Are You the Friend Who Never Shuts Up?

This guest post is by Daniel Smith of Propaganda House.

You know who I’m talking about: that friend who makes you wince whenever you see them pop up on your phone, or makes you dread social events that you know they’re going to be at. They’re like Jerry’s friend Joel Horneck in the Seinfeld episode “Male Unbonding“—the person who never shuts about themselves, and doesn’t pay attention to a single word you say.

Image copyright Renee Jansoa - Fotolia.com

Yes, I was becoming a Joel Horneck on social media. I was getting too absorbed in my own stuff, only caring about how many people viewed my posts and shared them with others. Scheduling posts on Facebook and Twitter, and not even looking at the timeline to see what other people were sharing.

Meanwhile, I was missing out on all the fantastic content that others were posting, and also missing out on developing relationships with these like-minded content creators.

The number one tip in the Social Media Examiner article “6 ways to become likeable with social media” is to “listen and never stop listening”.

Everyone wants to be heard, including your customers and clients. Listening to people is the best way to make them feel important, and it’s also the best way to build their trust in you. Don’t think this just applies to individuals; businesses can be good listeners as well, and can reap just as many rewards—potentially many more.

How do you think people get successful on social media? I can assure you it’s not by constantly talking down to their followers.

One thing I’ve noticed with the majority of my favorite content creators on social media is that regardless of the size of their followings, they take the time to thank you or reply when you share their posts or leave a comment. The really good ones even personalize the experience by taking the time to check out your site and comment about it.

Don’t think they’ve got some magical advantage which allows them to engage better than you—there are only 24 hours in their days as well. Think of it this way: if you’re really efficient, you could check out someone’s site and comment about it in less than two minutes. I know those minutes add up pretty quickly, but if it creates a long term fan/subscriber/client/customer, isn’t it worth it?

Reacting when people comment on or share your work is only a start, though. You should be aiming to be proactive.

Take some time each day to check out other peoples’ work, leave a comment, and share it to show them how valuable you found it. Not only will you make them feel good about what they’ve done and motivate them to do more; there’s a fair chance they’ll return the favor at some point down the track. Some simple ways to be proactive and show that you’re listening include:

Take some time out each day to retweet other peoples’ tweets. Be authentic, though: don’t just retweet for the sake of it. Retweet the stuff you like and think will be valuable to your audience.Subscribe to peoples’ blogs and comment as often as you can.Promote other peoples’ content by sharing with your audience on networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.Create conversations and engage others by replying to their tweets, commenting on Facebook posts, etc.

If doing these things doesn’t come naturally, it might help to create a list. Set yourself a number of retweets and comments that you’ll make each day, and eventually it will become second nature.

How can you start doing it right away? Leave a comment on this post, or share it! Obviously that’s what I want you to do, but it’s also a good way to see if I’m practicing what I preach. Will I reply to your comment? Will I thank you for sharing it? Let’s find out…

Daniel Smith is the founder of and social media consultant at Propaganda House. Hit him up on twitter @propagandahouse.

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If You Don’t Stop Doing This One Thing, Your Blogging Business Will Never Go Anywhere

This guest post is by Tommy Walker, Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name.

Why are you reading this article?

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, but isn’t there something else you could be doing?

What are you putting off?

I’m going to be straight with you. You are your own worst enemy.

And you are killing your business.

Photo by Stephen Brace on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

If you’re blogging regularly, at some point you’ll delude yourself into believing that reading every “5 tips to do this thing with your blog” article, and bantering back and forth with industry folks on Twitter, is “work.”

This delusion usually starts at the point where you hit a plateau, and your feedback starts to stagnate or wither.

So you hunt through other people’s work in search of the magic bullet.

Maybe if you read more, you’ll learn the secrets.

Maybe if you talk more, someone else in the industry will take notice and launch you into blogging superstardom.

If you just share more, create more, or interact more, eventually, somehow, you’ll make it.

Take this a step further, and you start buying information products, thinking that might somehow fix the problem. It doesn’t.

Meanwhile, your understanding of your audience hasn’t deepened, your writing hasn’t actually improved, your traffic hasn’t increased, and you still haven’t made a cent directly from your blogging efforts.

And you don’t understand why.

I know this, because I am you.

My blog has been live for a while, and granted there has been some steady growth. But when you’ve seen others rise up from nowhere in literally half the time, and make at least ten times your income, that extra 100 or so visitors isn’t really all that encouraging.

They get invited to speak at major conferences across the country, they get asked to do interviews with popular bloggers, they make six figures on their first launch.

You’re getting rejected from events from your own chamber of commerce.

And when it comes to talent level, their demonstration of knowledge is, well…

Doing more, giving more, and creating more, without having a purpose or an end goal in mind does nothing for your customers, and it does nothing for your business.

When you watch newbie after newbie surpass you in record time, it gets on your nerves.

After a while, it doesn’t make you want to learn more, it makes you want to quit.

For me, the moment came when I thought I was getting tired of working for myself, and considered taking a no-pressure sales position at Men’s Wearhouse selling suits.

But then I remembered,I got fired over a pair of pants in my last “real world” gig, so going back wasn’t really an option. It just seemed safer.

Of course, your customers don’t know any of this.

All they see is you phoning it in.

They see boring, haphazard updates desperate to grab their attention with no mission or purpose in mind.

They’re not sure what to think. You’re not helping them do anything specific.

So why would you expect them to do anything specific (like click the Buy button)?

I knew if I was going to revitalize my business, it was going to take something big.

I needed to prove I could do something impossible.

But let’s be real. There are plenty of reasons you can’t take on big projects, right?

For me, I have a nine-month old son.

I’m getting married in a month.

We’re moving into our first house.

I have a full-time client.

I conduct coaching sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I just started working on a collaborative project with seven other people.

While these are plenty of legitimate reasons to not do anything differently, the reality is that if these things controlled my business development, six months from now, I might not have a business at all.

Are you doing the same thing, day in and day out? Do you feel bored?

Have you convinced yourself you can’t do something because there’s too much other stuff going on?

Listen, the world is too small and life is too short for you to not do everything you can to make a dramatic impact.

One thing we have in common is that we share 24 hours in a day. Your impact on the world is a direct result of how you spend that time.

What do you have mentally filed away in the “I’ll get to it eventually” folder in your mind?

Chances are, that’s the best thing you could do for yourself, and you know it.

So really, what are you afraid of? Because isn’t that really what it comes down to?

Is it that that you might get criticism? Or that others’ expectations of you will increase?

Are you afraid that nobody will see it?

So what?!

“To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing”—Elbert Hubbard

Critics and downright haters mean you’re doing something right.

“Safe” inspires nothing: you don’t get people to think, or dream or hate.

Not everyone will love you. But consider yourself lucky that you’re able to inspire such a passionate response, even if it isn’t overwhelmingly positive.

And if nobody sees what you’re doing, do it again. And again, and again.

You are the only person in the world with your perspective, and to the right people, your perspective could hold massive transformational value.

So, with all of this in mind, I realized I didn’t really want to quit.

Knowing I had to prove I could do what I thought impossible, I decided to over-commit myself to a project.

Specifically, a project called 21 Days to a More Engaging Facebook Presence.

The problem with the “Facebook marketing” world is that too many marketers are focused on the “get more fans” aspect, and completely neglect how you can use the platform to genuinely learn more about how to communicate with your customer base.

I wanted to put out a free series that wasn’t just about Facebook marketing, but focused on developing an engaging voice that could be woven into every aspect of a business.

The principals really are universal, because it’s about truly connecting and bonding with your customers.

And like Gary Vaynerchuk says, “It’s the message, not the platform”

But here’s the thing: I didn’t plan.

Maybe three days before the beginning I said, “I need to sketch this thing out if I want it to be successful”

But three days came and went…

Plan or no plan, if I didn’t start on pre-designated Day 1, I knew I wouldn’t do it.

I scanned my brain for some of the most common complaints people had.

14 hours later, I scripted, screen capped and released a video entitled “Navigating Facebook to Gather Customer Intelligence” and introduced it as Day 1 in a 21-day series (which I still did not have planned out)

The reception to the video was overwhelming. New people as well as those who I had established relationships with were cheering me on and were very excited to see the rest of the series.

Each day, I thought about the problems that I had heard about, and created a new video.

Most days, I had no idea what I was going to do. But I knew I couldn’t stop.

I also knew that I wanted the information to be higher quality than some of the paid training that was out there, so many days involved a ton or research, and testing and experimentation to make sure that it was a caliber that would make people say, “WOW!”

It was hard.

Some days took 16 hours, other days the screen capture program would crash.

At one point I had to buy a new external hard drive, because I filled my existing hard drive with video data.

2 hours, 31 minutes and 4 seconds of video were produced.

My traffic is up 13% , people are taking 42% more actions than before, and my time per visit to my website is up 41%

I see a steady flow of daily traffic that is roughly double what I got before the series, and my Facebook Fan count is about 75% more than it was before.

Now here’s the kicker. I didn’t do much at all to promote the series. Between creating videos, doing client work, coaching, being a father, and being a fiancee, I didn’t have time.

It was pure organic growth, and every day I see inbound traffic coming from new links from websites I never heard of.

Anything worth doing is friggin hard.

In order to raise the bar, you have to over commit to something.

You’ll never learn how much you can do, or exactly what you’re capable of, until you push yourself to the limit.

Why are you holding yourself back?

Honestly.

Quit looking for dime-store tactics and commit to a project that forces you to level up.

Define a mission.

Develop your voice.

Do the impossible.

Then, and only then will you able to have a business that has any meaning for yourself or your customers.

So do yourself a favor, turn off twitter (after you share this article of course) close your email, and start fleshing out that idea you’ve had that you’ve been “too busy” to do.

Because your blogging business will never go anywhere if you don’t.

Tommy is an Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name. He is about to release Hack The Social Network, the ultimate guide to Facebook Marketing, and is currently developing a “mind hacking” course.

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Why should you never comment on Blogs. Ever.

This guest post is by David Hartstein of JG Visual.

I'm sure you've heard good thoughtful, logical arguments for why you should be commenting on blogs:

"You can be a part of the conversation happening out there." "You can build your own authority." "You can drive traffic to your blog. "

But, although there is a burnt, unpopped kernel of truth in these statements may, none of them take into account the many reasons why you should never comment on a blog.

Well here are some of the reasons for your cooperation.

First and foremost, you should not even begin to think about the comment unless you have something really profound to say.  If you simply agreed, it's probably judgment will rain down on you.  If, to be honest, it should.  There is no room for only opinions in the comment section of a blog.  It is after all a blog.  No feelings, just facts.

Plus there is a good chance that you don't have permission to comment on a post.  I mean, if someone is writing a post, they are certainly held in high esteem by all of the peers in their field.  The Internet don't let just anyone publish.  And if you're not an expert, you probably have a lot to offer.  Sure, maybe you have some ideas, but they are the kind that are best kept to yourself?  Unless you have a graduate degree in the subject at hand, they should probably be stowed in your journal.

Moreover, if no one else has responded yet, you are essentially your head on the chopping block.  You could write one, but doing so opens you up to the minority position.  It is quite possible that just after you have finished singing the praises of a certain function, a set of users will go on an angry tirade ripping apart of the author.  You would look really stupid.  Who cares what you thought?  Which other commenters probably know more than you anyway.

Also, remember that browser spell check leave something to be desired.  Certainly, it will be a word that you have slaughtered, but what about something more minute catch?  And any form of oversee your grammar forgotten.  Plus, there is a very good chance that a misspelled word will leave what you must say incomprehensible, leading to angry comments about the spam you leave behind.

Once you've waded through the murky waters of actually composing your comment, you're still faced with giving away your personal information.  If you're anything like the average web user, you probably still not given out a lot of personal info online before, maybe with the exception of some obscure social networking site.

If you feel the need to comment, you have the required authority to do that, and other people have already responded, consider the following action:

Design the comment in a word processor.Check the comment for misspellings and grammatical errors, both with the built-in tools and manually.Re-check. Send a family member or a friend for their thoughts (choose someone smart).Print out, sleep on it and it again at breakfast the next day.If you still feel the urge, you go ahead and publish it.Dealing with the resulting consequences.

If after reading this, you still are just to publish a comment from time to time, go ahead.  But consider yourself warned.  It is a dangerous game.

And, whatever you do, don't you dare write a comment on this post!

David Hartstein is a partner at JG Visual, an internet strategy company that works with organizations to develop and implement their online presence.  You can connect with David at the JG Visual Facebook page.

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