Social Media – 17 Lessons I Learned In 2009

Before we delve too deeply into this, I’d like to start from the perspective of one year ago today. At that time, I was vaguely familiar with LinkedIn, was aware of FaceBook as something that existed, and was beginning to hear folks talk about something called “Twitter“. I knew that the word “Blog” was a term for something. On the brighter side, I was pretty good with email (smile). That was about the extent of my knowledge of all things “Social Media“. This all changed in late January of 2009 when I dove in head first in an all out effort to learn all I could about this new form of communication and networking. I’ve still only scratched the surface but, eleven months later, here is what I have learned ……

The Not So Good:

1. If you try to stay on top of  everything that is happening at any given time, you will drive yourself crazy. The target changes too rapidly to have much hope of remaining current. Attempting to do so, without a good time management plan, will result in huge “time suck”. My time management plan wasn’t so good (smile).
2. People in Social Media are merely a slice of the existing human population. If you expect that their social skills will be any more refined due to their embracing this new form of communication, things like manners, you will be sorely disappointed.
3. For whatever reason, people in Social Media, and perhaps even more so than in real life, tend to be adverse to direct engagement. Odd, curious, and sad.
4. I hate all things automated and particularly those communications that are obviously so: auto direct messages on Twitter, FaceBook Fan Page suggestions, and “help me with a game piece”. Not personalizing these communications is far worse than not sending them at all.
5. “Get Rich Schemes” are abundant in all forms of Social Media and particularly in Twitter.
6. All of this activity has an increased tendency to attract the scum of the earth who perpetuate scams, viruses, and hijacks. There will likely be an attack in progress on something you use and that will be seemingly almost  daily. Best get you some good virus and malware protection.
7. As soon as you learn to really count on a particular tool, it will crap out on you. Murphy’s law.
8. I still have not found that one great app that really sets my heart a flutter. Mind you, I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff. WordPress is neat. Gist and Threadsy hold great promise. There’s a lot out there to like. Still, I’m a hopeless romantic who remains looking for love (smile).
9. I l have not yet figured out how to monetize all of this, in a way that I want to, but I will.

The Pleasant Surprises:

1. I’ve had the privilege of meeting and associating with some really cool people who have helped me greatly and taught me a lot. A number of these have developed into traditional relationships. I can say with all confidence that Social Media played a huge part in a large percentage of these associations as most of these folks do not run in my typical circles.
2. Social Media has presented me with an abundance of new opportunities. As stated in item #9 in the section above, I’m still not sure what to do with these opportunities however, I am getting closer to those goals.
3. NetWorks! Boise has experienced a tremendous growth spurt. We started the year with one group and in a week and a half we will have three. Once again, and I know this to be true, Social Media has played a huge part in this success. So, in actuality, I am monetizing it.
4. I’ve come to recognize the great value of FaceBook. Too bad I still hate it (smile).
5. Twitter is a great way to get software support. That app giving you problems? Tweet about it and find out how quickly somebody from the company will respond.
6. The new Blackberry’s beat the hell out of the one I had five years ago. That was maybe the worst period of my life and I blame most of that on the purple beeping s.o.b. that was hitched to my belt during this dark chapter of time.
7. My grasp of technology has increased 1,000 fold in this short period of time. This is not an exaggeration.
8. The eleven months that I have spent in laying the foundation needed to move forward, will not have to be repeated. At least that is what I am praying for (smile).

2010…. It’s going to be a great year! Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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I’d Love To Give You That Referral …. But

I have been incredibly busy this past week getting everything put into place for the launch of our third NetWorks! Boise group on January 5. This will be a Tuesday breakfast group code-named … Sunrise. How original (smile). Oh well, it works.  I’ve been thinking about the topic of this post for some time now and, in fact, it was originally created on one of my Posterous accounts that I don’t really promote as of yet. Still, the topic is timely. If Christmas is about “giving”, it only makes sense that I see so many “takers” these days (smile). Here is the original post in its entirety and please have a fun and safe Merry Christmas and New Years!! …..

Referrals are the “holy grail” of all networking activities. When you are provided with a referral, there is a better than average chance that, if anybody gets the sale, it’s going to be you. A good referral is like gold. Money in your pocket. It can range from “Please use my name” to “They are expecting your call” to “I’d like to take you out and introduce you to …”.

Now, let’s take a moment and think about that person who is providing you with this referral. If I give somebody a referral, I need to do so with 100% confidence that:

1. This person is going to treat my client or friend with total respect
2. They are going to do the best possible job for my contact
3. I will be kept informed of anything that comes up that I should be concerned about
4. By turning my client over to this individual, I’m not going to have to stay up at night wondering if I did the right thing

The reason is simple. When I send somebody to call on my client or friend, my good name and reputation with that client is placed squarely on the line. If things go badly, it reflects badly on me. It has the potential to damage the good relationship that I already have with this client. So, why do it? Two reasons:

1. I think that you can help my client and by providing this referral I am assisting you both
2. My client will value this new connection and this will reflect on me in a positive manner

Your day-to-day actions form my perceptions of you. Perceptions that, right or wrong, are going to come into play as I evaluate whether or not I will consider providing you with referrals. The following are not indictments. They are merely perceptions. I can’t help it. It is what it is.

1. You fail to return my phone calls or even acknowledge my emails: There is a better than average chance that you will likely do the same with my customer.
2. You don’t know how to say “thank you”: Your mother didn’t teach you any manners (smile).
3. You don’t keep me informed of what’s going on that affects me: Chances of ever hearing about how that referral is going are probably “slim and none”.
4. You treat our business relationship in a cavalier manner: I should expect you to be any different with my client?
5. I have to chase after you for monies owed: You either can’t handle yours or don’t respect me enough to take care of your obligations to me. And, you want me to provide you with a referral to one of my valued accounts? Mind you, and speaking for myself, I value communication over money. All I really want to know about is what the plan is. Is that too much to ask?

“Whoa!”, you say, “Hang on! I’m not at all like that!”. Maybe “yes”. Maybe “no”. I’m sorry but, that is the perception that you have given me and until that changes, that is the perception that I am going to have to weigh before I provide you with that referral. You should know that I still might consider you to be a great person and a valued friend. I just can’t be that comfortable in referring you to others. What may be even more incredible to me is that most of these folks have little or no idea of the perceptions that they are creating with others. They don’t ever think about the fact that “the person that I disrespect today (and that is what it is), may be in a position to assist me in the future”.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Another “Fish Friday” – Wrap It Up!

Whoa! What a week. Lot’s going on and lot’s to discuss. It was a pretty interesting week in the worlds of social media, NetWorks! Boise / Sales Results LLC,  and technology so maybe we can begin the discussion with …. tech talk.

Virus Alert: Not any particular virus. mind you. Just the one that got in my computer (smile). I was pretty upset as I do pay for a multi-computer license for what I was lead to believe was a pretty robust anti-virus package, Nod32. Not robust enough, apparently (smile). Something grabbed, of all things, my iGoogle gadget for Gmail for hosted domains. I ran multiple scans, tried to block it with filters, deleted the gadget and thought that had taken care of it (it had not) and then finally did a shout out to one of our NetWorks! Boise members, Joe Mikitish at SEN Technologies. Joe is a rock star and an uber geek. He now has me running AVG (paid version) and Malwarebytes (also) paid. Go to Joe’s company site for a link to each under the “support” box.

There is another plus side to all of this. I decided not to reactivate (at least at this time) my iGoogle Gmail gadget and instead just set up a direct link on my FireFox tool bar. One of the things that I don’t like about FireFox is that the tabs it uses are so freakin’ wide that they eat up available space real quickly. There is a FireFox add-on available called Tab Control which allows you to specify minimum and maximum tab widths. I have both set to 150 which makes tabs approximately 1/2 the width of the standard tab.

Zemanta introduced their new version and the interface is beautiful and it works wonderfully with both this blog and with Gmail. Performance appears to have been substantially increased!

Paint Shop Pro X2 from Corel was on sale at Staples last week and I got it for $49.99 after mail in rebate. I’m hoping that if I play with it enough, it will allow me to display sharper screen captures on this site. Actually, I know it will as I have already had some success in improving the look at that was without even reading the book. Yes, it even has a book (smile).

On to Social Media ….

TweetDeck‘s web site is now configured to address the new Twitter List features in great detail.

LinkedIn has a new, very clean, interface that I think I am going to like a lot. I wish FaceBook would follow this lead.

SocialScope Lite’s Twitter and FaceBook client for the BlackBerry just introduced a new version (the first that I have seen since I started using it) and it now includes lists and geo tagging. Good thing that I can pull in my Twitter lists because the group tabs I had set for it did not get carried across in the update procedure. Fortunately, I had those duplicated on my lists within Twitter itself.

One thing I have always coveted for this site was to be able to provide readers with the ability to Tweet or otherwise share articles that they read and like. This site is on a WordPress.com platform and that is not one of the available widgets. Addtoany solved that as is demonstrated by the “Share” badge found at the end of this post.

NetWorks! Boise had its Group #3 pre-launch meeting this past Tuesday and we will be formally starting the group on January 5 with 15-20 members which will bring our total membership in the three groups to well over 50. Time to start planning for Group #4 but I am leaning toward it being a little different. I have another version of NetWorks! Boise that has been previously developed but has never been introduced. Maybe the time is …. now. At any rate, here we are in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression and we are doing networking groups that require double the investment of competitive groups, and we are experiencing rapid growth. In fact, seven of our member companies think that the groups are valuable enough that they have chosen to be represented in more than one group. These companies, all of our members, understand the difference between an expense and an investment and recognize the value we provide. If you do not grasp this concept, you don’t belong with us anyway (smile).

Sales Results LLC is the legal entity behind NetWorks! Boise. Very shortly it will become much more as we have several exciting projects and products in the works. I would love to tell you about them now but, that would be premature AND, I would have to kill you (smile). Stay tuned. Subscribe to this blog or get updates via email. Links to do either or both are found on the top right sections of our sidebar.

“Fish Friday”. That’s a wrap! Thank you for visiting!

Craig

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Xobni – Social CRM For Outlook – You May Be Surprised

I’ve been pretty vocal about my search for the “holy grail” of CRM‘s. There are a number of solutions out there and all are doing some pretty nice things in the way of integrating social media into a CRM platform but, nobody that I am aware of, at least not at an investment level that is affordable for the little guy, has come out with a package that I feel has yet reached that pinnacle of achievement. Let’s talk briefly about a few….

Salesforce.com is likely the defacto leader in this application field. And, they have introduced Twitter to their product but in what I would consider to be a limited fashion. It looks, feels, and acts like an add-on. What it is well designed for is scanning and identifying sales and service opportunities based on product mentions found within the Twitterverse stream. Furthermore, it can automatically create contacts from those discoveries. Pretty cool. FaceBook or LinkedIn integration? Not yet that I am aware of.

Gist is a way cool product that acts like a social media aggregator and it does gather a ton of information on every contact it encounters. Gist also boasts very tight integration with both Twitter and email. No LinkedIn or FaceBook integration yet as it pertains to updates. I know this will be coming soon particularly since LinkedIn recently opened up its API to developers and so you are now seeing those updates via clients like TweetDeck and Hootsuite. Where Gist is weak today, in my opinion, is in the creation of emails and tweets. It is great at gathering them and allowing you to go back to the original source, but not generating them.

Salesforce and Gist Integration: This is something that is very interesting and very nicely done. Put the two of them together and they do form a very very nice Social CRM with Gist doing the gathering and Salesforce doing the creating of things like standard email. I am personally convinced that these two products, and that may mean having them work in conjunction, may be the best solution in the near future for a SAAS solution to Social CRM. Because of this, I am going to be devoting a great deal of time and effort toward learning each better.

Threadsy is another very cool product and if I could splice Threadsy and Gist together, I would do it in a heartbeat. Up to three email accounts, Twitter, and FaceBook and a gorgeous interface to manage all three. No LinkedIn integration yet but from the standpoint of creating and monitoring traffic from these sites and email, it’s a thing of beauty. Honestly, I would kill to see them take this to the Social CRM level and I don’t feel that it would be that difficult to do. Listen to “Mr. Armchair Code Cutter” (smile).

This brings us to Xobni. Get ready but Xobni may be the one of the closest and simplest solutions out there and if you use Outlook, you can have it today and you can have it for free. Please take a look at the image below ….

So, what does Outlook do? A pretty fine job with email. Keeps your contact and calendar. Some people consider it to be a CRM and maybe it is. Combine it with Business Contact Manager and you do have a CRM. A “piss poor” one, mind you, but a CRM nonetheless (smile). Add Xobni and you get the column to the right that gives you at least some information about your contact in terms of whether or not they are even on LinkedIn, their Twitter stream that you can at least reply and retweet, and if they are on FaceBook. Xobni also gathers information on their network and also links you have shared as well as messages associated with this contact. Worth a look? I think so. This package gets even better with the addition of the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook. If you do a search within this blog site, you will find several articles mentioning this tool. Suffice to say that it brings much of the power of LinkedIn directly into Outlook and actually quite a bit more.

Well, there you have it. Something more to think about. I also wanted to add that I believe it was today that Zemanta introduced the latest version of their tool for blogging and Gmail. I am using it now as I type. Sweet. Very sweet.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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