Successful Blog

Get Positive Attention in the Twitterverse and Other Networking Situations

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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!!

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!!

25 Traits Of Twitter Folks I Admire and 25 Folks Who Have Them

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Conversation, Relationship, Then Transaction

Those of us who’ve read the Cluetrain Manifesto and experience community working together have no desire to go back to a transaction-based business model ever. We see the value of working with people we know, like, and trust. And as we learn how to use the tools, we don’t lack people to connect with to get our business done.

Certain signs and characteristics seem to show in the folks who live the social media culture. Certain value and actions make people who care about having relationships and conversation before transactions easy to spot. I’ve listed 25 traits of Twitter Folks I admire.

These social media folks …

  1. don’t seek to be the center of any universe.
  2. find great conversations and get to know the people there.
  3. realize that every venue has it’s own culture and rules.
  4. do their own talking and their own listening.
  5. talk mostly about the accomplishments of others.
  6. ask intriguing questions that invite others to join the conversation.
  7. don’t worry when folks don’t respond to something they say.
  8. have time for new friends, talk to them, listen to them, read their sites and bios, ask them questions — avoid assumptions.
  9. have a different conversation with every individual and every business.
  10. take embarrassing or private conversations offline.
  11. are inclusive and encourage folks who exclude people to exclude themselves.
  12. shout out good news, help in emergencies, and celebrate with everyone.
  13. say please, thank you, and you’re welcome, and mean them.
  14. are incredibly curious about what works, what doesn’t work, seek feedback often, and look to improve what they do.
  15. study the industry and trends, watch how things occur, share information about those freely, but never break a trust.
  16. offer advice when people ask. Help whenever they can.
  17. aren’t “shameless.” Ask for help in ways that folks are proud to pitch in.
  18. are constantly connecting people and ideas in business conversations that are helpful, not hypeful.
  19. get paid to strategize business, build tactical plans, but won’t “monetize” relationships.
  20. ignore the trolls.
  21. keep their promises.
  22. can be transparent without being naked … most of us look and behave best in public with our clothes ON.
  23. listen to the hive mind, but think their own thoughts.
  24. send back channel “hellos” to friends when there’s no time to talk.
  25. understand that the Internet is public and has no eraser.

The relationships with people — social in social media — is what is changing things. It makes a business experience worth looking forward to and turns a transaction into a relationship. It’s different online because I can’t see you. When I meet folks who make that distance and darkness disappear, I respect and admire them.

Updated slightly for to replace those who’ve gone.

Of course, I admire @@chrisbrogan, @guykawasaki, @problogger and the others you already have read on every other list. I’d like to add some great social stars that you might not know yet. Here are 25 more great conversationalists I admire and learn from every day.
@LucretiaPruitt
@BethHarte
@MackCollier
@AmberCadabra
@ShannonPaul
@mark_hayward
@zaneology
@Tojosan
@AaronStrout
@nanpalmero
@hdbbstephen
@rainesmaker
@SheilaS
@DanielleSmithTV
@caroljsroth
@remarkablogger
@melissapierce
@BeckyMcCray
@jnswanson
@BawldGuy
@inspiremetoday
@jasonfalls
@northernchick
@ernohannink
@jonathanfields
@joannapaterson

I suspect you’ll enjoy their conversation as much as I do.
Feel free to add your own 25 to the list or make a list of your and link it back to here.
Great folks are worth celebrating.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

If You Remove the Social from Social Media Tools …

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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!!

Social Networking: User Generated Content and Community

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Guest Post by Richard Reeve

Social media intrigues me on many levels, especially as it relates to those platforms which have chosen to publish publicly. The poet Charles Olson predicted a day would come “when the private would be public.” I think that day is dawning.

International Space Station

If you are doing business within social media, what I have to share should be useful. If you think you’re not doing business in social media, I’d like to challenge that notion. I know, I know: “where’s the profit? show me the ROI.” Coming as I do from an arts background, I’m quite comfortable seeing engaged and talented folks not turning a dime from their activity. None the less, to call their work a hobby is both disrespectful and untrue. They are producers. No matter what you might take away from your social media experience, including the dollars that many are already realizing, you are also a producer contributing to the front edge of the largest data bloom in history. It’s a collective business you’re engaged in, and whether you realize it or not, you’re playing your role quite nicely.

Then you might protest: “But isn’t social media just today’s version of the chat room?” Unlike the proto-social media chat room experiences, your activity across platforms like blogs, twitter, and friendfeed allows for public access, and at least in theory, forever. You’re never replying solely to the person you are replying to, nor even to those currently in your network, nor to those currently on-line. Take for example this post I shared about a NASA website. It guides you to locate the space shuttle going overhead from wherever you live. Now I posted this over a month ago and through search it remains both fully functioning and as useful as the day I wrote it.

My experience has been that communities arise around content clusters emerging in the data bloom. While these clusters often have a personality shepherding the interest, it’s the shared interest in the content that aligns everybody. And shared interest eventually creates opportunity for the liquidation of social capital. That being the case, it’s through contributing to the data surrounding your interests that you are building the potential for your business.

The poet Robert Creeley wrote that “form is never more than an extension of content.” Social Media allows content to extend in previously unimagined ways, carrying the details of our commonplace lives, our deepest interest and our wildest aspirations into digitalized perpetuity. And that’s serious business, no?

—Richard Reeve
Image: flickr –International Space Station
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Richard, aspiration means breathing toward. I hope that’s where we’re headed.
Thank you for this and everything you contribute.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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What’s Your Answer? Do Consumers Always Know Their Own Needs Better?

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We say,
“Listen first.”
Do we listen to and about ourselves?

We say,
“Be part of the conversation customers are already having about your business and your products.”
Are we part of the conversation clients and corporations are having about us?

Recalling the powerhouse social media panel at AdTech in Shanghai, of which he was part, Lee Hodge reported …

All panelists were in agreement that to shunt conversation … is to assume that consumers are less informed about their own needs than the corporation that is pitching them.

When I consider conversations about “social media mishaps” of recent months I wonder. When I think about human nature and irrational choices I wonder even more …

Is the panel’s point valid?

Do consumers — even clients hiring social media firms — always know their own needs better?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
image: Wikicommons
Work with Liz!!