Successful Blog

25 Signs #yourenotreallyontwitter

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Twitter Is Pencil and Paper

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m a first grade teacher. I see Twitter as a 21st Century version of pencil and paper. I do believe that we can invent millions of ways to use paper and pencil. No rules are the right way to use it … draw, write, scribble, make circles over and over, be a poet, be a novelist, make a journal. Twitter is just as open and flexible.

I’ve never been one for rules.

What prompted this list was not a rant.

Here’s what happened.

About a week or so ago, on a Saturday, I was going through the people I follow on Twitter — people I’ve met at events, people I’ve talked to on Twitter, or people who follow me that I follow back. Over the course of a few hours, I reviewed 61000+ accounts to find those who were no longer active. I started by sorting out those who hadn’t tweeted for 90 days or longer. Then I started looking at their tweet counts — some tweeted less than once a day. That’s less than 365 tweets in a year!

As I was deleting the Twitter Quitters, I started thinking of people — some of them on TV — who say

  • “I tried Twitter and I don’t get it.”
  • “No one would talk to me.”
  • “It’s stupid and silly.”

or things like that. Which led me to think, they weren’t really ON Twitter, meaning some people leave Twitter before they figure out what all of the excitement is about. They never get the Twitter experience. And that happens because they approach thinking it’s supposed to be something different than conversation.

And at some point memories of Jeff Foxworthy’s litany of ways to tell “You’re a Redneck” popped in my head and I was suddenly channeling him and tweeting with the hashtag #yourenotreallyontwitter and some folks joined in.

  1. If you average less than 1 tweet a day, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  2. If you haven’t tweeted since 2011, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  3. If you never tweet about anything but yourself, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  4. @mikeyb95 pointed out: If you haven’t connected 2 total strangers #yourenotreallyontwitter
  5. If your avatar is still an egg 6 months after you got here, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  6. @jfouts noted: If you don’t reply to mentions. Ever. #yourenotreallyontwitter”
  7. If your avatar is a picture of someone else, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  8. @ValaAfshar added: If you use twitter as a megaphone, instead of a telephone, then #yourenotreallyontwitter
  9. If your only follower is an account you also own, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  10. If someone else tweets for you, #yourenotreallyontwitter , they are.
  11. @Tivitamivita added: If you never tweet about anything but #social media bla bla, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  12. If you’re only talking to certain people because you know it will raise your klout score, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  13. @MaureenAlley contributed: if all you tweet are Pinterest-only tweets #yourenotreallyontwitter
  14. If your every tweet is 1 link and 9 hashtags, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  15. If you think of your follower group as your “list” my guess is that #yourenotreallyontwitter
  16. @CraigFifield cited: if you tweet a large % of famous quotes #yourenotreallyontwitter #youareactuallyboring
  17. If your last 40 tweets went to strangers you don’t follow and all say “buy from me,” #yourenotreallyontwitter , you’re a spammer
  18. @Theatresaurus made the observation that: if you think you know the rules of twittering #yourenotreallyontwitter
  19. @erin_mcmahon threw in: If you think you can make one-size-fits-all rules about what it is to be on Twitter, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  20. and I replied: and if you think there aren’t any rules #yourenotreallyontwitter — treating people like people counts here too. 🙂
  21. @CarltonHawkins remarked: If your every tweet is 1 link at 9 hashtags, #yourenotreallyontwitter
  22. If you only ask for retweets from famous people #yourenotreallyontwitter
  23. @mikeyb95 stated: If I can’t learn about you from your bio #yourenotreallyontwitter
  24. And finally, if you unfollow someone as soon as they follow you back …. #yourenotreallyontwitter but you already knew that.

    25. And one for those who already know all of those –

  25. @NarissaTweets reminds us: If you’ve never made a #TwitterTypo #yourenotreallyontwitter

    26. Now of course if you have a Twitter account and a password that hasn’t been hacked by a phishing scam link you clicked in an AutoDM discussing the nasty things being said about you, you’re probably on Twitter.

    What I hope is that you’re talking to folks, finding great content, learning things you wouldn’t find anywhere else, and building a neighborhood on the Internet that reflects you most uniquely and doing it just the way you find right.

    After all my Twitter isn’t your Twitter and you get to pick. 🙂

    But I hope you won’t be a Twitter Quitter until you find out what it could be about.

    Be irresistible.

    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

Begged, Borrowed, or Stolen … The Economics of Influence

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Asking for Influence Gets You Something Else

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Earlier this month I received a string of private, direct messages (DMs) on Twitter from someone who has never sent me a public or private via Twitter or other social network. She’s never sent me an email. I’m pretty sure she’s never commented on my blog or my Instagram photos. She’s not a shareholder on Empire Avenue. As far as I recall, we’ve not met me at a conference or had a conversation on the telephone. Our sole relationship is that she is a human being with a Twitter account who chose to follow me whom I chose to follow back because she has an interesting Twitter bio.

The first direct message asked me if I could “get out the vote” because she wanted to win some prize being given to the person who got the most votes. I don’t know anything about her beyond her Twitter bio. How could I ask my friends to “get out the vote”? The choice seemed simple choose for my friends and my network — by not asking them to invest time — or choose for someone I don’t know.

That’s when it got interesting. The string of messages that came next thanked me for my help and asked me for help again. One in the mix — most likely meant to explain the behavior said, “she was crazy for the prize,” but she’d be happy to get noticed even if she couldn’t “take it home.”

The experience reminded me of a wave of similar requests that flooded my Twitter account during the run of the Fast Company Influencer Project in 2010 and a blog post I wrote about influence back then. What follows with some further explanation is what still applies now.

Recently Jason Pollock commented on Twitter about the Fast Company Influencer Project Project @Jason_Pollack said, I signed up for the “influence project” but quickly realized those at the top were just being very spammy to be there.

Robert Scoble replied with some true words of wisdom … @Scobleizer said, “Seems to me @Jason_Pollock that people with real influence never have to point it out or beg for it.”

They have a point.

Begged, Borrowed, or Stolen … The Economics of Influence

People rich with influence understand it as a currency. True and lasting influence — like true and lasting wealth — is earned through investment of time and resources. But it’s also a way of thinking and valuing what we do and the people we do it with. But influence, unlike monetary currency, cannot be begged, borrowed, or stolen. It can only be earned.

When a stranger asks me to “get out the vote,” she’s begging to borrow my influence as if it’s a limitless commodity that I’m at liberty to share. Were I so frivolous as to offer my network so freely to people I don’t know, I’d soon find that I’d spent what influence I had foolishly by not valuing the people who had valued my word. Or to paraphrase the axiom …

A fool and her influence are soon parted. Here are four ways to use the economics of influence to build influence of your own.

The difference between begging and building influence is the difference between giving to get and investing wisely.

  • The exchange rate. In economics, influence would be a local currency. It’s value is only worth what your network agrees that it might be. The ideal is that you might take a single contact to move people to action. Contests that require millions of votes to choose a winner are an example of hyperinflation.

    Power up your network. Be willing to work to prove your value.

    How can you connect with the people who most represent what you value?

  • The production costs. Producing influence takes resources — spent in building quality relationships, systems to maintain them, content to keep connected with them, and ways to grow those relationships. True influence grows from aligning our goals with others.

    Share your influence as an equal partner.

    How can others be better because you helped?

  • Specialization. People rich with influence have integrated their passions and skills into their sphere of influence. They choose their networks on values and ethics and by doing so have established an automatic barrier to entry.

    Know and value what has drawn you to each and all of your contacts.

    How do you describe your network?

  • Scarcity: Supply and Demand. If oak leaves were currency. They would only be valuable where oak trees don’t grow. People who have influence choose and feel no need to showcase their influence bank account. Their generosity is from a place of strength. They promote what they value in others, not what they hope will return.

    Value your word and the power it has.

    How do you know what not to influence?

When we know the value of our influence, we can invest it wisely in people who invest back. We don’t give our value promiscuously to every person who asks. Influence is earned. It’s given as a trust and kept by those who understand its value. It can’t be begged, borrowed or stolen, and in like manner, it can’t be bought or sold.

Who influences you simply by the way he or she influences others?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Do Your Homework, Listen, and Don’t Buy It Back!

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A curious thing happens during the first two months of a new year.

Whatever the cause, for the first few weeks of the new year, I find myself restating boundaries because a subtle sort of bad behavior starts showing up. Let me explain what I see at this time every year that I’d like to see less often …

  1. my string of “talk at me,” inappropriate email pitches increases.
  2. more strangers act as if I work for them — as if it’s my job to review their book, their blog, their strategy for free — and they act out “feelings” if I mention that my time is committed to projects and my family.
  3. more people try “clever” tactics to get me to buy in — Do they really think the subject line “Following Up … ” will earn them points when I find that they’ve simply tricked me into opening their email?
  4. more people waste time trying to convert me long after I’ve made it clear that I declined their offer.

    5. And saddest of all

  5. more people who have my attention keep on pitching and selling even after I’ve said a definitive YES!

Maybe it’s a rebound response to all of that holiday generosity. It could be simply that we’ve depleted our resources contributing to the celebrations and now as bills come in, we’re tired, feeling poor, and “peopled-out.” Or perhaps it’s just a new resolve to “hit the new running” that gets people starting off on the wrong foot.

Do Your Homework, Listen, and Don’t Buy It Back!

All five groups don’t believe in what they’re “selling.” So they use words to override the objections they’re expecting. And to keep safe from the possibility of rejection, they make sure to keep pushing the offer.

Here are three things to keep in mind when you’re about to make an offer.

  1. Do your homework. They say it’s a game of numbers and that you have to work hard. Yet, the successful people would rather spend their time identifying 5 people who have a high probability of wanting the offer than blanketing 5000 in hopes of capturing a few more. They like the confidence of knowing as they go in what the person is about and why that person might want what they’re offering. Those successful people also know that it takes time and is often embarrassing to set things straight when someone hasn’t done their homework — if the offer is a business success program and I just sold my last business for billions, more talking isn’t going to change that situation.
  2. Shut Up and Listen Successful people understand relationship can only strengthen the transaction. Saying hello and establishing a conversation lets people know you have confidence in them and in what you’re saying. Pushing through to the pitch before you’ve made that personal connection allows the person you’re talking to (or at) the latitude to also not consider you a person. More words, longer emails, sent to the wrong person won’t get anyone the right connection. Clever tactics that get attention soon backfire — people don’t “buy in” to ideas from someone who tricked them. Talk some. Ask questions. Then listen. You may hear some reasons your offer is a great match for your audience. If you’re using email, try an email or two to get to know the people you’ll be making offers to in the future.
  3. Don’t buy it back! When someone says, they want what you’re offering. Stop talking. Start listening. Let the person tell you why they’re buying. Don’t continue explaining how great the offer is — even if you didn’t get to your favorite benefits. Start making it easy to get the offer going. If you keep talking, you’re likely to “buy it back” by talking so much that person decides that you love the offer more than getting it going.

Luckily by spring, these behaviors settle some, though they never fully fade away. So be aware of them. We all could do with a little more homework and planning. We all could be a little better at listening instead of talking. We never want to be buying back what we’ve already successfully sold.

What behaviors would you like to less often?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

10 Best Ways to Build An Email Marketing List

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An email marketing campaign is one prong in an effective marketing strategy. Email marketing lets you get the word out to clients and potential clients. The email format is especially conducive to sharing and referrals. It allows you to have a conversational interaction with your target market.

Making your email marketing campaign effective relies on a good email marketing list. The quality and size of your list directly impacts how effective the campaign is going to be. Building your email list, however, isn’t necessarily easy or intuitive. You might put up a sign-up form on your website, for example, and the find yourself discouraged when no one has signed up after several weeks.

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If you want to build your email marketing list, there are some specific things you can do to speed up and increase your success:

  1. Make it obvious. Put the sign-up form for your email marketing list smack dab in the middle of your website’s homepage. You want to capitalize on every little bit of traffic you can, and putting it off to the side just won’t do. If you really want to have a successful email marketing campaign, you need to make it a priority on your site.
  2. Don’t compete against yourself. Realize, of course, that if you’re operating a retail site you could be drawing views away from your store or sales process in order to pull someone into your email marketing list. For online retailers, using a secondary website to generate buzz for your primary site is a better place to put that marketing list.
  3. Incentivize signup. Give something away to people who are willing to sign up for your email marketing list. This should be something of real value, not simply a worthless token. Free reports are common incentives, as are discount coupons and contest entries. Just be clear about the fact that, in order to get the freebie, they’re also signing up for your email list.
  4. Ask for permission. Email marketing lists are most effective when they’re opt-in lists. That doesn’t mean you can’t use your existing list of email address, but it does mean you need to ask them to confirm any kind of subscription. It’s been proven over and over again that spammy email marketing campaigns that don’t use an opt-in are most often failures. Not only that, there are some pretty specific federal laws you need to be familiar with when it comes to spam, as well.
  5. Leverage real world resources. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, get your walk-in customers to sign up for your email list. Some of the most effective email marketing campaigns consist primarily of customers who have already visited your real-world store. Bring a signup sheet for your email list when you participate in community or networking events, as well.
  6. Be relevant. It’s one thing to get someone’s name on your email marketing list; it’s quite another to keep them on that list for more than one or two mailings. If the campaigns you’re using aren’t truly relevant and useful to your customers, they’re going to ask to be removed.
  7. Offer value. In addition to relevance, you need to offer real value to your list. If a customer gets some genuine use out of a mailing, they’re much more likely to share it with others. Word of mouth is a powerful way to increase subscriptions.
  8. Put social media to work for you. Your Facebook page fans and your Twitter followers should also be email marketing list subscribers. Those formats are great for building authority and rapport, and for interacting with your customers. Your email marketing list, however, is all about increasing sales.
  9. Follow all of the rules. Again, there are plenty of anti-spam rules out there. Know what they are, and follow them carefully. Violating those rules can be expensive, and even having to defend against a single accusation can take a sizable chunk of cash. Include unsubscribe information as well as real-world contact and identification information with each mailing.
  10. Honor unsubscribe requests. Although you hate to lose people from your email list, you need to respect their wishes. You’re using an opt-in model, which by its very nature means you have to allow them to opt out.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective types of marketing for your business. Making an email marketing list work for you means putting these methods into practice and doing so with both integrity and diligence.

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Author’s Bio:
Dominique Molina is President of the American Institute of Certified Tax Coaches, an organization of tax professionals who are trained to help their clients rescue thousands of dollars in wasted tax. In addition to her blogging and speaking engagements, Dominique provides tax training and accounting marketing as a registered educator with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA).

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Be Empathetic

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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One of my favorite summer jobs in college was working for Tourmobile, giving tours of Washington, DC.  History, politics, and my latent ham gene all combined to make it the perfect job.  

One sweltering summer day, at the end of a tour, a passenger stopped on the way out of the bus.  I thought the tour went fantastically, and was ready for a compliment or a tip. Instead, the person said, “you know, I’m a Native American, and I object to your use of the term Indian-giver.”  Indeed, in part of my patter about a particular slice of land on the other side of the Potomac, I had used that term.  I had probably used it a million times.  But this person’s statement struck me, and as I apologized profusely, it became a life lesson.

Your most potent skill as a business person or entrepreneur is the ability to see things through another person’s eyes.  
Take a moment now, and imagine how others view these aspects of your business:

Customer service
New offerings or product features
Design for accessibility
Business partnerships
Marketing message
Contracts and deals
Pricing
Hiring and firing process
Employee benefit

Great leaders are usually empathy practitioners.  Here are some ways you can build your empathetic reflex:
*Practice active listening, keep eye contact and lean in
*Visualize yourself above the conversation, watching
*Do secret shopping on your business
*Don’t configure your customers from Liz, circa 2006
*Use outside tools to evaluate your user experience (user interfaces, accessibility
*Before responding, hesitate a moment to project yourself into the other person’s shoes
*Don’t ever use the phrase, “our policy is…”
*At a large business gathering, proactively reach out to the person who is obviously solo
*If it’s practical, try doing someone else’s job at your business for a day

You have a thousand chances a day to connect with other human beings.  How can you practice empathy today?

“Empathy is the most revolutionary emotion.”  Gloria Steinem

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Do You “Get” How Important Your World View Is?

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What You See Is What You Are

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Once I thought other people had a better view of the world than I ever could …

I suppose that’s reasonable the people around me were worldly, experienced, and smart. I great parents, great teachers, and outstanding friends. When it came to some of my bosses and boyfriends, perhaps I thought ideas through before I bought in.

It was as if he were a prince with insight beyond my own and for a moment I believed in his view of the world.

He always thought that only mountains could be beautiful. I heard him proclaim it. Yes, proclaim is exactly what he did when he spoke of them. He found his own thoughts worthy of public decree. He’d announce that flat lands had their use, but then ask what possible beauty could a man proud as he ever find in a place with flat air?

No matter the metaphor I couldn’t convey the lovely feeling and the wide open space of the grassland without trees only blue skies above it. The green is so green and blue so blue, that the clouds must show off for fear of being thought to be boring.

A sky like this, with no mountain in view, would mean nothing to him.

So today as I look out over the lake as wide as the world, I watch the cloud ballet and think of the adventures, of the characters we might have invented had we been here when we were kids.

I watch the changes, breathing in every minute. I drink in gratitude for a world that is made like this. I’m particularly glad I had the good sense to quit dating that proclaiming brat before I left college. I can’t imagine what a different person I would have become if I’d adopted a world view like his.

No one guy’s view is better, further, or more beautiful than my own.

Do you “get” how important your world view is?
The way you define your world reflects how you define yourself.
In business and in life, what you see is what you get and we slowly become what we look at most.
Surround yourself with colleagues, friends, family — worldmates — who share your view. Fill your life, your heart, and your mind with images and ideas that define what you love and admire.

Don’t take my point of view … “get” your own.

The succcess of your business and your life depend on it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!