What am I going to Tweet about or Blog about today?
What am I going to Tweet about or Blog about today?
This is a question I get all the time. People tell me they have nothing cool left to say. Well here are the 2 ways that I get an endless flow of content without every needing to think of anything to say myself.
#1 On Twitter look for conversations to join. You don’t have to start all the conversations. In fact some of my best tips or tweets no one as ever responded to but when you join a conversation you are guaranteed to have at least 2 people listening to you. Also every else looks to see if you are just talking or if you are listening and having conversations. You should see the @reply sign in your Tweets at least 65% of the time or else you are just talking into air.
#2 Envourage your customers to ask questions anytime and any place. They will love you for being accesible and as you answer those questions that creates the content for your blog and Tweets. Almost all of my blog posts are now answers to questions from you.
When you rely on conversations and questions you get out from under the burden of having to create killer content all the time. Killer content is hard work and way over rated. I believe in social media by being sincere and being real.
Is there anything Private on Facebook?
Is there anything Private on Facebook?
One of the most common questions I get is how can I maintain my privacy on Facebook If I am using Facebook for business.
A valid question because it is important that you feel comfortable and secure in putting yourself out online in social media. But make no doubt about you must be building personal relationships and sharing some of your personal side if you plan to win or even compete on the internet.
There are 2 answers.
#1 You can micro manage every part of your Facebook page using lists and security setting. Litterally every update or new photo you can control who sees it and who does not. This takes a lot of work and quite frankly I don’t trust anyone.
#2 Be selective about what you share in social media, but share everything that you put into social media. This is how I do it and recommend. Quite frankly I do not trust anyone at Facebook or in the hacker world so I do not ever mention my address. It just isn’t worth the risk to my family.
I do about my personal life. About throwing the ball out back with my son. Or going to see a disney movie with my daughter. I don’tlike talking personal, I am a business school grad from the North East, I get excited about a spreadsheet performa not your personal story about your kids…But I realized long ago I would have to force myself to put my personal side out there to connect with people at a personal level in social media.
More then ever now people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. You build all of this by connecting with people at a personal level.
The hottest job title on LinkedIn is “Ninja” lol
According to Mashable Ninjas Taking Over LinkedIn.
Apparently, Facebook isn’t the only online sphere where ninjas are becoming a problem — The LinkedIn Blog reports that the job title “Ninja” has become more and more popular since 2002.
According to LinkedIn(), those who deem themselves “ninjas” tend to work with computers, social media, design, customer service, advertising and finance, and — as you can see from the chart below — their ranks have been steadily growing since the dawn of the century.
Obviously, they are fortifying their numbers so as to take on some great adversary, such as Ninja Cat or the upcoming 2010 remake of The Karate Kid.
We can, however, take solace in the fact that the most grating of all self-imposed titles –”guru” — seems to be on the decline. Still, one does wonder what the next hot moniker will be — here’s hoping for “duchess.”
WARNING: How I lost all of my 6000 Twitter followers
WARNING — 4/1/10
There are so many applications to go with Twitter, the Tweetdeck, TwitPwr, Tweetlater, the lsit goes on and on.
I thought I had discovered one application that was really cool, called “SocialToo”
Socialtoo had several nice fatures:
1. It allowed me to automatically follow back people who were following me on Twitter, (a huge time saver)
2. It blocked out DMs coming from people who were clogging my inbox
3. It would send me stats with the number of unfollows I had each day & tell me which Tweet caused them to unfollow me.
4. It would automatically unfollow anyone who decided to unfollow me.
This last one is where the problem started.
How this works it Socialtoo using the Twitter API to take a snap shot of your followers on today and then tomorrow it takes another snap shot of your followers and then the technology compares the two images.
Well somehow yesterdays snap shot showed got screwd up because the servers were overloaded at Twitter and the snap shot showed that I had zero followers so when it compared that snap shot to today the Socialtoo system automatically unfollowed all of my followers and I lost all 6000 of my followers in one second.
I tried to call Socialtoo to ask them if there was a way to restore my followers and they said there was nothing they could do that “these things happen”.
While this is an April Fools story, the Moral of the story is NEVER USE AN APPLICATION TO AUTO UNFOLLOW OR THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.
To quote my Social Media Mentor Perry Belcher: “Please leave me a comment so I know your still alive?”
Proof that Personalization Wins in Web 2.0 Marketing
Proof that Personalization Wins in Web 2.0 Marketing
Ok I just saw a commercial during the March Madness for GM where the CEO sat down like in a living room and talked to me like a real person, telling me I should buy American and support real people, that bankruptcy is a new beginning for them.
Good luck GM.
But the point is every big company is trying to look small and personal. Us entrepeneuers now have the advantage because we have always been and always will be small and personal. Social media is the killer platform of the future of marketing, not because of what it is, but because of this shift to small and personal being cool.
People want to buy from real people. They don’t want to buy from bug businesses, which is why GM is trying to look real and small. Good luck GM.
The irony is when the internet came out, we small businessess said this is going to level the playing field because we can look big, but Web 2.0 is about looking real and personal. Big is out, Business is out, people are in.
Social media is just the tool in the right place at the right time to capitalize on this fundamental shift in marketing away from big business. What do you think?
Facebook Fun & Profits Solved - Thanks to Mari Smith Facebook Expert
Facebook Fun & Profits Solved, Thanks to Mari Smith Facebook Expert.
Getting ‘real’ updates from people that matter via social media often seems impossible for us business networkers because there is so much ‘noise’ when you start to get a bigger network. Thanks to Mari Smith for the solution which I call the DNGB list which I am going to share today.
Twitter is worthless for staying in touch, even with Tweet Deck because the volume of communication is too frequent, nobody reads anything but their @replies anymore. Don’t miss quote me I luv Twitter, infact “Twitter Search” is going to kill Google (more on that next week) but I think I am the last person I know who still reads their DMs and nobody can really keep up with anybody’s Twitter updates.
So I began thinking, What if I started using Facebook to get status updates from only my real friends and that I would dump all my other contacts. Good thought, bad idea.
My Confession
Ok the truth is I wanted to follow certain business contacts in real time that I am looking to do JV deals with, not so much my friends, but as an awesome side benefit of cleaning out the clutter in my Facebook news bulletin I now can communicate with all of my real friends everyday on Facebook in just 15 minutes a day.
Facebook is fun again now that now that I am not just connected with, but actually interacting with old college buddies and high school classmates. I’m reminded why I started this all in the first place. My interpretation of the American dream is to make a living doing something that is fun and involves your friends like Facebook, which is why is why I cringe when people tell me Facebook is just for friends not for business. Facebook = Fun & Profits!
I aspire to do business with my friends in a meaningful and helping them way. I want my clients and prospects to become my friends in an equally real and helping them way.
If you are not living by this mantra and personalizing your business with Facebook it is a lose - lose proposition. You will lose the business you could of won from Social Media and you will lose existing business to a competitor who is being more real then you on Facebook.
Ideally I want to do JV deals with my friends all day long, IMHO working with friends is better then the “4 hour work week”. Click here to Read my previous blog post only if you want to know how to line your pockets from JV deals or if you need to know what a JV Deal is, it is explained in one simple picture (cartoon). Maybe come back when you finish this story.
Now I’ve always insisted that if you are in a business or a job search you should be an open networker, you should not limit your network to only certain contacts because you never know when a friend of a friend might discover you. You should not guess at a person’s intentions. You can not be affraid that someone will steal your contacts because they are all out there anyways for the taking. Just be real and deliver value, then none of your clients or customers will ever want to leave you.
So how do you decide who to cut out of your social media? Answer = You don’t.
I tried. First I cut out everyone who was over posting more then a few times a day, or worse yet feeding their Tweets into Facebook which was badly clogging up my FB news bulletin. Then I cut out everyone that was not talking ‘real’ or ‘personal’ 90% of the time, this includes the link pushers, the blog updaters, the article retweeters…even though some of them were interesting Facebook is not the place for trying to impress me with your content.
Someone is wrongly teaching that the way to succeed on Facebook is sending out updates with links to cool articles with the intention of “adding value”, which might work on Twitter but on Facebook people want friends, so keep your “value add” in your pocket, just be interesting by being real.
Of course if you ever promoted your own website in an update anyone on Facebook should drop you in a heart beat, that is a given. Many people will tell you to never plug your website on Facebook however I feel strongly that it is ok to plug your website only in a comment and only if it is pertinent or helpful to that specific discussion but it is seriously showing direspect for my time to plug your website, blog, or article, in your Facebook bulletin updates.
Truth is I didn’t really want to cut out any connections on Facebook because I do want them to get my updates and learn about me so the real solution Mari gave me was to “hide” my DNGB list from showing up in my news bulletin so I would only be recieving updates from people that really mattered for personal and business.
BTW if ANY of my connections sincerely started commenting on my posts and made some effort to be real friends I would welcome them over to my “cool” kids list but if they are not interested in conversation with me I am putting them on the DNGB list, which is Do Not Get Bulletin list anymore.
Here is how to to create a DNGB list so you can have fun and profits on Facebook in just 15 minutes a day.
There are 2 ways to edit your bulletin list. Thanks to my online friend and Facebook expert Mari Smith for sending me these by Twitter.
Mari Smith is my favorite Social Media expert because she will always answer your questions personally everytime. Connecting with customers is what social media is all about and Mari lives true to this. Ironically because Facebook limits you to 3000 friends Mari and I are not connected on Facebook, I guess I am on the waiting list for an opening, although Mari tells me Facebook will be expanding this maximum soon.
@GreigWells Oh sure thing!! In your Facebook News Feed, just click “Hide” when you mouseover that friend’s updates.
@GreigWells Another great way is to make Friend Lists (click Friends > Create New List), then drag & drop specific list to top on Home Page.
You can contact Mari on Twitter @MariSmith
Click Here to Join me on Facebook
Greig Wells
Create Your Badge
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Why you must form your own Group - For Business
Forming your own narrowly defined group is the #1 strategy for converting contacts into sales on LinkedIn. This strategy is explained in detail in my free video on this blog “Creating a Targeted Sales Funnel”
Here is an example to apply to your business.
I offer home based recruiter training, so I formed a group for people that want to learn about STARTING a home based recruiting business. Anyone that joins the group is a slam dunk sales lead for me. I can also communicate will all of the group member regularly and I am positioned as an expert as the founder and host of the group. Whener I communicate with someone on LinkedIn I drive them to this group and promote my group link url. If you promote your own domain name you will get in trouble as a spammer on LinkedIn but oyu can promote a LinkedIn group all day and invite your contacts to join your group 200 at a time.
How are you using LinkedIn groups?
Why you must form your own LinkedIn Group - For Job Seekers
Lets say you are trying to find a job as a VP of Operations in Manufacturing as my friend Dave is right now. Dave should form a group where leaders in Manufacturing can come together and talk about current trends and challenges in Manufacturing. This gives you 3 big benefits:
1. You have target audience in one easy to find place. You can listen in on what they are discussing and ask them questions to learn more about what there challenges are SO YOU CAN Postiion yourself as the solution. You can communicate with the group and brand yourself as a Thought Leader.
2. When you network with people in your industry you now send them an invitation to your group in addition to an invitation to connect which gives them a bigger incentive to connect with and improves your likelyhood they will connect with you. The more connections you have in your niche the better as you then get access to all of their connections and they can find you when they are hiring.
3. You can brand yourself offline as the “Founder of the Assocation of {Insert Group Name} This will have some presitge to it and can also be a great way to show you are still active in the industry if you are not currently working you can list this on your resume as what you are currently doing.
4. You should be in 50 groups, the max LinkedIn allows. Join all industry groups, regional groups, job seeker groups, and power networking groups.
How are you using LinkedIn groups?
