Get Positive Attention in the Twitterverse and Other Networking Situations

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 27 Comments

Anyone who’s spent time in the Twitterverse knows that every person uses it in a way uniquely suited to his or her own purpose. That’s the beauty of a great tool. But if your goal is social networking and conversation, you want to have folks around. Conversation without a few and followers is usually called a monologue.

The art of attracting fiercely loyal twitter followers can make the time we spend twittering useful, productive, and significantly more fun! Great Twitter followers are friends, business colleagues, and people who inspire us. Be a great Twitter conversationalist and those followers will bring their friends join in. These traits in a Twitterer always catch my attention.

Want to have new Twitter friends? Here’s how to be one …

  • Have a presence. Make a Twitter home page with some self-expression. Have a name that I can remember, even if it’s not the name your family calls you. Have a picture as your avatar to let me know that you’re serious about being around long to finish a conversation.
  • Don’t wait for people to talk to you first. Follow about 30 people who are interested in these same things you are. Find them at http://search.twitter.com Take a look at their profile or their blogs. Reach out to them using the @ sign and their name to share a comment on what you found.
  • Show up in new places. Sound obvious? Maybe it’s not obvious as we think. Most of us tend to hang where we are. If you want to make new friends, show up in new places and new times and talk to new people about new ideas. New situations stretch our brains.
  • Respond personally. When someone follows you, explore their profile before you say hello. Know who you’re talking to. A statement about something someone wrote will get you noticed in a way that a “Thanks for following” response never will.
  • Share your best ideas and strategies. Get them out there. Let other folks use them too. Everyone likes a generous soul. Generosity come back to you in the most interesting and intriguing ways. Just as @inspiremetoday about that.
  • Showcase great stuff. It’s charming to point to something another person has done well. It shows generosity, gives respect, and adds value to your conversation. Showcase the people you care about. Care about the people you meet.
  • Give credit, give links, give a hand. Be generous of mind and of spirit. People remember and respect generosity. It’s a statement of character. It also gets their attention. You never know who might want to thank you one day or what shape that thank you might take.
  • Treat everyone as an influencer. Everyone wants to feel a part of something bigger than they are. Let your influencers be a part of what you do in every way that you can. Encourage participation. The more they feel they belong, the more they will bring friends along.
  • Be passionate, fun, funny, and human, If you are, other people will feel they can be too.

Be the kind of fiercely loyal, intriguing follower-friends you’d want to have and you’ll find those are the kind of fiercely loyal, intriguing follower-friends who are attracted to you.

But you knew that.

What gets your positive attention in the Twitterverse?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Get your best voice in the conversation. Buy my eBook.

What Tony Lawrence Said … About Commenting on Blogs

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 17 Comments

A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

Getting Folks to Follow You Home

When new bloggers ask how to get more readers, one of the first answers offered is usually to comment on other blogs. Connecting with like-minded thinkers with a thoughtful response to what they write is a strong way to let folk know who we are. The key is in the quality of the comments we write.

Here’s what Tony said . . .

I don’t think I like the idea of commenting on every post.

If you are really adding something worthwhile, fine. But how many of us have something useful to add on each and every post? And if it IS that useful, I’m probably going to blog about it myself and include a link back to my inspiration rather than leaving a comment. Of course that does zilch for building traffic links, but if I’m really saying something important, it may be better for me long term.

In fact, whenever I start writing a comment and it gets over a paragraph or two I start thinking “Shouldn’t this be a post?”

This comment qualifies, but I’ll leave it here just this once

I also don’t necessarily like putting links in my comments. If I honestly feel that I have something you really have to read, I might, but I’m more apt to just say “I do have a post on this at my site” or (most often) say nothing at all. I just don’t like using other people’s comments to promote myself.

When someone comments on one of my sites for no apparent reason than to get a link, I delete their comment entirely. If they have added something at least marginally useful, I’ll leave it be. I’m not draconian, but I’m not going to be spammed.

If somebody asked a question and I have a good answer on one of my sites, yes, of course I’ll link to it. But sometimes, and particularly if the post at my site is short, I’ll just cut and paste from the post instead of linking.

I’m probably too conservative in that regard.

Tony Lawrence from a comment on October 31, 2005

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Do Try This at Home Over the Holidays

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The Real Test of Our Social Skills

Families — fond memories, sentiments that bring us closer together. I’ve sure we’ve all got those. Unfortunately, it seems families aren’t absolved of people who aren’t a joy to the world, of incidents involving human error. Bad times, miscommunication, and conflict come along with the package family deal.

I know more than one person who has thought of starting over — electing a new family, demoting those currently in familial roles — she just doesn’t know how to tell the family she was born into.

It’s not a solution as far as I can see.

I have noticed that we often cut our new friends and new clients more slack than we do our families. Family history gets in the way of our relationships moving forward again.

It sure seems that where we have relationships — yeah even those stuck in a time warp — we might try our best social practices for connecting in positive ways when relationships aren’t happening.

Here’s a four-point plan to reconnect with people that you’ve had a history with.

  • Smile. Be joyful to see them. It’s a chance to change history. Be the change you want to see. The surprise alone often changes their demeanor.
  • Live that smile through and through. Folks we’ve had history with have put us into a content and context box. They use their experience and how we look, what we say, what we do — to recognize signs that might validate that smile. Belief and consistency in the smile through every test gives you and them a place to stand.
  • Never let ‘em see you sweat. When we’re at our best we’re authentic. If they ask, tell them life is good and that you’ve decided to look at the world with a positive view. If they bring up bad events, agree that the events were bad and be glad that they’re over. If you need to point out that the happy occasion isn’t the best venue for sorting out history.
  • Make everything about everyone in the room. Be a great guest who is helpful, curious, and interested in the folks who came. Talk about what they want to talk about. It’s an afternoon with the audience who knows you better than any client ever will.

We know how to meet, interact, and build communities with our friends and customers here. What if we do that with our families too? If we let go of old stories, we might find that the curmudgeon in our family is really someone who wants to be listened to. The hardest ones to know can be holding great bits of wisdom. What if we made it a quest to get to it?

Lots of us know that our families don’t see us clearly. It seems only logical that it must be true the other way too. If we start connecting, imagine what we could be learning. We’ve got the skills and the tools.

What if we try this at home over the holidays?

Meet someone you already know this holiday season.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Get your best voice in the conversation. Buy my eBook.

The 26th Trait and Maybe the Most Imporant …

Filed Under Marketing, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 15 Comments

Yesterday I wrote about 25 Traits I Admire about Social Media Folks.
Today I realize I should have made it 26 …
This last trait isn’t complicated.
So hang with me as I lay it out.

26. The social media folks I admire …
don’t take their personal value from some list — not a list that anyone makes — certainly not a list made by me.

For those of you who might wonder . . . I admire far, far more than 25 people and NONE of the people I admire use back channels to talk down other people. They respect themselves too much for that.

Thank you to everyone who took what I said in the joyful way it was intended.

Remember this, to include people isn’t the same as leaving people out.

If you know me, you know my heart.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

If You Remove the Social from Social Media Tools …

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 23 Comments

Hammersmith or Nail Banger?

This weekend on Twitter, I passed along Beth Harte and Geoff Livingston’s fabulous post, Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert is a Carpetbagger. I encourage you to read it.

Not everyone who does things differently than we might have them do it is a carpetbagger. I’m sure Beth, Goeff, Jason, Chris, Amber, Mack, or any other well-respected social media adviser would agree with that statement. Individuals and individual companies need to find their own voice and their own path.

Yet in this fast growing context and culture of experiments and experiences, the chance is high that folks may not have found the information they need for every decision. The world is full of “Swiss cheese knowledge.” Some folks get taught by bad teachers. Some things get past all of us.

Add to that the creativity factor, the drive for innovation, and the necessity that is the mother of invention. Experimentation is a good thing, especially as we test new tools. No one gets to pick who’s qualified to experiment and who’s not.

I’ve used a wooden-heeled shoe to pound a nail when I didn’t have a hammer.

What happens when the experiments change the nature of the tools?

If You Remove the Social … What’ve You Got?

Social media tools — blogs, social networks, Twitter, Facebook, Ning — what happens when you take out the social and just use the tool? What happens when messages and conversations become automated and future dated? What have you got if you don’t know whether you’re responding to a person or a bot?

It’s a fair question.

Some folks see the world with a different filter. They find uses for books and hammers that I’d never imagine. Some folks find uses for social media tools that, in my mind bypass the social. Allow me three extreme — of course no one actually does these things — metaphors to explain what I mean. Here are three people who would surely not see the social in social media tools.

  1. The person who sends a singing telegram rather than meet for coffee. That person probably won’t understand why socially inclined social media advisers don’t take to auto responders.
  2. The person who enters into a new neighbor’s house, saying “Cool boxes! Glad you picked my neighborhood! Check out my roller skate store.” That person probably won’t see the problem folks have with a “Just found you. Will you review my blog?” requests that come before “hello” has been mentioned.
  3. The person who interrupts people at parties to hand out business cards might not put together why a Twitter profile page filled with his / her website links and no @ signs would be considered unsocial.

Don’t get me wrong. Tools are meant to solve problems and experiementing is how we learn. Guy Kawasaki says there’s no wrong way to use tools such as Twitter. Within reason I have to agree.

I’m just sayin’ … when I use a wooden-heeled shoe to pound a nail, I’ve not become a hammersmith or a journeyman carpenter. I’m a nail banger who reconfigured a shoe.

For a hammer to be hammer, its design, function, and use involves setting nails. When I use a hammer as leg on a artfully made table, it’s no longer a hammer. It becomes a table leg.

The primary design, function, and uses of social media tools involve community, conversation, and relationships. A social media advisor brings social skills, relationships, and conversation into the mix. Without using the tools as they were designed, the tools change into something else.

If you remove the social from social media tools, what have you got? More Internet Marketing tools. Spammers and bots figured that out.

Scary thought.

How do we keep the social in social media tools?

If you disagree with what I’m saying, please set me straight. If you agree, please help me explain.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Get your best voice in the conversation. Buy my eBook.

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