I was reading my friend and inspiring mentor Kathy Caprino’s post on how all of us can and should ask for help when we need it, and it inspired me to write this post.
Kathy says, “Blogging, social media, and the digital movement aren’t bad. What is bad, however, is that thousands of people who need help aren’t reaching out to get it. They’re staying stuck, despairing and hopeless because they’re trying to solve their problems themselves without getting help or an outside perspective.
Einstein said that we can’t solve a problem on the same level of consciousness that created it. I believe this with all my heart. In isolation by ourselves, stuck inside our limited minds, we fail to see that shiny new possibilities, opportunities, and miracles are just one small step away. That key step is reaching out to get help.”
Yesterday I was a presenter on social media at the Grassroots Conference in Austin. Each time I present to different conferences, I realize that the most important thing is to encourage everyone first to breath a sigh of social media relief.
I know you’re all feeling overwhelmed by social media. I know these terms at times seems confusing and I know for many this is also accompanied by a feeling of fear.
A feeling of “too lateness” or what someone said to me they called, “digital generation gap.”
I’m writing this post to assure you that no such “digital generation gap” exists, and there is a sure and true path toward using social media tools like Twitter, YouTube, DIGG, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn for your own good and the greater good of your community.
If I can do it, you can do it. I’m considered at this point a dinosaur on the Web, I’ve been on the Web since 1995 and I was there when all the dot com fervor was at its highest and also at its lowest. I’m still here and I feel very blessed to have been a part of this history.
I also feel it is my singular mission to empower everyone as much as possible on utilizing the tools that are right for them. The key in social media is making sure the tools you are using are the best ones for you. Each person, company, community, non-profit is different in what works best for them on Web 2.0.
We’re all suffering from Post Traumatic Social Media Disorder, but I can promise you that it does get better. Now that you’ve been hit over the head with all this Web 2.0 opportunity, the very first thing you need to do is stop wishing it would just go away. It’s not going to go away.
And we shouldn’t want it to. It’s going to be ok and you’re going to be able to learn all this. When people ask me how I did it, I say, “What choice did I have?” I wanted to stay at home with my children when they were young, and I was blessed to be a technology journalist for a decade, writing about all these tools. I also completely believe in what transparent and open communication can achieve.
The great thing about the Web no matter what the number (2.0, 3.0, 80.0) is that you can have access to so much free and valuable information to help you utilize all these tools.
But you have to be willing to let go of fear, you have to let go of feeling too old, or too dumb, or too behind the times.
You are never too old to learn something new. You are never too old to be a genius at social media, life, the arts, social media, music or even happiness. You do, however, have to start somewhere. Sometime. Soon. How bout now?
NOW.
1. Go to LinkedIn.com and claim your name and build your profile there.
2. Go to Twitter.com – and just claim your name. Think about what you might tweet.
3. Go to Google and build your own Google Profile.
Be emboldened, emblazoned, enlivened to create the online and offline career you want.
I did it. You can do it too. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, then please do it for all of us who can surely use your wisdom, your insight and your presence in this Web 2.o world!
Write me and tell me how it’s going!
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Wonderful article on how altruism is changing the way we all do business. Please go and read it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYM256yuAqQ[/youtube]
Ok, I just stuck that video up there because it made me laugh. It also reveals a deeper question to ponder about product endorsements/reviews and how they can quickly turn to broken painful shells in one’s marketing plan. (Or at the bottom of one’s bathtub.)
Now, back to the topic of the day, blogroll-scrubbing. I recommend that you take time out about every three months and scrub your blogroll.
Does this entail real soap or painful walnut shells? Nope.
Here are five easy steps to take to do a good blogroll scrubbing.
1. Hit each blogroll link, and make sure the blogs are still lively (or even alive.)
2. Make certain they still have the content you want to refer your readers to.
3. If there are blogs that aren’t updated anymore then take them off your blog and let them rest in peace in the blog cemetery.
4. If you have blogs on your roll that no longer reflect your mission, your standards or your focus, then take those off as well.
5. For every two blog links you scrub, find one new one to take its place.
Keep your blog roll timely and always remember it’s a virtual library shelf for your blog visitors. You don’t want any resources or links up there that won’t be helpful to your community.
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“Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory.” Ghandi
While some of you might think of Linkedin and all these other tools as pure drudgery, I challenge you to think of them as tools for changing the world.
Tackling social media really works best if you take it one step at a time. In the case of Linkedin, it’s never too late to register yourself on Linkedin – in fact, it’s one of the most powerful ways you can build and increase your reach across the Web.
Authors, artists, entrepreneurs, musicians and leading business people are all on Linkedin. (It also saves you a lot of cold pancake networking breakfasts!)
I like Barack Obama’s Summary: The administration can’t only be about me. It must be about us – it must be about what we can do together. It is about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.
Baby boomers are one of the fastest growing users of Linkedin and every Fortune 500 company has a presence on this platform.
What are you waiting for?
Not only will Linkedin increase your online visibility, but using it regularly will help you find new client engagements, connect with past partners and peers and empower your current business connections to new levels.
While it might seem daunting at first, it gets easier as you go along. The folks at Linkedin are constantly adding new functionality to the platform so there’s always something new to learn as well.
Here are 3 Tips To Rock Your Linkedin Profile to a new level:
1. Make certain you have customized your URL for your public profile. Not only does this help in terms of Google search but it also helps in search on Linkedin itself.
2. Change your status at least three times weekly. This is easy to do, takes about five minutes per update and every time you update your stats your updates also appear in the Linkedin email summaries to your groups and followers.
3. Use the Events tool on Linkedin – this helps you spread the word about your events and also gives your connections a way to attend them! Booksignings, business conferences, workshops – put them all up there!
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRUeEJQSKbs[/youtube]
“It’s time to trust my instincts. Close my eyes and leap. It’s time to try defying gravity. I think I’ll try defying gravity, and you can’t pull me down.” (Defying Gravity – Wicked the Musical)
I’m writing my book fulltime on Sundays and I always try to listen to inspiring and uplifting music when I’m writing. Today my work ended with the soundtrack from Wicked, The Musical.
I’ve seen Wicked close to ten times and plan on seeing it again when I go to New York in October. (I was doubly blessed to take my teenage daughter to it for her first trip in NY last year.)
The book and the musical help inspire me to be more. The story of Elphaba and how hard she works to stay true to her mission, what she gives up along the way, and what she gains in return is timeless.
Elphaba (the green girl) also changes the people and places she comes in contact with. That’s certainly a powerful way to live your life.
For some of us, we face this new world of Web 2.0 with great fear and trepidation, but I can tell you after having been on the Web since 1995, there’s no reason to fear Web 2.0.
It’s just another upgrade. In fact, it’s one you can make easily and bring together the best of yourself offline blended with the offline. As they say in the musical, ”Let the green girl go.”
You’ve nothing to lose by using these tools and you and your community have so much to gain. The only thing Web 2.0 asks of you, your company or your community is to be just who you are.
Turns out the more authentic you are, the better off you are on the Web.
Web 2.0 doesn’t have any of the old smoke and mirrors tricks. Web 2.0 has disrobed the wizard controlling the masses through fear. For the first time in a long time, you can be who you want to be and create a highly engaged following.
You can be unlimited in Web 2.0. You might even be popular.
You might even be like me, a woman who started a career on the Web in 1995 (to stay at home with my young children) and is still blessed and lucky enough to be going strong after all this time.
You can absolutely engender success on the Web 2.0, but you have to participate. You have to defy gravity along with the rest of us. Take your hits and keep flying.
Here are five ways to “defy gravity’ using Web 2.0.
1. Build your page on Facebook.
2. Build your LinkedIn.com profile to 100%
3. Stop waiting for permission to be who you are.
4. Find the people that care about your causes on places like Twitter, Facebook and other social sites.
5. Start participating by embracing your mission and your messages and sharing them across the Web without fear.
You can do it. Sweep away all your fears of failure and start flying.
If I can do it, you can do it. If they can do it, we can do it. Just take one small leap and defy gravity.
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“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. ” (Ray Bradbury)
If you’re still feeling hesitation about the importance of social media and all that it can do for you, here are 10 free tools to aid you out of your cynicism.
1. Use Google Alerts for your company name, book or brand and see how many other folks are already talking about your brand without you. Join the playground.
2. Use Technorati.com to register your blog and track other like-minded – link-minded blogs. Revel in link-love and cross-promote one another with glee.
3. See what the absolutely free tool HowSociable reveals about your brand’s Web 2.0 visibility with its 22 metrics.
4. Want to track trend buzz in real time for free? (And who wouldn’t?) Use Trendpedia and see what’s happening.
5. Get TweetBeep to track in real-time mentions of you on Twitter. (It’s just like Google Alerts but for Twitter instead!)
6. Let’s not leave out MessageBoards and metrics for those – try BoardReader which can track several boards at once and forums too.
7. Google Groups – lets you search usenet groups.
8. Use Bit.ly to track free all your links and where they resurface in link-love-land.
9. Use SocialMention to see how social your presence is.
10. Use BlogPulse Trends to check the pulse keywords and phrases for optimal SEO on your site or your blog.
Bonus Tool: Use Facebook’s free Lexicon to track buzz on Wall posts!
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- Image via Wikipedia
“A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living.” (R.Steiner)
If you’re planning to start up your social media campaign, outreach or presence, you need to remember that your community as a whole should grow and build on the idea that there is a place for every single soul.
Yes, it’s absolutely important to define your target audience and participate in the social media community on a daily basis, but you must also foster the soul of your social media community.
Social media benchmarks can also be maintained in any social media campaign and those can be measured by views, follows, comments and subscribers.
And just as any other benchmark, you want to ensure the soul of the community is counted as a valuable measurement of how you’re doing.
To measure the soul of your social media here are four questions to ask during any campaign:
1. Are we engaging the community authentically and helping them feel important, valued and relevant?
2. Are we applying a marathon mentality or a sprint mentality to building the community? (Tip: Running longer distances with your whole community will let them know you’re in it with them not just for the short-term gain.)
3. Are the social media endeavors based only on currency or are they based on changing lives with our brand, product or service? (Tip: Changing lives is much more rewarding!)
4. Does every soul count? (Tip: If it doesn’t, you’re not going to have a successful long-term marathon.)
Now, go and find the soul of your community.
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If you’re an author and you’ve not yet ventured into the newly revamped Amazon Author Central (beta) platform, please, please, please do so now.
At Author Central, you have a bevy of ready-made tools designed by the bookselling and bookreading techno geeks at Amazon. All of these tools empower your to share information about yourself and your work with your readers — you can view and edit your bibliography, add a photo and biography to a personal profile, and use a blog to connect with readers.
Geez Louise, this makes me want to finish my book so I too can be front and Web-face forward on Author Central too!
Don’t miss out on the sample link to Neil Gaiman’s page. And take a moment to imagine him cast in a new part for the Twilight movies. I think he’s really trying to move that mojo with the picture he has up there.:>)
My fave is my client Bill Scheft’s page because Bill is really starting to dig all these new ways to connect with people. Bill is also proof that you can teach an amazing humor novelist and 18 year David Letterman show writer new Web tricks.
Bill will also be a keynote at the Erma Bombeck Writers Conference this year (Twitter: @ebww) and he will be at the Texas Book Festival. (He writes a snappy blog too!)
I also notice at the Texas Book Fest that Buzz Aldrin will be speaking. I’m excited about this. I interviewed him years ago about his science fiction novel in Dallas, and he could not have been more gracious.
My favorite part of the interview was where I stupidly asked him (after weeks of watching old Apollo films for background) why they were doing different gaits across the moon.
“Mr. Aldrin,” I asked, “Did you all try those different gaits across the moon because you wanted to calculate differences between running, skipping, hopping?” (Oy vey, to be a young dumb journalist again.)
And he said (without a smile), “For God-sakes no. Young lady, we were on the moon! We were skipping because we were on the moon!” (Duh!)
He also had a great perspective on being the second man on the moon.
Buzz at the time was also in deep planning about his idea for a tourist service around space travel. I’m going to have to dig up the whole interview and post it as a PDF on the blog now.
Speaking of new frontiers, don’t forget to register on another fantastic author platform and one of my own personal faves – Filedby.com . If I was still a technology journalist my prediction would be that in two years from now, this is really the only author community you will need to be on.
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“For just one night let’s not be co-workers. Let’s be Co-people.” (Ron Burgundy)
Ten Ways to Kiss the Social Media Facade Goodbye:
1. Stop trying to control your community – and start being a part of it.
2. Freely admit you do not have all the answers and be a perpetually free resource with the answers you do have.
3. Be yourself and the tribe will follow.
4. Don’t spend time trying to be clever or inauthentic.
5. Don’t only quantify the value of your readership or community by the number of clicks.
6. Die snarkiness die.
7. Cash isn’t the currency you need on the Web. Courage and transparency are what really goes viral in Web 2.0. (Don’t believe me? Check out Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” on YouTube. Look at the view numbers and watch the vid if you haven’t yet.)
8. Let “link-love” abound.
9. Find joy in Web 2.0 or don’t do it.
10. For every hour you spend on social media, spend the same amount outside. (Remember the sun is good for you. Real grass smells fantastic. Laughter at playgrounds cures almost everything.)
Be brave and lose the facade. Life’s way to short not to spend it being real with your co-people.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpWAlvWNZj0[/youtube]
If you think of the Jerry Maguire scene and apply it to your signature line in your email, then make certain you will have them at “hello.”
Five Tips For Having them at Hello: (on your signature line in email)
1. Link to your TwitterID under your name – “Tweet with me TWITTERID”
2. Link to your blog – not just “See my blog here – LINK”, but rather, “See how contrarian I can be at LINK”
3. Link to your LinkedIn.com account- again, put a teensy tiny call to action – Come on you know you want to LINK up – LINKEDIN ID here
4. Change your signature line at least once a month if you can with new innovative short calls to action to your other online platforms.
5. Take your social media IDs on your sig line and make sure when you get a new batch of business cards printed they are also on there as well. It’s not just about having your website on your card anymore.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKSXdDvBaio[/youtube]A.J. Jacobs has done a hilarious book trailer to announce his latest book. I encourage you to check it out and see how creativity and humor can be incorporated into book marketing!
- Image by vincos via Flickr
As the success of using social media continues to rise, one of the key things to keep in mind is the “economy of effort” as it relates to the time you’re spending on all your social media endeavors.
Instead of trying to be active on all the grouplists, all the social media sites as well as on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook, you need to first take a step back and define your purpose on these sites and which ones will work best for you long-term.
As you think about the purpose for your involvement in social media keep this in mind:
If you try to be active on every social media platform, every group list, every online conversation, you’re going to run out of social media steam.
Web 2.0 is not going to go away, but you certainly should not let it drive you into a frenzied effort of trying to be all things to all social media.
Just pick out three things and commit to doing them well on the social media landscape.
Define how much time you are able to spend on each of those three things.
Block this time into your calendar just as you would any other standing appointment and block out 30 minutes three times a week to devote to this work.
If you have a blog then you need to probably block out more like an hour three times a week, so that you can incorporate what you’re doing on your blog too.
Keep track of your time spent, so that you have a good barometer of what your efforts entail.
Commit to your social media efforts for six months and you will see results.
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