Here’s the coolest thing about the Internet. You get to choose who to follow. You get to choose who to block. You get to choose the channels on which you communicate. You get to choose what to talk about. You get to choose who to listen to. You get to choose who you sell to. You get to choose who you buy from. You get to choose the high road. You get to choose whether you involve yourself in others’ business, or mind your own. You get to choose what filters you put on the information that is fed to you. You get to choose how you present yourself to others. You get to choose your perceptions. You get to choose to +1 and Like whatever you want. You get to choose. Are the choices you’re making out here every day getting you closer to your goals? [image by: colodio]
How to Stop Procrastinating on Your Social Media Plan
You probably already know where you want to get to in your business. You may already have a roadmap to get there. But there’s one thing that keeps coming up time and again when I talk to business owners. Many of you are trying to figure out how to fit all this social media stuff into the day to day operations of your business. You’ve got all the information, but are completely overwhelmed and have no idea where to begin. I can and do spend time with some of you, helping to build your social strategy and ensuring it is in alignment with your business goals. I can give you all sorts of information and pointers and links. I can completely overwhelm you with things to do and learn and figure out. And you can take all that information, go back to your office energized and ready to take on the online world….and then life takes over. You never quite get around to working on your plan any further. You see this social media stuff as Mount Everest, and you’re barely at Base Camp. So you put it off, and put it off. 6 months go by and you’re even further behind than you were before. And that plan we worked on months ago continues to gather dust, while technology whizzes by you at lightning speed. Sound familiar? Procrastination is the single biggest reason why people don’t move forward with their social media plans. Procrastination is a funny beast. To really understand its nature, it helps to look at the things you don’t procrastinate on. Let’s say you’re super confident in something. It’s easy to be able to sit down and do that thing, and do it well. It’s likely how you built your business, right? By using those skills you’ve worked so hard to master. What may be difficult for others is easy for you. Now take something that you may not be so confident in….like social media. And you will come up with a million ways to put it off. Understanding how to solve a problem like procrastination means understanding what causes it. And what causes procrastination is lack of information and confidence. Most of us get the information part right. It’s why we take courses, workshops, webinars. But where we fall short is, we don’t develop confidence in the thing we’ve learned. There are two sides to learning something new. There’s learning it, and then applying that learning. Where the problem happens, especially when it comes to building a social media plan, is in the application. You can read all the books in the world on a topic, spend hundreds of dollars on courses, workshops and webinars, but until you actually TRY it, you’re never going to get to the point of feeling confident enough to stop procrastinating. The solution to procrastination is to TRY stuff. But try what? You’re already overwhelmed. You’ve got all these books and blogs and plans and things, and they all say different stuff. There’s new things coming out all the time. You can’t possibly keep up. But you don’t have to try it all at once. Nope. Just try one thing. After a while, that thing won’t be so scary. You’ll become more confident. And then you can stop procrastinating on that piece. Then tackle the next thing. To help you along in this, here’s short list of “one things” to try: Go hang out at http://search.twitter.com. Spend some time searching on topics of interest. Get to know the syntax of Twitter. Don’t know what a RT is? Google will tell you. Create an account at http://www.google.com/reader. Click “Add a Subscription”. Search on topics of interest. Click subscribe. Change the way you find information by having it delivered to you instead. Set up a Page on Facebook just so you can see how it works. Actually walking through the process and filling out all the information makes it less scary. Then you can slowly start to build upon that page you’ve created. Complete your Google Profile. It doesn’t take a long time, but will give you another way to be found. And don’t panic about not being in Google + yet, you’ve got some time. But if you’re feeling like trying something new, send me an email at sue [at] jestercreative.com to request an invite. Grab a blank piece of paper or computer screen. Write down one sentence each for 5 things you would like tell people about something you care about. That list will be the titles of your first 5 blog posts. Now go write one of them. The point is, you don’t have to do everything at once. You can just try one thing from the list, and play with that for a while. Get comfortable. Then, go back to your social media plan. And see how much more sense it all makes now. [photo by Cliph]
Social Media: It Ain’t All Business
I spend a great deal of time showing people how to use social media to help market their businesses. I spend a good chunk building and implementing social media strategies for clients too. People really want to understand how they can these new communication tools to help drive new opportunities in their doors. I totally get that. I want to do that too! But sometimes, it’s good when social media isn’t all about business. Sometimes, it’s good when it’s just…social. I’ve been hanging around on Twitter since early 2007. At that time, there weren’t many of us there. My Twitter social circle was pretty small. And in those early days, we spent most of our time just socializing. We chit chatted, joked around, and participated in random silliness. We didn’t spend much time self-promoting, or gushing over gurus, or “leveraging the tools to drive business goals”. We just played with it, and had fun, and got to know each other. We became friends….good friends. Somewhere along the way, “goofing off” on social networks seems to have become somewhat taboo. If you’re messing around, you’re not getting your super important work done. If you’re being silly, and chit chatting and carrying on, then you’re making too much noise. If you’re not taking things seriously, then people start to take you less seriously. If you’re letting your personal life creep into your online presence, then you’re somehow less of a professional. But you know what? I’d rather do business with people who have more than one side to them. I’d rather get to know people for their professional talents AND for the kind of human being they are. And sometimes, I don’t want to sell my widgets to people. And I don’t want to have widgets sold to me either, just because we “have a relationship” and are “engaging with each other”. Sometimes, I just want to hang out with my friends. Because a lot of my friends these days don’t live in the same city, or heck, even the same country as me. And hanging out and chit chatting on Twitter or Facebook or whatever is how we go out for coffee, or beers, or lunch, because we can’t do that in person very often. It’s how we keep up with each others’ lives and families and careers. It’s how we support each other in tough times and celebrate with each other in good times. So…..Jon, Becky, Amber, Bob, Chris, Other Bob, Diane, Steve, Deb, Chel, Danny, Jason, and Ian…and everyone else in this wacky online world, who I am so honoured to have as my friends. Thanks for goofing off with me. I appreciate all the richness and laughter and hugs and love you bring to my life. [photo by: gaspi*yg]
Who Are You Online?
Who are you? It’s the age old question, and in the online world, it’s one that is asked more often than just about anything else. When you put your unique perspective of the world online, you inject your thoughts and ideas into other people’s worlds. Conversation ensues. It’s amazing to think that these connections are being made, millions of them every day, between people who may otherwise have never had the opportunity to come together. But who are you? When you fall into my online field of view for the first time, the first thing I do is click on your profile. What I see at this point is critical, because it puts you in one of two categories. Let’s use Twitter as an example. If I click your Twitter profile and see a one line description and no links, then to me, you’re just that person I know from Twitter. But if I see a description that actually describes what you’re about, and a link to your blog, web site, podcast, or whatever, then you go from being that person on Twitter, to being a blogger that’s passionate about dogs. Or a graphic designer with a keen sense of colour and form. Or a guy that really digs Stephen King novels. It doesn’t matter what you’re using social media tools for. You could be looking for work, or drumming up new business opportunities. You could be just looking to socialize and meet new people. You could just be curious. But if you’re going to use social media, do yourself and the people you’re hoping to meet a big favour. Tell us who you are. Give us something to explore about you. Build a body of work that reflects your goals, dreams, business, desires, or passions and put it out here for the world to see. Don’t just be “that person from Twitter”. I want to know who you are. [photo by Demi Brooke]
When The Time Is Right
I’ll start my business when the time is right. I’ll build a blog when the time is right. I’ll get married and settle down when the time is right. I’ll lose weight when the time is right. I’ll write that novel when the time is right. I’ll call that friend when the time is right. How many of these things ring a bell to you? We spend a lot of time thinking about the things we’d like to do in our lives. We spend countless hours dreaming about what it will be like at some future point, when our business is succeeding, or our relationships are stronger, and when we’re more fit and healthy. But how many of those hours do we actually spend working on those things? We wait, because it’s not the right time yet. We’re not financially secure enough to quit our day job and start a business. We’re not sure if he or she is the one. We don’t have the time to focus on writing. We’re under too much stress to stop eating and start exercising. But someday, when all these things work themselves out…boy oh boy…just watch us go! We wait, because waiting is easier than making a commitment. Because it’s far less scary to dream than to do. Because, we’ve got lots of time left, right? The hours, days, months and years continue on without us. We get lost in our dream world, waiting for the exact right moment to make our move. But that moment never comes. Instead, what if you just did one thing today that moved you closer? What if you just signed up for a blog, and created a title for your first post, then wrote a few paragraphs? What if you sat down with your sweetheart and had THAT conversation about your future together? What if you put down that ice cream bar and went for a walk instead? What if you just opened your laptop and started writing? What if you started working on a web site for your new business instead of watching reruns of Heroes? What if you just picked up the phone and called that long lost friend to say hi? What would change if you did that one thing, right now? The time IS right. [photo by Steve Groisbois]
Event-Based Social Media
As some of you may have seen from my Twitter and Facebook stream the past few days, I’m immersed in a big project this week. My company is leading the social media and content gathering efforts at the Women’s Worlds 2011 Congress, an international feminist conference taking place in Ottawa this week. Over 1,600 people from 92 countries have converged on our fair city for a week of learning, sharing, and connecting. There are more than 300 sessions planned, as well as several Arts and Culture events. Many social media blogs spend a lot of time talking about social media for businesses and organizations. There’s a tonne of valuable information out there. But less often is there talk of social media around events. It’s a different beast, and one that merits its own set of guidelines. I thought it might be helpful to share a few things I’ve learned over the years about event-based social media. Start Early. Probably the most important thing you can do when planning social media activities around events is to start as early as possible. We began to ramp up our social media efforts on Women’s Worlds about 10 weeks ago (and we’ve been strategizing about it for nearly 1 year). This meant establishing presences on the various channels and starting to communicate, post links, follow people and engage. Keep in mind it will be slow going at first – just because your event is at the top of your mind, doesn’t mean it will be at the top of everyone else’s. But it’s critical to establish yourself early on, and be posting relevant content, links, and other information – even if you feel like you’re talking to a wall sometimes. If you’ve done the pre-work and really established your online presence ahead of time, then when the event hits, people will find you quickly, catch onto what you are doing, and most importantly, they will trust you. Be Everywhere. When it comes to building a social media strategy for a small business, often we’ll tell people to just pick one or two channels and start there. For example, get a blog going, and work on building a presence on Facebook. This can work out just fine in this case, especially if you have limited resources. But for events, it’s critical to be everywhere – because your audience is everywhere. Establishing a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (or Picasa), and linking these tools via your web presence are vital. Not everyone is on Twitter or Facebook, so you want to give multiple options for people to be consuming what you’re putting out. And video, audio, photos and text are all vital to the full event experience – so make plans to capture and share all of these things. Monitor monitor monitor. In the build-up to the event, and once the event is underway, monitoring is absolutely essential. Things change very quickly during a live event, and the social channels will quickly become a hub of activity. That’s why it’s important that you get your monitoring set up an advance of the event. I highly recommend Hootsuite for monitoring Facebook and Twitter. The dashboard gives a bird’s eye view of everything that everyone is saying, and allows you to respond quickly when you need to. Interact. Like in business, nobody wants to hear you just pushing out your own stuff all the time. As important as social channels are for sharing critical event-related info, it’s also a place where you can share what others are experiencing. Make good use of the retweet function in Twitter, and keep your Facebook wall open so event participants can post their own links and share what’s important to them. Allow event participants to be guest bloggers on your web site, and you’ll add a rich new layer to your audience’s experience. Be Consistent and Timely. Timing is everything when it comes to communicating about an event. Now, it’s likely you have other stuff on the go too besides just social media, so you may not be able to sit and spend all day tweeting and Facebooking and blogging. So, carve out some time each day to work on developing content and scheduling it. The Schedule function in Hootsuite is wonderful – you can sit down in the morning and poke several of your posts for the day, and time them so that they go out around critical events. You can pre-write a batch of blog posts and schedule them to be posted at the perfect times. However, scheduling doesn’t replace actually being there – you still need to monitor the channels and reply as necessary, and be present as much as possible. It will be busy, no doubt, but scheduling can help you to keep on top of it, maintain consistency and not forget to post important stuff. These are just a few things to note about event-based social media. It’s an extremely busy job and not one that you can do half-way. You will pull 14 hour days, posting a LOT of different content, keeping an eye on the activity and interacting a ton. But in the end, giving your audience a rich, multi-media experience will enhance your event greatly. So have fun, and remember, you can sleep when it’s over! Do you have any tips for running social media for events? Please share them here! [photo by Pink Sherbet Photography]
The Ultimate Distraction
Cinematographer Mark Poirier kicked off PAB2011 last night with an inspiring keynote about storytelling. Here are a few thoughts on his talk…. Mark Poirier has, in my opinion, the ultimate storytelling job. Mark is a cinematographer, but in a very specialized part of the business. He shoots in IMAX 3-D. A far cry from your typical camera. It takes 4 people to lift Mark’s camera, and something like 3 people to operate it (including him). The technology is immense, and complicated, and I’m sure, subject to any number of time-sucking malfunctions. And as we know in the film business, time is money. But there’s more. You see, in spite of the challenges of working with this large, expensive format, Mark’s job is to get the shot that tells the story. Not only that, but Mark is often getting those shots in the most harrowing of places. On the ground in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. 1000 feet up on the edge of a cliff. Next to the loud, giant waves of the South Pacific. Mark Poirier operates in a world of distraction, yet must remain focused on the task at hand. He must not just do his job, but he must do it consistently and exceptionally well. No matter what. We live in a world where the level of distraction is at an all-time high. Information is pummelling at us from all directions, at alarming speeds. Our attention is diluted like never before, and our temptation is to point and click on everything that catches our eye. And as a result of this distraction, we’re not always achieving what we want to achieve. We’re getting 3 stars on every level of Angry Birds, but we’re not moving needles on our business goals. We’re talking with people on our networks, but we’re not getting that next blog post onto their screens. In many ways, we’re subject to the same level of distraction that a guy like Mark Poirier is. The technology in front of us sometimes works, and sometimes fails. It prevents us from focusing and wastes our time. The things happening in our social circles are coming at us continuously, and we’re unable to detach from it. But Mark Poirier has shown me that distraction can be overcome. By spending the time (and money) testing the gear, and knowing the technology and having good people to help with it, Mark is able to overcome any malfunctions that might occur. He doesn’t let potential technology hiccups distract him from the work. And although our technology might not cost $1 million, we can overcome our technical hurdles too, by being prepared, learning how to use it well, and calling in people to help when we need it. Mark overcomes the physical distractions by focusing on the most important thing – getting the shot. It’s not to say he’s not affected by what’s happening around him (it would be impossible not to be affected by the devastation in Haiti), but at the moment he’s there, doing his job, there’s really no choice but to focus on how to tell the story through the lens. The best way to overcome distractions related to what’s happening around you is to shift your mind onto the task itself. Make that task the most important thing, at all times. Then, even though the distractions will still be all around you, they won’t affect you in that moment. Distraction is a pervasive beast, but one that can be overcome, by ensuring your tools are working for you, and by remembering the job that needs to be done.
PAB2011: Not Just Another Social Media Conference
I’ve been playing in this social media game for a while, but one of the things I don’t really do is conferences. There are a million of them, it seems, and at least once or twice a month, I witness hundreds or even thousands of geeks converging on some (usually American) city for 3 to 5 days of….well I’m not always sure what. What I have seen with many social media conferences is that, though there do seem to be some great keynotes, panel discussions and presentations, not a lot actually gets DONE. People come away saying things like “I got to go to some great parties”, or “that talk by that famous blogger was really inspiring”, or “I got so many business cards!”. But rarely do people seem to leave conferences with actual real things that they put into practice. This is where I think conferences like PAB are different. First, let’s clear something up. PAB stands for Podcasters Across Borders, and although when it started in 2006 it was actually a conference about podcasting, it has evolved into a conference for anyone who creates content across any medium (audio, video, photography, text, semaphore, you name it.) I am relatively new to the world of PAB, though I’ve known the organizers, Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis for a long time. In fact, if it wasn’t for Mark and Bob, and a couple of other unsuspecting smart people, I probably wouldn’t be doing any of what I do in social media today. My first PAB conference was last year. I had somewhat of a sense of what to expect, but I what I actually experienced was so much more. Here is what makes PAB different from other conferences. Everyone is equally important. At some of the big conferences, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. You see signs and posters everywhere for all the A-list mucky mucks that are speaking. You can’t get into certain rooms because they are filled to capacity, while other, lesser known panels happen in near-empty rooms. There’s a hierarchy, and I’ve always gotten the sense at these events that if you’re not as well known, what you have to say isn’t deemed as important (Podcamps are the exception to this, by the way- I’m talking about the big, expensive conferences here). PAB takes place over 3 days in one single room. There are usually not more than 120 people there at the most. The speakers are given centre stage and all eyes and attention. Sure, we have people who are more high profile than others – bestselling authors, popular podcast hosts, well-known journalists – but none of that matters at PAB. It’s a level playing field, and everyone is an equal, and each individual’s unique perspectives are embraced. Well known folks hang with less known folks, and nobody cares “who” you are. They only care who you actually are…as a person. Networking happens organically. There’s nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than going to a “networking” event. You’re forced into a room, trying to balance your cocktail and a plate of shrimp bites, while people come up and try to shake your hand and ask “what do you do?”, and stuff business cards in the crook of your arm. Ugh. The great thing about PAB is that networking is a byproduct, not the emphasis. Social events are extremely casual, all participants are more than welcome. It usually happens in a restaurant, bar, or on a boat. There’s a lot of people at PAB who are close friends, but new people are brought in to the mix seamlessly. People are not spending all their time shaking hands and passing out business cards. Mostly they are talking about life, and passion, and media making. We don’t really talk about our jobs at PAB. We talk about what gets us out of bed in the morning. We learn what makes others tick. And we laugh, and cry, and laugh, and laugh some more. And after the conference is over, we walk away with new connections. Maybe we do business someday, maybe we make new friends. Maybe we do both. That’s how networking SHOULD work. Suffice it to say, PAB is one of the best conferences I’ve been to, and I think one of the premiere content creation conferences in the world. There’s still a few short hours to register, so if you’re so inclined, and can make it to downtown Ottawa in time, click here and we hope to see you there! You can see the full list of all the amazing speakers here. If you can’t make it, then I highly recommend you plan for PAB2012. Meanwhile, I’ll be posting about my PAB experience here all weekend and you can follow the #PAB2011 hashtag to get a sense of what it’s all about.
Practicing Patience on the Bus
Sometimes I take the bus. Oh sure, I have a fully functioning car. But if I’m headed downtown and don’t feel like dealing with traffic or parking, I take the bus. I actually like traveling by bus. The people I see on the bus are always interesting, and the bus takes a different route than I do when I drive, so I get to see the city from a different angle. The bus gives me lots of ideas. But mostly it forces me to be more patient. Waiting at the bus stop. Waiting for the bus to get me where I want to go, with all the stops in between. Walking from the bus stop to my destination. I move at a much different speed when traveling by bus, as opposed to traveling by car. To me, the bus is the ultimate exercise in patience. I was standing at the bus stop yesterday and a young mother and her little 2 year old girl were there too. The little girl asked her Mom when the bus would come. Her Mom said, “It’s coming soon, we just have to wait a bit, and be patient”. The little girl said, “What’s patient?”. The Mom replied, “It’s when we have to wait for a while, but we don’t mind.” Patience is when we have to wait for a while, but we don’t mind. It’s too bad that we don’t have more patience when it comes to achieving our goals. We want to have it all, right now. We want our business that we just started, to start being profitable immediately. We want our blog to be an overnight success, so we can start monetizing like the big boys and girls are. But the world doesn’t work like that. There’s a real disconnect between how fast everything moves these days and how much time it actually takes to make the most of it. We think that because it’s so easy and fast to get up and running now, and because information flies around at the speed of light, that our success with it must happen just as fast. We see the folks with popular blogs and a big following succeeding as businesspeople, teachers, and professional speakers. And because we have only seen them at the top of their game, we assume their ascent happened in the blink of an eye. We become impatient, because we are still at the place we are at, and we’re not where we want to be. We see what’s possible, and we work and work and work, and we still aren’t quite there yet. Our impatience is frustrating. It’s overwhelming. And sometimes it makes us want to just give up. Every journey you take, whether it’s the journey of finding the perfect job, landing a big client, or finding true love, involves waiting. Overnight successes are one in a million, yet so often we bank on going from unknown to superstar in one fell swoop, because we perceive that’s how others have done it. When we do achieve a success or two, it’s tempting to rest on our laurels, because we figure that the waiting is now over – we’ve made it. But the waiting is not over, and it never is – and that is the point. Practicing patience is the most important thing you can do when you’re working towards your goals. Because as much as hard, hard work is necessary to move you closer to your goals, waiting and being patient is part of the game too. The secret is to learn not to mind. [photo by B Tal]
Going With Your Gut – Intuition as a Social Media Strategy
When us old timers started out in this social media stuff 5 years ago, there wasn’t a whole lot to go on. There were no training courses. Heck, there weren’t even any books yet. What we learned, we gleaned from a combination of reading the blogs of smart people, connecting with other social media geeks on Twitter, and a big chunk of our own intuition. We just tried stuff. Some of it worked gloriously. Other stuff failed spectacularly. We clicked and explored and shared in the wild, wide open, and relied on our gut to know what to do next. And it shaped our experience in a big way. I think in general, most of us don’t trust our intuition enough. We want to know all the answers, and be 100% confident in everything before we step foot into the unknown. These days, there are countless training courses and books and paid online communities that we feel will give us the inside scoop on how to succeed in social media. We spend hours writing and refining our goals and building concrete, measurable action plans. We consider the risks of this action or that, and weigh all the options. Only then, do we consider actually sitting down to create something. Look, having a social media strategy is vitally important. I’m definitely not arguing with that; I spend a tremendous amount of of time working with people on building good social strategies. But all the strategies in the world are not going to help you if you are not willing to just try stuff. And that’s where intuition comes in. Intuition is a muscle. If left unattended, it will quickly wither. It’s easy to let your intuition go – especially with the abundant products and tools that now exist to show us the way. But the problem with only listening to others is that your experience is always going to be unique. Your circumstances are not everyone else’s. Only you know all aspects of yourself and your situation, which means that ultimately, there’s a point where you need to let go of all the advice floating around and simply go with your gut. That could mean choosing to interact with a certain person (or not). It could mean going with that compulsion you have to offer a differing point of view on somebody’s blog. It might mean finally listening to that niggling feeling you have in the pit of your stomach to actually sit down and write your own post, or do that podcast. Not because your social media strategy says you should. But because your gut says you should. Of course, intuition isn’t the ONLY social media strategy you should have. But I challenge you to spend a bit of time today letting your intuition navigate you through this world. Instead of interacting with someone just because they are “influential”, interact with someone because they get your attention. Get quiet and listen to your gut, and if it tells you to write or record something, then do it, without thinking “how can I measure this”? And never forget, your gut knows more than any guru. [photo by add1sun]