Social Media Makes Everything Better

Want to know how to make the biggest sports game of the year even bigger and better? Add social media to the mix.

Indianapolis is the home of Super Bowl XLVI and the city intends to make the most of all the media attention. To this end they have enlisted the help of local interactive marketing and communications company, Raidious, who has in turn brought on board dozens of volunteers, established a social media command center in downtown and spread the message across the entire social web. So far, their efforts have been paying big dividends. The NFL reports the pre-game events are attracting more visitors than ever before and Fans are boasting about the fantastic experience they are having in the city.

It hasn’t hurt that the weather has been decidedly spring-like, meaning the “warming zones” the city set up around their Super Bowl event complex have not been needed as much as expected.

All of this is great news for Indianapolis, and even better news for social media marketers because it has brought attention to the impact possible when social media is used effectively. Fans visiting Indianapolis not only have all the NFL information they could ever need at their fingertips but they also have everything they need to know about the city they are visiting. Where to park, what to eat, where to grab a beer; what hotels still have rooms available and where they can get all their favorite NFL related gear. There is a veritable army of social media volunteers monitoring the networks to handle any problems a visitor to Indianapolis might encounter, so nobody has a bad time. (At least that’s the idea.)

Until the Super Bowl is finished and the dust settles it will be hard to know exactly what the full impact of all the social media attention has been, but in the days leading up to the big event, so far, the fan reaction has been everything organizers had hoped for, plus a whole lot more.

“We saw a way Indianapolis could take things to next level in terms of how we use social media to deliver a great visitor experience,” said Taulbee Jackson, president of Raidious, the digital media company overseeing social media strategy for the Super Bowl Host Committee. “If they’re online talking about anything about this [Super Bowl experience], we’re able to determine that and respond to them.”

The social media command center is staffed by 16 full-time employees and 30 volunteers who manage the @superbowl2012 Twitter handle and related Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Foursquare accounts. They also will run a blog.

Click here to read more about the social media efforts surrounding Super Bowl XLVI.

Oops I've Done It Again! Britney Spears (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

…the life out of you, your clients and your business.

Especially when you keep tripping over your cape and getting it stuck in the telephone booth as you rush to put it on so you can keep everyone happy…

There’s so much to do, so many people are counting on you – you’ve made promises because you KNOW you can do it all!

But even super heroes can get distracted.

One click shopping, tweeting, texting and running around creating the perfect holiday for your kids, parents, friends, clients, and trying to impress random strangers who might drive by to your Chevy Chase like christmas light display you hung to wow them…

Shouting to the world, “Look At Me, I’m Winning At Christmas!”

Well that’s about as productive to your business as retweeting aimlessly, am I right?

Like a robot, you’ve been swinging for the fences all year long! Trying to switch gears to tap the heart and focus on “what’s important” during the holidays (a time for reflection and gratitude), well it’s not as easy as Kodak and Hallmark make it look, now is it?

And in this economy, how can you justify taking your eye off the ball?

Yet the holiday season is supposed to be about reflection and being grateful. Which is hard for overachiever in you to do, for sure. The pressure to have it all and keep everyone happy, can leave you feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and even unappreciated.

But just because you may have the talent to actually do it all, doesn’t mean you should.

Not now during the holidays, and not in your business – ever.

Which is why you have to work to have defined goals. And you must create a strategy for succuess supported with proper planning and good time management. By doing this, you’ll know exactly when to say no, which you must learn to do…

Especially if you find it easy to say yes.

If you truly are multi-talented with a capacity to “do it all”, you probably struggle to set limits, because life feels limitless to you. The more talented you are, many times you lack the discipline of those who had to work much harder with less talent to be as successful as you are or as you’ve been.

This is what my friend Tony Robbins would call a “quality problem”.

Not only do you have to choose what you want to do, but you must define what’s really important to get done NOW. This inability to set limits is what causes many entrepreneurs to fail in their business.

Having too many talents creates too many distractions.

When you aren’t limited by your abilities, you actually need self-discipline to decide what’s best for YOU.  You have to plan and stick to it. The reality is, you rarely fail because of talent, or passion…

You fail because you lack self-discipline.

And I’m not talking about being Rain Man like my babies are when they want to play with the iPad!

I’m talking about productive flexibility that comes from having an open mind that’s disciplined to filter what serves your plans…

I’m telling you being fluid in your business doesn’t mean you should jump from baseball to basketball to football and back again, and still expect to win the game. It’s not sustainable.

And most importantly, if you’re an agency,  you can’t let your clients jump from one strategy to the next without proper planning and metrics in place. It’s up to you to create the map to define which hill to take.  You can only do this by definitively evaluating your wins and losses!

(Shiny pennies are good for luck, rabbit holes are safe for rabbits and squirrels are great for hunting – but other than that they should be ignored and avoided at all costs!)

The bottom line is simple…

If you struggle with self-discipline, finding it hard to set boundaries and limits, then two weeks of a crazy holiday season can easily derail 50 weeks of work even with the best well laid tracks – leading to depression and lack of motivation.

Change your attitude by filling it with gratitude, not more ideas!

Focusing on what I’ve accomplished and done well, being grateful for all opportunities I have, even the ones I missed, or balls I dropped but still managed to move forward, only serves to open my heart.

And no one – I mean no one – does this better than one of my best friends and the most brilliant writer, poets, teacher, dad, husband and friend I know, Sean Platt.

So imagine my surprise (and panic) when he sent me an email titled “I wrote this when I was sad”.

My first reaction was to think, “Thank God he’s human – he gets sad!”.

My second was to think “OMG – what’s wrong?” as I scanned down to see what it was he had sent to me. I must admit he had my attention with being “sad”!

(BTW – Your first sentence is ALWAYS your most important. Then your second. Then your third. Then the fourth – you get the point right? Every sentence to make them want to keep reading to the END, and you’re almost there right now!)

When I saw he had sent me a poem, unlike what I do when I see most poems (vomit in my mouth, because most of them suck quite frankly), I ran and grabbed a kleenex.

Because, well, because he’s that good.

(And I bet you are too, in your own way with your own special talent.)

In fact he’s what inspired this post. And I’m so very grateful he’s letting me share his off-the-top-of-his-head private poem here to inspire you. Because like so many of you, his talent and desire to swing for the fences at all costs…is his greatest gift and his biggest challenge.

It’s what he faces in this poem, which you can read at the end of this post – it’s inspiring! But more importantly, I write today to share some insights that might help anyone considering Amazon as a publishing or lead generation platform.

So please, pay attention closely to the point I’m trying to make…  

From writing books on marketing to vampires to off the charts good children poetry there is NOTHING he can’t write. But Because he’s written on so many various topics, it has presented a problem with his ability to fully leverage Amazon‘s relevance engine.

Basically buy something from Sean Platt at Amazon, or check out his author’s page to find out more and you’ll see other books he’s written. Which is both cool and confusing to a reader right?.

I mean, what’s a loyal reader to do? 

You could read his easy to ready and apply book for content creation called “Writing Online”.

You could buy an amazing and inspiring book of poetry for the kid in all of us titled “Syllable Soup”.

Or maybe you like in your face para normal thrillers like “Available Darkness” ?

And then you can even try his something new – serialized fiction- which I wrote about here, called Yesterday’s Gone?

Here’s a visual for you…

Hmmm…

Ok. for me, it works because I know him and the books.

But for most people?

Not so much. And the truth is, if it was another author I didn’t know, I might find it odd or worse be turned off.

Now don’t get me wrong…

In and of themselves the books Sean has written are FANTASTIC. 

Most of them have been #1 for a bit or in the the top 10 of their niches at one point. But they don’t cross pollinate naturally and most people are moving on too quick just a tad too lazy to connect the dots from one book to the next.

(He’s already figured out how to fix this and as a free tip for you: Consider using a pen name for other genres and stick to one topic for each name, until you have 3 or 4 books published before moving on to the next big niche. This is how to leverage Amazon’s relevance engine which is beyond powerful. You can read more about that here.)

It’s a “Done For You Society”, my friends.  

So while from a reader’s prospective, while an online marketer who buys Writing Online might like vampire books or poetry it’s not something you should bet the farm on is it?

(It sounds crazy when I type it out loud, right?) 

We all have things we love, things we are good at, and things we “have” to do. Unfortunately, they may or may not go hand in hand. You need to know who you’re talking to and what they want to hear before you begin to speak.

Give your people what they want!

For example, I know the people I jump horses with could care less about my social media clients.  And while I do have the ability to use a horse analogy to make a marketing point, that doesn’t mean I should write a “How To Jump Your Horse” post, should I?

The quickest way to lose credibility is to confuse someone for no reason.

To most of my readers here, talking about leg yielding, shoulder in and distances in and of themselves would sound like something that might well belong on a porno site, right?

And even thought the ole’ porno approach could generate some traffic for a while, (aka the Shock And Awe), it might not be the right traffic for a direct response and social media marketing consultant…which is my point!

If you say too many things to too many people, you are doing the “Razzle, Dazzle, Frazzle”, my friend.

You have so many plan Bs, Cs and Ds, you’ve forgotten there is a plan A. 

You see, even though you might not be an author like Sean, many of the people who come to me for help aren’t proactive, they’re reactive.  And many times it costs too much to back, causing them to face starting over.

If you aren’t testing various marketing approaches…

If you don’t give strategies the proper runway to be successful ,with metrics in place to evaluate them effectively…

Or even worse, you aren’t even allowing them to marinate before you begin to implement them…

Fear is driving your bus.

You’re so afraid of being left behind, you think it’s faster and easier to just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, right? You tell yourself you’ll figure it out eventually.  But you waste time chasing opportunity after opportunity with not even one strategy working well right now.

On top of that, you are probably trying to get better at something before you even have data to support you should be doing it in the first place!  If you don’t have a website or even a product, why would you buy a course on Pay Per Click?

If the grass is always greener, you aren’t fertilizing your own lawn enough.

Jay Abraham’s advice is fantastic on this. He says instead of focusing so much time trying to get better at something you’re not, focus on getting great at what you’re already good at before you waste time on new things.

Otherwise it’s too easy to forget what makes you special and good at what you do RIGHT NOW.  

In an instant gratification society, the spray and pray or fire hose approach takes too much time. It’s too ineffective and makes it simply too hard on you to connect or engage with an audience to be successful.

But you can fix it simply by focusing on 3 basic principles…

1. People need to know who you are so they can care.
2. Don’t be all things to all people and expect to be special.
3. If you aren’t special, you’re a commodity and you’ll need more volume that you can attract or afford to buy to make that into a real business!

Which is exactly what Sean and I learned this year – the hard way.  

So if you want a bit of inspiration of how to get from where you are now to where you want to be, read this poem written by the one and only Sean Platt and smile as you think, “I think I can, I think I can…” 

I’ll Prove I Can Do It – I’ll Make It Come True!

I’m right at the edge of getting things right
I keep my pen moving, improving the fight
Roadblocks bar my way, blurring the dream
But I leap from the page, my thoughts in a scream

I’m right at the edge, at the ledge of unknown
From crawling to walking, then flying to flown
Drawing no blanks, the pages get filled
Breathing the breath from the worlds that I build

My insides are stripped, I’ve ripped my inertia
Ambition’s abundant, I’m taking a sure shot
I’ll stand at the line, take aim with the ball
It’s nothing but net now, I’m taking it all

At the edge of exploding, the words that I’m writing
I’ll dribble and scribble and never stop fighting
I’ll look toward the future and never turn back
Marching my feet on the right of the track
I’ll will it, I’ll kill it, I’ll make it come true
I’ll prove I can do it, the last thing I do

The years have been hard, a bucket of nails
Pounded in blunders; my errors and fails
I drafted a new plan, revised and relived it
Drew a pic of my future, its colors so vivid

I’ll never surrender the best I can do
Write till the ink in my pen is all through
Type till my fingers are red and upset
Write all the words that I’ve not written yet

I’ll prep for the rep that soon I will earn
Race on the straightway, lean into the turn
Grow up and grow stronger, the longer I try
Keep my breath steady and both my eyes dry

At the edge of exploding, the words that I’m writing
I’ll dribble and scribble and never stop fighting
I’ll look toward the future and never turn back
Marching my feet on the right of the track
I’ll will it, I’ll kill it, I’ll make it come true
I’ll prove I can do it, the last thing I do

I’ll admit it was hard, but won’t greet defeat
Keep my rhythm steady, and time on the beat
Persistence my weapon, I’ll dull it to death
Turn impossible true with my dying breath

My moment’s approaching, a chorus away
As soon as my future gets fate to obey
I’ve every ingredient, am mixing them good
The nails and the screws and the glue and the wood

I’m greeting the world with a curl in my fist
Facing the sunrise, the edge of the mist
Never a U-Turn, I’m heading there straight
And I’ll be even better for learning to wait

At the edge of exploding, the words that I’m writing
I’ll dribble and scribble and never stop fighting
I’ll look toward the future and never turn back
Marching my feet on the right of the track
I’ll will it, I’ll kill it, I’ll make it come true
I’ll prove I can do it, the last thing I do

If you liked this post, please go check out Sean at his blog Ghost Writer Dad by clicking here.

Or give him a shout at on twitter @seanplatt 

And please help a sister out by leaving a comment, like this post and share it with your friends – I really appreciate your support!

Attention bloggers, social media gurus and wannabe best-selling authors:

Have You Written “The Book” Yet?  

You know the one…

Maybe it’s Jay Baer’s “The Now Revolution,” Jonathan Field’s “Uncertainty,” or that cute “Unmarketing” guy, Scott Stratten’s, “Unmarketing” book.

If you don’t know him – he’s brilliant, fun and pretty hot – I’m just sayin’.

Based on their success it would seem your book is a golden ticket to shine – to finally show the world just how BIG that brain of yours really is, once and for all.

I don’t care if you want to be the next Chris Brogan, Gary V, or even the “Stupid Shit My Dad Says” guy – your easiest and best way to claim your fame is to start rocking Amazon – NOW.

WHY SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO ME?

With a Klout score ranging from 74-76 some people would say I know what I’m talking about. Of course, some would also argue it’s meaningless, so fortunately a rock it with more than just my Klout score.

As a guest blogger at massive traffic magnets like Social Media Examiner, PickTheBrain, Convince and Convert and other top blogs, it would seem my knowledge, expertise and opinion hold value to someone, somewhere.

I’ve been a 7-figure earner since I was 25, precisely because of my ability to keep my clients from the red through the use of innovative direct response campaigns.

I’d say that’s worth a few more minutes of your precious time. I charge a premium for mine, but this is important enough I’m writing about it for “free.”

This is What I’d Tell You To Do If You Were My Client:

1. Own your space.

2. Become an industry expert, or hire one to affiliate with your company (like Hubspot wisely did with Dan Zarella).

3. And by God, add some damn value by giving your audience more than they bargained for every day, all day.

ARE YOU LUCKY, OR SMART?

To those who know me, I’m a trend hound. Blessed with a nose for business, and a sniffer which rarely goes wrong, I’ve been labeled, among many other things, as “lucky.”

I call it being in the right place at the right time, while always working really, really hard. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Either way, this “middle ground” has led me to follow Master Card: Everywhere you want to be…only I try to be there first.

BEING FIRST MATTERS 

I was the first marketing strategist to lead her large non-profit clients to the Nirvana of 100’s of millions of dollars by mailing gold foil address labels as an upfront premium. Hence my national DMA Echo Awards and off the charts response rates (over 30% for house file mailings of millions).

As a first round investor in uber-successful Klout, Pixsy (the 2^nd or 3^rd largest video search engine), and other cool tech companies such as Live Matrix, I enjoy being at the bleeding edge of business.

This nose for profit has helped my clients get where they need to go, without wasting their time, and what eventually led me to the Promised Land of digital marketing.

From being an early bird on Twitter, to putting QR codes on tee-shirts for brands like Cops, then using them in direct mail campaigns which effectively drive traffic from Facebook to you, I work hard to leverage each touch point so I can maximize my client’s marketing muscle.

I’m not telling you this to impress you – I’m tooting my own horn to get your attention so I can impress UPON you….

HOW TO BE THE NEXT BIG THING IN YOUR NICHE – FAST!

Even if your aim isn’t to build your brand or business, you should watch the strategy below closely, especially if you have clients craving a boost in their authority and influence.

If you’ve not started creating industry specific products for Kindle at Amazon, you my friend might be a marketing moron. 

Ebooks are outselling print by a margin of more than 3/2, and there are currently 9 authors who have sold more than a million downloads each, and counting. Ignore this piping hot trend and you’re basically the polar opposite of my friend, co-collaborator and ghostwriter extraordinaire Sean Platt of Ghostwriter Dad, Writer Dad, and Collective Inkwell, just to name a few.

If you’ve been online and paying attention, you’ve run across Sean many times, even if you didn’t realize it. Sure, Sean is a spectacular writer, but that’s not what’s turning him into a fiction and children’s poetry mogul, practically overnight.

Ok, maybe he’s not a mogul, yet. But trust me friends, if being first matters, you better rush to the front of this line NOW. And you can’t let your writing skills deter you.

You aren’t trying to win the next Pulitzer (although I think Sean just might some day). All you need to do as an average Joe writer is head to elance.com and find someone to help you get your brilliant thoughts from your head and onto Amazon!

AMAZON “DFY” – NO WAY YOU CAN LOSE 

While Amazon won’t write content for you, they will promote it for you all day, every day, provided you get your part right.

Amazon has something known as a “relevancy engine,” where they’ll happily pimp your book to all the right people. Much like ranking well in search engines, you must tag, optimize and do all the other super important stuff Amazon wants you to do.

When readers love you, Amazon loves you, too. And they’ll show their affection by recommending your work to anyone they think might be interested. Add in the ever addictive “one-click” button, and smart writers and marketers simply cannot lose.

Now Sean is probably the best all around writer I know, but that isn’t a prerequisite to success, so let’s settle that right now. 

Having carte blanche at some of the biggest blogs in the world, either with his own name or as a ghost, Sean’s had his writing go crazy viral – to the tune of over one million views (I still can’t say that without hearing Dr.Evil’s voice, can you?)

Truth is – it isn’t always easy to follow great advice. Sean’s been up my you- know-what to get my Social Caffeine™ series of eBooks written and published to Amazon for a while, and while I’m definitely working on it, I’ve had a steady stream of paying clients to tend to first – a quality problem for sure.

It wasn’t until Sean got his “serialized fiction” project,“Yesterday’s Gone” on Amazon when the fire he lit under my ass went super nova.

Now it’s mission critical for me, and should be for you too.

WTF IS SERIALIZED FICTION?

Exactly.

While not exactly new, Sean and his writing partner, David Wright, had to blow the dust from the rarely used term. Basically, the pair saw what was working like gangbusters on TV, then reverse engineered it to create amazing Kindle content, uniquely tailored to the modern consumer.

The model is so new it still has the shrink wrap. Sean’s been doing interviews all over creation and admits he doesn’t know the rules, but can clearly see it’s working!

Yesterday’s Gone, with little to no promotion, cracked the top 100 on Amazon for genre fiction in its first two weeks.  

Of course it helps that the book is AWESOME. If you like Stephen King, were a fan of LOST, or love edge of your seat thrillers or serialized TV shows like 24, Walking Dead or Breaking Bad – oh honey – run, don’t walk, and download the series NOW. 

(That’s not an affiliate link, by the way. Seriously not trying to make 10 cents yet- there are easier ways.)

But no matter how awesome the book might be, the model is almost smarter than the title itself.

You can taste the “pilot” for .99 cents, or buy all 6 episodes for 4.99

Is that genius OR WHAT?

Seriously. Think about it.

At .99 cents you get practically nothing but a wink from Amazon, financially.  At 2.99 and over, the take-home for an author is a whopping 70%, meaning a $4.99 title yields $3.50 of profit. Not nearly as much as an eBook on your site perhaps, but you don’t have the engine of Amazon to push it to markets you’ll never reach.

It’s ALL about positioning.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE STEPHEN KING TO WIN AT AMAZON

Sean is a freak of nature – his ability to write anything and everything, from page-turners to sales letters to poetry, will be the stuff of legends – I promise you.  But you aren’t him. No one is (I’m not even close – and let me tell you I’m no loser when it comes to writing).

Even though Sean is an amazing writer, I groaned when he wanted me to read Yesterday’s Gone. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I’m an excellent friend. I’ll always tell you the truth, and for some of people, that’s the last thing you want to hear.

But I don’t lie, and won’t lie now. 

My family is full of fast-reading super freaks who spend vacations as beach reading junkies, and we happen to hate a lot more than we love. So I was apprehensive about Sean and David’s so-called “serialized fiction.”

I was actually sorta dreading it…  

Until I read the first page.  

Then I read the second, intrigued…

Then the third, fourth and so on…

Until I was no longer reading a book for a friend – I was sucked in, swallowed, chewed up and spit out. And I loved it. I started when the moon was high, and before the sun rose I’d read all 6 “episodes” of Yesterday’s Gone’s first season.

(Side note – this is an ABSOLUTE MUST READ if you love science fiction or thrillers.)

Yes, I read all six episodes in a single sitting.

And I wanted MORE the minute I was finished. And therein lies the genius of the model.

YOU can do this too, even with non-fiction!

WINNING IN 2012 WILL BE ABOUT BLOGGING LESS AND WRITING MORE 

Many people are preaching less daily blogging, more EPIC posts. The ones with real meat such as this Conversion Guide for Bloggers at Viper Chill, Sean’s own Ultimate Writer’s Guide to Guest Posting, or my extremely well received 6,000 word post on Facebook.

Amazing but true: With the right niche, proper planning and effective keyword research, you can rank on page one of Google faster through Amazon, with mega posts disguised as ebooks, than you might with your own site.

Even better – you can rise through the ranks of Amazon and get your book in front of ready-to-take action buyers – just like Sean did.

It’s not just Yesterday’s Gone that Sean has published in the last few months. He and Dave have published several titles which are holding their own; including the children’s poetry book “Syllable Soup,” which hit #1 in for children’s poetry and his followup, “Beauty and the Beast” published over the weekend is right behind.

It helps that Syllable Soup is a phenomenal piece of work, with echoes of Seuss and Silverstein, more modern and just as magical. But the point is, Sean’s developed a system for getting quality content to Kindle that people love to talk about it.

With over a dozen uploads to Kindle, and an average 5-Star rating, Sean has a friend in Amazon, and they’re starting to recommend him regularly. In fact, when he published singles from his book Writing Online, they started to sell without a single post, link or tweet from Sean.

And they’ll do the same for you as long as you’re smart. Sean’s way is working for him. Find a way that works for you.

Put QR codes to videos at your site which further articulate a point to send far more qualified traffic to your company.

Give additional bonuses, with free reports or blueprints to further illustrate a point from your book, with a simple link and a call-to-action to find out more!, so you can turn that reader into someone eager to do business with you.

Amazon may not be the biggest search engine in the world, but it is the biggest for buyers. Leads you generate from Amazon are superior to those coming form plain ‘ole web surfing, which can often yield info-sucking troll who at best take everything you can give with nothing in return. And at worst, leave negative comments littering your blog.

EVEN BILLIONAIRES ARE DOING IT

Yep. My friend Keyur Patel, technology genius, movie mogul, and owner of Kiwa Media, has over 1,300 children titles in an iPad app. Rumor says it’s making over $200,000 per month, and just getting started.

If you want to drive a greater number of more qualified leads…
If you’re seeking new strategies to gain instant authority…
If you want to write the NEXT BIG THING…

Do your homework so you can start “hocking” your goods at Amazon. Pun intended via Amanda Hocking is million-a-month digital author and if you haven’t heard of her – dear Lord – get up to speed!)

Check out the the awesome fun of these trailers. They’re both great, and totally different:

Yesterday’s Gone: Season One

Yesterday’s Gone: What Would Boricio Do?

Yesterday’s Gone is a title worth paying attention to. Whether you’re a reader, writer or marketer, it’s a potential game changer, well worth following. You can start by buying the Yesterday’s Gone pilot for $.99, or get the full “season” for just $4.99 and keep the smile on your face for a week. If you want to make sure you don’t miss a thing, click here to become a “Goner,” and get exclusive chapters with shocking endings, and a ringside seat to our behind the scenes marketing.

P.S.  If you read Yesterday’s Gone, which you should, and LOVE it, which you will, please leave a review on Amazon. Great karma for when you’re publishing what’s important to YOU!

What’s A Tweet?

Let’s begin with the basics.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, where your messages, broadcast to anyone who wants to listen, are limited to just 140-characters.

That means every letter counts.

You are free to post as many of these micro-messages (tweets) as you like. But you must realize there are readers on the other side of those tweets. Flood your stream and you’ll drown your followers.

Tweet Like You Mean It

The last thing you want to do is alienate your Twitter Followers (people who read your tweets). They followed you for a reason, probably based on what you said in your bio. Be respectful of their interests and never, ever bring spam to the party.

Never go on and about how great you are, no one cares.

Always place quality over quantity.

Tweet like you speak, and your readers will read like they listen.

Be sincere.

Make sure the content you’re linking to is interesting and always be aware of how much you send. Blabbermouths might be fun for a while, but people tire of them quickly.

Avoid The Pitch

You might think Twitter is a tremendous sales tool, and it is, but don’t be the guy at the party handing out business cards when everyone else is talking about the game. 

Social media is relationship marketing. And relationship marketing means establishing trust with your network. Pushing a fire sale via Twitter is like plastering your neighborhood with flyers for your infomercial.

1. “Shouting” specials at your followers

There is a tendency among businesses new to Twitter to simply use their account as a way to announce daily happy hour specials or menu changes without interacting with their fans. This is a mistake.

While communicating ‘what’s going on’ is one of Twitter’s most natural functions (How else will we know whether Lady Gaga slept well last night?) it shouldn’t be where you stop. Twitter is superior to Facebook as far as the opportunities it provides to listen. To take full advantage of Twitter you have to be engaged in a give-and-take.

Monitor what your customers are saying and answer their questions. When a customer follows you, follow them back. An easy way to figure out whether you’re doing Twitter the right way is to analyze your tweet stream: If the number of one-way broadcasts dwarfs the replies and RTs you send out, you’ll need to find more balance.

Click here for more Twitter tips.

Who’s Best? Both!

Are men or women more likely to use social media? As in, is the most active social media user a man or a woman? That’s a tough question because it is very much like comparing apples and oranges. Some recent market analysis shows that men and women both use social media but they use it quite differently. Men prefer to use it as a soapbox while women prefer to socialize.

Sounds like conventional wisdom, doesn’t it?

The Same But Different

As it happens, understanding how men and women use social media helps marketers better target their messages. Because men and women use social media differently this provides a dual opportunity for marketers who have a message to spread. By analyzing the demographics of social media users marketers are better able to identify what works, and who is likely to see their message.

What’s Your Message?

This brings me around to you and the message you need to spread. Does it help you to know how best to market your message for men, versus women? Or does your message play across all demographics?

Despite knowing how men and women differ in their social media usage, analytics for social media usage in general is still sorely lacking. But perhaps this bit of information will tide you over until someone figures out how to put it all in one place.

In the case of communicating with family or work colleagues via social media, women again dominate at a whopping 60% for family and 34% for colleagues, with men only at 42% for family and a measly 22% for co-workers.

The study shows that women, in general, tend to trump men when it comes to media consumption and communication online.
There is one area, however, where men actually do manage to take a short lead, and that is with voice/telephone communication. The math in the following graphic seems a little off when first glancing at the percentage of women and men versus the actual population number, but this can easily be explained.

Out of the 235 million adults living in America, 119 Million are women and 116 Million are men, while 24% of the population is less than 18 years old (numbers based on a 2010 U.S. Census). So in terms of who is actually being included in the survey, women outnumber men in general, not just in the way they choose to communicate and with who.

This study doesn’t fully conclude that there are more women than men actually using social media overall. Rather, it communicates a preference among the two opposites for what medium they choose to communicate through and who they choose to do that communicating with. Purely out of curiosity, we’d like to conduct a small sample survey of our own.

Click here to read the entire article.

Unbelievable

It seems odd that social media marketers would need to be reminded that courtesy counts when it comes to online interactions with customers or potential clients, but sadly, that’s the case. Not everyone understands the true nature of relationship marketing and this lack of knowledge is clearly evident in the number of “honest mistakes” made by social media managers responsible for promoting their clients. They insult large groups of people, ignore others entirely, and generally conduct themselves as if they are a drunk frat boy rather than a working professional.

What’s The Answer? Common Sense

The answer to every great question in life is common sense. Treat others with respect if you expect respect in return; don’t be rude, crass or uncouth. Don’t admonish someone for their point of view, but do offer them alternatives. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Open the doors, but leave the “walking through it” to them. That’s what the very best social media managers do.

Relationship marketing is all about building relationships. This cannot be accomplished with harsh words and rude conduct.

Lead, Follow Or Get Out Of The Way

When it comes to social media management you have to decide exactly how you want to conduct yourself. The decision is yours, but a lot rests on it. If you conduct yourself professionally, encourage interaction, respect everyone who comes along and provide positive encouragement, you are bound to reap more of what you sow.

If you don’t, well, whatever happens after that will be solely your fault.

Social networking began as a personal communication tool. Friendster, MySpace and Facebook were all about friendships and dating. Today of course, social media has also become another arm of marketing.

Increasingly, businesses are actively promoting their brands and products, and sharing thought leadership content through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. When you interact with your company’s followers on these sites, it’s great to be bold, intelligent, fun and thought-provoking. But it’s more important to not cross the lines of propriety. Nobody wants to be known as a “social media stalker.”

Here’s an example: let’s say someone tweets favorably about one of your competitors. Would you track down the Tweeter, and send them an email (or even a public retweet) disparaging the competitor in favor of your superior brand? Of course not.

But what if that same person mentioned that she was looking for new high-end golf clubs for the serious amateur, and you happen to market some that fit the bill? By all means, reply through Twitter with a teaser and link to your product page. Could you pass the tweet along to your sales team? Sure, but until the prospect shares their personal contact information with marketing or sales, it’s less creepy to communicate with her through Twitter.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Believe It Or Not

This week has been chock full of good information about social media usage. First, it was the Nielsen ratings which showed a whopping 140 million people logged on to Facebook in the month of May, far more than any other social media network. Then, Constant Contact announced they were so certain email marketing would produce results they were offering a guarantee. Now a new study shows that people who use social media are much more apt to shop online than any other demographic group.

In fact, almost 75 percent of all social media users also shop online.

Big Numbers, Big Business

For businesses interested in integrating social media marketing into their traditional marketing plan this is important news. For one, it shows that the people you are trying to reach are actually spending money online. For another, it shows that if you have something to sell, social media makes a lot of sense. There is no direct evidence (as yet) to show how effective a social media marketing plan is, but there is certainly more and more empirical showing that social media marketing is directed at an important demographic group.

The Way You Do The Thing You Do

How you reach them, well, that is the tricky part. A savvy social media marketing professional can help you identify the best ways to use social media marketing to reach the people who are most important to your brand, your business or your product. No doubt you will want to wrap whatever traditional marketing efforts you are using into an effective social media marketing plan, gaining the most from every marketing dollar you spend.

Nielsen’s third quarter study, “State of the Media: The Social Media Report,” examines the increasing influence of social networking on consumers and points to trends that bode well for businesses active in the social media space.

“The value of the time consumers spend online and on social networks and blogs continues to grow, most visible through the influence on purchase decisions,” Nielsen reports. Adults active on social networks and blogs are 12 percent more likely than the average user to shop online; nearly 4 in 5 active Internet users participate in these activities and 70 percent make online purchases….

 

The profile of the average social networker is an interesting one. According to Nielsen, she is between 18 and 34, likely Asian or Pacific Islander, has obtained a bachelor’s degree, and makes less than $50,000 per year.

Examining the average demographic of users on various sites, several other observations appear:

• 41 percent of Blogger’s audience earns more than $75,000 per year.
• 25 percent of WordPress readers have a bachelor’s degree.
• Female teens are better represented on Tumblr than any other social network.
• 62 percent of page views on Facebook come from female users.
• African Americans are better represented on Twitter than on any other social network.

Click here to read the entire article.

Imagine your house has just gone up in flames…

Visualize a real life made-for-TV 6 p.m. news story blaze – a burning inferno!

Now picture this…

Your face covered in sweat has turned almost black from the smoke.  Falling to your knees, face buried in the cool dew of the grass, sheer determination the only lifeline you had. Bruises cover you from head to toe. Is that blood, tears or sweat in your right eye? A coughing fit racks your body. Every bone in your body feels like it’s broken. Still gasping for air, fighting for every breath – you smile. Gratitude begins to flood into your cells with the sweet flavor of oxygen bringing you slowly back to reality. Rejoicing you made it out alive, marveling at the grit and sheer determination coming out of nowhere as you fought to live – you say thank you. In a zombie like state, a fleeting thought flutter by, “Is this a dream?” It feels a nightmare – only it’s not. It’s your life. Or was. And as tears stream down your face, horrified at your loss…the numbness finally begins to wear off.…

And belatedly the question sneaks in,  “Oh God, what did you leave in there?” 

Now, take control and ask yourself, ”What’s still in the house worth “facing the fire” to risk your life to “save”?”

Would your computer be worth it? How about your phone? What about your brand new ipad? I could go on and one, but let’s get real…

Is there really any one “thing” worth your LIFE?

Sure if you heard your child, probably any child screaming for their life, there isn’t anything or anyone who could keep you from trading your safety for theirs, right?

And that’s my point.

(An entire police force couldn’t keep me from saving MY baby – you can bank on that.)

Now play along with me for a minute, just because you can and ask yourself this…

Have you ever stepped away from dinner with your family or loved one to grab an “important” phone call?

Have you ever rushed your child to bed to get back on your computer to finish up that “mission critical” project?

Have you ever sat at a baseball game or a piano or dance recital taking sneak peaks at your phone because you “have to”?

If you’re human, I bet you have! 

But, now pretend everything is on the line…

Would you risk your life to walk through fire to “save” your crack berry?

No. You wouldn’t. (Or at least I HOPE you wouldn’t… )

Yet every single time you let technology steal your precious minutes from the only people that matter, isn’t that pretty much using your life as a credit card? Is being accessible to your clients 24 hours a day, a slave to your business, worth the price your loved ones pay?  

Considering the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the quality of your relationships, how much are you investing into YOU? Every time you’ve disappointed your friends, family (even yourself), aren’t you taking out a billboard, “advertising” to the world,  “Relationships don’t matter, but business does!”

Unfortunately, I believe it really is that black and white…

How you deal with people, opportunities, disappointments, stress at work, the gym, grocery store, you name it – that’s your LIFE!! No matter what costume you chose to throw on in that moment, your life is comprised of series of choices; nothing more, nothing less.

If you only had one minute left to live, would you choose to trade the business deal of a lifetime for a minute to say good-bye to someone you loved? And if you’re thinking, “Duh…”

Maybe you want to ask yourself who’s to say this moment right now, is NOT your last moment?

You have no idea, really – you just think you know.

What’s sad is that most of us wait for the fire to burn you alive, until we begin to actively “participate” in our choices. You’d be surprised at how little oxygen you let in, comfortable breathing in smoke that slowly chokes the life out of you.

Think of it like this…

You get sick. A loved one gets sick. Or any disaster strikes….what do you do? When extreme choices are put in front of us, we typically choose from the heart and do pretty good!

Waiting to be knocked down by life, needing to be laying face down on your front yard, gasping for air with tears on your cheeks, to face the “fire”, to “get it”…that’s not much of an offense is it? Actively participating by making choices that serve you in all aspects of your life now, is the only way to truly be the master of your life.

Remember –it’s your life – you make the rules!

Yes there are exceptions to every rule, but the good news is YOU make the rules through every choice you make. It’s YOUR life created by YOUR choices. Because c’mon, let’s face it, not even Tony Robbins himself can walk into your life and make you believe anything you don’t want to, even if you invite him in.

You can take control NOW just by doing these 3 things…

#1 Pay attention to your beliefs.

Identify how your beliefs are affecting your decisions, before setting priorities.

#2 Be flexible and bring fluidity to your life.

If something isn’t working then make a choice to change what’s important to you.

#3 Forgive yourself when you make bad choices.

Just go back to step 2 and have a little do over.

What about you…

Are you an “urgency junkie”? Does the squeaky wheel get the grease? I’d love to hear how you balance what you know with what you feel and how you stay focused to set priorities that serve all aspects of your life.

Related articles

• The Death Exercise (alantorresorong.wordpress.com)
• Learning How to Deal Better with the Full Intensity of Life by Becoming More Awake and Enlightened AND Conscientious (fullcatastropheliving.wordpress.com)
• 11 Ways to Survive and Thrive (revpeggyray.wordpress.com)
• Why Social Media is So Addictive (wiredprworks.com)

As host of One Click Society at  Positive World Radio Network I have had an opportunity to sit down and talk with a great number of social media pioneers.

Kyle Lacy is one of those guys.

Before people knew what “social media marketing” was, Kyle was writing a book on leveraging the power and potential of Twitter.
I talked with Kyle about the current state of social media and to make the best use of the social media tools available today. We also talked about the future of social media; where it’s come from and where it’s going.

If you want to make the most of your social media marketing campaign listen to my entire interview with Kyle.
Here’s a piece:

…I think we’re coming to an age where integrated marketing and integrated communications is absolutely key. Now, the only difference between a one-way and two-way conversation is social media, whether you’re having a conversation with a group of customers or you are trying to get them to become advocates for your brand. I think that the main focus of social is more of that one word which is social, which is two-way communication between individuals.

…our main focus when we’re talking to people is this idea that the industrialization concept of as many eyeballs as you possibly can, you need to buy that billboard. One-way distribution of messaging has always been extremely important, and it still is extremely important. You should never listen to somebody that walks into the room and says you should get rid of all your traditional marketing and just go digital because it’s
absolutely stupid.
I think that the main focus is storytelling. I think that marketing has always been storytelling. I think that the best marketing, the best use of technology is allowing your customers to tell the story for you, and that is true advocacy, your constituents, your donors to tell the story for you. I think that social media allows a company to truly understand the concept of the brand advocacy. If I love a restaurant and I tweet about it, that has relevance.
Now, as an industry, we haven’t quite put our finger on what that metric of relevance is, how it actually affects the bottom line. We can say that it is an increase in brand awareness which is awesome, but I think that social is still a little bit slow on the whole metric type monitoring and measurement.
It’s more than just creating a Twitter page. It’s more than just creating a Facebook page. It’s actually a complete change in how you communicate to consumers. It’s not how you communicate necessarily. It’s how you allow them to be the communication vehicle for you.

Click here to listen to my entire interview with Kyle at One Click Society.

Click here to download the complete transcript of my interview with Kyle Lacy.

A few weeks ago, I guest posted on LoriTaylor.com.

Thank you Lori, it was fun!

Many of you seemed to enjoy it…it was tweeted over 200 times!

Tweetreach showed 399,000 impressions from the first 50 Tweets

(I was too cheap to pay for the full report).

However, except for a handful of friends, the tweets didn’t mention my twitter handle. The tweets and re-tweets, as well as many of the comments seemed to be directed to Lori, as if she authored the post, even though I mention my wife several times in the article.

(I don’t believe Lori has a wife—LOL.)

Before I continue, let me clarify my point:

I’m not upset, ranting, or disappointed.

On the contrary, Lori is great for allowing me to “borrow” her blog.

This caused me to wonder, though. Considering the post’s reach had referrences to Lori, instead of the actual author…

Did people read the post or ONLY the headline?

I’m certain some of the tweets and Likes were automated, but not all of them were, and certainly the comments weren’t.

So…I ask again, “How important is the headline?”

IMHO, it is far and away the most important piece of writing in the post.

One of these days, I’m going to experiment with a great title like, “10 Ways to Convince Your Boss He Wants to Give You a Raise.” Then fill the body with Blah blah blah! Blah blah? Blah blah blah blah; blah blah blah.

(Did you notice the proper use of the semi-colon?)

Do you think I’d get a few tweets?

So what makes a great headline?

Here are a few headline ideas with examples:

• Ask a question. (I like open-ended questions)
• Solve a problem or offer a benefit.
• Jump into a debate or controversy. (What’s on your audience’s mind?)
• Use appropriate humor. (This isn’t as subjective as you’d think, btw.)
• Include keyword phrases. (Don’t be Captain Obvious with this one.)

I read a great post from Problogger on this exact topic and here’s what it said…

What You Can Do To Get Your Blog Read

If you believe your blog is receiving some attention, but not being read (lack of comments may be an indication), you must consider what can be improved to make it easier to read, before you do anything else.

• Be brief
• Format to make it pleasing to the eye, use bullet points etc.
• Talk like… you. Be yourself—it will come through
• Be funny, engaging and/or informative—hold your readers’ interest

I hope this has given you some ideas to consider.

Let me know what you would add, and watch for my next post—How Math Whiz Predicted Lottery Winner!