Category Archives: Social Media

Social Media

4 Reasons Why You Need To Be On LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is a social media site that’s different than the others because its main purpose is for business networking. Almost no matter what you do, being on LinkedIn will help give you a business presence you can’t get anywhere else.

Let me preface the rest of this by saying I’ve been ranting a little bit about it lately because suddenly there are all these fake accounts that keep trying to get me to accept them, which I won’t do. I don’t know if this means it’s less secure than it used to be, and it’s somewhat of an irritant, but for business purposes there’s nothing parallel.

Whether you’re an employee or a business owner of some type, LinkedIn is where you need to be in some fashion. Here are 4 reasons why:

LinkedIn

  1. The networking opportunities. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIn gives you a real opportunity to not only meet people locally but people all around the world. If you sell anything your market could be the entire world. You might find a supplier or a buyer or even a job if that’s what you’re looking for. And though LinkedIn isn’t crazy about people marketing their businesses, reaching out to individuals that you feel might help you or that you have something you feel might help them is encouraged; after all, that’s what business networking is all about.

  2. Publicity. Although LinkedIn will help you set things up so they look like a resume, you can pretty much go in different directions to highlight whatever you want to highlight. On my page, for instance, I list my businesses and a couple of positions I’ve had, but I spend a good portion talking about one thing in particular that I market myself for. This gives those who are looking for that particular thing a great opportunity to find me; after all, LinkedIn has a search function for people who are looking for something or someone specific.

  3. Information. Information goes both ways on LinkedIn. You can decide to put out current information on some regular basis or you can decide to just read what others are saying. There’s a timeline like Twitter, but there are also groups like on Facebook. I do a little of both, and you never know just who you might talk to that might push you forward in some fashion.

  4. Backlinks. LinkedIn is one of the top 20 sites in the world as far as traffic goes, so getting a link from that site to your site is a good thing. It allows you to link to more than one site, including a blog, and of course this helps make you just that much more visible online. Frankly, if you have a website this is probably one of the more important things to do to help your SEO processes.

 

Social Media

Is Automation Your Friend?

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When it comes to blogging, many people I know use some type of process to have their blog posts automatically go to different places when an article goes live. I used to use a plugin called Twitter Tools to get the job done, but when that bad boy was discontinued I was lucky enough to have someone recommend Twitterfeed to me, and that’s what I use to have my posts go directly to Twitter when they go live.

New Belgium Production Line
scumdogsteev via Compfight

It turns out there’s lots of different tools that can handle that, but it’s also true that there are sites where those tools aren’t needed, and they can handle more than just blog posts For instance, if you set your account up properly on LinkedIn, it will not only share your most recent blog posts but any updates you make to your website will automatically show as well, if you have the proper RSS settings taken care of(I know some people are saying RSS is going away; well, it hasn’t yet). Facebook supposedly has a way of finding new things on your website or blog as well, but I haven’t fully explored it after they took away the original process I was using there.

There’s always this question about whether automation online is a good thing or not. In one way it’s good because it can allow you to put things out when you’re not around that you want people to see. In another it’s horrid, at least to someone like me, because some people set up their automation to post multiple times a day, and I mean like once an hour for a 24-hour period. Who wants to be connected with anyone doing that?

There should always be a balance in how and when to use automation for anything. For me, I have my initial blog posts automated because I like them all to go out between 9 and 10:30 AM EST, and I’m not always around when they go live. However, subsequent postings of anything, if I do them, are done live and in the evenings so that if someone wants to comment or say anything to me they know that I’m online at that time. I think it helps with engagement and branding and lets people know when you’re available to donate time to them.

Overdoing anything isn’t good, and that’s important if you’re going to automate processes. Learning how to engage your potential customers and audience while balancing your time is important. As someone who has a tendency to stay up real late, I tend to “call” some posts I see from people I know are asleep. They’ll have to deal with me the next morning; just the cost of doing business. 🙂

Do you think automation is important in your marketing efforts? Are you presently using it in some fashion or thinking about it?
 

Social Media

5 Takeaways From My Video Project

10 Comments

On Monday I finally ended my video project. That project was first mentioned when I wrote my post about creating content.

Oswego Sunset
Sunset Over Lake Ontario

The main idea was that I needed more videos on my business YouTube channel. I had fewer than 30 videos overall, and now I have 58 on that channel because I did a video every single day for the month of June. I shared a couple on that other post, and during this month I celebrated my 13th year of having my own business with a video post giving 13 business lessons for those 13 years, the longest video of the series coming in around 29 minutes. I’m sharing that one now:
 


http://youtu.be/roOzb1sdqYA

One doesn’t undertake such a project without having some ideas and beliefs of what’s going to happen and what the goals are.

My first goal was to see if I could do 30 videos in a row, and that was only challenged once, when I knew I’d be on the road coming home and wouldn’t get in until after midnight, and since I’d be working all day I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do a video unless I did it beforehand and uploaded it just after midnight, which I did. Other than that… I did one every single day.

My second goal was to see if I could get more viewers to that YouTube page and possibly increase my subscribers in some fashion. I had a few viewers but overall I’m not sure it was more than what I’d had before. As for subscribers, I only got 2; I’ll take what I can get. 🙂

The third goal of course was to increase the number of videos that not only helped enhance what I tell people I do, but also to have some videos in reserve that I can go back to and embed in blog posts whenever I touch upon those subjects. That’s something that not all that many people do who create videos, but it’s also one of the reasons why I tell people all the time that they should create more videos.

20140613_201833

With that said I did learn some things, and I’m going to share 5 of them with you here. I’m not sure you’ll be able to use them all but hey, I think lessons can be learned in many different ways, in many different formats. Let’s see if you get anything from what I’m going to share; after all, this IS I’m Just Sharing lol:

1. You don’t have to plan every step way in advance for anything. For this series, the only video I actually planned was #24, the one I’ve shared above. In a way, that’s how I write most of my blog posts; I come up with an idea, then I write about it. I put this out there because so many bloggers tell people they have to come up with a blogging schedule to help them figure out what they want to write about; nah.

2. Almost every subject has a lot of different things you can talk about. I concentrate a part of my main business on leadership and topics surrounding that. Except for the last video and the one above all the other videos were on some type of leadership topic, which includes motivation. Truthfully, I could have probably done 30 more, but I think I made my point.

3. Marketing is a bear when doing that much content producing. Other than weekends, I worked or traveled every single day in June. I created the videos, but since they’re on my business channel they automatically go to my second Google Plus channel but no others, and I only have 4 people I’m connected to there. Also, if you create a video via Google Hangout you have to share the video links on your own, which is different than if you create a video and upload it.

Because I did a video every day, sometimes around 11PM Central time, I’d do the video, wait about 15 minutes for it to show up, and then post the title and link to my main G+ account and Twitter. I only posted two videos to my Facebook page, and neither got 20 views; cursed Facebook. lol And because it was daily I only posted each link once except for the video above, which I felt had a chance to reach a much larger audience.

The marketing of videos, along with the time period for trying to let people know when I was going to do one, wasn’t great and I think I suffered in that manner. This taught me two things.

One, I need to put out a message asking people to let me know if they want to be informed when I’m going to do a live video on certain topics and base it on those channels so I can add those people to their own circle.

Two, for the most part it’s better to do videos at a time when people are actually awake and not about to go to bed. It a way it’s not enough just to have the content. If I did a video around 7PM instead of 11PM and only got to share it with people afterwards, they were more apt to see the link while they were still on Twitter or G+ instead of being asleep and possibly seeing it when they awoke (yeah, like that happens for most people). I don’t think the pre-notification would have done much but posting afterwards much earlier in the evening or during the day on the weekends… way smarter thing to do.

Mushroom Dude

4. Don’t do videos if you have a mirror in front of you. In the second hotel room I was in there was this large mirror in front of the desk. Sometimes I start moving my arms when I talk, and most of the time you don’t see that in the video because I have the camera mainly on my face. However, I’d keep distracting myself because I’d see something moving, which of course was me. I could have covered up the mirror or gone out to the living room / dining room area to do the videos but I was too lazy. Still, trying to avoid as many distractions as possible is smart.

5. Sometimes you have to go with the flow. When I did the video above, which was long, I had multiple times where I had to scratch my nose or face. Initially I was fighting it like a boxer but eventually I had to succumb because there was no way I was going to make it through without scratching. If I knew how to edit videos I could have stopped and then come back, but that would have looked choppy and I’m not sure that would have made the video look better.

So I announced it the first time, and every other time I had to scratch or rub my face I just did it. Hey, it was hot, and I didn’t want to turn the fan on because I didn’t want the noise messing up my audio.

Sure, you want to look as professional as possible, but there’s a thing about live, that being that, well, it’s live! When I do live speaking engagements, sometimes I get an itch, or need to cough, or will pause and drink some water. When I interact with people in person, sometimes that happens as well. I don’t think that was an issue on any of the short videos because I pretty much spoke on my message and got out. But 29 1/2 minutes? Wasn’t going to happen.

There 5 takeaways that you may or may not be able to use. In any case I hope some of you watch the video above, especially if you’re thinking about starting your own business or have your own business and might feel you’re missing a few things.
 

Social Media

When Free Speech/Privacy Advocates Lose Their Mind

19 Comments

As some of you know, I play an online game on a site called Empire Avenue. I’ve written about it a couple of times, and if you know nothing about it check out the link above.

Facebook: The privacy saga continues
opensource.com via Compfight

This post isn’t really about Empire Avenue, but it plays prominently in this tale, a cautionary tale for all of you who want the cake of freedom of speech and the ability to eat your rights to privacy at the same time. How ugly will this tale end? Stick around…

Empire Avenue has a number of communities where people can get together to discuss all kinds of stuff. I joined a few early on in the game, never liked them much because it didn’t seem anyone had anything to say, and never joined one again.

However, a friend of mine sent me a link to one of the general communities of people who are considered leaders on the site because she wanted me to check something out. Seems there was some general fighting going on about some of the processes in the background of the game that she wanted me to see.

In the middle of it all was this guy, whose name (fake or real) I’m not going to mention, nor his blog, links, Twitter page, etc, because I don’t want to get in the middle of it all; you’ll see why as I get through this story.

Anyway, this guy seemed to be completely out of control. He came into this particular discussion with a chip on his shoulder for some reason and began personally attacking people. He actually came to the defense of someone I’m not even sure he really knows because of something that was said in a Facebook group, and on that one and only point I agreed with him on.

However, he went too far and started calling out anyone he could think of who’s a major player in the game (which is why I’m never mentioned lol) in this forum. And if it had stayed there things might have died down.

But you know that’s not how this story goes. Turned out the guy has a blog on WordPress.com and he started ranting and writing these tomes about the evils of Empire Avenue and naming names and quoting people and pasting images of conversations from the community forum that, in essence, was a major violation of people’s privacy, especially since many of those people had nothing to do with the initial conversation and, in his “wisdom”, he decided to call out those who attempted to call for peace; sigh…

If it's on the Internet, it isn't private.
DonkeyHotey via Compfight

One of the reasons this guy thought he could get away with all this abhorrent behavior is because he went behind a fake name; actually, two fake names, one of those being a deceased actor/comedian. So he went nuts, saying all this stuff about everyone he could think of, posting their images and the like, and boosting it all via his Twitter account as well. He became the Empire Avenue troll; there’s a nice business gift.

And he proclaimed his right to free speech when some of those people complained about his putting their names on his blog and posting them on Twitter, and said that anything on Empire Avenue was his to use as he wished.

However, he started to dislike some of the backlash he started getting on Twitter, and at this point he put out a cease and desist… on Twitter? On Twitter, if you don’t want to see something you just block people, but that wasn’t enough for him. He didn’t want them writing anything about him at all, so he put out a cease and desist against everyone who was against him, and he wrote about it on his blog.

And he started sending letters to Empire Avenue, state and federal agencies in the United States and Canada (where EA resides), and in one instance even called the employer of one of the people he had a beef with to say this guy was harassing him online; wow!

But he made some mistakes. See, what most people don’t realize is that if they’ve been on social media for any amount of time they’ve built up a trail that someone with motivation can follow and find out a lot about that person. Who would have more motivation than a guy who had his job threatened by a lunatic? For that matter who would have more motivation because they’d been called out on a lunatic’s blog?

You guessed it; they found out who he was. They got his name, where he went to school, pictures of what he really looked like, his age, pictures of his children (yup, this guy has kids, adult kids, but the folks had some morals and didn’t post pictures of his kids online). And after people talked with each other to confirm that they all had the same information…

They posted it all on Google Plus. Then they put the link out on Facebook and Twitter so anyone who was connected to some of these folks (or in the Facebook group for EA, which I’m a member of) could see it.

Of course I went to read it all. Fascinating stuff, especially the part about being 43 years old and living in the basement of his mother’s house because he has no real job right now. Seems that’s why he has so much time to troll all these EA members.

You know what happened next… part of it anyway. He went off, saying he was going to file a lawsuit against EA for giving out his personal information, and then lawsuits against all these people for violating his privacy. But he also smartened up… slightly. He went back to all those images he’d posted and started blacking out names that weren’t blacked out previously. He also started going back to remove some names from posts he’d written; y’all know it’s too late for that because everyone he named has copies of it all.

20140526_150204
This post needed some cute

At this point he hasn’t backed off, and in an amazing move is actually showing EA shutting him down for his bad behavior, which he can’t see, while still complaining about everyone else violating his privacy, and admitting openly that not only is his name fake (folks can use fake names) but that his “business” information is also fake (folks aren’t allowed to do that part, but since he owned up to it he violated the terms of service), and is thus banned for good.

What’s this story about? Consequences. Many times I’ve written on this blog about consequences for actions and how people need to protect themselves online.

There was a recent news story about a guy who visited some Instagram pages of people who lived in his area that he’d never met, and then he went out and found these people in places they said they congregated, talked to them as if he knew them and told them all kinds of stuff that they thought was private, and only after shocking them with what he knew finally telling them how he’d found it all out (it was all recorded on video). They were all both amazed and shocked because it never occurred to them just how much of themselves they were giving out; lesson learned.

I’ve talked about the topic of controversy and, if you decide to go this route, how it can backfire on you if you’re not prepared for it, and how you want to choose your language carefully if you do decide to take on a subject you know some folks aren’t going to react well to.

I’ve also talked often about privacy, the lack thereof, and how if you’re not going to protect your own privacy all that well that you owe something greater, a major responsibility to your family and friends because most of them probably didn’t ask to be brought into the sphere of social media. That these folks found out about this guy’s kids, with pictures and everything, and his mother, his mother’s house, et al… for a guy talking so much about protecting his privacy he didn’t do a good job of it.

Social media isn’t something anyone should be scared of. But everyone needs to know the inherent dangers of what can happen. On my business blog I’ve talked about the dangers of thinking everyone you work with is your friend and how those folks more often than not will throw you under the bus to save their own skin. It’s like that.

Just two weeks ago two high school girls did two videos on YouTube that were racist against people in their school and community. Now they’ve had to leave school and will be home schooled, even after apologizing, because their safely can’t be guaranteed and the school was suspending them anyway.

Let me spell these lessons out:

* Don’t be stupid online

* Don’t think you can have total privacy online

* Don’t call anyone out unless you’re ready to deal with it

* Don’t think your freedom of speech trumps anyone else’s freedom of speech

* Don’t start none, won’t be none

Anyone disagree with anything I’ve said here? By the way, notice I didn’t mention any names, didn’t link to anything, so only a few people on EA, none of whom read this blog, could ever even figure out who I was talking about. So, if this person finds out about this post & has anything to say… it wasn’t me who violated anyone’s privacy… right? 😉
 

Marketing, Social Media

Liking Your Own Stuff

28 Comments

As many of you know, I’ve been making YouTube videos for a couple of years now. I’ve had a few that have done really well, but some haven’t quite gotten the type of traction I’d hope they would get.


who wouldn’t like this!

There’s always this question about how to promote videos, or blog posts, or things one posts on Facebook. The thing I see happening most often, and I see it on YouTube more than anyplace else, is “liking” one’s own video.

The thing about liking a video on YouTube is that, for most people, it automatically shows up on both the person’s YouTube channel who likes it and on Google Plus, since Google owns them. If you have lots of people following you it’s another way to reach many of them who might not immediately go to your page when you post something, and if you have few people it gives you another opportunity to spread the message that you have a new video.

I remember having a conversation with someone a couple of years ago about this practice, only we were talking about blog posts. She said that whenever she wrote one she shared it everywhere, including Facebook, and then if she could “like” it she would because it would not only help spread the message but, in her opinion, if you didn’t show you liked your own stuff why should anyone else like it.

My response was that it seemed narcissistic and looked kind of goofy, especially if you ended up being the only one liking your own stuff. However, she pointed out to me that whenever we created a new page or group on Facebook that we had to like it, otherwise we couldn’t follow it easily. She was right on that front… but I still have problems with it.

I believe in marketing. I believe in selling. I believe that there are many opportunities to do both, and that probably most of us are bad at these things. I’m the guy who did a video telling people that the ultimate secret to success is selling. So it’s not that I’m against any of that stuff.

I just personally have a problem with trying to tell everyone that I think everything I put out is great. Truthfully, I don’t think everything I write here is great. I don’t think all my videos are great. Pretty good most of the time… yeah. Are some things great in my mind? Yeah. 🙂

With that said, if I click on everything I write or record and tell the world that I think I’m great… am I lying, promoting, bragging… what?

Once again, this is something I don’t have the answer to. Maybe I’m the only one with this issue; I’m not sure. So, on a relatively short post for once, I’m asking you, the blogging public, what you think about liking your own stuff in public. I’m not saying sharing now… I mean visually liking your own stuff.

This should be interesting; I can’t wait to see what y’all come up with. And, as a special treat, how about one of those “great” videos of mine, on the topic of influence? Go ahead, I’ll wait… 😉
 


http://youtu.be/mH02Z4OQxng