Very recently I turned off my email notifications on my phone. THE best thing I’ve done for myself in years!! I can still access my email from my phone, but it no longer dings and bleeps when something has come in.
Why? Because I was tethered to my phone and wasn’t taking care of “me”.
Have you thought about cutting back on how “connected” you are? Are you guilty of being one of the described below in the infographic? What have you done to curb your “connectivity”?
Tilted Playing Field
There has been a lot of mention that social media and social networking levels the playing field. Last week facebook made some changes that tilted that playing field considerably.
Now I know there are many out there who think it was never level. Take someone with a big budget like pepsi or coke coming in and taking over the soft drink attention from the folks reading posts and engaging in the brand.
I however do not agree.
Get in, make your point, get social, get engaged, get to know your customers!! Big budgets mean squat when the person taking care of it all doesn’t have a clue as to what they are doing!
So….back to the playing field. Have you noticed? Many of our own pages are no longer showing up in the feeds. We are being told that it is no longer the number of “likes” on the page or on any particular posting.
It is what social media is all about…..
It almost seems as if things have changed so much on facebook that now it is more like the most popular gets fed? Seems that way to me….so how do you get to be one of the popular ones?
Gone are the days when everyone and everything showed up in our news feed.
What are you going to do to step up your game?
If you are using the NetworkedBlogs app for facebook, you are making it difficult for me to share or even see your content.
I pulled this off my facebook feed. See where it says “See 4 more posts from NetworkedBlogs”? Will you click on that? I won’t. It is one more step you are making me take to find your content. This is step #1. To see if your post is in there.
If I want to share your blog post to my 1000+ friends and plunk it in my feed, look what I have to do in order to do so…
#2. Its asking me to connect to facebook
ok, I’ve clicked on it and this is what it wants …
#3 would be clicking the “Allow” button. But this is as far as I’ll go. Why you may ask? Because it’s asking me for personal information I’m not willing to give it. Not so that I can simply share your post with my friends.
Here’s the thing.
Take 3 seconds! Yes 3 seconds!! I’ve timed it!!!!! Copy the link from your blog post and paste it into your facebook links! Viola! Done! I can share it and I don’t have to jump thru hoops to do it.
It’s more likely to get shared by others too!
Do not make your fans jump thru hoops to read your content!
I was inspired today by a question that was asked by Mike Cardus of Create-Learning on my fan page over on facebook.
So it got me thinking!
Is losing fans a bad thing? The focus seems to be on building our fan base, growing the number of people who see our content. It’s all about the numbers for so many people.
This is a big argument for many….they say it’s all about the numbers! Great! Numbers and big numbers are wonderful (unless it’s on my scale!) So what is ideal?
Here are my thoughts. If you are holding contests to gain fans, Great. Why are they staying? Are they staying because they want to win more cool free stuff or are they staying for your content?
If they are leaving because you are no longer offering free stuff, then you weren’t going to make any money off them anyway.
But, what if you are losing fans because you post too much? Or you are being hidden in someone’s feed because you talk too much? Should you care? Yes and no. If once or twice a day is too much for someone, this probably isn’t someone who would turn out to be a paying customer. Or someone who isn’t really interested in what you have to say. They aren’t finding value in your content.
One study has shown that 44% unlike a page because they post too frequently. Why do you unlike a page? If you think they are posting too frequently, how many times are they posting?
43% said they unliked because it was full of marketing. In other words….they were constantly pushing their crap on me!! There is a lesson here! Save 43% by engaging your base, don’t push your crap on folks, pull them in with your knowledge, get them to know, like and trust you. That is who we buy from….who we know, like and trust.
38% said the content was repetitive or boring. Keep it fresh and keep it fun. If not fun….at least interesting. You want to keep them coming back for more. Not hitting the “unlike” button.
26% said they liked a page to take advantage of a one time offer, then unlike it when that page didn’t offer anything else. These folks you can do without. You don’t need them, you don’t want them. Don’t stress over them!
So think on it….losing fans teaches us what is working and what isn’t. Losing fans or being hidden means we probably won’t make any money from those people anyway. So let them go.
When you see a mass exodus from your page….go back and see what is going on!
Do you panic when you lose fans? Do you worry you’ve offended someone? Or do you carry on, plugging away at finding and targeting the people you know will be interested in your topics?
When you read the title of this post, what was the very first thing that popped into your mind?
Was it to make money? Or was it to help people? Maybe you are in business because this is something that is expected of you or it’s an inherited business. Maybe not. Passion is the new buzz word, but it’s also a truth. Are you working your passion and just happen to make money at it. Are you doing something that you would be doing anyway?
When I first read that I thought….which business?
The Wilson Edge is the result of my desire to see other people succeed in their businesses. I was helping and telling folks about facebook and twitter long before I started teaching it for a profit. It was promptings from any connections in my network that told me I needed to do this. There is a whole lot more to this story…but I’ll get into that another day.
Why do I want to see you succeed? I’ve been there. I know how hard it is to run a business on a shoe string budget! See….the thing is, you can do it! You can have $25 in the bank and start up your own business, market it for nothing more than your time. I knew that. You can be scrabbling to pay the rent and the phone bill for your shop one month, then breath easy the next because you managed to get your name out there. Why? Because I helped you! THAT is why I want to see you succeed!! I love to see businesses thrive and grow. Especially after I’ve seen that little light go off in their head and they are off and running!
I truly believe that once you take the dollar signs out of your eyes and focus on helping people. You will succeed further than you’ve ever dreamed possible. I’m already there, I’m not sure what to dream next…but I’m enjoying the ride and loving every minute of it!
So? Why are you in business? Have you taken the dollar signs out of your eyes? What are you doing to help your customers? Tell me in the comments below.
He isn’t and he’s got a t-shirt on the way that says so! Who am I referring to? Scott Stratten!
I was going to do a nice warm fuzzy synopsis of my Marketing for the 21st Century and UnBook tour. All professional and proper. Well…I’m a bit too casual for that. You all know Scott is casual and down to earth if you’ve seen him talk or watched his videos and Mike Cardus of Create-Learning just fits right in. Didn’t you all think so? (those of you that were there?)
So let’s start at the top! That would be me…presenting first. I did my thing…chatted a bit about Scott and how him and I first started talking on Twitter. It happened a couple years ago….he was in Buffalo and tweeted a request for directions to the Toys R Us from the airport. I believe that is when we started chatting. So you see? From a single tweet, it started. Then he sent out another single tweet about his book tour. Being curious to see where he was going to be and looking to see where I was going to have to travel to, I realized it was directions on how I (me…the girl from northern ontario…hated high school and can’t cut circles) could get him here in Buffalo!! How friggin’ cool is that!!
He Came!!!!!!!!! He Spoke!!!!!! (he should be home resting now)
That’s how I started it (the single tweet part) Then….off I went into my favorite success stories!! Donna Scalfaro of Carpet Care Services was first up! How after taking my facebook and twitter classes she grabbed hold of social media and let herself fly!! She is an amazing woman who is strong, smart and knows exactly what she wants! I never ever hesitate to recommend Donna to anyone who needs her services.
Then I had my chat about Nancy. I can tell you I successfully talked about Nancy without tearing up this time. I think it might be because she was at the back of the room and I couldn’t see her. Nancy Rizzo a Life and Wellness Coach and owner of Smart and Simple Wellness I told that room full of people how Nancy was able to grab hold of Social Media and help get her son’s band More Than Me on the main stage in Hyde Park in London England opening for Paul McCartney to over 40k people!!!!!
Are you amazed yet at the power this medium has?! If you aren’t, you’re not paying attention.
Mike then got front and center and had everyone quite curious about how ideas having sex make Awesome ideas! Mike’s high energy presentation was a hit! He very nicely tied it into customer service, listening to your client and building your business. At one point there was massive movement among the audience as we all followed Mike’s directions madly passing cards with ideas on them back and forth until he told us to stop…rating the ideas on the cards. Taking the ideas we had read, melding them with our own helping us come up with ideas of our own on what we were going to do the next morning to make our businesses more sexy!
Were you there? What have you implemented to make your business more sexy? Leave your comment below, we’d love to hear!!
If you would like to see Mike’s slideshare you can find it here.
Photo Credit: Todd Billiar
Then Scott got up and plunked himself on the table at the front of the room and just talked. I was unsure whether to 
call this post He’s Not the Jack-Ass Whisperer or Scott Stratten UnPlugged. Have you ever gone to a concert or gone to listen to a speaker and you feel he’s only singing or talking to just you? Scott’s warm engaging way engulfs the entire room. He just talked and we all listened, laughed, learned and hopefully left so charged up they devoured his book!
There were so many things touched on. Some of the comments after at the mixer where…
“I need to tweet more”
“He’s Awesome!”
“I love how our ideas can have sex, then we can implement them with social media”
“Man! Look what he’s done in such a short period of time!”
Scott was honest and transparent about how the book tour has gone. It’s gone fantastically….but he’s paid a price.
Scott has a brilliant mind when it comes to social networking, how customer service is suppose to work and has a wonderful humor about things like the jackasses that get in the way sometimes.
So if you get the chance to hear Scott speak. Do it! Or buy the book and soak up every bit of information he has in there. Or check out one of the many videos out there on YouTube. If you get the chance, be sure to check out his Keynote speech for TEDx Oakville. For those of you like myself who push yourself too hard…..we need this reminder once in a while.
I am honoured (Canadian spelling!) and feel very priviledged to have had you here to speak with us Scott. Thank you doesn’t seem like its enough. But it’s a heartfelt Thank you!
Oh!! You know what else? We may….just may have picked up a new Sabres fan!!!
All Photos of Scott were taken by Todd Billiar, our official unofficial photographer! Thank you Todd!!
Donkey Photo Credit: IIco Trajkovski
I did warn you that this blog might get racy! So click away if you don’t really want to know about my networking meetings yesterday and how all these topics came about!
Yesterday morning I drive out to Orchard Park and arrive at the location where my networking meeting was being held and I was to do a presentation on social media and what it really is all about.
I have never had one of my talks interrupted in such a way that I came away with a blog topic….and loving the woman who started it all!
First….we talked about chocolate before my talk. I’ve never heard anyone refer to chocolate in this way. This woman was making love with her words in her description of the chocolate she had eaten. The company she was talking about turned out to be one of my new clients… Stuffed Chocolate (shameless plug for them)
Alright…so far, for an 8 o’clock morning meeting, Im laughing and thoroughly enjoying myself. Now those of you who know me. You know that I don’t do mornings!! Here I am sitting with a vibrant group of women in business talking about chocolate. (so far)
Oh…then it turns to law. This is the first lawyer in any of the groups I’ve been to who specializes in divorce law. But here’s the thing. Not only does she specialize in divorce law, she also helps women who own their own businesses protect and prepare for what “may or may not” happen in their marriages. Wow!!! This woman has a niche and she is in the right networking group to help get herself seen!! If you want her information, send me a private message and I’ll forward her contact information to you. Send it thru the “contact me” form.
Oh, but wait it gets better!!
I start talking about social media and the woman who talks about chocolate orgasmically says with the same vigor she put into her chocolate description…
“Who has time for this?!”
“Who is tweeting at night?”
“That’s why we need divorce lawyers (pointing at the lawyer at the end of the table) because they are all tweeting instead of having sex!”
“You all have to stop tweeting and go have sex!”
All these business women, had just been undone! Laughter, comments about wine, chocolate, and sex were rampant! What an amazing group! Because each of them let themselves loose a little bit, I instantly liked them. Not one sat there uptight and prim! How often can you sit and get a feel for so many so quickly?
Sex, Chocolate, Twitter & Divorce Lawyers…..all in an hour and a half networking meeting. Several women that I would not have met otherwise if I had not attended. Because out of the group a very small portion of them were using social media.
The moral of the story?
Don’t put all your networking eggs in the social media basket. Get out there and do the face to face networking with vibrant high energy groups!! You never know who you are going to meet and you never know what they are going to say!!
So….enjoy your chocolate, get off twitter and go have sex!
I hear this ALOT!!
“I don’t have time to tweet or to facebook. I don’t have time to stop my world to tell everyone what I’m having for supper. To top it all off I DON’T care!!!”
First of all….if you don’t care about me and my business, then why the hell should I care about you and yours?
Because if you are constantly shoving your product/service in my face, I get turned right off and I want nothing to do with it. BUT, if you’ve taken the time to talk to me, gotten to know me, let me get to know you….you then have a potential customer who is at the very least willing to listen. That is the first step. Get them to listen. Get me to know you. Get me to like you. Get me to trust you. Then I’ll think about doing business with you.
What is the absolute best way to treat your customers? Like they are you’re long lost family members! (the ones you like)
For some of us it’s second nature. Many years ago I was working at the front desk of the Ramada Inn back home (up north) and the phone would ring for reservations. I cannot tell you how many times the front desk manager asked me if I knew the person I just took the reservation from. I finally asked him why he kept asking me that (yes it was almost a year before I asked). He said its because it sounds like Im talking to friends and just making their reservations for them. The best part tho, was when they came in….pointed their finger at me and said “You’re Robin!” (with a smile) The other way might not be so good!
Ok….so I got off a bit there didn’t I?
My point is…listen to them. Take the time to get to know them.
ok…another quick story
Man comes up to the front desk and the poor bugger looks like someone dragged him under a bus for miles and miles. He asks me for a room, I gave him the prices and he looked at me and said “Honey, I really dont care! I’ve been in a car with my wife, my mother in law and 2 kids for the last 12 hours!” It probably wasn’t very nice of me to laugh, but I did and told him I’d take care of him. Got him all settled and because our hotel had a big huge waterslide and mini golf I made sure he took the free passes for himself, his wife and his mother in law. Even after he said they wouldn’t use them. I told him to take them anyway…..the kids might need them. I seen the light go on in this poor tired man’s eyes! I made myself a new best friend! When you take care of your customers, they take care of you.
I took an interest in what he was saying. I cared that he looked like a nagged at, nattered at man!
Pay attention to your customers and you will “know” what they want. Listen to what they have to say and you will better serve them.
So…the next time I’m telling you I may be baking and you could care less, that tells me a lot about you. Remember that food is the single one commonality between us all! If I tell you I’m making butter tarts….it starts this huge thread on my facebook page about it. What does this tell me? That people really are watching and paying attention. They may not always comment, but they do watch.
Ok, as for the other comment. “I don’t have time!”
Let me tell you something else!! If you tell me you don’t have time to facebook or twitter to help your business grow and I go visit your profile page and I find nothing but games being played? What do you think I think?! Have you forgotten that I can see the games you are playing when you are suppose to be working on what ever it is you’ve been complaining about.
Or…you drive a 1/2 hour to a networking event, pay $25 to get in, plus drinks, spend 2 hours there then another 1/2 hour to get back home. Don’t get me wrong many of these are great. But many are a huge waste of my time! So pick and choose your groups carefully.
So, yes you do have time. You just have to prioritize it.
You must take interest in those around you. Because it really isn’t all about “Me”.
I’m betting you want more “proof”?
I’ve met Tom Ruberto via facebook then in person when he came to buffalo to visit family. Why? Because I posted a comment about Ted’s Hot dogs. Tom loves Ted’s and can’t get them as readily in Arizona!
I’ve met Rick Griffin via twitter over a conversation about a breakfast he was eating and I believe the word lipitor was tossed around that conversation as well.
I’ve met Tim Vanini via twitter our conversation started on a Sunday morning about where we were going to have our coffee.
I’ve met Grassroots Web via twitter, I’m not sure what started our conversation, but we certainly talk alot about wine now 
I’ve met Robert Wilson via the T-shirt forums. After getting to know him, I swear he’s a long lost brother. He has the same sense of humor as my brother (even kinda looks like him)!! But!! This is the fella that adjusted my profile picture! Amazing work he does!
This is just a very small sampling of folks I’ve met both virtually and in person. Some have become clients/customers. Some haven’t. But the point is, I’ve taken the time to listen, I know what they do. I know some of them like chocolate chip cookies and some only drink red wine. Some only drink Timmy’s coffee and some abandoned ship and moved to McDonald’s for their coffee. So when someone needs their services, I will very likely recommend these people. Because I’ve take a little bit of time to get to know them.
Networking at its best!
It started as an experiment.
But then it happened…after two years and over 65,000 followers he’s grown his company UnMarketing to new levels!
He has a #1 best selling book! But it’s not just the book that is what’s important. It’s what’s inside it. What he’s learned on his journey in using social media to help grow and build his business.
This isn’t just a boring old book tour where Scott is going to sit at a table and sign your book. Ha! Not a chance!!
Scott is coming to Buffalo! He will be making a stop on his tour getting to know us and sharing with us what he has learned!
I’ve been following him on twitter since the height of his twitter addiction! I believe it all started when I did a twitter search “buffalo” Scott was over by the buffalo airport looking for directions to the Toys R Us store. That’s how the conversation between him and I started. Since then, I’ve learned so much!! The best part, along with you I will be meeting Scott in person on November 20th.
It won’t just be Scott speaking! You are going to hear myself speaking about foursquare and how Buffalo can utilize this amazing marketing tool to direct traffic to your business! You are also going to hear from Mike Cardus of Create-Learning speak on Team Building!
Get your tickets, invest the $27 in your brand or your business!
UnBook tour Tickets are available here.
