I’m not an ass kisser. Never will be. If you’re expecting a page full of sucking up, I can save you some time.

This post isn’t about singing Lisa Barone’s professional praises – some things are self evident. But it is about one of the best posts I’ve ever read of hers.

I insist that you go read her Open Letter.

You need a reason? Here’s a quote:

There was an eye-opening article on Inc. Magazine yesterday from Drew Gannon where she (yes, she) writes about the uphill battle women face in tech.

Drew’s piece touches on the Women in Technology Panel (catch it on YouTube) that took place last week where Important Women came together to discuss the power of women and the challenges we still face.

What are some of these challenges?

We’re meek.

We don’t share ideas in meetings.

We routinely discount ourselves.

We’re bad at math, science and other things that require high-level brain thinkings.

We’re responsible for twice as much of the housework than men and three times the childcare.

Dude! I had no idea! I always thought these were personality traits certain people had – like a bad temper or an affinity for collecting life-sized dolls.

Now, I know that some of these conferences that seek to address issues women have mean well, and they do help people.

But as Lisa pointed out, there’s a huge difference between a PERSONALITY flaw, and a GENDER TRAIT. And even if something IS more common in women, the solution isn’t to tie it on like some feedbag of shame. It’s to conquer it like the warriors we are.

I don’t have a problem with people who have problems getting help to solve them. Actually, I’m a HUGE fan of that. But lookit. That picture they’re painting? Doesn’t match up to me.

Meek? Not only will I share an idea in a meeting, if I think I’m right and you give me shit, I will shove it up your nostril until you convince me that I’ve been heard.

Discount myself? Not routinely, (though some of my pricing needs to be fixed, right now. And my blog is called Free Traffic Tips for goodness sakes.  If it wasn’t for bragging rights to my search results, I’d have razed this site to the ground a long time ago.)

I kick math and science’s ASS. And yours too if you’re ever dumb enough to grab the second PS3 controller when I’m playing a fighting game.

Housework? You’ve got to be kidding me. They have services for that. Yes, I helped rear both my sister’s sets of twins – but that was in equal partnership with her parents and my mother.

My point is, I don’t fit in stereotypes or boxes.

Yes, there are issues I struggle with as a women and a black person in technology.

So? Everyone’s got problems. And the issues were not CAUSED by my womanosity or blackuality.

And that’s the lithmus test.

Anyone remember that ridiculous book The Bell Curve, that used erroneous science to “prove” that the injustices black people faced were caused by their genetics, rather than the result of circumstances? I actually sat and read the book for a college class, and if you know anything about the difference between a causation and a corollary, it’s amazing that it was ever taken seriously by any true scientist.

Making blanket statements about women, then using statistics or factoids to assert gender as the cause, rather than a group of facts that coincide, is just as dumb.

There was a really important post at DoshDosh today called “An Essential Marketing Principle: Give Before You Try to Get“. It went over a very basic marketing principle that has somehow gotten turned into a gimmick – the idea that in order to get someone, anyone, to do something for you, that you must first do something for them. 

It struck me, reading that article that everyone knows you’re supposed to do that. 

Everyone thinks they understand why to do that. 

And yet few people know HOW to do it. Or everyone would, and everyone would buy everything and all our problems getting the word out and  would be solved. 

I wonder why that is. Thinking back to when I was a newbie, thinking about how current newbies to traffic generation behave when they meet me, I think this quote from the article best alludes to the mystery:

You’re not selling to robots or animals. You’re selling to people whocare about the seller. Get what you want by first giving unconditionally. Manage what people think or feel about you and you’ll get what want easily.

When I was a newbie, I didn’t get that. I got into business to be able to help people and have some extra spare change – I was looking for a part time supplemental income.

One day put out some valuable information for free, and for a while got a lot of great attention for it. Then when flipping through Clickbank, I noticed that someone had turned my idea into a product. Out of curiosity I bought it, thinking they had the same idea I had at the same time – maybe we could work together and make something bigger.

And I saw that, word for word, some of the content in the product was stuff I was giving away free on my blog.

At the time I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

Sue? I didn’t have a lawyer and couldn’t afford one.

Contact the person and bluff that I was going to sue? I couldn’t make good on the threat, and besides, it was a lie. And people knew that person well – they were just getting to know me in the marketplace.

Ultimately I figured out that due to the ranking of the product, they couldn’t have been making a lot of sales. So I made a better product, and put it on the market. Six months later the market for that particular item was flooded with competition, and I was still on top.

I always believed it was because I provided better value, and people knew it. I gave away most of the information others make you pay for, and then heaped a lot of actionable content to pay for on top of that. Eventually my tactic paid off.

Because I wanted to build a business. The other guy just wanted to make a quick buck.

And that’s the difference between some of the new blood in any business and the veterans, between some of those living the “guru” lifestyle and the true experts.

One wants to build a business, the other is hoping to run away with some of your cash. One has to shoot straight with you or they risk losing your future business. The other doesn’t care because they just want to get you to buy this one thing and then run away.

If you want to earn trust with your audience, before everything you do, think, “will this build me a long-term relationship with subscribers, customers and clients?”

Ask yourself why they would come back for more.

Ask yourself why YOU would come back for more.

This month in Traffic Reality we’re going to be talking about how to use social media properties to build your business. I’m not going to just talk about Twitter, or Facebook or StumbleUpon or forum marketing.

I’m going to talk about all of them as a whole, from the technical points of how to use them, to the tips and tricks on each separate site in my Web 2.0 strategy and how I use them together to generate traffic, leads and sales.

I’ll be focusing on Actionable Steps, and how to reduce your daily social media workload to half an hour a day. We’ll discuss the intimate nature of how and why some things get popular in social media and other items fail miserably.

We’ll be looking into why these occurrences have nothing to do with quality of the resource, and everything to do with leverage. Actually we’ll be talking about that fact that I feel leverage is so important that, years ago, I named my company Leveraged Promotion.

This topic is so important that I’m going to start giving away bonsues in Traffic Reality at the beginning of the month of lessons instead of the end, so I can get them all in.

In the next post in this series, I’ll give you a few take away points for right now, as well as an announcement of our last content winner.

Our blog is back up. Thank you to our super-hero Web Host who has saved the day once again, just like the Powerpuff Girls.

I’m so sleepy. Almost as sleepy as I was when I wrote this message that you guys keeping pinging me about. Stop laughing at me!

Ok, laugh at me. It is Friday, after all.

In today’s Social Media Issue:

• The First New Traffic Test in a Year
• Our New Facebook Group
• Where to Get Free Help with Linked In
• A Social Media Whitepaper from Jeremiah Owyang
• Another Social Media Whitepaper from MotiveLabs
• Add Us to Google
• Links to 69 Articles on Web Traffic
• The Traffic Methods Series #229 – 239

Whew! Are you as pooped reading it as I was writing it?

Read it here.

That’s right. We changed the template again.

Okay, I, Tinu, control-freak extraordinaire, led the changing of the theme. It was me. ARE YOU HAPPY?

Sorry. Skipped my wheaties again.

Anyway, it seems that after a long search, I’ve found the three column, widget-ready, lightweight, professional theme with shades of blue in it that I’ve been yearning for, lo these many couple of days. I’m going to ask Nina to make our professional WordPress template based on this one, with our narrow columns all on the right.

We’ll be bringing back missing features like MyBlogLog, the DoFollow notices, and BUMPzee over the next few days.

It was hard to break the tie between what we had during our Cutline design change, the three-right-column version of same, and this one, but in the end, blue always wins out over right-column bliss.

Though I have to say that on my newest blog about money, the Cutline three-right-columns version wins hands down, I just have to make all the header graphics.

So, what do you think of the design change? Can you see everything okay?