Why Should You Share?

I had someone ask me a question about sharing and linking at my recent presentation about Blogging for Business at AGS University.  They said someone had told them they shouldn’t link out to others because it was taking traffic away from your website and giving it to others.  I thought this was a strange perspective and strategy to take, and here’s why.  If you never link to anyone else, why should they link to you?  You will then be limited to only the traffic you can generate yourself, and very little referral or word of mouth traffic from others, which is how most people generate new business.  It seems to be a short-sighted strategy, like overbuying food you’ll never be able to consume- it’s hoarding your own traffic at the expense of others, but it’s also not doing you very much good, either.

There’s a chapter looking at Altruism in the new Super Freakanomics book. (There seems to be some controversy around, especially regarding the chapter on global warming, but the most relevant chapter to me was about altruism.)  In this chapter, the authors discuss how part of altruism and doing good things for others that may not always serve you the best, is the side effects of being seen as a good and trustworthy person.  The warm feeling you get from helping other people is one of the benefits of altruism, and it’s why most people who volunteer will say things like “I get as much out of it as I put in.”

On the web, trust, authority, search engine optimization and the like are all geared towards measuring whether or not your business/blog/website is relevant to people searching for information.  The more links, tags, keywords and the rest on your site, the more the search engines can parse whether your site is a good match for people searching for “dog food” “specialty gifts” or even “consultants.”  The more other people consider you an authority, the more authoritative by default you become.  It’s a positive (or negative) feedback loop, that you grow by being generous with others.

This is a concept at the heart of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents- how you can build your “juice” online by being someone worthy of trust, by becoming an authority, by helping other people.  This is the old “bread on the water” strategy, that often you help other people without charging, with a tacit if unspoken understanding that if you are asked for a favor in return, it’s more likely than not someone will help you out in return.  It’s “paying it forward”.  It’s the old cliche of “you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

And if you want to get down to the neuro- and behavioral science, people remember positive experiences- positive reinforcement is the greatest tool to help alter behavior, where negative reinforcement or bad experiences tend to cut off a behavior, but doesn’t necessarily replace it with a new behavior.  So for example, if I want my kids to clean up after themselves, small amounts of praise is more likely to get them to comply next time than yelling at them ever will.  Likewise, if I want people to come back to my website, I better offer them useful information, a product they can use or take advantage of, or share  resources- something to make it worth their time and attention.

Personally, I use Google reader and Delicious, a social bookmarking site, to save and share blog posts, websites, and other online information sources for myself, but also offer it up for others who are interested.  I tell people in seminars that if you really want to know what I am up to, a check of my Delicious site will give you an idea of what I’m finding new and notable and what I’m researching.  I check on the sites of friends for the same reason, because usually I find something there that I haven’t come across on my own.  Rather than keep these bookmarks private on my computer, these bookmarks are web based, meaning I can access them from anywhere and use this information more efficiently than if it’s locked up at home on my machine.

Likewise with Google Reader- there are gazillions of blog posts everywhere online.  Using my friends as a filter, I get pointed to some of the best stuff around, on topics I may be interested in, that I might not have found on my own.  Over time, these tools build my personal library of information, making it more useful for me, but also to everyone I know.

Keeping this information a “secret” helps no one.  When we’re taking about information out there on the web, we can’t possibly keep up with it all, yet it’s all public, so how “secret” can it be, anyway?  By taking a sharing mentality, I help myself, but I help others at the same time.  I become a resource for information, which helps my reputation and consulting business.  This “looking to help others” mindset therefore also pays off for me personally, creating another positive loop.  It also has the side benefit of just being good karma, which I can live with as well.

So in the end, I honestly believe sharing information online helps you more than it hurts.  While you might not share a secret pharmaceutical formula or the 7 secret herbs and spices on the web (some things are industry secrets), anything available on the web, openly, you might consider sharing- you become an aggregator, a reference source, and a trust agent, just by sharing a bit of what you know and think.

Plain and simple- people you like you more and pay attention- and that’s not something that you can discount these days.

Why Social Media is Like a Veg-o-Matic

This could also be entitled “What I’m learning from Malcolm Gladwell and Ron Popeil”.

I picked up Malcolm Gladwell’s new book,”What the Dog Saw“- a collection of some of his New Yorker pieces. Since I wasn’t as blown away by his recent Outliers book as I had been by The Tipping Point and Blink, but even in the first chapter, I’ve found a story that’s speaking ideas making it more than worth the purchase price already.
The first chapter talks about Ron Popiel, of Ronco, informercial, and Showtime Rotisserie fame. Ron himself comes from a long line of pitchmen, honing their craft on the boardwalk and fair circuit, before Ron introduced TV into the mix. Ron Popiel has had an affect on my life, as I look back on it, from the first time I bought a Ronco Record in the late 70’s. (Does anyone else remember Ronco and K-Tel? Play that funky music, white boy…..) While I consider most infomercials the height of getting people to buy stuff they don’t really need- this guy is a master marketer we could all learn a few things from, especially when it comes to social media.

How many Ginsu knives and ShamWows do you have in your house? Veg-o-Matics? Pocket Fishermans?

Gladwell does a fantastic job of talking about the art of the informercial, and of Ron as an inventor. Ron has managed to get people to buy stuff for years by mastering the art of show and tell. He makes the product the star, and while he talks to you about it, he uses it and demonstrates, convincingly, how the product in hand will solve problems you never even really knew you had. On top of this, he gains your attention, entertains, and then makes an elegant turn and knows how to ask for the money.

Even in the days leading up to the new FTC regulations requiring truth in advertising, celebrity endorsements and the end of the small print *results not typical*, it’s hard to imagine how any of this will effect Ron. Ron shows everyone, in a personal and empathetic, emotional way, that his products do amazing things, and that every result is typical- no one is surprised. Now, they may get home and decide they didn’t eat as much beef jerky or dehydrated food as they thought, or eat as much salsa as they thought when they bought the veg-o-matic, the product does work exactly as promised. Ron is in the clear.

What I’m learning from all of this, is that even in social media, we have to be clear on what we’re doing. What are we selling? What is the product? Is the product the star, or are we trying to compete for attention with the product? And most importantly, do we know how to convert the interest into money? Do we know how to ask for the money?

As a consultant, I’ve been working with small and medium sized businesses to educate them about what social media can and cannot do for their business. My “pitch” is not for a specific product, but to try to help companies understand social media as a portion of their marketing strategy and how to make the most out of it. I earn money by charging businesses for my time and expertise, and helping them tailor a business strategy that makes sense for them in a way they can measure. I show companies the tools, we discuss pros and cons, and then try to get them to decide where they want to put their time, money and effort, and proceed accordingly.  And as much as I can dazzle people with all I know- the “turn”- converting Spectators into Buyers is what needs to happen.

And this goes for every business, every product, every person who needs to sell something to someone else.  We need to have products that can sell themselves, because we demonstrate that they are relevant and necessary to our customers. We need to make sure they know how much they need our products to solve their problems, and be ready to ask for the money and sell the product to them when they are ready to buy- not too soon, and not too late.  We need to make our case, and the convert the swayed person into a customer.

Ron sure makes it look easy, all the time.

But he’s gotten to where he is because his products aren’t smoke and mirrors- they do what they say.  Yes, I have 2 ginsu knives that are as wonderful as they were when I bought them, years ago, impressed by a sales guy at a home show at a convention center.  I am a happy customer, and Ron has earned my trust as a result.

I think we can learn a lot from Ron, and from Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, if we just remember to let the product be the star, to make sure we understand show and tell, and  most importantly, how to ask for the money.

Tags: infomercial, malcolm gladwell, pitch, Ron Popeil, ronco, show and tell, value

Personal Branding

At the very first Podcamp Boston, CC Chapman and Mitch Joel did a great presentation on Personal Branding that altered the way I approached my web projects.  Instead of always staying in the background, I learned how important it was to own your blog and podcast, add your personality into the mix, and give your projects a human face and voice.  This is still excellent advice, for businesses or individuals.  Without a sense of personality, of humanity to our writing and work, we lose the most compelling aspect of it, and what people want the most- connections and affinity with others. (I’ll save the diatribe on Maslow’s Heirarchy of human needs for another post.)

There’s a small downside to personal branding, though.  When some web personalities become really successful, like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki, they become not just a personal brand but a brand unto themselves.  They become a product.  And people expect different things out of products than they do people.

Products are supposed to be available on demand, whenever we want them.  For example, I am in the process of replacing the “twitter van”- my old Toyota Sienna minivan with over 197,000 miles on it, with something new.  The old girl is just sad looking at this point, and my husband has declared enough is enough, so I am updating my “personal brand” with a new car.  We’ve been shopping for cars for some time, but I was disappointed to find out the brand and model we wanted were sold out of 2009’s so I have to wait for a 2010.  Dealers were surprisingly blasé about selling me a car.  I would have expected them to be a bit more enthusiastic about the prospect, but only one dealership did any sort of work to really see when the models would be available, see what they could order, and give me a great deal.  When I took this offer to another dealership closer to my home to see if hey would match it, they seemed incredulous that any of this was possible.  Yet, here I sit, with the VIN number of the car in hand, awaiting its delivery in the next few days.  The bottom line in terms of branding is that I expected with this brand that the Company as a whole should be happy that I want a car from them, that they should have them ready for me unless I want something really unusual, just as if I were buying a bottle of ketchup.   And as a brand, I expect they should be willing to do at least a little to make sure I don’t go off and decide to get the large purchase elsewhere.

But when people become brands, they can never be exactly like a car or a bottle of ketchup.  They can produce great books, like Trust Agents or Six Pixels of Separation, (both written by friends of mine), that act as products or souvenirs of the people and their ideas.  But the people themselves don’t scale the same way.  They still have lives and families and friends; they need to sleep and eat and have private time.  But some of this gets murky once personal branding and actually branding start to merge.

Think about this in terms of celebrity.  I think it really started with the Beatles.  The band became more than just records and music.  They became icons, they became lunchboxes and action figures and now even video games, many years after their initial fame for just being musicians and song writers.  Now you see the merchandising of fame and celebrity being as important as what ever someone did to become famous in the first place, but what gets lost in the hype are the people themselves.  A quick trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will bring this all into relief, as you see how many people get chewed up by the fame machine, and see the few that have managed to survive it.

We don’t always consider how weird and difficult a childhood someone like Michael Jackson or Lindsay Lohan have had.  We don’t think or look at them empathetically, as people.  We look at them as side shows, as entertainment, and when they seem to crack up, we say “Well, they asked for it, what did they expect?”  On some level, they just did what they did best, acting or signing or writing or whatever.  The rest became the business of being a celebrity, which has its privileges and up sides, but has just as many down sides as people take random pot shots at you, or think you have some magic you can lend them, or give them a big break so they can be just like you, or whatever.

Celebrity, the height of personal branding, breeds a certain amount of expectation and neediness in others.  We expect our celebrities to be the bottle of ketchup we can get a fix of whenever we need.  We expect them to keep on delighting us with every new project and we’re more than happy to express crushing disappointment when our appetites aren’t fed.  And the media, professional and amateur, seems only to happy to find something to criticise at every turn.  We think “Oh, what a big head they have now that they’re big shots.”     Or “Well, you don’t seem to remember that you used to be just like us before you got lucky.”  Or “Why should I feel sorry for them?  They have it easy.”  Or “Well, they’re snobby now- I can’t even seem to talk to them anymore- I guess we aren’t really friends.”

All of this is ridiculous, of course.  All that’s happened is that a greater number of people constantly want the personal attention and adoration of the person whose “made it”, and that the person can’t scale like their product can.  All this drama is happening on the side of the audience, not from the person on the pedestal, and the person can’t do much other than watch it happen, because the cat is out of the bag, and there’s little hope of getting it back in.

I don’t think there’s any easy answers here.  I think part of it is for all of us to realize that personal branding is a great thing, but once you reach the product stage, there are hidden traps along with the benefits.  And I think this is meant as a wake up call for all of us who have friends with strong personal brands, to remember that our friends still need the same love and support and attention they always got from us, even if it doesn’t always come back reciprocally- they are trying to scale, but they’re finding themselves trying to be people in a product loving world.  And that seems like a busy but pretty lonely place to be.

Tags: CC Chapman, lindsay lohan, maslow's heirarchy, michael jackson, Mitch Joel, personal branding, rock and roll hall of fame, seth godin, six pixels of separation, trust agents

Now What? Be the Change

Chris Brogan had an interesting post  titled “ What Human Businesses and the Social Web are all About” and it got me thinking, as usual.

Tom Friedman has talked about how the World is Flat and the boundaries that have long separated people are evaporating as we can communicate and do work 24 x 7 with the advent of broadband and web communication.  Hospitals send radiology reports to be interpreted overnight to India.  I do work with many people located around the Country; Google Analytics tells me people around the world read my blog and listen to my podcast; my social group extends beyond my town, my State and my Country.

As the borders and boundaries that separate people from one another dissolve, information flows freely.  Ideas flow freely.  Some take root and catch on, others don’t.  Information and education has fundamentally changed the way people see their situation, their company, their government, and more.  We can’t hide injustice and tragedy, because everyone can upload the raw data and information to the web, to let others interpret and decide for themselves.

Yet as much as this sharing, the lack of borders, the lack of walls lets us know more than ever before, the question then becomes, “Now What?”

-So you see devastation on the other side of the planet-the aftermath of natural disasters, poverty and more-  what are YOU going to do about it?

-You see that government or healthcare could be more efficient and it seems silly that it’s grown up in such a convoluted manner- what are YOU going to do about it?

All the information and data you could possibly want is pretty much out there and just waiting for you to take a hold of something, anything, and make one little part of the world better.  What are YOU going to do?  Because guess what?  It’s not just someone else’s problem- it’s all of ours.

It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and complain about the troubles of the day, to bemoan the fact that our government isn’t perfect, and those other people across the Globe aren’t perfect, either.  There may not be any one right answer.  There’s not one right way to approach a problem, but that doesn’t give us a pass for doing nothing in the interim.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath talk about the problem of third world hunger and soliciting money to help a charity address the problem got much better results when the problem wasn’t discussed in broad strokes, but was personalized, so that a person could help one other person, one child, and make their life better.  This is because when we look at the whole problem-”the whole forest”- it can be overwhelming, and the problem seems truly impossible to tackle and see any progress.  But when we look at a tiny problem -an individual tree- the problem becomes much easier to tackle.  We say “I can do that” and we pick up a shovel or our checkbook, or whatever and get to work.

I often joke “Talk is cheap until you starting talking to a lawyer.”  While great things always start with talking, with sharing ideas like we do on the Web, the real change comes from putting verbs into our sentences and actually doing things to make change happen.  It means getting our hands dirty.  It means just picking a spot and dig in.  Every small step takes you closer to your goal.  Failing to take any action leaves the project and change undone, left for someone else to do instead of you.

It can be tricky where the rubber meets the road.  There’s all sorts of friction, all sorts of problems, nothing is easy.  But without action, without that friction, you’ll never make any progress at all- all you’ll do is spin your tires, hoping some day, that there will be some “grab” and you can start progressing forward.

Pick something.  One thing.  Donate an hour of your time.  Make one small area of your community better.  Or go to Kiva and give someone a microloan so they can create traction for themselves.  Do something that’s not all about you.  Help someone else with a problem they have.  You’ll be surprised at the difference you can make for others, and for yourself at the same time.

Everyone can do something for someone else.  It doesn’t have to be big or grandiose.  It can be taking the time to help a friend.  It can be donating a can to a soup kitchen.  But knowing you are making an effort to help beyond yourself-  that’s where the real satisfaction in life lies.

If you hate the health care system, don’t just complain- learn why the system is the way it is, what challenges are faced, and think up ways to fix it, or make it better.  Can volunteering at the hospital teach you this while you do good for others?  Maybe.  If you hate the government and politicians, why not run for office yourself?  Figure it out- everyone who has that job had to figure out how to get there- you can, too.

Ask for help.  Read.  But for goodness sake,  put verbs in your sentences and become the change you want to see in the World.    It sounds trite, but it’s true.  It all begins with you.

Tags: be the change, chris brogan, kiva, making a difference, Tom Friedman, world is flat

The How To Myth

A couple of my friends have recently come out with fantastic books- Mitch Joel wrote “Six Pixels of Separation“  and Chris Brogan and and Julien Smith have come out with the New York Times best selling Trust Agents.  Both books discuss how people are connecting for business over the web and how these new relationships work, but there’s been some critique that the books aren’t “How To’s” of  internet success.

This got me thinking about the whole concept of the How To.

How To permeates every aspect of our lives.  As a parent, we have a major role in teaching our children everything from appropriate social behavior to self-care – how to eat politely, how to tie your shoe, how to brush your teeth, how to get good grades- it goes on and on.   From the kid’s side, our parents and our teachers are constantly giving us the recipes to follow to learn stuff we’ll hopefully need later on in life.

After being indoctrinated in the How To all of our lives, we seem to want others to provide us with the fool-proof formula to win at whatever decide we want to do.  How many books, for example, promise us 5 easy steps to instant fame and fortune?  8 steps to flatter abs?  & habits of highly effective people?  Somehow, if we can just get the recipe right, everything will be perfect, and we’ll look better, smell better, and have the easy life of a Hollywood star, with all the fame and fortune we can imagine.

I don’t know about you, but I have found the following things to be true:

• To get what you really want, and the satisfaction that comes from attaining a goal, hard work is necessary.  It’s never handed to you.
• The Rules, the How To, the Recipe for success may seem simple, but the devil is always in the details.  Take the 10 Commandments.  Think how many pages of interpretation and commentary have been written about this simple list of things to do and not to do, at least two thousand years ago.  Clearly, it wasn’t that simple.
• I love to cook, and I love to knit.  In both of these areas, success can depend heavily on following a recipe or pattern.  Even in directions that allege to be “foolproof”, I can assure you, I can find a fool (usually me) who will make some sort of mistake executing this simple set of directions.  Let’s not even discuss the infamous Beer Cheese soup or the sweater that was about 2 inches too short, shall we?
• The Genius is always in the customization anyway.  Take a given recipe- adding a touch of your favorite herb, or adding nuts, chocolate chips and raisins into those brownies- and you take the generic “just like the picture” meal from replication of someone else’s idea to your version of the same idea, with unique elements that make it all your own.
• Customizations of the prototype to fit your own life, the hacks we all make to get the generic product to fit our needs-this is what takes things from being just “stuff” to being a part of our own creative process and learning.  You don’t learn much about painting by doing a Paint by Numbers- you may learn basic technique, but it’s the application of those techniques to your own project where genius lies.

We all want How to’s because they are comfortable, and we hope that if we see behind the veil, we’ll automatically harness someone else’s creativity and hard work, harness their insight, and somehow, leverage that to make ourselves equally as successful.  Yet we don’t need more imitations, copies and echos of the original, as much as we all yearn for that one, unique, purely special moment, great idea, or original insight of our own.

I’m currently working on a project that is a How To- but the critical element is to try to let everyone know that in using this book -1) it’s only a guideline, a coaching tool- your own milegage may vary  2)We’ll give you templates that work for us, but you have to customize it towards what you think will be best for you and 3) Never be afraid to try something new, to fail, to try again, and fail better the next time.

We only learn from making mistakes.    Some mistakes you only ever need to make once. Let me help you avoid a big one- never put dish detergent in the dishwasher, thinking it’s an ok substitute unless you want to flood your house.

Some mistakes you make more than once.  I still insist, for example, I do not need to “swatch for guage” ie. make a small sample before knitting a huge project, hoping that the knitting gods will protect me.  I am frequently wrong on this account.

But the biggest lesson is this:  even the best how-to’s only provide guidance and suggestions based on one person’s experience and what they have researched about the experience of others, trying to shine a light on frequently encountered difficulties.  This is what Parenting books are all about.  But only you know yourself and your own unique situation, and applying these ideas to your life will require mass customization to obtain the results you want.  Lockstep copying won’t get you the best results, only customization of the recipe will.

I still get suck ed into the promise of the How To, but at least my expectations now are that it is nothing more than advice.  I will learn and master things only through trial and error, making better guesses and spurring different ideas based on what the book or expert offers, but I can’t expect that these books and lectures will fix my life- that’s my job, and mine alone.

Tags: books, chris brogan, how to, julien smith, Mitch Joel, six pixels of separation, trust agents