Okay, so first?

It’s twittering. If it’s a word at all.

Secondly, it’s easy.

If you’re in  cubicle farm now, look around and tell me how many people you see who are Actually working.

If there are 25 people around you, I’m willing to bet that if you look closely, 5 people are working, 5 are doing something social that’s related to working, and 10 are just looking like they’re working.

Not because they’re lazy or stealing time from their company.

No. The people in the last two groups are doing something essential.

The human mind needs time to breathe between tasks.

I figured this out way back when I got the tapes, “Where There’s a Will, There’s an A”. I badly needed this course as a student when I came back from Africa for middle school. Because where in Africa, we learned things by understanding them, and then building on knowledge we previously had, it was different in the States.

Eventually I figured out that there was a reason why my grades had dropped  in Math and Science, even though we’d been ahead of those courses when we returned. The education system here ( which hasn’t changed in any other substantial way in 200 years – did you know that?) was more focused on the standardized testing system than it had been when we’d left.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. In the States we rely much more heavily on memorization as a teaching method than we should, due to standardized testing and its growing importance. (I’d be fine with that if we mixed in other learning styles and gave as much weight to creative learning as we do to technical learning, since the world we live in now gives its money to people who solve problems, not those who manage or process them. But I digress.)

the point is, I’d learned a different style of absorption, so I’d have to adjust. So I found the “Where There’s a Will” course and it really did help.

My most important lesson from it was that you remember most the last thing and the first thing you read. I have no idea if there’s any science behind this but it definitely worked for me:  To achieve more retention of the facts you were memorizing, the theory was that you need to make the opportunity to remember information happen more often.

And it was then I learned to chop my learning up into smaller tasks. If I read a chapter in a half hour, I’d remember the beginning of the chapter and how it ended. But in small enough chunks? The  beginning was so close to the end I even though I couldn’t quite remember clearly, nearly all the important parts were accessible at testing time.

Read five pages. Take a break. Review the high points, next five pages.

Of course, this carried over into my professional life. It’s helped me absorb a great deal more information despite having the crappiest memory of anyone I know. And since I have this horrible tick about wasting down time (long story for another day), I had to figure out – what can I do while I’m letting my mind breathe?

When I worked in a corporate setting, that was easy.

• Get up and talk to a co-worker,
• see if my boss needs anything,
• visit another department
• and reinforce my alliances.

But the last two offices I’ve had it’s been either just me or me and one other person.

And there’s only so many times you can say hi to your one co-worker who works eight feet from you – or your own reflection – before you start to seem like a lunatic.

I prefer that no one happens upon that information before I’m ready. You understand.

Anyway. Now that most of my co-workers or people who work for me are in other states or countries, I visit them online. Which is where Twitter, Facebook, etc comes in.

You see, being able to spark acquaintances online is an ongoing task, and will take continuous follow-up on your part. However, you don’t have to feel like you have to spend an hour on each site for these connections to take place. There are plenty of tools out there that can help you automate the supporting tasks, or let you know that it’s time to follow up- including Twitter itself!

We’ll chat more another time about how to have meaningful discourse on multiple mediums without spending your whole day networking online.

I’ve been honored again to have an exclusive article of mine published by Women Grow Business. Yes, I am honored to serve on Network Solution’s Social Web Advisory Board, and Women Grow Business is a Network Solutions Publication.

But it’s not like inclusion is automatic.

So yeah, I am hereby bragging about this awesome event.

The article is about how far you should take exporting your social media “chores” as a business person. Where’s the line? I’ll give you a hint, but first let me say this.

As I’ve always said, I believe that as long as there’s not social media deity, anything the social media service you’re using doesn’t prohibit, goes. I put this under the heading that I hate getting telemarketing calls but that doesn’t mean that someone should be allowed to shoot them for doing their job. Nor does it mean the method is not sometimes effective.

Sure, I think there’s a better way, but I don’t always know all the circumstances – I can only tell you what I’ve gotten results with and seen others get results with. I can take my expertise and experience and speculate, but nothing more.

So, while my article shouldn’t be considered the Bible on Social Media Surrogacy, do know that it comes from seeing companies just like yours attempt and flourish – or fail.

Getting back to the article and what crosses the line of social media surrogacy – I think it’s fine to hire someone to make you a Twitter page, or help you form strategy.

Does everyone who want a blog have to invent, and then use WordPress in order to have a blog? No.

And why shouldn’t someone log in to your account and delete obvious spam requests for connections? Frowning upon that would be like me telling you Akismet shouldn’t filter your spam or you should answer every phone call at the receptionist’s desk yourself.

So what’s not okay? What have I seen attempted and end in failure a couple of hundred times? And why?

You’ll have to read “The Limits of Social Networking Surrogacy “to find out.

Google News is without a doubt the reason why we where we are today.  And, the social networking aspect of Google News has helped us tremendously.

Joe Vallee and Dennis Bakay measure the impact Google, Facebook and Twitter have had on social networking for websites. If its traffic you’re after, this makes for an interesting read.

I’m back again, continuing the Facebook Business Basics series.  

If you went to my Facebook page, you saw two videos about how you can find people on Facebook who may be interested in you and let them come back to your site. This video talks about  what to do once you have someone viewing your profile.

Recorded via cell phone. I previewed it via cell, so hopefully it’ll sound okay.

[download mp3]

In my last article, we talked about the wrong way to network with groups. This is one of the right ways – at least it is if you want the result of growing your business via Facebook without looking like a spammer.

Before we continue, I want to let you know I’m aware of the video embed problem with videos from my Facebook fan page.

Apparently even if you embed a video to a page, which is supposed to be visible to Everyone even outside of Facebook, some people still can’t see it.

So I’m uploading the videos to our free member site over at Leveraged Promotion, and using that embed code to feature them here.

If you couldn’t see Why Facebook Matters, The Psychological Side of the Facebook Experience, or Leveraging Your Profile via News Feed vs Other People’s Profile Promotion (otherwise known as Why Facebook Spam Fails), the new embeds visible to everyone are now live at those links.

You can become a fan of mine at Facebook to see all the videos in the series in one place. If you’re looking to be able to connect with me directly and don’t know me yet, that’s your best bet.

However, if we already know each other, you might want to join me at the social members section of Leveraged Promotion, where I have a members-only blog that’s updated with less frequency, but juicer tidbits.

Members are currently moderated and approved on a case by case basis. Generally if you’ve made a comment here, know me on Twitter/Facebook/StumbleUpon or have bought a product from me, you’ll be accepted as a free member – apply here.

That’s it for announcements. Oh, and we are back on the old site theme until next week when I hope to unveil 09′s custom theme.

Find more videos like this on Website Promotion for Regular Folks

(You may need to click through to the original post if the video isn’t showing up. You can also click the lower right corner of the video to go full screen.)

Technically speaking, where does the experience of Facebook largely take place? See why you can get better results posting to your own profile (which updates the news feed that goes out to your connections) rather than publishing on other people’s profiles.

I’ve got lots more Facebook video for you, to view them just go to my Facebook fan page in the videos section. The next three videos in the series give you an airplane view of what you need to do to be in the conversational and activity stream of information we just talked about.

Why do you want to be in that stream? Because that’s where the interaction is happening.

 Tinu Abayomi-Paul’s Profile 

Ever since someone told me I was on Facebook Grader’s Elite User page last month I’ve been in a constant state of amusement about it for three reasons. 

1. I was still getting Facebook traffic every day, whether I spend zero minutes or an hour there each day,
2. All the social media scoring sites amuse me to no end, because though they mean well, they miss the point,
3. At the time I had about half the friends of most of the people on that list, and while I updated Facebook nearly every day, I almost never logged into to do it. I had the stats to legitimately be on the list, but I worked about 10% as hard to get them as anyone else on that list.

Two years ago I wrote a book about my experiences with Facebook for Business, which I’m updating with some multi-media aids and more recent how-tos.

Because I’m seeing that two years later, most business people still don’t get Facebook, how it can help them, or what they’re supposed to be doing there, let alone how it can mean an increase in sales, more leads, more traffic, better business connections, or more business period. 

I’m going to spend the whole week talking about this. But for right now, let’s just cover the basics. 

What Most Business People Think of When They Look at Facebook – and What They SHOULD Be Thinking

Most business people look at Facebook and think “I want to advertise or market to those 180 million people.”

They should be thinking “How can I help the targeted sub-set of those 180 million people see my business as THE solution to their problems?”

Facebook is a social platform. Now there’s a place to advertise and ways to market, but …. that’s not what the optimal relationship is, and that isn’t what will reach the most people.

Let me put it this way… naturally the best way to maneuver through water is in a boat, so doesn’t it seem silly to try and go up the Mississippi river in a motorcycle? 

It’s probably possible, sure. But there’s a better way. Why not do that instead?

The best way to get the most out of a social platform is to be social. Period.

Social meaning that you meet as many people as you can who you have something in common with, connect to them, then present them with the option to connect more deeply with you. This does not have to be:

• Time consuming
• A one by one process, or,
• Something you do every day

in order for Facebook to work for you. 

And you don’t have to market on Facebook. It’s probably better if you don’t.

I have never, not one time, solicited any type of business while on Facebook. Last year Facebook brought me tens of thousands of dollars in profit. 

While I was sick.

Not including book sales.

How is this possible? I set up my profile effectively, and let it speak for itself to the right people. Then I made them all come to me. 

I’ve never gone up to anyone on Facebook and said “hi, I’m Tinu, this is what I do, and how I can help you”. Not as a first conversation, not as a 50th. Everyone comes to ME, asks for my help, and how much it is to hire me.

If you can create that environment it’s a constant stream of prospects to you.

I’m actually going to reveal all the basic things you need to know about Facebook for free in a few days, here on the blog. Before we get to that though, let’s look at how people are screwing up their chances on Facebook, so that if you’ve been told to do any of these things, you can STOP.

Huge Mistakes I See Every Day on Facebook

1. People marketing in the wrong place, to the wrong people, in the wrong way, at the wrong time.
   
   You want to market on Facebook? Fine. You have 4 options. Get a Facebook Business Page, Participate in or Create a Group, Buy a Facebook Ad, or Leverage Your Profile.    

   Guess which one works the best, by far? Leveraging Your Profile. Most people don’t see this, and when they get an inkling of it, they do it in the most annoying way possible.

   And you can’t sell to people you annoy. They tune you out or they block you from interacting with them.

   No sale. 
    

2. Relying solely on building a large friends list.
   
   There’s a reason that the Facebook grader page doesn’t just list the first 50 people to make it to 5000 friends. If you make 5000 weak connections, they are actually worse than another person’s strong 50 connections.     

   Like anything else, you need to connect to the most targeted connections possible, and have a subset of influencers within that group.

3. Ignoring Facebook’s power to broadcast as well as receive. There is something to be said for having a lot of friends of Facebook – if they are the right friends. 

   If you’re picking people who are mutually beneficial to you, who have influence over other people in your target market, the nature of Facebook will amplify your efforts.The key to that here is the news feed.

   When you go to Facebook’s home page, you’re getting live updates of the people you’re connected to, and if you wish, a subset of the people you’re connected to, now that they’ve introduced filtering.  So when YOU publish items on YOUR profile, they’re going at least to all your friends, and potentially to the friends of your friends, if they take action on the information. 

   So why not just post your link on a more powerful user’s profile? 

   Well, first of all they can delete it, and block you, and then you can never leverage that relationship again. And you probably won’t find another powerful Facebook user to dupe into listing your spam, because we all know each other. I’m one degree of separation from all top 50 users on the Elite list, and half of them I either know or am connected to them on Facebook.

   Secondly, Facebook isn’t set up to drive traffic to profiles anymore, it’s set up to drive traffic to news feeds. I spend 75% of the time that I’m logged into Facebook on my own profile page, browsing the news feed. Unless I’m deciding whether or not to add you, I’m not going to your profile. Neither are other users. 

   Thirdly, you’ll get better results posting to your own profile, where people you know and the people they know can get your news when it pops into their news feed. 

If you take no other information away from our dialog about Facebook this week, let it be this: the news feed is where it’s at, where it’s going to BE at, and where it always WAS at. Master the News Feed, and learn to properly leverage your profile and your work in Facebook is done.

We’re gonna talk more about every day this week. For now, sign up for a Facebook account if you don’t already have one. I’ll show you the most important areas to pay attention to in an upcoming video.

Yeah. They’re talking about Twitter again.

From The Twitter Fantasy | Collaboration 2.0
| ZDNet.com

I smell Beanie Babies, Housing Bubbles and Dutch Tulip Manias – there’s a frenzy around followers that will boom and bust.  Few people know why these various followers are of value apart from to try and sell to them, often in a way that would be very at home on the home shopping channel, ideas, services and stuff.

It’s already bust among the savvy. The problem is the savvy folks are not the majority of the general population.

So here’s a question; if you’re on Twitter for business, should you care about the number of followers you have?

The short answer is no.

You could have one million followers – if they aren’t likely to retweet, buy, click, subscribe, or take other direction from you, it just plain doesn’t matter. You might as well have one follower, you.

The long answer: it depends on who you are and what your market is.

There are some brands doing amazing things with Twitter, and the number of followers they have shows a genuine interest in their brand.

Look at the Barack Obama account. You’d think since his people made no tweets between election day and the few days before he got elected, the number would have gone down dramatically.

Instead they’ve tripled since November. That’s insane. That’s brand loyalty. 

I don’t care what your political views are – there isn’t an entrepreneur alive who wouldn’t want to triple their following by saying almost Nothing.

So, if who you are is a strong brand that people want to feel close to, those numbers mean something. Tripling your numbers means something if the people following you are mostly doing it because they want to hear anything you might say.

Which brings us to our next point – what’s your market got to do with it?

Lots, actually.
See, if you’re an individual or business, marketing consumer products with mass appeal to the regular person, numbers matter a little. Many people will read your high numbers as a sign of popularity.

In fact, if you’re in any business where subconscious popularity cues come into play in terms of marketing, numbers will play a role – who wants to follow someone who has 8 followers?

At the same time, you have to balance that quantity with quality. 

Why?

For the same reason that you only want targeted buyers, and maybe affiliates or resellers, on your list. Anyone who is on your list that won’t someday be instrumental in sending a sale your way is dead weight. It’s nice to have high numbers that make you sound like you’re more important than you really are – if you’re just starting out and you need a bit of magic fairy dust to get people to See that you’re actually that valuable. 

But if you get people on your list who are just following you because they knew they had to follow you so they could get more followers (yeah, I’m talking about Twitter Getter) unless people who need more followers is actually your market, you’re wasting your time.

Yes, if you’re in internet marketing, and you use Twitter for internet marketing, and you sell mostly to other internet marketers, then as I’ve said before about Twitter marketing to marketers, that particular circle will be profitable for you, at least for a few minutes. 

But if you are building a business that is

• in a niche market, 
• caters to free thinking artistic types
• caters to the offline or partially online entrepreneur in any way
• has freelancers as customers
• is mostly business to business
• is mostly made up of coders
• is mostly comprised of web designers
• has a mixture of writers
• sells to other people who provide services

Then don’t build your following just to get an inflated number that doesn’t truly represent you. 

Why? Why, when numbers are so impressive to some people should you err on the side of quality?

Well, let’s think about what the desired effect is for people who want big numbers on Twitter. They want to be able to:

• Have a wider reach
• Use Twitter as a broadcasting platform, not only directly to their own audience, but through retweets
• Influence or directly control flow of traffic resulting from their own tweeted links
• Be a person who wields influence.

Of course I can’t speak for every person who wants a high number of followers, inflated or not. I’m basing this on my conversations with a couple hundred of them over the past few years, a few dozen of which actually met these goals. 

Now, look at each point above. None of those can be successfully reached with an inauthentic audience. 

You don’t really have a wider reach if the people following you are only doing it to get you to follow back, or have some other intention besides following what you say, or performing actions you desire. 

You can’t broadcast to people who probably aren’t listening – and you can bet they aren’t if they aren’t following you of their own volition. They won’t retweet under those conditions either.

You can’t influence or control traffic to links you tweet if you have followers who aren’t attentive. Again, it’s one thing to have a follower, it’s another to have one who is paying attention to you. 

You might be perceived as a person who wield influence. But you won’t have actual influence unless people are naturally drawn to you.

So eff your follower numbers. Once you get past 100, forget about them for a while. Yeah, it’s good to have goals, but think about it…. how much more money would you make if you had a subscriber list of 1000 where 50% bought every time you mailed a new special, versus a list of 50,000 with 1% buying?

Now if the work to get a quality follower that is likely to buy is equal to that of getting 100 barely interested followers who will probably never even subscribe is the same, where should your effort should be?

Guess it depends on whether you’re running a business or a popularity contest.

It seems to me that if you can learn how to be the life of the party, you can learn how to work the social media scene. Let’s think of it as a party then, and do a run down of how it would work out.

Stage One: You Go to the Party

If you’re smart, you’ll be invited, or better yet, throw the party. The party of course, meaning the place where you socially interact in the social media arena.

On a social news site, the party might get started when you submit a link, or a party in progress might be a story you vote on that’s rising in popularity.

Stage Two: You Find the People Who Like
What You Like

As Rob Gordon says in High Fidelity, “What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.” So find the people who have the same tastes as you, follow what they’re voting for, or saving, or where they’re hanging out.

One safe basis of friendship is commonalities.

Stage Three: You Mirror and Create Rapport

You know how you meet someone knew and start picking up their expressions, etc. When you’re meeting people online, we also tend to try on aspects of other people’s behavior. You’ll suggest things to each other, or catch yourself imitating one of the Alpha Populars.

There’s actually a scientific background to this. In Unlimited Power, Anthony Robbins talks about how to use rapport to build connections to other people.

Stage Four: You Make a Gesture

Eventually, you’ll start to drill down to your favorite folks, and in natural course, do something for them. It’s partially the paying of an imagined social debt – when people enrich our lives by sharing information we enjoy, we often feel like reciprocating.

That’s one of the reasons the free ebook still works so well to get newsletter sign-ups. (It’s email that’s failed, not the email marketing techniques. But I digress.)

Stage Five: The Gesture is Appreciated,
or Even Reciprocated

When you get feedback from shared links, when you are thanked for your gesture, or the person you hooked up does you some kind of solid back, you’ve definitely got the basis for a relationship.

It’s a two-way street.

Stage Six: You Are Friends

At least in the online sense of the phrase. This is the time when you can send a link out of the blue even if you haven’t spoken in a few days.

But remember the most important part of a relationship is maintaining it. Don’t take this new connection for granted, and keep doing the thing that made you become familiar to each other in the first place.

The more I think about what some people are doing wrong with social media, the more it occurs to me what other people are doing right, and how it can be emulated. I’m also realizing that I’m assuming that people know how to relate to each other, but that’s not necessarily true either.

Think about it – often, not always but quite a bit, people are congregating online to avoid offline encounter. It’s not always because they are shy or anti-social. Sometimes being online is more efficient than, say, having ten people fly out or conference call for a meeting.

Allan Cockerill started discussing what he says is the central issue to social media interactions:

These are social networking sites that we are talking about, and networking means relationship!.

If I don’t know you, why should I bookmark something for you?

And if we are friends in the online sense of the word, a string of links via instant message isn’t a friendship, it’s a dictatorship!

I would agree. You really have to think about what builds a relationship when you’re entering into these interactions, because if you enter into real connections with people, in the long run, this is what will work in your favor the most.

The difficult piece of the puzzle is two-fold.

1- We all have our idea about  the acceptable parameters of relating, on or offline, and,

2- Some elements of even a casual relationship akin to friendship are more difficult to imitate in an online-only connection.

Even if you don’t feel  that an ongoing link with another person in the online world is a friendship, by definition it is a type of relationship. The key to building better social media relationships then, is in remembering how certain types of casual relationships are formed, duplicating that in a suitable way online, and then show how they continue.

And we’ll ponder that next.