Learn to be in 2 Places at Once & Save Time Doing It (4/4)

As the world of social media continues to become more and more crowded we find it harder and harder to keep up with the pace. How do these huge brands have people that use all of these different platforms? How do they stay relevant? They must sit in front of their computers and type posts every 10 minutes, do they even have another job? As small businesses, we don’t have the resources for someone sit and ‘play’ on social media all day long. The good news is we don’t have to.

The bad news is that if you agreed with the word ‘play’ above you haven’t seen the relevance of social media and you need to open your eyes. It’s not going away anytime soon so embrace it. Those businesses that embrace social media marketing now will be light-years ahead of those that pick it up in 6 months or 2 years. Think of it like investing, the earlier you get in the more value you can bring to yourself even if it’s a small amount.

So far in Social Stratgery we have gone through the process of listing ourselves everywhere in Part 1. We have picked our top platforms to use based on our business’ demographics in Part 2. And we have discussed how to effectively communicate on those hand-picked platforms in Part 3. Today we’ll talk about the rest of the parties and how to get our message across on each of the other forms of social media that we discussed in Part 1. Here are some time saving social media tips and strategies.

The Plan

Most businesses have a website. If you’re reading this, you probably have a website, if not we’ve got a whole other set of problems to tackle… And most of our websites do not just sit dormant, we use them to create content for our customers and communicate to them what we do.

As we add content to our website we need to share it with the world. The online world. The social media world. If our content just sits on our site and nobody sees it, it doesn’t do us a bit of good.

Let’s use an example:

  • Joseph sells product X for a living
  • Joseph puts new uses up for product X on his website each week
  • Joseph begins to share his product and uses for it on as many forms of social media as he can find
  • Joseph gets one of his pins on Pinterest (not his main platform) re-pinned 482 times by chance
  • Joseph drives 5 new sales onto his site from his decision to post everywhere automatically

By sharing his products on every form of social media he can find, Joseph is increasing his chances of being found. In our example, let’s say Facebook is Joseph’s main platform. But he finds a way to distribute to every other platform effectively when he makes new posts about how to use his products, e.g. Pinterest.

The Hack(s)

We all know I am a big fan of using technology to increase our productivity. So here’s some technology that has helped Joseph and millions of others distribute their information to their ancillary forms of social media. These plugins are for WordPress (not sure about Twitterfeed), they are all free, and they require some setup in the beginning, they don’t all just automatically link to our profiles. Take some time to set them up properly and each time we create new content we can publish it to multiple social platforms at once. 

  • Jetpack – Jetpack is a plugin that connects WordPress blog features to WordPress.com users. Amongst them is the feature to “Publicize” content to a few forms of social media simply by pressing “Publish” on a post or a page of your site. Here are the sites Jetpack allows us to post to automatically:
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn – What I use
    • Twitter
    • Tumblr – What I use
    • Path
  • SNAP – The Social Network Auto Poster plugin allows you to post to a plethora of different social networks all at once, just like Jetpack. Here is a list of the platforms it services.
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Tumblr
    • Path
    • Blogger
    • StumbleUpon – What I use
    • Delicious
    • Twitter – What I use
    • Diigo
    • Blog.com
    • Livejournal
    • Plurk
    • A handful of others that I am not familiar with
    • Google+ & Pinterest – These can be purchased for $49.95 each
  • Twitterfeed – I do not use Twitterfeed but it was high on the list of services when researching this topic. It only posts to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn from what I can tell but seems to be very simple and tracks results for you.

Imagine Pinning, Tweeting, Tumbling, and LinkedIn-ing (huh?) all with the push of one button. That’s what we will enable our websites to do with these plugins. We will be able to be in multiple places at once and save time doing it. We increase our outreach with minimally additional effort. If you are not the person that manages your website, ask them to download one or a combination of these (like I have) to get your content out there ASAP. Each plugin shows your contently slightly different across each platform so take some time to analyze how your content looks once it is posted so it appears the way you want it to. 

But wait, if we’re just posting on all these sites and we’re not engaging with users, isn’t that what you called ‘shouting’ in Part 3???

ChurchillContradictions

Yes ,I said we don’t need to spend time on each social media platform. Yes, if we try to be everywhere without using these tools we’ll go crazy. And YES, this will create the ‘shouting’ effect that we talked about in Part 3. I know what I said, and yes, I’m sticking by it.

BUT, when we can set these programs up ahead of time and it’s a simple as a button, why not post to those sites? Why not put our names out there? Why not increase our online footprint? This is about saving time and increasing our effectiveness, not limiting who we reach. If our customers aren’t on Pinterest (like Joseph’s) than they won’t follow us and they don’t care that we’re ‘shouting’ on that platform.

If we’re communicating effectively on our hand-picked platform, we don’t need to worry about ‘shouting’ on other platforms. A majority of our customers aren’t there and if we get additional traffic that’s icing on the cake.

Scheduling

So now we know how to communicate on our hand-picked platforms as well as our ancillary platforms. But what if we still want to conserve time? What if this is STILL overwhelming for us? Don’t fret, there are more tools that we can incorporate to help us save time and increase our visibility.

Below are the two most popular social scheduling sites, they allow us to insert pre-determined messages, include a link, include a picture/video, and schedule a time for the posts to go out. These sites shrink our website URL’s that we’re posting (that’s where the ow.ly and buff.ly links come from) to enable us to use as many characters as possible for our messages. Each site allows us to connect various social media accounts so we can post to each of them simultaneously. When we set aside time, once a day/week/fortnight, we can plan out what we want to say to our followers on a variety of social media platforms all at once.

If we take time to schedule messages, we can fill in the hours that we know we won’t be able to check our social media accounts. For example, I do a majority of our work on social media in the morning, but I work on other projects in the afternoon. So while I’m away from social media in the afternoon and evenings, I use Hootsuite to schedule messages so the accounts stay active. My live messages are the engaging ones and the scheduled messages are the ‘asks.’

  • HootSuite – This has a wider variety of platforms to choose from and allows users to seem more interactions with followers such as @mentions or Twitter. We have the paid version for Epic Day Outdoors and we are able to schedule over 300 messages per sitting using a CSV file (similar to Excel). Duplicate messages are NOT allowed on this platform.
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • Linkedin
    • Foursquare
    • WordPress
    • Mixi
  • Buffer – This essentially does the same thing as Hootsuite, but it has better statistical analysis and is more effective for Linkedin posting. I am not sure of the capabilities of Buffer since we don’t use it, but I’m sure there is a bulk uploader just like we use for Hootsuite.
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • Linkedin
    • app.net

Yes, this does take spontaneity out of our messages, but not everything we talk about has to be spontaneous. If we have things like interesting articles or funny pictures that our followers will enjoy, we can schedule those to be posted when we know we won’t be spending time on social media. This allows us to fill in the gaps so we can always be relevant.

Checking In

One trick that I use to attempt to keep my ancillary profiles up to date is checking them each once per month. For example, I’ll go to Google+ and connect with some new people, make sure my profile is up to date, and like/comment on a few things while I’m on the platform. If someone has commented on a post, I’ll comment back. If someone has followed me, I’ll follow them back. Google+ is not one of my main platforms, but it helps to not have a barren, dormant account if I’m posting my daily blog posts there.

If someone comes across our profile and they see old personal information combined with no activity, we can’t expect them to follow us. However, if we maintain these profiles and check up on them once per month (or so) we will have a much better chance of growing our followers, even if that’s not our hand-picked platform we spend a majority of our time on. 

The Future

This has been a long and technical series of posts, but I know that many small businesses are missing out because they don’t know these processes. Social Media is not a fad, it is not going away anytime soon. Every day more platforms are developed, more users sign up, and we are weaving it deeper and deeper into our social fabric. When we learn to embrace the change we will have an advantage over most of our competitors. When we embrace it we can set ourselves apart from the crowd and begin get ahead of the curve.

Please share this with anyone you think might enjoy reading this or get something out of it, that’s why I wrote it. I hope you have enjoyed my mini-series on social media known as Social Strategery, but more than that I hope it will help you improve your social media marketing!

Part 1 – How to be Everywhere on Social Media Without Losing Focus

Part 2 – How Small Businesses Should Choose Social Media Platforms

Part 3 – Why talk if nobody cares? (no shouting, please)

Part 4 – Learn to be in Two Places at Once and Save Time Doing It

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How do you engage with your followers? 

Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your successes (& failures) on the subject. 

P.S. 13 Days till Christmas!

Why talk if nobody cares? (no shouting, please) (3/4)

The entire purpose of social media is to connect with others, plain and simple. Connection (outside of social media) happens when we talk with others and share experiences. Connection is a meaningful thing, it’s the 2nd and 3rd most important in Maslow’s Hierarchy after our basic survival needs. Translated, this means connection isn’t just being someone’s friend on Facebook or following someone in Tumblr. Social media connections are made when we talk with people (not at them), when we feel a sense of community, and when others care about what we have to offer.  Connection doesn’t happen just because we live in the same city or occasionally go to the same party.Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

We now have to figure out how to connect with people on these social media platforms. In Part 1 of Social Strategery we talked about being everywhere so we could be found at any party if someone were to look for us. Then in Part 2 we talked about picking one or two platforms that will have the largest demographic of our customer base and preparing to focus our efforts on those platforms. In Part 3 we’ll discuss how to make those connections on our hand-picked platforms. In Part 4 (tomorrow) we will talk about how to distribute information to the other accounts that we have setup we are not focusing on.

Communication

Communication is a two way street: talking AND listening. The most effective social media campaigns listen more than they talk. A common mistake that many businesses make is to just post on Facebook when they want something. We post when we have a new product, or we post when reduce a price, or we post when we want to same something from people. We need to post when we have something that will bring value to our customers, not just when we want something from them.

Here are some of the worst practices on social media that many businesses have in common:

  • they do more talking then listening, and some don’t listen at all
  • they only post things that are beneficial to them
  • they don’t have authentic personality in their posts
  • they aren’t clear with their messages

Here’s now we can avoid those mistakes and build effective social media campaigns by listening, engaging, and then asking.

Listen

Think about the guy  that always talks and you can never get a word in. How did he get invited to this party? Does anyone like him? Does anyone ask his opinion? We don’t have to because he usually offers it without being prompted. This is how we are perceived when all we do is post on social media without engaging. It’s a self-serving approach that would be scoffed at if we changed the setting to a party. I call this ‘shouting.’ Telling people to “Look at me, I’m the greatest!” without bringing value the people we’re trying to convert to customers.

If we watch our timelines we will find out what people want and we can offer something to them if we’re attentive. We can see what is popular online and craft our messages to resonate with the people that follow us. When we cater our messages to our audience we are much more likely to get them engaged with us. I use the below tools to monitor what is going on in the world. Set these up and have them sent to your inbox once a day/week so you can find out what is going on outside of your immediate circles.

Another way to listen is to ask for feedback on our social media accounts. Ask followers what product improvements they could use, ask them what new services they would like us to offer, ask what they don’t like about our business, ask what they had for lunch today. Just ask! And when people give us honest feedback, we need to respond honestly to them. Even if we’re not face to face, people’s noses still work. BS is easy to smell.

Engage

One way Epic Day Outdoors has engaged with users on Instagram is by finding pictures that are relevant to our niche and commenting on them. If we find a great fishing photo we tell them congrats, if we find a great surfing video we compliment them on their wave and ask where the video was taken, and if we see funny hashtag on a rock climbing picture we make a relevant joke and ask tell them it looks like a fun day.

We like as many photos as possible and we do our best to comment on the ones that aren’t quite “like-worthy” so that our outreach is even larger.We follow the people we engage with and do our best to flatter them when we initially follow them. We are giving as much as much as possible so when it’s time to ask, people are more open to give back. If all we did was post photos and follow people, we wouldn’t have a very engaged user base and our social campaign wouldn’t be very effective.

Beneficial

So we know what NOT to do; don’t shout at people, it’s rude. When engaging, remember the party analogy, we want to provide value to the people we’re talking to. Value can be funny posts, value can be telling someone they have a nice cover photo, value can even be sending people to your site using content marketing (free info) that could be useful to them. Value is not what we sell.

People need to know who we are and know that we provide value of some sort or they will tune out our noise. We can also provide value by offering helpful tips, free user guides, or even interesting articles that pertain to our business. The most effective social media campaigns will provide beneficial, authentic information that is relevant to what is happening right now in the world by keeping an eye on trends with the tools above. This does not have to come from us, it can come from other sources as long as it’s relevant and trusted. When we post things that we didn’t create, our credibility is on the line.

If a tree falls in the woods...

If a tree falls in the woods…

Authentic

When we mix the personality of our business with our valuable posts we are moving in the right direction. We want to convey messages that reflect who we are and what people can expect when they get us on the phone, when they come to our website, or when they visit us in our store. People should not be able to tell the difference from social media messages to in-store conversations.

It’s important for a brand to have an authentic voice or else we can become lost in the noisy world of social media. Think, what makes us unique? Why should people be our customers instead of our competitors? When we answer those questions, infuse our social media messages with those answers to get our authentic voice.

Asking

To avoid ‘shouting’ we need to be transparent about when it’s time to ask for the sale. This means we don’t try and trick people into clicking a link or signing up, we tell them up front what they’re getting. On sales calls, we don’t just walk up to someone and ask if they want to buy. We take time to build rapport, we make connections, we ask questions about their business/life, and then when the time is right we go for the close.

We have to engage before we close or the sales process will never work. If we change the setting, we see how redundant our efforts can be on social media. So now that we’ve provided value more than we’ve asked for business, we can be clear about what we’re asking for. The best sales people are not sneaky, they are not liars, and they are good communicators. Now we have a voice, we have attention of our users, and have the opportunity to ask for the sale. We have set ourselves up for success, just ask the question, “Will you buy my product?”

Thus far in Social Strategery we have covered how to be everywhere on social media, how to pick the right platform for our business, and now we know how to communicate effectively on our hand-picked platforms of choice. In Part 4 we’ll explore how to maintain a presence on other platforms that we do not use as often as our hand-picked accounts.

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How do you engage with your followers? 

Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your successes (& failures) on the subject. 

P.S. 14 Days till Christmas!

How Small Businesses Should Choose Social Media Platforms (2/4)

When choosing a social media platform for our businesses, we need to take 3 major facets into consideration: (1.) Who are our customers? (2.) Where are they? (3.) Which one(s) am I willing to use every day? When we can honestly answer these three questions, we are able to come up with the social media platform(s) that will guide our business in the right direction. In Part 2 of Social Strategery we’ll set ourselves up for success by discussing how small businesses should choose social media platforms.

1.) Who are our customers?

Many small businesses do not know the demographics of their customers, sad but true. We don’t know who we cater to, we don’t know who our ‘ideal customer’ is. Most small business owners have no clue who our typical customer is because we’re too focused on the business itself and we haven’t stopped to make any sort of analysis like this.

It isn’t important enough to stop day-to-day operations so that we can run reports, do surveys, or think about who we are targeting with our marketing efforts. We just wake up, put our heads down, and try to make as much money as possible that day. And since we don’t do these things, we aren’t targeting our messages. When we don’t target our messages, we are using a buckshot approach and trying to hit everything with one shot. This is ineffective on social media (& in many traditional forms of advertising as well).

I am just as guilty of it, I have no clue who my readers are. People always ask me, “So who are you writing for?” and I usually have to wiggle through an uncomfortable answer about management, mixed with some leadership, but sometimes marketing and a dash of sales. It’s hard to stop and take time to really think about who we want to talk to, and what we want to say to them. I’ll talk more on communicating on in the social space tomorrow.

Getting to know them

In the mean time, here are some great tools that can help us to get to know our customers. If we know who our customers are, we are more likely to find them in each respective ‘party’ (reference Part 1 of our Social Strategery series). We will analyze a few forms of social media below with information like m/f users and age brackets, these tools can help you find out these types of information.

  • Survey Monkey – The largest online survey company
  • Google Consumer Surveys – It’s as simple as choosing a target audience, choosing a question, and asking
  • Zoomerang – Another large online survey company
  • Poll Daddy – With free, paid, and corporate plans this has the capacity to scale for your business insights
  • Constant Contact – If you are unfortunate enough to use Constant Contact, the bright side is that they offer survey services

Most of these are free, we only need one so choose which one you are comfortable with and starting asking your customers who they are! The power of feedback is incredible, and very few small businesses have ever asked what their customers want. Ask and it might open your eyes to some great opportunities!

2.) Hello… Is anybody out there?

We have to look in the right places to find our customers, think back to the analogy in Part 1 about social platforms being parties. Now if our target demographic is 18-25 year single old men, will they be in the same party as 30-45 year mothers of 3? Probably not, and as social media becomes more and more woven into our social fabric, we’re seeing each platform become more niche.

Think about MySpace. Back when it first came out in the early 2000’s it was the largest social media platform out there, then came Facebook, and now Instagram is on the rise. It will always be a competition for the top spot, but our businesses don’t attempt to be everything to everyone, so why are we chasing everyone? Now that we know who our customers are, we can go find them based on their social media platform of choice.

You almost forgot I mentioned MySpace, didn’t you? It’s still around, but it’s nowhere near as large as it used to be. It still has a very loyal following… amongst musicians. It has found it’s niche and become THE social media platform that bands use to connect. If you have a band or you’re a musician, odds are you have a MySpace account.

This is the trend that many social media sites are following, becoming more and more niche in order to provide better services to their users. MySpace used to be everything to everyone, and now if you visit the site it is blatantly obvious that it’s customer base is musicians. Nice pivot, MySpace. As social platforms become more niche, their users will become more and more specific and now is the time to stay ahead of the curve.

3.) Which one(s) am I willing to use every day?

Here is where the commitment comes into play. Which of these social platforms are we willing to put 90 days into? 180 days? 360 days? Having knowledge about who our customers are doesn’t help us unless we apply it. Knowing where they congregate doesn’t help us unless we go talk to them. We have to be willing to spend time where our customers are in order to make those connections.

If you’re not ready to put time and effort into this, stop reading now, you’re wasting your time. We will never be successful using social media by just putting out a “Check-In Here” sign on our door with the Four-Square logo on it. That’s a weak attempt that will fall by the wayside.

So now that we know who our customers are, we know where they hang out, we should have 1 or 2 options for social media platforms to choose from. Some demographics are below for users on the top social platforms, this should help us decide where we want to start.

Case Study

If you’re looking for a good example of what I am talking about, go find Stephan Futeral on the social space. He is a Charleston Lawyer that does an amazing job on social media using platforms that are applicable to his business: Google+ & LinkedIn. He connects with people, he comments on posts, he likes what other people are doing, and he writes great content to get them back to his firm’s site. I will reference Mr. Futeral again in our series again in our segment on communication.

Mr. Futeral chose the platforms where he knew he would find business professionals and he chose to make his stand there. He’s able to be found on Facebook & Twitter, but he’s not wasting unnecessary time there.  He has a Futeral & Nelson (his firm) page set up all over, but he only spends significant time on Google+ & LinkedIn.

Find what is best for you by preparing to attack social media like it’s a real part of your business. If we treat it as a ‘ho-hum thing we have to do’ it will never pan out and you might as well not waste your time. Treat it as an opportunity. If you’re ready to dig in and put forth some good effort, you will see great results.

Statistics

Facebook – 

  • Users: 1.19 Billion Worldwide
  • Growth: 26% from 2011 to 2012
  • Age Demographics: 29.7% of users are ages 25-34
  • Gender Demographics: 53% Female, 47% Male
  • Sources: Zephoria, StaticBrain

Twitter – 

  • Users: 554,750,000 Active Worldwide Users (Monthly)
  • Growth: 135,000 new users daily
  • Age Demographics: 55% of users are 35 or older
  • Gender Demographics: 60% Female, 40% Male
  • Sources: Royal Pingdom, StaticBrain

Instagram – How Small Businesses Should Choose Social Media Platforms

  • Users: 150,000,000 Active Worldwide Users (Monthly)
  • Growth: 55,000,000 Average photos taken per day
  • Age Demographics: 90% of users are 35 or under
  • Gender Demographics: 68% Female, 32% Male
  • Sources: Instagram, Business Insider

Pinterest –  

  • Users: 25,000,000 Active Worldwide Users (Monthly)
  • Age Demographics: 63% of users are 35 or older
  • Gender Demographics: 79% Female, 21% Male
  • Sources: Digi Daily, Royal Pingdom

Other Popular Networks

  • FourSquare – Location drive site that encourages people to check in
  • Tumblr – Blogging site aimed at a younger (18-25) crowd
  • LinkedIn – Business professional site (perfect for B2B)
  • Google+ – It’s run by Google so it’s got to be important

These are just a few of the top sights out there in the social space. Do some research for yourself and find out which is best for you. No two businesses are the exact same, and no two social media strategies will be either.

So far in our Social Strategery series we’ve talked about How to be Everywhere in Part 1, and today we talked about Choosing the right platform(s) for our business. In the coming posts we’ll talk about communicating in the social space and putting together the tools we need to have a successful social media marketing strategy.

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What is your social media platform of choice? How did you come to the conclusion that was best for your business?

Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear how you picked the right platform. 

P.S. 15 Days till Christmas!

How to be Everywhere on Social Media Without Losing Focus (1/4)

With the ever-growing number of social media platforms available in the world today it’s easy for us to get lost and confused like a scared puppy that’s run away from home. We see so much out there and we want to chase it all, but we don’t really know how to use it or what the benefits are. Then if we catch it, we don’t really know what to do with it.

I’m coaching a friend and when discussing all the social media platforms he told me he felt “overwhelmed” attempting to figure them all out. I concur, it has taken me a few years to accumulate the knowledge I have and he’s trying to squeeze it into a weekend.

What I want to attack in this mini-series known as Social Strategery is the burning question that comes up so often: “What is the best social media platform for my business?”

Why Social Media

I have extensive experience in traditional & guerrilla marketing as well as sales, but over the past 2 years I’ve noticed that without an understanding of social media those skills aren’t as useful as they once were. More and more people are relying on social media for their information instead of the phone book or even Craigslist.

So how do we find customers on social media? How do we engage with them? And most importantly, what do we do when we find them? I’ll cover all these topics and more in this series on social media over the coming holiday weeks so we can take this information into the new year with a better understanding of how to leverage social media to grow our businesses.

Have them all, but don’t spend time on them all

I hear this question often posed on podcasts interviewing social media experts and people that have much more extensive experience than I do. I get irritated when nobody is willing to go out on a limb or make bold statements in these interviews about what platforms to choose. I didn’t realize how difficult that question was until I began writing this…

Here is my personal philosophy: Have them all, but don’t spend time on them all. Notice I didn’t say “use them all,” we’ll be using them, but we’ll use them efficiently. We can only dedicate so much time to social media in our personal and professional lives. That being said, we don’t have time to ‘personalize’ a message to each social platform (yes, the messages need to be different) and still have time to think at the end of the day. However, if we pick 2 or 3 of the best social media platforms for our business and we focus our efforts, we will see great results.

So does that mean we should delete our Tumblr account because we don’t use it that often? No. I am a big advocate of being able to be found anywhere on the internet and social space [see below]. I learned this from my friend James that has taught me a great deal about connecting our social accounts to our websites, thank you sir! The more our names are out there, the more of a chance we have to be found. If we are only on Twitter and we don’t have a Facebook account, than the people that only use Facebook are not ever going to know what that we even exist.

The goal of social

Is not to get people to stay on social media with you, it’s to get them back on ‘our turf’ aka our website, our landing pages, our brick and mortar stores. When we get people on ‘our turf” we are then able to focus them in on what we want; to sign up for our email list, buy a product, or bookmark our website. When people stay on social media, it’s more difficult to get them to focus on what we are trying to get them to do.

Think of social media platforms as different parties where people are interacting, each with their own unique themes. The goal of social media should be to get them to leave that party and come to ours aka our website or store.

This cannot be walking into the party and announcing with a bullhorn, “We are the greatest, come back to our party now for discounts on X!” as many people do. People will laugh at us and look the other way. However if we come in and talk to a few people and engage in conversations, make some compliments, tell a few jokes, and then tell people that they can get discounts on X at our party, we are much more likely to get them to come with.

As you can imagine, it’s impossible to make sincere, honest, meaningful connections across all forms of social media every day. So we need to pick the platform(s) that are best for us and focus on them while leaking messages to the other platforms when we can so the accounts aren’t dormant. I’ll go into more detail about choosing which ones to focus on as well how to use the other platforms without wasting time.

How to do all this

First, sign up for as many social accounts as you know about. We want to own the same name on each platform so we’re easier to find. Once we sign up for each, make them all same name or as close to the same name as possible. I would advise using the same email and password on each so it’s easy to login. Here is a list of my accounts on each platform I recommend having, these are each of my real accounts so you can see a real example.

Facebook.com/mike.mccann.165 best social media platform

Twitter.com/mikemccann3

Instagram.com/mikemccann3

Tumblr.com/mikemccann3

Pinterest.com/mikemccann3

youtube.com/user/mike1582

Plus.Google.com/mikemccann3

StumbleUpon.com/stumbler/mikemccann3

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mike-mccann/32/511/966/ 

FourSquare.com (I don’t use this, but it’s very important for brick and mortar businesses)

And my email account is mikemccann3[at]gmail[dot]com. As you can see, almost everything matches with the exception of LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. Facebook and YouTube are difficult to change because I’m not the only Mike McCann in the world and LinkedIn requires a paid profile upgrade to change. I really hope nobody guesses my password now…

The next step is choosing which of the social platforms are best for us. Choosing the right platform, an outline of the top social networks, and communication through each are all soon to come. I’ll be breaking down different social platforms by relevance in more detail over the coming days. This will shed more light on each platform and help us choose which one is right for us and our business.

If you don’t already know your platform, and even if you do, sign up for each of these and get the ball rolling. The worst thing that can happen is you sign up and the account sits. The best thing that that can happen is you gain more traction/customers, so what do you have to lose? 

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If you have a favorite social media that is not listed here (yes, there are many more) please let me know what it is and share this article on it so I can add it to my list. 

Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear what you have going on. 

P.S. 16 Days till Christmas!pickadirection.com

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Blogger Meetup: How to leave the Comfort Zone behind

I’m not sure what I expected to get from this blogger meetup

I kept hearing that in order to have a highly trafficked blog, networking with other bloggers is necessary. I didn’t really know why, but I figured it was because we could send traffic to each other from time to time. After Googling “blogger meetup + Charleston” I landed in a Meetup group set for Barnes & Noble on 12/5/13. I didn’t know what to expect from the situation, but I was hoping to get some tips on how to improve my blog and I was just haughty enough to think I could give some out too.

I was a little nervous, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I was about to go on a ‘date’ with 6 strangers (that’s how many RSVP’d) and share with them a personal project that I’ve been caring for like a child. I have been working on this blog a little bit each day since I started it back in August, and now I was about to open it up to be scrutinized by people who have been doing this longer than me… I felt like I was about to go watch game film back in my CSU days and Coach Staggs was going to rip me for something I didn’t see.

Getting out of the “Comfort Zone”

Leave the Comfort ZoneFor years I have heard that we need to constantly get out of our comfort zones in order to make progress. I taught a guest lecture at CSU a few weeks back and asked the 2 football players in the room if they had ever gotten better at an easy practice. They both shook their heads “No.” We only get better in difficult situations.

The same theory applies to our everyday lives. When we constantly push ourselves to try new things and go out on limbs, we are constantly pushing to be the best version of ourselves we can be. Nobody has ever won an award for coloring in between the lines. We only get better when we get out of our comfort zones.

What actually happened

I arrived to 2 very nice, helpful bloggers that immediately asked me about my site. What type of content is it? How often do I write? Have you thought about adding this? I loved it. I wasn’t being mocked for having a basic site and they immediately made me feel comfortable about my decision to come to this.

I soon learned that each of them were as normal as me and my apprehension was soothed. One of them is a life coach and I was immediately intrigued because I’ve always wondered how people got into that profession and how they actually make money from it. The other is a lawyer and this is her side project that she has packed with inspiration, for which I’m obviously a sucker. We talked for a bit about how to improve each of our blogs and upcoming projects we’d like to take on, all offering suggestions where we could. 

I learned some great tips to improve my blog from some very nice people and I can now say I belong to a ‘blogging mastermind’ group. The next time we meet I want to be able to offer more to the group and have some good suggestions, I found myself taking more than giving and I don’t like those scales to be unbalanced. But the others didn’t seem to mind, they were happy to help and I’m very appreciative. The experiment was a success!

Making it a habit

A few days leading up to this I found myself getting nervous and wondering if the people I meet will be way ahead of me in their blogging prowess, or if they would all be awkward and silent, or even worse if they liked me and wanted me to come back for the next one… Do I want another commitment???

Seth Godin refers to this as ‘the lizard brain‘ and he regularly speaks about why we need to beat it back as vehemently as possible. When we are scared of something, that usually means we need to go towards it. We are often more scared of the potential within us than actions we should take to reach that potential.

So now I have been, it was great, and I was able to successfully step out of my comfort zone to try something new. Just before this meetup I decided I need to do this more often, I need to get out of my comfort zone more often. If you’ve read any of my blog, you know I’m all about some public accountability so here it is:

Every week I’m going to get out of my comfort zone and do something that I’ve never done

Each week my comfort zone will get bigger and bigger, so each week will be a new challenge. Of course I’ll be writing about this so get used to that feeling of “That sounds cool, I should try something new, too,” because I want you to feel that. If you’re reading this I want you to take something away from it and get better, so what are you going to do this week to get out of your comfort zone?

Please let me know what you do to get out of your comfort zone, it can be small – not everyone has a large comfort zone – but if it pushes you, that’s what matters!

Connect with me on Twitter or Linkedin, I’d love to hear what you have going on. 

Have a great weekend!

Learn to be more Effective AND Efficient: Monotasking vs Multitasking

Recently I have had my eyes and ears open to more and more business books, blogs, and podcasts to hear what the experts are doing to be effective and efficient at their work. At the same time I experiment with my own daily tasks and objectives to find out what works for me, so I can get the most out of my days.

Monotasking (the opposite of multitasking that requires us to focus solely on one task at a time without interruptions) has become a very popular trend. But, I’m not 100% convinced it’s the only way to get work done effectively and efficiently. On the other hand, multitasking forces us to split our efforts in order to get more done in a shorter period of time.

This is an audio version of this exact blog post:

Multitasking

When I entered the business world I continually heard about multitasking from superiors, from professors, and even some business books. I put this ‘art’ as some might call it, into practice.

I talked on the phone while I was typing emails, I texted colleagues while I was in meetings, and I had conference calls on speaker phone while I would continue to work on other projects. I divided my attention amongst multiple tasks in hopes of saving time to get more done in a day, like a well oiled machine… or so I thought.

Reflecting back on those days, I see that I was more efficient than I was effective. This was because those multitasking practices forced me to give 1/2 of my attention to each task.  Giving them both a sub-par effort, but getting a lot checked off my to-do list at the end of the day.

Each of us wants to be effective at our work, but we also have long to-do lists, so we need to be efficient to get it all done. What I’ve found is that we need a healthy mixture of effective focused work mixed with efficient tasks to maximize our productivity. It’s not an either or question for multi or mono tasking, it’s a when and where question to maximize our effectiveness AND efficiency.

Monotasking

As I’ve talked about, I start my day no later than 6 AM to read and write, getting the most important task for the day knocked off my list. My day starts out monotasking, there is no music or podcasts in the background and my phone is on silent until 8 AM.

When I write, I have to practice discipline to not check email or Facebook before my daily post is published. It’s difficult to stay focused but it’s helped me stay disciplined in other areas. I eliminate all other windows and I’ve set my bottom task bar to disappear in order to give me as few distractions as possible on my screen. The only things on my desk (aka kitchen table) are my laptop (no power cord), my mouse, and my coffee. I don’t get up from my seat until my post is published, however long that takes.

This is monotasking, not allowing distractions to creep in. We have to do it in quiet space and time with as few distractions as possible or we won’t be as effective. Some people will go into extreme monotask mode and put on a timer, close their office door, and knock out their tasks. I would recommend putting on a timer for 20-30 minutes, putting the phone on airplane mode, closing the office door, and selecting one task to accomplish.

We amaze ourselves at how much gets done when we put all our effort into 1 thing and 1 thing only.

Monotasking vs MultitaskingAs I mentioned I used to juggle multiple tasks all day to get as much done in my quest for efficiency. That’s the way my mind works, “If I can do this while I’m doing that, I’ll be done in half the time!”

WRONG!

I have only learned the value of true quality work in the past few years. Too many times when we attempt multitasking we end up doing a piss-poor job of our work and we need to go back and fix it.

In the days I was multitasking my face off I would regularly (almost daily) forget to attach things to emails because I didn’t focus on the task at hand. I would have to go back and resend it with an attachment and a sheepish note saying I forgot it after someone replied all to ask about said attachment.

Monotasking AND Multitasking

I have definitely changed my ways since  then, but I still believe there are a few times we can effectively and efficiently multitask to get more done in a day.

Today I listen to podcasts or audio books while running and working out, cleaning the house, or driving. I’ll check my Twitter feed (yes, this actually is work-related) on my elevator ride in my apartment or while waiting in line for coffee. And of course, I’ll talk on the phone while walking, driving, or riding/crashing my bike.

Notice I didn’t say emails, I batch all of those into certain times of the day, you can read more about that and seven other productivity tips here.

The bottom line is everyone works differently. I’ve found that the more I attempt to do, the less effective I will be at it. So if you’re in need of great work, eliminate distractions and get focused. If you have a mundane task like listening to a conference call, than listen. But take a walk or clean your office so you’re not just sitting and staring. Its OK to be efficient AND effective sometimes.

What Monotasking vs Multitasking examples do you have?

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Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great weekend!

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One trick to Improve Communication Skills & Be More Decisive

At work we can be accused of poor communication when something is not followed through or we don’t approach a project just like our superior expected us to. We may have unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings or even given conflicting orders to the people we oversee.

If any of these have happened, here is one simple way to avoid these pitfalls and start to improve communication skills.

Write it down

Turn that thought into words. This is a very simple concept that I touched on in Follow Through that has helped me tremendously in more phases of my life than just accomplishing goals. We have millions of thoughts per day ranging from what food to eat to what is on our to-do lists to sexual desires to why some squirrels can fly and some can’t.

We cannot always control our minds and these thoughts will happen. However, we can clarify some of these thoughts by writing them down.

It is easy to have a thought, we all do this each day. The next step in clarification is verbal communication – I’ll touch on non-verbal communication another time. It is harder to have a conversation or even talk to ourselves in the mirror than it is to have thoughts racing through our brains. We don’t need any conscious use of our brains, random thoughts will happen whether we like it to or not, but speech forces us to hone in on that particular thought. And when we can speak it, we have a much higher quality of clarity than when it’s rattling around in our brains with the other million thoughts.

Still, even more difficult than speaking our thoughts is to write them down.

When we write them down we don’t use the words ‘like’ and ‘sort of” and ‘um’ are added to give us time to clarify points, we are forced to put in a focused effort so our writing is clear. If you don’t believe me, you can check out this interview (interview has been taken down) that I did over the phone and then had transcribed (via Fiverr for $5) to see how difficult it is to read verbal communication.

When we consciously transform our thoughts into written words, we have to really focus on what we’re saying in order to make that message clear. This is the most focused form of communication we can offer to those around us. Improve Communication Skills

Enough about theory, let’s talk about how to apply this to our work (and home) lives. First off, we need to learn to recognize when clarification is needed.

Picture yourself leaving a meeting with 14 new objectives to accomplish and you’re not sure where to start. Although I hate email, this is the perfect place to clarify thoughts with one. Email the person that was running the meeting or the person giving directives with a message that states what you took away from the meeting as well as what you perceive your follow-up actions to be and ask if this is correct. If you’ve done a good job listening and writing our your objectives, you will get a simple “Yes, that’s correct. Thanks for following up,” back AND you’ll have yourself a nice, clear to-do list for your own personal use.

Way too often we forget that a hand-written note goes a million miles further than an email or a text does.

No I’m not referencing sticky notes, I’m referring to thank-you cards and apologies. The art of the hand-written note has been lost over the years so when we receive a hand-written note it stands our in our minds.

Next time someone at work (guys this goes a long way at home, too) does something very helpful for you, try using a hand-written note to say thank you. Your impact will be great than ever, and they won’t soon forget that! And the same goes for apologies, if an action was very hurtful an email isn’t the best way to express regret.

Finally, when we write our goals down we create a sense of accountability. It’s easy to dismiss our ambitions as thoughts when we have so many each day, but not when we have them written down. Not when they’re sitting on our desk, or refrigerator, or bathroom mirror.

When we define our goals, we know what path we want to be on in life and our actions will reflect that commitment. For example, when I write down that “I am going to put away $250 each month into savings for a year” it’s an easy decision for me when a buddy asks if I want to fly to watch a football game next weekend. That will cost more than $250 plus I wouldn’t be working, meaning that doesn’t align with my goal of saving $250 each month. Easy decision, I forfeit that trip. Sacrifice is not easy, but we do it so that we can enjoy much great things later on in life.

pickadirection.comLearn to write things out and you’ll learn to improve communication skills in the office and at home. Do you have any written communication tips?

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Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

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Crowd Sourcing: The Initiative to Clean Our Streets

Crowd sourcing is a concept that has been around for a long time, but has become very popular in the past few years. Websites like IndiGoGo and KickStarter are sites that have become enormously successful (Kickstarter raising over $901M since inception) and trendy. So what can we learn from these businesses?

A brief explanation for those that have no clue what I’m talking about: Crowd sourcing is the idea of distributed work/investing/ideas/pictures to crowds versus individuals. The website Kickstarter allows people to put their projects (music, video games, films, books, art, etc.) on a stage, tell the world what it is using the ‘Kickstarter microphone,’ and asks for support. When  an individual gives money to a project they may receive something in return for their monetary support like a copy of the book to be published or a signed copy of the album a band needs funding for. Not all websites have the same perk system, but many offer rewards for the supporters.

One website described it as, “marrying the worlds of entrepreneurship and philanthropy.” Other websites that incorporate crowd sourcing are Wikipedia, StumbleUpon, and iStockPhoto.com – A website that encourages users to buy and sell images for dirt cheap while iStockPhoto makes a little bit of money on each transaction.

As I’ve mentioned before I am running a marathon on Dec 14th and training for this requires 20-40 miles per week of running. Since I’ve been spending so much time outside I have come to notice more and more trash outside and it grosses me out. It would take me hours to walk through my routes and pick up all the trash I see each day. However, if everyone I passed on a run just picked up 1 piece of trash each time they were outside (as I do), we would have a cleaner world in no time. The basic idea of crowd sourcing is that we can accomplish more together as a ‘crowd’ of  amateurs than as 1 professional.

So what can we learn from crowd sourcing? First off, that there are opportunities to save money all around us. Instead of paying $100 per image for high quality stock photos, go to iStockPhoto.com and get them for $1. Instead of paying for someone to transcribe an interview for $85/hour go to Fiverr and pay $15 for 3 people to do it. Instead of paying a secretary to answer the phones all day, we can find services on ODesk or Elance that we pay 1/2 the price for 24 hours phone support. Depending on our industry there is probably a crowd sourcing website that will help us save money in some way, shape, or form when we do some digging. Each of them is slightly different, so find out what each one specializes in before diving in head first.

Next, we can look internally to see how we can use this idea. Use our  own ‘crowds’ to our advantage, there’s lots of ways to do this. We can ask our customers for ideas on what types of products to carry and pre-sell them. If we use social media we can ask all of our employees to share/retweet all of our posts so the outreach is greater. In a company where sales people outnumber managers, owners, and secretaries it would be extremely beneficial to set up a blog for sales people by sales people to share their experiences and help each other out. And if we really are looking to start a new project that we need massive funds for, we can get on one of these sites and begin asking for money.

Sites like Kickstarter are not just for people starting out, even a figurehead like Seth Godin has used sites like this. He published his most recent book through Kickstarter, not because he needed the money, but because he saw the opportunity.

Where is our opportunity?

If you liked this post do me a favor and pick up just one piece of trash next time you’re outside, it’s the best way to clean things up!