Auto-Invite and Breaking My Window

Peter Kim has an had an awesome post a couple of days ago that really rocked my memory and brought me back to the world of Made To Stick or maybe it was the Tipping Point… In the long run it doesn’t really matter both books are absolutely brilliant.

In his post, Peter talks about the broken window theory where graffitti and *trash* leads to misconduct and chaos in a community. I was relating it (in my head) to social media experiencing an increase in spamming and straight up hard-selling of products and services through outlets like Twitter and Facebook. (Thanks Peter for a great article). I realized that part of the reason why we are seeing a push back from small business owners on using social media is because of the amount of email invites they receive from different networks.

We are all familiar with the “give me all your contacts so I can spam everyone to join MY network” tool that you are pushed to complete when signing up for a network. I am confident that the auto-invite button is contributing to the overall degrading of social media by vagrants and misfits.

I am positioning this argument towards individuals just getting involved in social media. Try not to auto-invite your entire list to a network… it isn’t going to accomplish anything. It is just going to frustrate people who are hesitant to get involved online because of the amount of email and overwhelming content they receive on a daily basis.

Steps To Not Auto-Invite

1. Click Next.

And if you are going to break more windows in social media…Do me a favor and un-follow me.

Have a great Friday!

Related articles by Zemanta

• A healthy dose of scepticism (dillonslattery.com)
• Deleting 20,000 Followers from Twitter (kylelacy.com)
• Social Media Predictions 2009 (myventurepad.com)
• Ann Handley: 50 Social Media & Marketing Predictions for 2009 (mpdailyfix.com)

The Dynamics of Change

Oh Seth Godin… How I love you!

Seth had a small post yesterday talking about changing a business or the way you do things in a recession. Read his post here. It really hit me pretty hard as a small business owner.

If you’re not happy with what you’ve got, what radical changes are you willing to make to change what you’re getting? In my experience, not much. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start now.

I guess the question would be… what is the definition of radical change? You can relate it to a certain point in the past where you assumed you made a “radical change.” It could be a shift in your business environment. It could be a new product offering or a change in management. Heck, it could be developing and implementing the new tools that we talk about on this blog (social media).

You could be going through an organizational change with staff or trying to figure out your processes to perfect them (my business). Radical change is what you make it. It is important to shift your understanding with how your business was run a decade ago to how you NEED to run it now.

The important thing to remember through all of this is that you are changing. Human development needs change why shouldn’t business development? We are all trying to work through this world and make a name… make some money.. and provide for the people we love.

Do not ignore change. I find it sad that Seth Godin has a hard time finding people willing to go through radical change or at least witnessing it. I am going to make the decision today to go through some radical change! Who is with me?

Related articles by Zemanta

• While they’re all standing still… (andrewmccall.com)
• Bootstrapping Key to Success (myventurepad.com)
• It’s All About You (chrisbrogan.com)

Ignore Digg. Quality is First.

Image via CrunchBase

Here is an example of information spreading on the web via Twitter and Blogging. One of my twitter and friendfeed buddies, Zee, fed a post on Twitter that was in turn sent to me by re-tweet from Roger Byrne (@styletime on Twitter). The post is called 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My First Blog by Neil Patel. If you have been using the Internet, blogging, or reading you have probably run across Neil Patel’s name on a blog or two. He knows how to create relationships and engage people online.

One of the things that I found interesting on his blog post was the point he made about not writing for Digg. I have heard from multiple bloggers that it is important to hit Digg because you drive a ton of traffic to your site.

“On the other hand Quick Sprout hasn’t got on Digg more than once and I have a very strong core user base. This is the main reason Quick Sprout has tons of reader interaction compared to other blogs.”

Neil took the opposite approach when building readership to his blog. He decided to focus solely on the people hitting his blog through links and other avenues other than the ungodly amount of traffic from Digg. I think that is extremely important.

I have been pushing myself to care more about the daily reader than the hundreds of hits I get from outside sources. It is always cool to open your Google Analytics and see an increase in traffic but how qualified is that traffic? The important relationships to forge are the people that are constantly contributing to your content and vice/versa.

Thanks to Neil for helping me get back on track and focus on the quality of my blog. Thanks to Roger and Zee for constantly feeding me information that helps all of us along this wonderful process.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 3 Powerful Tools For Monitoring Your Brand (davidrisley.com)
• Tapping the Real Time Web (techwag.com)
• A Strategy for Online Website Promotion (socialmediatoday.com)
• 12 Twitter Stream Aggregators (socialmediatoday.com)

Building a Pre-Meet Platform

I was browsing the many, many pages of social media blogs this morning and found a post by Steve Woodruff. His blog StickyFigure has some great content and his post, The Personal ROI of Social Media is one of those posts. I am going to borrow a concept from his post and expand upon it: the pre-meeting.

From Steve’s post:

“Through bloggging and Twittering, I have “pre-met” a vast array of people who have shared interests in marketing, branding, social media, pharma, and other aspects of life. By having initial contact in the safe zone of social media, a shared sympathy has been built up, irrespective of any borders of geography, race, background, and political leanings.”

I thought to myself… hmm… It is always good to try and fit a visual description of an idea in order to help people remember the concept. If you are using social media as a platform to build a business network that far surpasses  anything in your location.. you are on the right track.

Social media allows you to pre-meet thousands upon thousands of people and then decide whether you want to take that relationship to the next level and meet at a conference or by other means. You could almost think of it as a pre-screener. Ehh, I would rather not meet them in person. Blah.

I encourage everyone venturing into the social media world to pre-meet and extend a hand to the people you find interesting in the online environment. If you have a location based social network (like Smaller Indiana in Indianapolis) it is important to have these offline meetings to further strengthen your online network.

Build the pre-meeting platform and you will flourish. Just remember to take it offline sometimes too.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Some Pharma eMarketing/Social Media links (impactiviti.wordpress.com)
• You are a Social Network (thecustomercollective.com)
• More social networking in crisis times? (theicecreamdebate.wordpress.com)

At Least You Are Trying Social Media

Chris Brogan has a recent post called You’re Doing It Wrong. The post discusses the concept that we are all doing it wrong at one time or another (pertaining to social media). I was reading it tonight while watching NCIS or CSI… or maybe it was Law & Order? I am not quite sure. Beside the point…

I realized something extremely important after reading the post. And by all counts of innovative thought or light bulb moments… this doesn’t compare whatsoever but it does shed light on something simple.

At Least You Are Trying

The majority of my days are spent talking with small business owners about social media marketing. We have developed strategies and tools that allow our clients to use social media as a tool in their marketing plan. While it is important to have a strategy and the tools… it is also just as important to dip your feet into the pool. Just try it.

You can read multiple blogs about the rights and wrongs of using social media. You can rant and rave about not using Twitter, using Friendfeed, whether AUTO-DMs are right or wrong, organic search marketing or paid search… the truth of the matter is.. and I am going to quote Chris:

“Because we’re all doing it our own way, and it’s not always going to match the way you think it works best. And just like pretty much all of life, we’ll get there somehow.”

It is extremely important to start in your own way. Get out there are try the tools after the kids go to bed. Surf through facebook for 30 mins on your lunch break. Get acquainted.

Once you get acquainted… maybe then it will be the time to hire a firm or spend some money on a strategy plan for social media. And then again…

At least you are trying.

Small Biz Use of Social Media to Double in 12 Months

My father, Dan Lacy, sent me a SearchEngineWatch.com link in my email today that talked about the number of small business and social media. Now, I am a huge fan of small businesses and I am a huge fan of social media. I had to open it.

According to the Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, the number of small businesses using social networking services and strategies will double in the next year. Now, this is good news for companies like man that want to help small businesses leverage social media. It is good to see a tool being adopted by the small businesse market (my favorite).

I do have one word of warning to small business owners wanting to leverage social media. If you are wanting to enter the social media space whether it is through social networking sits, a blog, podcasts, wikis, blah blah blah make sure you have a strategy in place to complete your efforts. Get the right training and social media partner. It is a must.

Danny Brown made a great comment on the post saying:

Related articles by Zemanta

• Who is Educating the Small Businesses on Online Marketing? (thecustomercollective.com)
• The only 2 questions an SMB will ask about Social Media (socialmediatoday.com)
• What Price Social Media? (the-unmutual.blogspot.com)
• Cutting the Right Costs (li-bs.com)

Notoriety to Aspiration: 5 of 10 Social Media Commandments

As a collective group we have been working through the 10 Commandments of Emotional Branding in Marc Gobe’s book, Emotional Branding. We have been applying the ten concepts to social media marketing and how you should be applying them to your social business strategy.

The fifth commandment is the concept moving from notoriety to aspiration.

From Marc Gobe:

“Being known does not mean that you are also loved! Notoriety is what gets you known. But if you want to be desired, you must convey something that is in keeping with the customer’s aspirations. (pg. xxx, Emotional Branding)”

This is my favorite commandment in the entire list because it one of the more important principles in social media: QUALITY over QUANTITY. Anyone can spend twelve hours a day adding everyone and their mother to their social profile. The question is, what makes them different from everyone else spending an ungodly amount of time online? Nothing. It takes a little personality to push you over the edge. Scott Stratten at Un-Marketing does this the best way possible on Twitter. Add him.

There is a split down the middle for small business owners. Many of us want to create relationships online but there is no guarantee for return on investment. This is especially important if you are using social media as a customer relationship and marketing tool. The truth of the matter is this…

It takes time and resources to truly utilize social media. It should be implemented into your marketing budget as a piece of the pie. And remember…

You can add as many people as you want but don’t be upset when you have thousands of followers and no revenue.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Intelligent Traffic That Converts? (battleandbounce.blogspot.com)
• Everything You Think You Know About Social Media and Measuring ROI is Wrong! (seomaster.net78.net)
• In a slow market, the internet will be important (sharemarketing.wordpress.com)
• 8 Tips for Selling Social Marketing to CFOs (socialmediatoday.com)

4 of 10 Social Media Commandments: Quality to Preference

We are still working through the 10 Commandments to Social Media and social media marketing. The 10 Commandments are taken from Marc Gobe’s book, Emotional Branding. He has a great list of the 10 Commandments of Emotional Branding and the points were pretty much identical to my views on social media.

What is the 4th Commandment? From Quality to Preference.

From Marc:

“Quality for the right price is a given today. Preference creates the sale. Quality is a necessary offering if you want to stay in business; it is expected and had better be delievered. Preference toward a brand is the real connection to success. (pg. xxx)”

When I relate this concept to social media I think back to the building of a brand and the development of a customer connection. The modern day consumer wants to feel an emotional connection to a brand. Each individual that interacts with your company or brand wants to MATTER. What does it mean to matter? It means you are constantly responding to problems and situations that arises pertaining to your product or service.

You can use sites like Twitter and Facebook to connect on a personal level with customers and clients. People EXPECT quality. There is too much competition in the world to tout a quality product. When it comes to the first and second levels of marketing quality is not going to sell your product.

Consumers want to see the human side of a brand. They want to become “friends” with a service. We strive for an emotional connection. Always. We are human.

And when you take your product or service from quality oriented marketing to preference oriented… you create customer evangelists that will flood the world with your story.

“–there is no stopping a brand when it is preferred.”-Marc Gobe

Related articles by Zemanta

• 10 Tips For Keeping Your Green Business Afloat in 2009 (lightbulbs.org)
• Easy question – Who will be the social media marketing agencies of record? (RexBlog.com)
• What Results Can I Expect From My Social Media Campaign? (tsurch.com)
• Why I’m finished with ‘social media’ (tsurch.com)

3 of 10 Social Media Commandment: From Honesty to Trust

Good morning everyone! Here is the third installment of the 10 Commandments to Social Media Marketing. We have been talking about listening to consumers and about transforming your product into an experience but now it is time for the main enchilada: Honesty and Trust.

In his book, Emotional Branding, Marc Gobe talks about taking a brand from honesty to trust. We have been relating his 10 Commandments of Emotional Branding to social media and the third commandment hits it home for me.

From Marc:

“Honesty is expected. Trust is engaging and intimate. It needs to be earned…Trust is something else altogether. It is one of the most important values of a brand and it requires real effort from corporations. It is what you would expect from a friend.”

Honesty is expected? Absolutely it is expected! This is not only a moral and ethical obligation for a company but YOU (the corp) are going to be found out anyway. With millions of bytes of content being produced on a daily basis it is important to remember to be honest with all the content being developed surrounding your plan.

Social media allows you to take ENGAGE with your clients. It creates multiple tools that allows you to build a relationship and interact with the people that will spread your message to their friends and eventually the masses. Trust can be built in an online environment. It can be built by using the tools available to you through Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIN… etc… etc… etc…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Listening to online brand conversations (vator.tv)
• Are You Getting Engaged? (socialmediatoday.com)
• What’s Your Answer? Do Consumers Always Know Their Own Needs Better? (successful-blog.com)

You Need A Job? Get Off Your.. I’m Tired of Helping

I have reached a critical point. I wouldn’t say it is as much of a breaking point as it is a… just being pissed off point. Let me explain.

We all have friends, family, and acquaintances that have lost their job. It is a recession and the economy is not as strong as it once was (back in the day). It makes sense that someone you are connected to.. somewhere.. is going to lose their job. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a friend losing their job?

Right. “How can I help them find a job to provide for their family or themselves.”

Second scenario. You have a friend that asks for help or asks for you to provide assistance to a third party. Out of the goodness of your heart… you help that person.

Now.. maybe I am just over the top and I expect to much from people but when someone helps me, gives me advice, or the tools to get the job done… I use it and I thank them. It is a novel concept, I know. I actually use the tools and advice the mentor gave me in order to further myself in life.

I don’t know if certain people in my generation are just lazy or complete idiots. I have had multiple times when I have helped out a third party (someone relocating or a friend-of-a-friend) and they do nothing I tell them to do.

“Are you looking to relocate to Indianapolis? Cool. Well you should join LinkedIN, SmallerIndiana, and Facebook. You are welcome to connect with anyone you want from my LinkedIN account. I will forward the introduction and Smaller INdiana is a great place to meet like minded individuals that will also have jobs or know of job openings. You could also start a blog/site where your resume is highlighted.”

The majority of the time they don’t do any of it. They even forget to send me their resume until three days later. If I was looking for a job I would be salivating at the chance to connect with over 400 professionals through an account on LinkedIN. I would be listening intently to advice given by someone.. anyone.

My advice:

Quit being normal. Quit being lazy. Get off your ass and get something done. Be proactive. Be extraordinary. Write a note and thank someone for helping you out. Do everything they ask and do it the day they give you the information. Don’t wait 5 days to setup a stupid social media profile because they are watching.

And do you think I am going to forward a resume that wasn’t sent to me until a week after I talked to you? Click. Trash.

And next time YOU decide to call me and ask for advice… you will be receiving a bill in the mail for my hourly rate because you don’t deserve it.

Okay I’m done.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Twitterville Notebook : United Linen’s Scott Townsend (redcouch.typepad.com)
• Messages Here, Messages There, Messages Everywhere (markevanstech.com)
• Clarifying “Social (Network* OR Media)” (davidrothman.net)
• Jobs in a Recession Survey Results 1: Recent Hires Got Jobs Via Referral from Friends, Colleagues, Alumni, or Family (web-strategist.com)