Archives for February 2011

How to Be a Social Media Rock Star

So you want to be a social media rockstar?

You want to get your Klout score to that magical 100, and get free trips to Disneyland and have everything you say shared across Twitter and Facebook even when it’s nothing interesting?

Worry no more – help is at hand.

Below you’ll find all you need to know to become a bona-fide social media rock star, with insights from some folks over at my Facebook page who were kind enough to offer their advice.

Pimp Up That Bio!

No self-respecting social media rock star can have a normal, boring, everyday bio. Instead, you need to make sure that we mere mortals know how amazing you are.

So dump your Twitter bio description and insert words like “guru”, “ninja”, “jedi”, “rock star”, and my absolute favourite, “interactive jedi”. Get these in your bio today and watch your followers swoon.

Turn Your Blog Into a Book

Back in the day, to be a published author you needed to write an original manuscript. Whether it was a work of fiction or non-fiction, you needed to sit down for months and craft the story and progression of the plot points or ideas.

Thanks to social media, though, now you can just gather a bunch of non-related blog posts together, add in a foreword that makes them seem related, and have other social media rock stars write wonderful things about your blog book. Genius – thank you social media!

These are two tips that I can think of, but since I’m not a social media rock star I know there are many more. So I asked folks over at my Facebook page, and here are their answers.

Tamara McPherson: “Steal other people’s tweets or links without crediting the originator.” (This is great for making you look like a thought leader – DB).
Molly Cantrell-Kraig: “Collect conference badges and tweet lots of pictures of you wearing them.”
Justin Goldsborough: “Make sure you are holding a guitar – even a Wii Rock Band one – in your profile pic.”
Geoff Livingston: “Mention the word ‘I’ at least three times in every opening blog paragraph.”
Jay Dolan: “Spread the social media love and only say positive things.” (Something Jay does very well over at his blog – DB).
Sherry Kerr: “Talk about nothing but social media, talk about talking about social media, talk only to other social media rockstars, talk down to us non-rockstars.”
Eileen Marable: “Write everything with verses and a bridge.”
Michael Schechter: “Talk about yourself in third person.”
Clay Morgan: “Declare EVERY SINGLE NEW social media tool as the next big thing. Until next week, when something else will be released.”

So there you have it – the guaranteed way to becoming a social media rockstar. Now you can get all the free Klout perks you want, and be asked for quotes on the next round of social media books that you don’t need to read to recommend.

Of course, you could ignore all the advice above and just be a regular person getting on with your job and making your clients or employer successful. But why would you want to do that..?

How about you – any tips for us on becoming a social media rock star? Let’s be having them!

image: wader

A Quick Thank You to Evan Carmichael and Team

When something goes wrong, how it’s resolved says a lot about the person or business.

It can mean the difference between being perceived as not caring about your customers or users, or showing that you recognize your userbase is a key part of your success.

Evan Carmichael and team fall squarely in the latter category.

I recently became an author over at EvanCarmichael.com. It’s a well-respected resource centre for small businesses and entrepreneurs, and offers a ton of great advice for anyone from these fields.

I had set my account up to automatically share any articles I posted via the Evan Carmichael Twitter account. This worked fine until a couple of weeks ago, when the tweets went out with the article title but not the links to the pieces.

I got a couple of tweets from people that received notification, but couldn’t follow a link (since there wasn’t one). I replied that it may be a quirk with the @EvanCarmichael account so it could be checked.

Within about 20 minutes, Evan had replied, apologizing for any issues and advising that his marketing manager, Marija Sekularac, would look into it. Lo and behold, I got a great email from Marija shortly afterward apologizing and saying that she would keep an eye on things for me.

But this isn’t the best part (as great as that service is).

A few days later, a parcel arrives for me at Bonsai Interactive’s office. Inside are four really – and I mean REALLY – delicious brownies, and a card apologizing again for the mishap. The message (which is pictured below) made me chuckle too.

What really impressed me about this whole thing was that it was based upon a really small technical hiccup. It may have been an issue with Twitter’s API, which is never the most reliable. Or it might have been a feed-to-Twitter issue (which I’ve had numerous times elsewhere).

The level of follow-up from Evan Carmichael and his team on this makes me wonder what would happen if something really big crashed – maybe they’d send a jet! I’ll have to look into that…

In all seriousness, though, I just wanted to say a big thank you to the team. And now, because of that service, I’m far more likely to recommend Evan’s site if people are looking for small business resources than I am something like MarketingProfs or similar.

Which just goes to reinforce the fact that great service stands you apart from your competitors. And the best thing? You don’t even have to send out brownies and a card to show you have great service – just acknowledging and trying to help works wonders too.

Something a lot of businesses seem to forget…

Yelp Doesn’t Understand Your Small Business

This is a guest post from Joe Hackman.

I received an email this week from Yelp reminding me that they do not understand my business. The first thing in bold red header images I read was:

What Yelp continues to fail to understand is that many small businesses and self-employed professionals don’t have a massive amount of customers. To put it bluntly, if we did not ask our customers to review us, there probably wouldn’t be any reviews, and we think that is a shame because we’ve worked hard to build up our reputation. The message went on to talk about one of the more frustrating aspects of Yelp:

“Another reason to avoid asking for reviews: solicited reviews may get filtered, and that will drive you crazy.”

This is Yelp’s story and they are sticking to it. Every time I’ve gotten a call from their sales reps I complain about the fact that the limited reviews from legitimate customers that I have received over the years ALWAYS seem to get filtered. Instead, it seems you need to fall under some key criteria:

Pay to play (advertise on Yelp).
Drive a lot of traffic to their site (read: have a lot of customers that are more Business-to-Consumer oriented).
Get reviewed by people contributing frequently to Yelp (their reviews don’t seem to get pulled).

It is easy to conclude that Yelp does not really want you. I think the real answer is to focus on Yahoo Local, Google Places and LinkedIn recommendations. At least none of them are calling me asking for money, yanking legitimate reviews or otherwise gaming me to try to get me to do things “their way”.

Rocky Past

Yelp has a bit of a rocky past – a lot of business owners have felt extorted by the tactics Yelp has used to try to encourage advertising. I know I get a bad feeling every time they solicit me. I bring up the issue of the positive reviews being removed and they do their dance, then call me back again in a few months. The whole thing seems like a classroom full of kindergarteners in charge of a candy store.

What do you think? Have you experienced similar frustrations with Yelp?

Joe Hackman is the founder of Managed Solutions, a blogger, podcaster, technology enthusiast, and fan of conversation. He helps businesses use technology more effectively.

When to Defend Yourself and When to Walk Away

One of the biggest questions most businesses have about social media is what you should do when someone posts something negative about you.

This could be a tweet, a Facebook status update, a mention in a LinkedIn group, a blog post, a video response to one of your YouTube videos – basically, anywhere where there’s a chance to post something, there’s the possibility of a negative mention.

So the question is – when do you respond, and when do you walk away? And can responding – even to something you feel you need to – cause more (potential) damage than not responding?

Sticks and Stones

It’s a simple fact of life – no-one is going to like everything you do. Even your most fanatical evangelists will get pissed off at something you do or say. There’s an old saying that if you don’t upset at least one person, you’re not doing it right (whatever “it” might be).

So when a negative comment is made about you, you then have a decision to make – do you respond, or ignore (based on relevance and approach of the negativity)? And if you do respond, what tone do you take?

It’s not an easy call – just ask Nestle’s PR team that was running their Facebook wall a little while back. By ignoring, you could be perceived as not caring, or taking criticism seriously enough.

Then again, by responding defensively, you could be seen in an even worse light by those that see your response. And if even the “experts” get it “wrong”, then it just goes to show how difficult it can be.

Criticizing Criticism – Adding to the Fire?

Take Jay Baer. Jay’s a guy I respect immensely, and is one of the smarter folks on the social media circuit. Jay’s just released his first book The Now Revolution (co-authored with Amber Naslund).

As part of the promotional outreach, Jay and Amber gave away a number of books to bloggers to review. Many have been positive, but one that popped up on my radar was the review posted by Jay Dolan over at The Anti-Social Media. Jay’s blog was named as one of the Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2011, and has a very irreverent look at social media.

Jay’s review, entitled 8 Reasons You Don’t Need to Read The Now Revolution, was a mix of what he liked about the book and – as the title suggests – eight reasons he wasn’t a fan.

These included comparing the book to an overlong blog post collection; bad grammar; and questionable images for reference points. It’s partly satire and partly a serious overview of what Jay sees wrong with the book, in typical Jay Dolan fashion.

Both Jay Baer and Amber responded to Jay Dolan’s criticism via the post’s comments, but in different ways, and this is where it gets a little interesting for anyone wondering how those that consult on social media respond when criticized.

While Amber offers to discuss in more detail by email, Jay chooses to respond in the comments. Here are a couple of quotes below:

“On the grammar and writing side, I?ll only say that the praise for that component of the book has been universal, except here. You may be a particularly exacting judge of written communication, and evidently we?ve fallen short of your benchmark.
Given that there were parts of the book that you liked, and given that indeed the book is not intended for ?social media people? but rather for business people, it seems a bit unfair to slap a ?8 reasons you don?t need to read the now revolution? headline on this post. But, if you want to accentuate the negative to generate clicks, that?s a choice YOU made.”

As I say at the beginning of the post, I like and respect Jay Baer – but I wonder if the responses above were the best way to respond to the review?

Defense or Defensive?

As a few people in the comments of the post have picked up, Jay’s comment comes across as defensive overall (although he does temper that with points on where he agrees with the post). From the comments section:

Morgan: “…defending your work is like saying I made a mistake, now I must explain myself. His work will either speak for itself or it won?t.“
Grayson: “If you have so many great reviews, why are you so concerned about one negative one? It is an opinion and there are many people who will read your book just to see if they agree. They will then decide for themselves.”
Bob LeDrew: “You guys had 224 pages to make your arguments. I don?t know that you need to make two separate replies to Jay D?s 1200 words of review. Let the book stand or fall on its merits and on the readers? responses, sez me.”
Dean: “Is there a Chapter in the book on ?when? to respond to a negative review from a blogger so as not to make a mountain out of a molehill? Seems you?ve just unnecessarily started a more visible spitting match and elevated his stature by lowering yours.”

Perhaps the reason a few of the comments have questioned Jay’s response is that if social media has taught us nothing else, the “wrong” response can soon get out of control.

I can understand Jay’s protection of his baby (I did the same thing a couple of years back with 12for12k), but the perceived defensiveness of his comment has perhaps put him in a less than flattering light. Which is the opposite of what Jay is, from what I’ve seen from my interactions with him.

Maybe Jay was having a bad day. I’ve had Jay respond to some questions on this blog and he’s always been personable (even when I’ve been a bit playful). The problem is, bad days can have an impact on a person or brand if it’s shared in public.

Feedback is a natural part of having something for public consumption. We all get it; we all deal with it differently on any given day. It’s not always easy to hold your tongue when something you care so deeply about is questioned.

Like I say, Jay’s a good guy, and maybe this was just a bad day reaction. But sometimes you need to just walk away when the question of defending yourself arises.

For businesses, it’s a hard line to manage. For consultants offering advice on how to walk that line, it’s probably even more important to make sure your line is how you’d advise clients.

What line would you have taken?

image: Mubina H
image: Jay Dolan

Sunday Brunch – Elevator Pitch

Welcome to a new episode of Sunday Brunch, where we talk about your questions on social media, marketing, business tips, entrepreneurship and more.

Today?s question is from?Ari Herzog, who offers consulting and speaking services as a new media consultant and writer/editor over at AriHerzog.com. Ari asks:

?I’d enjoy learning how you introduce yourself to strangers — whether online or off — due to your multiple hats. Between your work with Bonsai, 12for12K, and other initiatives, let alone the multiple sites you write blog articles at, what’s your?elevator pitch?when introducing yourself? Is it always the same, or do you change it depending on the audience??

Thanks for the question, Ari, and I hope the video helps.

If you have a question, you can send it in via the form below. There?s also a file upload option, if you want to send in a picture of your favourite Sunday Brunch place.

Cheers, and see you same time, same place next week for some more Sunday Brunch chats.

This post contains a video. If you can’t see it displayed properly in your feed, you can view it directly here.

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