Another turn-off, ironically, is something that I liked at first – the two columns. As nice as it is to be able to click the little arrow and see more about a certain person and his or her tweet, that information stays on the right hand column once you go back to perusing your Twitter stream. I find that kind of confusing. I get distracted by the information on the right and lose track of what I’m doing in the left column (maybe this is a challenge on the part of Twitter to see if we can handle two columns of changing information well. If so, I failed).

I also don’t really like the new placement of things. I think the search bar “pops” more on the right-hand side. It’s kind of buried up at the top in the new version. I think the interface is just a bit more tricky than “old” Twitter.

So that’s my review…pretty eh. It’s not terrible, and at least there aren’t (so far as I can tell) major privacy ramifications like when Facebook makes changes. Still, I think I’ll be hanging with “old Twitter” for awhile longer.

image by a d. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/okiesurfer

A few people have asked me what finally inspired me to buy my domain name and migrate over here from WordPress.com. Well, to tell that story correctly, what I really need to do is tell you the story of how a handful of people completely ruined my life.

A little ditty ’bout Chris, Stan, Maya ‘n Suzanne (and countless others – I just liked the sound of that 🙂 )

When I started lightly tweeting late last year, my attitude was rather skeptical, I’d say. I saw all of these people who could get retweeted talking about how their shoes were untied. I saw people who had hundreds of thousands of followers. When I started blogging, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of people were getting an average of approximately 5 million comments a post.

“Well,” I thought. “There is nothing new I have to say. There is nothing I can offer here. I can’t make this work.”

As it turns out, I think that attitude is probably pretty common to newcomers. Anyway, I was pretty content existing as a non-entity in a world that seemed overrun with entities. I still had my television shows to watch, my crafts to do. Everything was just fine and dandy. The angst I felt about how there was no way to break in was good news for all of the black clothes I still have in my wardrobe.

Then the problems started. I started connecting with really good people. I met Lisa Alexander. I met Danny Garcia. I met Stanford Smith. I met Maya Paveza. I met Suzanne Vara. I met folks like Tom Moradpour and Cristian Gonzales.  I met some dude named Chris Brogan.

The really annoying thing about these people, and others…well, no, there are lots of annoying things about these people. For example:

1. They are endlessly giving, in all kinds of different ways.

2. They are all smart beyond belief.

3. They’re nice. So irritatingly nice.

4. They are willing to share their knowledge, expertise, and experiences

5. They are incurable optimists (most of the time)

And worst of all, they don’t really like words like “cant.”

I mean, you can see how I’m headed for a downward spiral now, right?

How does this lead to my domain name decision?

So, I’d love to tell you that I created a spreadsheet, made charts outlining the pros and cons of WordPress.com versus self-hosting. I’d love to tell you that I researched every aspect of my new blog home to see how I could customize it. But in truth, none of that really played into it. Actually, this move is a symbol for my own optimism and hope, both of which were nourished by these people and more. When you connect with the kinds of folks I’ve connected with, you no longer think just in terms of the now. You think about the best possible scenario. And that’s not where it ends. You actually start working to get there!

I have folks who have supported me and who have made me believe that one day I might need a self-hosted site and domain because my name will be worth something to other people, not just me. I mean, I love my name, but it doesn’t really stand for much beyond my own person right now. But people believe, and they made me believe, that some day there might come a time when someone thinks of my name and thinks of something great. And for that occasion, having my own self-hosted site will be great. I have folks who have helped me believe that at some point, the bandwith that WordPress.com gives everyone might have been over-stretched by what I’d be asking it to do. So, this site, this domain name – they represent the big blooming flower that these people helped me grow. It represents my hope and optimism regarding the future. It represents an investment in helping you access information that could help YOU in the best way possible.

Sitting back content, assuming that things won’t work out, is easy. Trying to grow a daisy through a crack in a driveway is hard, and that’s kind of what carving your own niche in Social Media is like. These folks convinced me, and convince me still, that I can do it and that it’s worth it. What a lot of work. What a shambles my life is now!

So now I want to ruin your life

If you are sitting back feeling like there’s really no point in working your tail off, it’s only fair that I play it forward and ruin your life. Yes, you should invest in a domain, just like you should invest in nice clothes and a good diet. Yes, you should take yourself seriously and assume that you are just as important to your community as everyone else is. Yes, I will bug you, just like I have been bugged, to try new things, to plow ahead, to keep on learning. It hasn’t all been said because YOU haven’t said it all yet, nor have I.

But as I sit and make you work your tail off…as I sit and ruin your life, I will also be one of your top cheer leaders. I will actually click to your blog when you post something you’re proud of because my friends do that for me. If you say something great, I will retweet it because that has been done for me. With those gifts comes a responsibility to not rest on your laurels. The journey is never done. You’re never going to be finished learning, nor will the journey of giving back end. Ruination lies ahead of you — a ton of work, sore hands from too much typing — these things are in your future. It’s the best kind of ruination going.

Image by torun basu. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/torun

I know that a lot of adults have a secret problem, just like I do. We like to watch Pixar films and other kid movies. Come on, you can admit it! I am the proud owner of movies like Shrek, A Bug’s Life, and Monster’s Inc. I understand that I am not necessarily the target demographic for these films, but I find them charming. It is this little secret habit of mine that inspired me, a few years ago, to check out Over the Hedge. There’s a character (voiced by Garry Shandling of all people) who happens to be a turtle, and this character gets a “tingling” feeling whenever something doesn’t feel quite right.

Well, I sometimes get a tingling feeling when I feel like something is just completely hitting the mark. And right now, my friends, I am tingling because I just read Mark Dykeman’s new e-book called Unstuck, Focus, Organized: Using Mind Mapping.

Without giving away too much, I want to explain why this e-book resonated with me so much. Essentially, mind mapping is kind of like putting a freeze frame on your brain and capturing what is going on in there at any given moment. It’s possible that this kind of process wasn’t entirely necessary a half-century ago, but with 24/7 news, 24/7 Social Media sites feeding a fire hose worth of information on an hourly basis, and other stimuli besides, our brains are filled with ideas, thoughts, problems to solve, and we just don’t have the opportunity to catch everything before we move on to the next thing. This can leave us feeling stuck, frustrated, disorganized, forgetful, and other things. You know how it goes. You have a great idea when you wake up in the morning, and by the time you finally have a chance to put pen to paper, the idea has gone or it suddenly seems really dumb to you.

Now, with mind mapping, you still need to make a conscientious effort to sit down and actually do it, but what Mark outlines in his book is how you can do that and how it can be advantageous. Essentially, you diagram what’s going on in your brain as it happens.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say I tell you I have a great idea for a new business. You say great, and you want to see my whole concept. Well, there are so many details that go into this idea that it seems overwhelming to tell you the whole story. Besides, it might result in creating a long, boring Word document. If you’re a grammarian you might get distracted by that typo on page 1,742 and miss the whole point.

Now, imagine if I could show you a single sheet of paper with a diagram showing my central idea, supplementary ideas branching off from that, and subdivisions of ideas branching off from those. Not only can you see the entire workings of my brain in one fell swoop (I know, that idea scares me too) but you can also easily and quickly give feedback. You can see with a glance that I have nothing about the location of this new business, which means I’m also missing everything tied to the location of a business. That’s what mind mapping can do.

Oh, I’m not doing anything that requires mind mapping

The one thing that really surprised me about Mark’s book is that he addresses mind mapping in such a way that you could really use it for any facet of your life, your Social Media presence, your business, or anything else. Since I just finished reviewing the 7 Habits as they could relate to Social Media, let me give you some ideas of how you could tie Mark’s mind-mapping ideas into updating your Social Media strategy.

1. Being Proactive: Habit 1 talks about the fact that “love” is an action, not a feeling. But deciding how you can be proactive while staying true to your mission can be kind of tricky. Creating a mind map could help you see how proactive tactics could stream off of and support your central goal

2. Begin with the end in mind: This one could clearly benefit from some mind mapping. What is your plan? What are your goals? How are you going to get there? You could literally map out your entire Social Media strategy on 1 sheet of (big) paper.

3. People come first: How do you want to lift other people up? What do they need that you can provide? Who do you want to lift up? Maybe asking for other people to provide you with their mind maps could help you integrate their strategies with yours.

4. Creating a win-win situation: Executing a mind map to strategize a win-win situation would be extremely helpful, not just in terms of mapping how you would create that scenario, but also in defining what the “win” would actually be. If you don’t know what’s going in the center of the chart, you already know you have a problem!

5. Letting others know that they have influenced you: In this case, maybe your mind map would be, “How can I let several people know this at the same time while also creating a “win” for other followers? Perhaps you could map out a series of blog posts.

6. Creating a community: This would be an interesting exercise. Would your initial inclination to be to put yourself in the center of your chart? That’s not really what the idea of community is though, right? The idea is that the sum is greater than all of the parts. In this instance, “community” would be the central point, and the goals of the community would be mapped out.

7. Sharpening the Saw: No one can become an “expert” at Social Media, which means that we all can constantly improve some aspect of what we are doing. Mapping out goals and objectives would be a great way to keep all of your teeth sharp and pointy.

As you can see, mind mapping could enhance your experience in all of these different ways, and that’s just in regards to the intersection of the 7 Habits and Social Media. Are you starting to see why this book made me feel tingly?

Now Mark, being the champion person he is, worked out a special agreement with me, and by extension, you. Should you decide to purchase this e-book (which you can do here), you can get a $5 discount if you enter the code SMSafety. Now again, this discount will only show up if you put in that special code. That just lasts till October 17. For every book that is purchased using that code, Mark will very generously donate $5 to the Social Media Safety project!

Oh and by the way – Chris Brogan, Michael Martine, and Chuck Frey have audio files tied to the book that you can access when you purchase. And Dave Navarro supplied Mark with a special Q&A.

Mad kudos, Mark. You’ve created a FANTASTIC product. I think you will alter how a lot of people approach situations where they feel stuck.

1st Image by Nate Brelsford. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/runrunrun

2nd Image by Kriss Szkurlatowski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/hisks