Heading to the Motor City to deliver a keynote for RE/MAX.
21 Posts In 21 Days- Lessons Learned From Daily Blogging #21in21
Today is the final day of April 2012 and with that brings to an end a month long challenge. I wrote back on the first of April of this challenge that was given to me by my good friend Mike Mueller and the consequences if either of us did not complete. I am happy to report today that there will be no chicken suit wearing happening any time soon by me.
See, Mike & I had taken the blogging challenge to another level. If one of us did not produce our 21 posts during the 21 business days of April, we would have to dress up in a chicken suit and dance on a busy street corner. Luckily for me, this is my 21st post and fulfills all my requirements for the challenge.
Over the past month though, I have learned a few things regarding blogging:
1. Daily Blogging can be tough when you run a business too. Granted, my business revolves completely around my blog, but some of the days it was really difficult to take the time away from other tasks in my business and focus on writing a post. See, not only do I do social media consulting, but I also do a good amount of traveling as a social media speaker. This month I attended one of the larger conferences I do in a year which took up almost a full week away from the office.
During this time I had to be diligent to sit down and write posts at certain times or have the forethought to write a post the day before and schedule it to publish while I was away from the computer.
2. Creative is hard depending on your business. While I spend a good amount of time speaking in consulting, there is a third aspect to my business where I build custom WordPress sites for clients. I found it can be very difficult to think creatively for blogging content when I was spending several hours doing very technical tasks on a site like writing CSS code. I’d have to take a good break, walk away from the computer and come back later.
3. Book end hours work best for me. I found that I was able to get my best blog posts by either writing them first thing in the morning to start my day, or doing them at the end of the previous day. Whenever I would try to do it in the middle of normal business hours it would take much longer due to many distractions of phones ringing & crisis messages being received from clients that needed immediate attention. The early morning and late hours of the night seem to be much calmer around my house and provide a better atmosphere for writing.
4. Killing social networks proved productive. I used to leave both Google+, Facebook, & Twitter all open while writing so I could multi-task. But what I learned is that it would take me much longer to write then. I also would repeat things or say it in manners that didn’t always make sense. When I shut off all the distractions, I could create much better content in a fraction of the time.
So, now that the challenge is over, what does that mean? Well, nothing really. You will continue to receive content from me on a somewhat regular basis. However I won’t drive myself crazy if a day or two come along where I am busy with other things and do not get the time to write a post. As I share with clients all the time during coaching, don’t write something just to meet a quota or goal. Write because you are passionate about it or feel this post will help both you and others around you be better.
So Mike Mueller, did you finish your #21in21?
Are You Tech-Savvy or a Tech Fool?
Before I get into today’s post, I must first warn everyone that it might be a little bit of a rant to some and different from my normal how-to type of post. Here’s why I am ranting today. I recently received a friend request from someone on one of my favorite social networks to interact with people, FourSquare. So, I clicked on the request notification on my phone which brought me to their profile. When I saw their profile image, I almost blew my gasket.
Instead of finding a smiling face for a person named Andrew, I found their profile photo had been replaced by a QR code. Now, my guess is either Andrew is a really ugly person who broke a camera the last time it tried to take a photo of him, or some marketing genius that he listened to at some point said that QR codes are cutting edge technology that he should implement immediately to make himself look more tech-savvy.
Now, I am not going to get into a debate on QR codes today as that isn’t the point of the post. Instead I would like to focus on way this tool was implemented. In my opinion, I feel Andrew did so many things wrong by using a QR code in this manner.
First, social networks are designed to encourage social interactions and connections with others. When you replace your profile photo with a QR code, or a cartoon avatar, a branding logo, or something else impersonal, you immediately change the mindset people have of you when they are deciding whether to connect with you or not. I know for me, when I see those, my mind immediately jumps to wondering if this person is going to try to push a product down my throat and beg me to buy something from them.
Secondly, Foursquare is a platform designed and built to be used almost exclusively from a mobile device. They have had over 2 billion check ins from mobile devices. In contrast, according to compete.com, their website only receives about 2 million visits. That means that less than 10% of all their members actually visit the full website version. The point behind a QR code is to give someone an easy way to access your content from their mobile phone from some sort of printed material by simply scanning an image.
Lastly, in order to scan a QR code, you need to have a phone with a scanning app. So, for me to scan Andrew’s QR code, I would need a second phone since probably 95% of the people who would see it are on a mobile device already. You can’t use the camera function of a phone to scan something on it’s own screen. So a second device would be necessary to access the QR code. Personally, I don’t know too many people who would go through the effort of borrowing a second phone from someone else just to scan your code.
To me this just makes someone like Andrew look like a fool instead of someone tech savvy. So, before you listen to the next guru or expert who mentions the next latest & greatest technology tool, take a moment to think through how you are implementing that tool. Ask yourself if this will make me more tech-savvy or look like a tech fool.
Are Quoted Graphics Turning Facebook Into MySpace?
I am as much a Facebook Junkie as the next, but over the past few months I have found myself spending less and less time in the actual stream and more in private Facebook groups. This is because I have found specific private groups to be much more valuable to my business than just my public news stream. Last night however, I took some time to read through the stream of my friends and when I did, I kept coming across quoted images or graphics similar to the one above.
Now, I understand why people make these, but I really don’t see any value in them for a person sharing it. The reason people create these is due to the fact that Facebook’s edgerank algorithm places more emphasis on photos as that is overwhelmingly the most popular thing for people to view, comment & share on Facebook. This was made obvious to me by the incredible popularity a photo of my daughter received the other day. (97 likes & 43 comments & growing) So, marketers learned that if they create quotes into an image instead of just plain text update it is more likely to be viewed by people and receive interactions and popularity they want.
But, what I have noticed lately that these quoted images are taking over the Facebook stream. They get thousands of shares, comments, & likes. But, they go against everything that Facebook was designed to do. Facebook was created to give people a place to share images of each other & connect with people you know. Unfortunately marketers have come in and are ruining this concept with these images.
I may be alone on this, but I feel like this new trend is making Facebook feel a little bit like MySpace where people spammed your comments with stupid images and shared things they found on another profile and thought was cute or funny. Luckily, Facebook doesn’t allow animated GIF’s (yet) so we don’t have to worry about the sparkling princess fairy just yet.
What do you think? Do you feel these new quotes are junking up the Facebook stream and making it feel a little bit like MySpace?
Are You Trying To Create Social Sales Or Social Trust
Over the past few days I’ve been doing a lot more reflecting on my business and what has helped to make it is today. As I have thought about my successes over the past few years, I have come to the conclusion that these are not caused by the knowledge or skills I possess. It’s not from 13,000+ fans I’ve connected with on Twitter. Nor the thousands on Facebook. While those things are nice, they don’t make people hire me to speak or ask me to build them a custom WordPress site.
What I realized is that people hire me because they have formed a level of trust with me. This revelation came to me the other day as I thought about the amazing time I had this past week in Atlanta, GA at the RETSO conference. It was a fun time spent with friends & family, but what made the trip so enjoyable was my good friend Maura who lives there and her assistance with what to do when not at the conference. Maura is a real estate agent in the area that knows what is happening in her community. She also runs a really great site called 365 Atlanta where Maura shares great information on places, events, & things to do in the Atlanta area.
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to know Maura somewhat well through various conferences and social media platforms. In fact, the past two years I was invited to an amazingly delicious dinner held at her house before RETSO because of the connection we have made online. I know that Maura wouldn’t just randomly invite me to her house if she didn’t trust the connection we made online first.
In the past when attending RETSO, I would just go wherever to eat and do whatever was close by for entertainment because I didn’t know the area. Sometimes I would have OK experiences, but most the time it ended up in disaster. To be completely honest, the top experience was visiting a Dave & Busters once for Gahlord’s Edamame. However, this year I decided to take a different approach based on the trust I have formed in Maura through our interactions on social networks and her blog. Whenever it came time for dinner or to go do something, I simply asked Maura and she would quickly recommend a place.
She told me before the event even began that she had made reservations for us all on Friday night for a dinner downtown. Now, the conference is a good 30 minutes away and as we drove to downtown Atlanta, I did start to wonder why we were going so far away just to eat a meal. Until I placed the first bite of food into my mouth. Maura recommended us going to a restaurant called Rosebud which is owned by chef Ron Eyester and the food was out of this world delicious. I had fantastic tastes of everything from pimento cheese spread, mouthwatering calamari, and so much more.
While I could have eaten anywhere else along the way or much closer to our conference, I went with Maura’s choice though because of past good experiences and the trust I’ve formed from her past successful recommendations. Now, whenever someone mentions Atlanta & housing, I immediately think of Maura. She knows her area and people form a trust in her because she is a regular person online just trying to help others. What’s even more amazing, is that once someone trusts her, they are more willing to work with her and trust her with not just their bellies, but also their money. She has had great success with her real estate career all from her 365 Atlanta site that doesn’t even really talk about real estate.
I’ve found this to be the same in my business. I don’t really do a lot of selling across the social networks. Very rarely do I even make mention to my business on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks. Instead I try to spend more time helping others and sharing all I know with others openly. On Twitter, over 75% of the 29,000 tweets I’ve sent, are me having conversations with others or promoting them, not me broadcasting stuff. On Facebook, I find myself spending most of my time now in private or closed tech support groups interacting with others and helping them with whatever they need. I share openly my skills and help whenever possible.
By simply being my normal self and not focusing on a sale, it has brought my business tremendous success. When someone contacts me about hiring my services, they don’t question my ability to do the job. They already know me well enough through the various social networks or my blog to just trust me. When I mention a price or my rates, they don’t second guess them, they already know enough about me to simply agree and hire me if it fits their budget.
If I spent all day trying to just make sales and not be social across the different platforms, people would no longer trust me. Instead they would start to completely ignore every single thing I posted in fear of being sold to. I’d go from being a good friend to just noise that gets ignored.
So before you send your next tweet or next Facebook status update, ask yourself this: How will this update build more trust with those I am connected with?
The Art of Uni-Tasking
This past week I was in Atlanta, GA for a real estate tech conference where I got the honor of hearing my friend Matthew Shadbolt deliver a very powerful presentation on how social media is ruining us. He shared about the addictions people are forming to the instant gratification and recognition they receive on social networks like Twitter & Facebook. The mentions, likes & comments we receive release a level of oxytocin that makes us feel better. Once a person starts to receive some, it becomes even more addicting.
It gets to the point where people spend hours at a time bouncing from one social network to another trying to find another dose. Not only is the addiction a bad thing, but it has also caused more and more people to do more multitasking each and every day. No longer are we just focusing on our duties for our job, but we also splitting our time that should be spent working on a task on Facebook updates, Twitter statuses, and all other types of social networks.
While I used to believe that by multitasking I was accomplishing more. I also used to brag at how well I could do it and how I could do so many things at once. But what Matthew shared in his presentation changed my whole thinking. No longer am I going to try & multitask. Instead, I’ve implemented a new work into my daily routine called uni-tasking.
To me, uni-tasking means I will no longer keep my inbox, Facebook, Twitter, iMovie and several other networks/programs open at the same time and bounce from one to another. Instead, I am going to only do one at a time and shut the other networks off.
On Monday I tested this theory to see how it would work. I shut everything off but my inbox. I took the next three hours and spent just the time on email. What I noticed is that I was able to respond to everything I need and seemed to be much more focused on it while doing so. I also found I didn’t miss the likes, mentions and praises that the social networks provide. I was then able to move on to another task without having to wonder if everything was finished or not. I found myself more productive than I’ve been in weeks and had everything done to then spend time with family.
So in closing, this uni-tasking might just be the best thing I implement into my business in a long time. If you don’t believe me, give it a try and see if you receive the same results. My guess is you will be amazed at what you can accomplish by trying to just do one thing at a time.