Tag Archives: Wisdom

Social media best practice: be authentic

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Jeremy Tanner tagged me: I need to chime in and tell the world, in all my infinite wisdom, what a “social media” best practice is.

Interestingly enough my knee jerk reaction was to say either:

  1. if you call it social media you’re doing it wrong, or
  2. just stop trying, FFS.

At least, that’s the way I’ve felt in the recent months. In fact, it’s a new rule for me on twitter. If you’re a self-proclaimed “social media” guru, then you’re not.

That leads me to my point: to be successful in social media (or any media, I believe) you need to be authentic. It goes back to one of my personal favorite posts: my thoughts on transparency and honesty. If someone is extremely active across a variety of services and trying to connect with so many people (Linkedin, twitter, pownce, etc.) it sends the message that you’re convincing me I need to listen to you. It’s like trying to advertise your product after building it and calling that “marketing.” The biggest way to fail is to reach out to as many people as possible just to broadcast to your followship.

Instead, be an authentic person. Just be you and the right people will find you. For instance:

  • Penelope Trunk, although a writer (its her day job to make uninteresting things interesting), is a geniune lady who will bare all and do her best to connect. I consider her the Britney Spears of the internet sometimes but she’s authentic and, thanks in part to that, has a tremendous followship; in both size and passion.
  • Gary Vaynerchuk, although a marketer (its his day job to get the message out to everyone), is a geniune guy who will talk to anyone and go out of his way to make them feel important. He’s a busy guy but spends most of his day just talking to people via e-mail, twitter, facebook, and so on. In turn, he’s built up one of the most popular video podcasts about a product that no-one had ever thought to look for online: wine.

There’s my thoughts on how to do social media the right way. Agree / disagree?

Tag, you’re it: noah kagan, Andrew Chen, Ramit Sethi. (original link)

Track your goals for the day, week or resolutions

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I’m a huge fan of simplicity; I’ve been working on de-cluttering, simplifying, and reducing the unnecessary in my life lately (which is why I’m in love with Zen Habits). I’ve started tracking the many things I want to do by using Joe’s Goals.

Joe’s Goals is a simple site where you set a goal (positive or negative), which days it applies to, it’s weighting (1 point? 2 points?) and then you have a simple grid with days across the top and goals across the side. As you complete a goal every day you check it. Joe’s Goals tracks this for me and serves as a simple checklist (with a history).

Joe's Goals

If you’re looking to start making change in your life, set up an account and set it as your homepage. I’ve done this and, again, being greeted (aware) of what you want to change is sometimes all it takes.

Takeaways from Community Next

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This weekend was the third iteration of Community Next and it was focused on developing for platforms (in other words: how to make money off of Facebook). I’ve been tossing around some ideas myself and only needed to listen to one or two panels to determine following:

  • The “bubble” has decentralized. Instead of one big commotion over something called “the internet” we’ve created dozens, if not hundreds, of mini-bubbles that all involved parties convince each other is the most important thing right now.
  • Mini-bubbles can make mega-money. Each new concept (Facebook platform, website widgets) only grows the pool even furthur which means more talent, more money, more excitement, repeat.
  • Most people don’t “get” Facebook. Social networks are the first websites that both nerds and normals can use together and overlap. Nerds build the applications, though. In other words, millions of college kids (normals) put “who reads?” as their favorite book whilst nerds create applications to list your favorite book, current reads, and your personal review of them all.
  • There is no formula to success. Just because your application or idea is viral doesn’t mean it’ll attract millions of users. Just because it’s rich in features doesn’t mean people will use it any more frequent. You can’t look at success with such a checklist approach.
  • Switching costs are lower. Thanks to thousands of app developers if I think your Office Quotes application sucks it only takes three clicks to get a replacement. We’re picky, we’ve made the big decisions (Facebook v MySpace) but the rest are so easy. Do it right.
  • Noah sure knows how to make money. It’s wise to build a conference and a reputation of bringing smart people together. Being able to repeat it every 3 months with a new idea (thus, group) is perfect.

I don’t know if anyone agrees or disagrees with me so I’d love to hear your thoughts. In fact, I’d love to hear what Noah Kagan, Dave Feinleib, Dave McClure, Andrew Chen, Rodney Rumford and anyone else at CommunityNext think/thought.

Did you know you can help recruiters?

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Did you know you can help recruiters? You typically think of them as someone you need to know and you require in order to get a job. But what if you already have a job and aren’t looking to move? What if you have a network of upcoming or recent college graduates? Well, in that case you can do someone a favor! Why wouldn’t you?

Wednesday Wisdom

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Wednesday again already? Grab an umbrella, I’m about to pour on some knowledge.

Uranus’ satellites are named after Shakespearean characters.

A historical allusion to the later-removed “Jail Scene” from The Tempest.

Wednesday Wisdom

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Ready for a bit of topical, humorous trivia? Well line the floors with bubble wrap, I’m about to drop some knowledge:

15% of U.S. women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day.

It’s so compelling it has to be true.