Imagine Your Reality

My blog is now on Alltop. You can find it in the Marketing section. You can also find it on social media today and a number of other blog directories. Each time I learn about a new blog directory or resource site, I get my blog listed on it as soon as possible, in order to build up backlinks to the blogs, and also to expose it to a wider audience.

If you post on a regular basis and you think of your blog as a professional platform, it’s worth your time to get it listed on different blog directories. Not only does it build up credibility for your blog and your professional standing, but it can also help you get more readers and followers who find your blog on those sites.

I already mentioned backlinks, which are related links that push a website or blog’s rankings up on google, Bing, and other search engines, but something you can also do is add your blog/business website to local search engine directories as a way of building those backlinks and also making it easier to find your presence on the web.

What’s key is that you get active about getting out your blog out there so that other people can find it and read it. You can’t expect that readers will come to you, if you don’t make your blog available on different sites beside the one its hosted on. And also make sure you post your latest entries to your social networking site. The more consistent you get about it, the easier it will be to attract readers and develop interest in what you are doing.

In this video blog I discuss trust and where it fits in with social media, but also with networking in general. Relationships of any kind only thrive when there is trust between every person.

There are times when Do It Yourself (DIY) is the way to go and other times when it’s time to go to your expert. Do you know when to go to your expert?

I’m a firm believer in delegating work to other people. For me, going to an expert happens when it becomes more work to do something than is worth the time, or when I’ve reached the limit of my knowledge and skills. I know I don’t have the time or skillset to do everything. And I really don’t want to do everything, if I can help it.

At the same time, I also think its important to have a basic knowledge about any and everything. I’ll never be a bookkeeper, but I know enough to keep track of my expenses, and if I ever hire one, I’ll also know what to look for to make sure the records are accurate. Likewise I know enough about web design to make tweaks to my site, but if I need to make a major change, I’ll hire the website designer.

Having some basic knowledge can help you immensely when it comes to hiring your expert, as well. You’ll know what questions you need to ask, as well as what to look for from that person, so that you can make an informed decision about the person you are hiring.

Go to an expert when you know that the time your investing in doing something isn’t worth what you are getting out of it. You’ll feel a lot less stressed when someone is taking care of that task, so that you can free up your time to do what you love.

The other day, a client and I decided to do some research to see what kind of social media policies similar organizations had. What we ended up finding looked really thin, a brief description of what social media was and that it was only to be used on break. There was no focus in the policy on how the organizations would actually engage and use social media, and the type of organization I was developing the policy for definitely needed more than just a brief descriptor of what social media is and when employees could use it.

Good social media policy defines not only what social media is or when employees may or may not use social media. It defines how the company will use social media, what sites the company will be on and who has the authority to post information related to the organization, as well as handle positive and negative commentary.

The reason a good social media policy focuses on all of these details is because they are essential to understand, in order to successfully integrate social media into the rest of the marketing and outreach efforts the company engages in. Good social media policy asks who is responsible for what message and defines how social media will be used and what forms of it will be used. Without that kind of clarity, a social media policy doesn’t begin to effectively address where social media fits into the marketing strategy of a business. A good policy allows a business to begin allocating resources and personnel for their social media effort, while channeling that effort into productive outcomes that generate more traffic and leads for the business.

It will become more important for businesses to develop a social media policy that isn’t something you would find in an employee handbook. While what’s in an employee handbook is useful, businesses need a more sophisticated outlook and awareness of social media and how it fits into their overall plans and goals.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Google Buzz and I’ve realized its the social media equivalent of the Google chat function that comes with Gmail. The only difference is that its billed as social media and it doesn’t show up in your inbox if you miss part of the conversation. That doesn’t mean Google Buzz is useless. If anything, its quite useful in terms of what it can offer to users, but it does make me question how it’s any different from all the other Google tools people can use, and I’ve come to the conclusion it really isn’t.

I’ve noticed that people have started using Google Buzz to start collaborative conversations with each other, which is similar to Google Wave. I’ve also noticed that some of them use it like a chat, which is just like the chat box that Google offers with Gmail. And I’ve noticed that some people are using it to post status updates, which is perhaps the only difference from the other tools I see.

I think Google Buzz is useful. It’s another medium that can be used to touch people, but there is something to also be said for over saturation, and while Google Buzz does offer another medium of communication, it also lends itself to over saturation of Google’s services. It likely would’ve been better to have incorporated Google Buzz as strictly part of Google Wave, in order to encourage people to use it. Instead it’s part of Gmail, where everything it does is already offered in Gmail.

What do you think? is Google Buzz useful in Gmail or is it over-saturation of the same services?

I needed to redo the last two episodes of social media coach because of poor sound quality. They’ve now been redone and you can hear them this time..

Social Influence and Customer Service

Social Media Policies

There’s so much positive hype about social media that sometimes its easy to forget the importance of maintaining perspective about it. Recently an acquaintance of mine stopped using Foursquare when she was pranked by several people who told her they were going to rob her house. Because Foursquare is used to indicate where you are, it was for them to know that she was at a restaurant and not at home. Fortunately she wasn’t robbed, but this story is illustrative of how social media can be used for more negative purposes.

Another issue, which is occasionally brought up to me, is in regards to identity theft. I don’t think that social media significantly lends itself to identity theft. If anything online shopping puts you at more risk for identity theft, but all that said, its important to recognize that you are putting details on social media sites that people can use against you.

My recommendation is to never put any information up on a site that you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing in public. By choosing to be selective about the information you make available to others, you also make it much easier to protect yourself from unwanted attentions or actions, such as what happened to my acquaintance.

As with anything else, it’s important to maintain proper perspective on social media. Just because its available, doesn’t mean we have to post every detail. And sometimes its better not to.

The latest episode of Social Media coach focuses on Social Media Policies. Next week’s show will focus on desktops and laptops vs mobile for social media.

Also this coming Wednesday I’ll be interviewing Jerry Fletcher, the Networking Ninja, for the Imagine Your Reality Radio show.

Finally Bret Berthoft, has recently started his own podcast called The Face of Media. Check it out and give it a listen!

Last week, I met some interesting people and decided to see if I could find them on Twitter. The only problem was, when I went to search, I saw the following message: “Twitter can’t search because it’s bit stressed out from all the tweets.” I felt stuck, because I wanted to start following the people, and get in front of them as well. My room mate suggested that if I knew there user name I could simply use twitter.com/username and then add the people.

This turned out to be a very workable solution and I was able to add the people I wanted to connect with, but it also helped me realize that it’s sometimes too easy to get stuck using the obvious tools that an interface provides. Just because I couldn’t search for people, didn’t mean I couldn’t find those people if I had their usernames. But because the obvious tool wasn’t working, I had to find a workaround.

With any social media site, not just Twitter, there will be times when some kind of functionality isn’t working because the site is being improved or because it’s being overused and the functionality has to be shut down. It’s important to develop workarounds so that you don’t have to wait until the site is repaired. For twitter, it was fairly easy to just use the usernames after twitter.com. For other sites, there will be similar workarounds. Don’t let yourself get limited because the obvious interfaces don’t work.

I was in a conversation the other day with Miles Austin and he said the following quote: “Inform for free, how to for a fee.” Chris Brogan recently wrote a post on price points, and essentially pointed out that if you wanted his time you had to pay him what it was worth. Good point. The more you give away your services, the more you undervalue them, and the more people will take advantage of you. That’s what I’ve learned from the past year. And when people balk at paying my prices, it means they aren’t my clients, and if I try and take them on, I’ll be wasting my time chasing them.

I no longer offer free half hour consultations and I’ve determined what my price points are and I’m sticking to them. And as you may have noticed I no longer offer free webinars, and what I’ve found is that price doesn’t substantially change the participation in the webinars.

If you want free, read my blog or subscribe to my newsletter. I’m happy to inform you. But I recognize that how to always needs to have a price. If it doesn’t, it ultimately isn’t valued or followed through on. This is true regardless of what service you offer. There will, of course, be some people that will do their best to get something for nothing or for a reduced price. And I think the best choice in those cases is to walk away. They can tell you they can’t afford you because of the economy, but even if the economy was better they still would come up with some reason.

Know your value and stick to it. That’s really what I’ve been learning, as well as how to say No to bad business deals. When you do that, a lot of stress falls away because you aren’t trying to chase after clients. Instead you let them come to you, when the time is right and they recognize they are ready for the how to.