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July 15, 2011 By 2 Comments

Google+ profiles are for people, not businesses

Google+ profiles are for people, not businesses

I’ve been enjoying Google+ recently and have written a few blog posts about it, as well as put together a short introduction video. However, as expected, I started seeing one of my pet peeves within days of using the service: profiles being set up as a business, not a person.

Google has clearly explained in this post that Google+ profiles are for people, not businesses. In fact, they are explaining that they will shut down your profile if it’s mis-used:

“Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

In a previous post about Facebook, I explained that profiles are for people. Yet, for some reason, many businesses can’t resist using social profiles as a business. Not only is this violating the Google+ terms of service, it’s also just bad social media etiquette. Let’s not forget that people want to do business with other people. Brands are great, but a brand should not eclipse the people behind it.

Getting your Google account shut down has even scarier ramifications if you are using AdWords, since this would affect your ability to advertise on Google. Be sure to wait for Google’s official business service to launch later this year. In the meantime, enjoy using Google+ as a person.

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July 12, 2011 By 4 Comments

Prioritizing social networking with your DISC profile

Prioritizing social networking with your DISC profile

With four major social networks now competing for your attention, it can sometimes be overwhelming trying to keep up. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus all have shiny appeal and are full of people just dying to network with you. But what if you only have so much time? How do you prioritize while still getting value out of social media, both personally and professionally?

My friend, you need to dust off your DISC profile.

If you are familiar with DISC and have taken it once or twice, you are probably already nodding and seeing a light bulb start to glow above your head. If not, be sure to do some reading on it. DISC is a personality assessment that uses four different classifications to identify how you behave and function. You can find plenty of places to take the DISC online. The types are:

  • Dominance: relating to control, power and assertiveness
  • Influence: relating to social situations and communication
  • Steadiness: relating to patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness
  • Conscientiousness: relating to structure and organization

Upon taking the assessment, you will be given a report that includes a chart explaining where you fall in the DISC personality types. For example, I am both a very high “D” and a very high “I”. My “C” is third and my “S” is last. This means I am very action-oriented, outgoing, and somewhat process-driven.

So how does this relate to your social media activity? Well, I believe that people are most successful when their activities are aligned with their energy and interests. If this is true, then why not use your DISC profile to help you decide which social network will be the most effective for you? Let’s take a look at each type and which social network is the best match.

D – Your network is Twitter.

Twitter is fast-paced, concise, and to the point. As a “D”, you have a bias toward efficiency, action, and speed. People who ramble and take forever to get to the point exasperate you. You’re in luck because those people don’t survive on Twitter. Since this network is fast-paced, limited to 140 characters per post, and full of rapid exchanges of information, you’ll feel right at home on Twitter.

I – Your network is Facebook.

As an “I”, you are the life of the party, you love to talk to people, and you like to have fun. Facebook is the place for you. Here you’ll find photos of parties, cats, and other people. Additionally, you’ll find lots of photos of you, which appeals to your slightly narcissistic (but well-meaning) desire to be noticed. People tend to be the most casual and “fun” on Facebook. Let’s face it, as an “I” you like people and you like having fun and being a little silly. Facebook encourages all of this.

S – Your network is Google Plus.

As an “S” you crave tight personal relationships and security. Google Plus offers both since it is built on a system of “circles” that allow you to easily group people into sub-networks that are private and exclusive. You can easily keep your conversations within certain circles and avoid broadcasting your messages to everyone at once. Additionally, the clean and simple user interface of Google Plus appeals to your aversion to over-stimulation and clutter. Google Plus will be a peaceful place for you.

C – Your network is LinkedIn.

As a high “C” you crave order, rules, and systems. You’re in luck because LinkedIn is built around all three. First of all, LinkedIn is all business so it appeals to your desire to keep your personal and professional lives separate and your personal life private. It is based on strict rules of conduct and communication that encourages people to only make connections based on a prior meeting or a specific reason outlined in the rules. It is designed to make networking systematic, structured, and safe. As the most process-driven and professional social network, LinkedIn will be a zen-like oasis for your high “C” desire for structure.

My favorite social network is Twitter, and as you can see it lines up very well with my high “D” personality. I like fast-paced, efficient communication so Twitter is the place for me. I like all four major networks and Facebook and LinkedIn both appeal to my “I” and “C”, but I find myself gravitating most often to Twitter when I default to my most comfortable medium.

So if you’re wondering how you might prioritize your time on social media, try comparing your activity to your DISC profile and embrace the network that appeals to your style the most. You might end up enjoying social media even more.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go see what I’ve missed on Twitter in the last hour.

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July 10, 2011 By 2 Comments

Google Plus will revolutionize video conferencing

I’ve been using Google Plus (referred after this as Google+) for a little while now and so far I’m really enjoying it. If you are not familiar with it yet, you may want to check out my Introduction to Google Plus video for a basic overview.

Others have written some good stuff about it, including Chris Brogan, so I encourage you to check those sources out. I am finding Google+ to be similar to other social networks in some ways, but with a much better user interface. I like the lack of clutter and I like the way information is displayed. I also find the “circles” concept to be very useful.

However one feature of Google+ really stand out to me and that is Hangouts. A Hangout is a video conference that you start within Google+ that can be shared with everyone, specific circles, or specific people. It’s similar to Skype but with a few key differences.

1. It’s dead simple to use. Starting a video conference is as easy as clicking “Start a hangout” and everything is run within the browser. There is no software to download and install on your computer (except perhaps a quick browser plugin) so everything works seamlessly within the web browser.

2. It’s free. Group video conferencing on Skype is a paid service and while it works well, not everyone wants to pay for this feature. Google+ offers a free alternative.

3. It’s smooth. By smooth, I mean both the technology and the user interface. Video and audio quality are both excellent and I noticed very little delay or choppiness. Conversations happen very naturally and it’s as close to being in the same room as I’ve seen when video conferencing. The user interface is also very cool in that it moves whoever is talking to the primary window. That is a nice effect that helps the conversation flow more naturally.

Individually, these features are not earth-shattering. However, Google has really gotten this right, and the way the whole system works together makes it very easy for just about anyone to enjoy high-quality video conferencing.

When combined with Google+ circles, video Hangouts have potential to truly bring group video conferencing to the masses. The tight integration, the ease of starting conferences within your circles, and the great user interface are very impressive.

What has your experience been with Google+? I would love to hear your thoughts below.

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July 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

What your business can learn from the Mormon Church

For those who may not be aware, I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Other less formal labels for this denomination include “LDS” and “Mormon.” My faith is a source of great happiness in my life and I am always happy to answer questions about it. However, this post is not about religion, so I would ask that if you have any religious questions about the LDS faith, please contact me directly and I will be happy to discuss.

The LDS Church is one of the largest religions in the world. It has over 14 million members and is the second-fastest growing church in the U.S., according to the National Council of Churches. Other statistics on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be found in the LDS Newsroom.

All spiritual debates aside, it’s easy to see that the LDS Church is doing something right. What are the Mormons doing that has lead to such dramatic and steady growth and how can it apply to your business?

Strong systems

The Mormon church is extremely systematic about everything from building churches and temples to teaching sunday school. If you go to a Mormon church anywhere in the world, you will find that they all follow the same meeting agendas, the same processes, and even teach the same lessons. If you attend a church meeting one Sunday in Indianapolis and then attend a meeting the following Sunday in California, it will be very familiar and you will be be able to stay on the same lesson plan. If the Mormon Church wants to form a new congregation, it follows a proven system for setting up the meetinghouse and can very quickly set in motion a process to get it up and running (complete with local clergy) very quickly and with very few issues. This saves time and money.

In a similar fashion, your business can benefit from strong systems that allow you to execute tasks and projects quickly and consistently. If you have proven systems for sales, marketing, product delivery, and customer service, your business will run much more efficiently and enjoy faster growth. If you’re unfamiliar with creating business systems, check out The E-Myth (affiliate link).

Member empowerment

The LDS Church makes it a high priority to encourage members to share their faith with others. In fact, one of the three main components of the mission of the church is “to proclaim the gospel.” Church members are encouraged to talk about their faith, share information with others, and speak openly about religion. This creates a culture that empowers all members to become “marketers” for the church. They are encouraged to follow their enthusiasm for their faith and make it a part of their everyday lives and communications. As a result, almost every member of the LDS church is prepared and eager to be a polite but ardent evangelist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Your business can also turn employees into evangelists. If you continuously encourage your employees to talk about your company with others, share your brand, and openly talk about their jobs, your company will enjoy greater name recognition and awareness. This will result in more leads and potential customers. Empower your team to use tools like social media to inform the public what your company is all about.

Training

The Mormon Church has a phenomenal training program for its 52,000+ missionaries around the world (who are volunteers, by the way). Before serving, a missionary must spend anywhere from three weeks to three months in a training program that helps them utilize systems, processes, and procedures for reaching prospective new members. Every missionary goes through the exact same proven training process. If some part of the process is improved, it is rolled out to every missionary in the world. The Mormon Church is very serious about proper training and equips its missionaries with the systems and support they need to be successful.

Does your business provide sales training? If not, it might be worth considering. Proper sales training gets all your sales people on the same page, gives them a system to follow, and provides ongoing coaching. My favorite sales system is the Sandler system. If you’re in the Indianapolis area, I recommend Trustpointe or Lushin.

Rapid embracing of technology

Technology evolves at an frenzied pace and it can sometimes be difficult to keep up. However, the Mormon Church sees almost every form of new technology as an opportunity to grow the church’s brand and message. You’ll find that the church has a presence on just about every major social network in use today and even organizes messaging among specific focus areas, including newsroom communications, and member training just to name a few. The church has an incredibly strong SEO strategy which brings lots of relevant traffic to its websites. Additionally, the Mormon Church facilitates messaging through the use of apps, blogs, video, mobile, podcasts, and email. The church even has web portals and apps that allow all members of a congregation to instantly download directories and leadership information directly to their phones in order to facilitate easy communication between members. Most church buildings also now have wireless Internet access in order to encourage members to make use of these technologies as learning aids.

Your business can also benefit by embracing new technologies. If you look at each new form of technology as an opportunity to share your message, your brand will travel faster and your business will grow. Just as the Mormon Church does, carefully study each new tool or technology that evolves, decide how it can strengthen your brand messaging, and then deliberately integrate it into your business.

Partnerships

The Mormon Church does not see other religions as competition. Instead, church leaders throughout the world work with leaders of other faiths to serve and provide humanitarian relief. Some notable examples include Indian Ocean tsunami relief efforts in which the Mormon Church partnered with Islamic leaders and the church’s partnership with the Catholic Church to bring aid to Niger. Other less-dramatic events include interfaith concerts and other social events.

In a similar fashion, your business can also grow faster by leveraging partnerships. Instead of viewing other businesses in your space as competitors, try reaching out to them and looking for ways to work together. Not every prospect will choose to work with you and some may choose your competition (just as some people will choose another religion over Mormonism). However, if you have a positive working relationship with your competitors, you can create opportunities to refer to each other and network constructively, which raises the level of respect for everyone.

Conclusion

The Mormon Church continues to grow quickly and recruits new members very rapidly. With new churches and temples being built all the time, it’s obvious that the methods in and practices of the church lead to growth and success. So what can your business learn from the Mormon Church? By creating systems, embracing new technology, utilizing sales training, creating partnerships, and empowering your employees, you can have a business that enjoys similar growth and success.

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June 30, 2011 By 1 Comment

You have to care

Many times when I do speaking and training about social media, I see excitement and enthusiasm from the people I talk to. I like that. I really like that. It makes me really happy to see people getting excited about using new communication tools and methods.

Sometimes, however, I also encounter people who are just the opposite. They whine, they complain, they say “I don’t have time” or “I don’t want to try to keep up with all that stuff” and they defeat themselves before even trying.

I don’t know how many times I can say this: social media is not a chore. It’s not about “learning Twitter” or “getting LinkedIn.”

Social media should be fun. Social communication is about extending your platform to reach new constituents. It’s about magnifying your message. It’s about giving a voice to your passion.

You have passion for what you do? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you have something worthwhile to say? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you care about your customers, members, or constituents? Then you’ll be “good” at social media.

The key is, though, you really do have to care.

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May 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Users keep secrets

Have you ever used an application or a website and gotten stuck because something didn’t work quite right? What did you do? Unless you’re like me, you probably gave up and didn’t bother saying anything about it (unless it was something mission-critical like online banking). Now I’m a little bit unique in that I am quick to write up an email to the developers of the application complete with screen shots and supporting information but that’s because I’m obsessed with usability. Most people tend to ignore it and simply stop using the application.

This is a warning to software developers everywhere who create applications and websites: users keep secrets. When things don’t work quite right, you may not know about it. Your users don’t want to take the time to send you a screen shot, write up a detailed description of the problem, or even try to figure out who to contact. They simply want it to work and when it doesn’t, they move on.

For this reason, it is the responsibility of software developers to test, re-test, and anticipate the workflow in their applications. Relying on real-life user testing is not always reliable. As a software developer it’s important to think through scenarios, predict what could go wrong, and proactively resolve the issues.

By analyzing your applications with a more critical eye, you will be able to create more user-friendly and profitable applications.

Filed Under: Technology
January 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Systematic Business Blogging

The benefits of business blogging are numerous. A great business blog can bring benefits in the form of SEO, authority, and increased trust. However, one of the most common complaints I hear when it comes to blogging is “I just don’t have time!”

Interested in overcoming this? Read more about it in my guest post for Rhoda Israelov called “Systematic Business Blogging“.

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January 1, 2011 By 3 Comments

What did I ship in 2010?

Seth Godin wrote a great post this week listing the things he shipped in 2010. Taking some inspiration from his post, I am also listing the things I shipped last year. As Seth said, it doesn’t matter whether these things were a hit or not, just that I shipped them. Here is my list.

Most of these things were done with help from my outstanding team at SpinWeb. A huge thank you goes out to those who contributed and assisted.

I enjoyed this exercise and it helped me see 2010 with a new perspective. It also helped me see what things I wanted to ship but didn’t, which makes for a some nice goals for 2011.

What did you ship in 2010? I would love to hear via your comments below.

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November 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

5 reasons why a LinkedIn profile is better than a resume

What’s the first thing job seekers do when they apply for a job? They send a resume (probably as a Word doc – yuck!). This practice is, of course, perpetuated by employers who keep asking for resumes. For a long time now, this magical first step of the employer/candidate dance is to transfer this stale, boring document called a resume from one party to the other.

Why?

My guess is simply that this is just “how it’s done” and employers want to see (rightly so) how experienced and/or qualified the candidate is before investing any more time.

Resumes have outlived their usefulness. They are boring, static documents that don’t really tell anyone much about a person. Luckily, there is a tool that is much more suited for job-seeking and hiring. That tool is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a fantastic networking tool and profile builder that far surpasses the old-fashioned resume. Here is why.

1. A LinkedIn profile is a “living” document. I am constantly hearing friends say things like “I need to update my resume”. If you maintain your LinkedIn profile and actively use it, you won’t have to worry about updating a resume. It contains your current activity, accomplishments, and work and has dynamic connections into other applications. Besides, you can always export your resume from LinkedIn if you really need to.

2. LinkedIn gives employers insight into the personality of the candidate. Part of hiring is making sure that a candidate will fit well into the company culture. A resume will not tell you much about someone’s personality but a LinkedIn profile will show you what types of things a person is posting and how that person communicates.

3. Recommendations are stronger and more credible on LinkedIn. On a resume, a reference or recommendation is just a bunch of words on a page. However, on LinkedIn a recommendation can be traced back to a real person with a real profile. You can see exactly who is making the recommendation and what that person’s background is.

4. LinkedIn shows off your communication skills. You can pull your blog and presentations into your LinkedIn profile which allows employers to see real, tangible examples of your writing and communication skills.

5. LinkedIn helps you make connections. Finding a job is all about networking. LinkedIn allows job-seekers to connect with people who can make introductions for them or allow them to reach the right people. It’s an incredible network of professionals who can offer advice and assistance to job-seekers.

As an employer, try asking for someone’s LinkedIn profile from now on instead of a resume. It will tell you a lot more about the candidate and will be a much more useful evaluation tool than a resume.

Job-seekers: work on creating a powerful LinkedIn profile. Recommend others in order to receive recommendations in return. Add applications that showcase your writing and presentations. Use a high-quality professional photo. Actively seek connections with others. These things will enhance your image as a candiate and help you stand out.

Let’s evolve beyond the resume and use LinkedIn instead.

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October 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The secret to effective time management in social media

I give regular presentations and training sessions on social media, online marketing, and technology-related topics. My audiences include business owners, professionals, and non-profit teams. 100% of the time I get this question or some variation of it:

“How much time do you spend on this stuff?”

Variations include:

“How do you find the time for all this?”
“How many hours a week do you spend online?”
“How much time do I need to spend on social media?”

My favorite is:

“When do you actually work?”

If I sense that my audience is truly looking for some practical “runway-level” tips on time management with online marketing, I will talk about automation, batched activity, block scheduling, and so on.

However, sometimes I will give a much simpler answer:

“Love what you do.”

That’s it. If you love what you do, you won’t ever have to ask how to find the time to talk about it. Social media is about communication with other people. If you love what you do, I mean truly love what you do with a passion, then talking about it with others will be effortless and natural. It won’t be forced and pushy; it will be honest and passionate and your business will grow naturally as a result.

You won’t have to “find the time” to be active in social media. It will become a natural extension of what you already do. You will be excited to have a new set of tools to expand your network and participate with a learners mind.

The bad news is, if you don’t love what do this message will be uncomfortable for you. It might prompt you to question why you do what you do. It might make you think about change.

The good news is, what you do with your life is up to you.

So what is the secret to effective time management in social media? You could try block scheduling and other fancy things. Or you could simply love what you do.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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