maine web development, web design, internet marketing

How you choose to expand your network will directly affect the quality of your network

I know a woman who refers to Twitter as a giant cocktail party and loves that you can eavesdrop and jump in on any conversation, at any time. True, but what if your followers stink? They tweet about boring things, share the same links over and over, talk at you not TO you and no one responds to your thoughtful content.

If you focus too much on your Twitter followers being a numbers game and not a relationship starter, you will be blessed with crappy attendees to your virtual cocktail party. Thousands of boring tweeters will clog your Twitter stream with sales promos, what they had for breakfast and whiny tweets about how horrible their lives are.

Relationships beat numbers

What are you using Twitter for? As a broadcast tool? To tell you boss that you have 10,000 followers? Then sure, numbers are good but more often then not, your tweets fall on deaf ears (or um, eyes). If you are using Twitter to build and reaffirm relationships with your customers, establish yourself as an expert in your industry or to get feedback on your products and services, then relationships matter more.

Jason Falls wrote a quick and to the point blog this week about what is more important, ‘influence’ or trust? Many people spend too much time trying to get the attention of the people with the biggest Twitter followers or most blog subscribers. If one of those picked up your content, would you really get the eyeballs you want on your content? You are probably better off finding someone in your niche who has followers that would really benefit from your content, products and services.

3 easy ways to find good people to follow on Twitter

1. Try adding your LinkedIn contacts to your Twitter followers. The Next Web thought that with this new easy integration, this could be the ‘a-ha’ moment for many Twitterers struggling to find meaningfulness in their Twitter streams.
2. Look for hashtags that are in and around the target group you are trying to reach.
3. Can’t find a good hashtag? Start your own or start a Twitter chat. Twitter chats are a great way to find new people you can connect with. I have met some really good people through #blogchat.

Lastly, if you feel like your followers are lacking the qualities you need, don’t feel bad about trimming the fat and getting your numbers down to people who care about you and your content.

Photo credit: aboveallprecious

You may have seen them leaving off-color remarks on blogs, or always being negative on Twitter but Internet Trolls can be serious business. If you haven’t run into them first hand, you should probably be prepared to and have an idea of how your business will deal with them.

What is an Internet Troll?

Internet Trolls are internet users who find enjoyment in attacking and criticizing other people’s content. Their mission is usually to get a reaction from the person they are attacking or from their network.

An internet troll can be found in the comment sections of blogs, on social networks, in message boards and more. Their protocol is usually to comment on someone else’s content or profile in a negative and sometimes controversial manner to try to get a reaction.

Where the damage can occur to your business is in how you react to an internet troll. Your comments are as much of your marketing as your original post or profile.

Wikipedia Defines Troll (Internet)
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

As you become an authority in your industry, you are more susceptible to trolls. Remember when your mother told you that kids were mean to you because they were jealous? Well the same applies here but with grownups and new tools for malicious behavior. As you establish yourself as an authority and broadcast to your network what your point of view is on a topic, you have put yourself out there and need to be prepared for trolls to try to get a rise out of you.

Sonia Simone from Copyblogger had a great post called The Dark Side of Authority where she explains that we all know being an authority in our industry is what we want, but trolls are one of the downsides of being an ‘expert’. She goes on to say that it is human nature to admire authority, but it is also human nature to for some to resent authority.

How to Deal With an Internet Troll

First things first, an internet troll is looking for a reaction so carefully consider your response or your decision not to respond.

Here are a few tips for dealing with internet trolls:

• Have a plan first – As with all things we talk about with internet marketing, it is important to have a plan first. This could be a conversation with anyone who is participating in your business blog and social networks or an official policy on how to respond to off-color comments. Going into the situation blindly without considering the possibilities means you could be more prone to having a gut reaction, and giving the troll exactly what they are looking for, attention.
• Approach each comment as constructive – As many of us have learned the hard way, there is no tone in written text. You cannot tell when someone is being sarcastic, or trying to be funny, maybe had a typo, or shouldn’t have read your blog after that martini and they misunderstood your content. Treat each comment like it had good intentions. Some will be very easy to tell that they are malicious but if it is borderline, treat it like it had the best of intentions.
• Delete content that hurts your network – I think leaving negative comments on your blog or profile is usually ok, if not good. It shows debate or lets you realize how other people view your opinions and you can have some really great conversations that help you grow. You should delete content that attacks another member of your network, has profane language or that you find offensive. You don’t want to be the arena that one of your readers gets into an argument with a troll.
• Say ‘Thank You’ – If there is a comment or a tweet that I think is malicious but I don’t have anything constructive to add, I will just say a simple ‘thank you for your comment’ or ‘thank you for your perspective’. That way, they know they were heard but they did not get a big reaction out of me.
• Follow up – On at least a dozen occasions someone has said something hurtful about me, my work or my company I have followed up and made a relationship out of it. A few have even become partners I refer work to. A whiny tweet could just be someone else who provides similar services but thinks their way is better, a cry for attention to view their work or a faceless crime and when you meet them face to face they are guilt ridden for their comment.

Dealing with internet trolls or off-color remarks is definitely a case by case and company by company basis. You need to do what is best for your business, your employees, your network and you. If you are prepared beforehand, you will probably have better results versus a petty battle of words in the comments section of your blog.

How and When Can You Use Other People’s Content?

As we talk about blogging, social media and creating content online, we have to stop and talk about sharing content, copyrighted material and when it is ok to use other people’s work and when it is not.

For years, in our recent history, we copyrighted everything that we created. We copyrighted photos we took, videos we made, music we created and everything else so that people knew it was ours and we would get credit for it.

Now with the internet, blogs and social media – users are creating content all the time. With that they are re-purposing, sharing and building off other people’s words, thoughts and art; standard copyrighting laws are too strong. Many people want their content to be shared, built on and used for collaboration.

Introducing Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that is working with content creators of every kind to make it possible for some of their work to be used in some ways. Creative Commons provides free licenses for creators to use when making their work available to the public. These licenses give the creators that ability in advance to know what their content is intended for.

In the past, copyrighted material meant all rights were reserved and that you had to ask permission to use or build upon that work, without ever knowing what the original creator’s intention was. Now when you create some type of work you can use Creative Commons to tell potential users exactly how and when they can and cannot use your content.

In the late 80′s copyright laws changed, and as soon as you finished a piece of work it was automatically copyrighted as yours. What if you wanted to share that work? Let people add onto it? Build upon it? Make something else with the content you created? You couldn’t really. The copyright laws were too restrictive. Creative Commons created their own terms and agreements so you can make the decision on how and when people can use your work the way you intended.

Here is a video that I think explains Creative Commons well:

What Should I Do With MY Content?

It is very much up to you and your company what you want to do with your content. Some people want all of their work completely open to give it as much legs as it can get. Some want to publish some content for free and then have some work copyrighted and be able to charge for specific in-depth content. As you work with your business on a content strategy you need to decide what it is people can and cannot do with your content.

Jason Falls recently wrote a post on his blog, Social Media Explorer, on why he recently changed his open, share and share alike copyright to a non-commercial, share and share alike copyright. His work was being confused for other people’s and credit for his work was going to other sites and it was important to him to get those pieces back.

How Do I Know What Content I Can Use?

Not everyone participates in Creative Commons. It is still, in the scheme of things, relatively new. The catalog of items increases every day. You can start by browsing some of the resources Creative Commons has on their site. Some blogs have a logo and link to their creative commons specifics.

Photo credit: hoangnam_nguyen

I have always used Flickr for my blog entries and they are great with Creative Commons photos. You can search just for items that are part of the Creative Commons and each photo clearly tells you what the image can be used for.

For example this adorable puppy picture (I picked it to make Jenika go ‘awwwwww’) has a link on the Flickr page that says ‘Some rights reserved’. I can click on that link and see what the specifics of using this image are. This image is made to share as long as you attribute the work, which I did below the image, and on the condition that if it is used again from this blog entry, it gets attributed there as well. Here is the link that explains how the image can be used.

The puppy example is just for photos. Now think about how you can use this for text, music and other creative content. Creative Commons has a good thing here, especially now in this time of so much content creation. I hope this post helped explain what Creative Commons is. Happy creating and sharing!

I have the opportunity to speak to lots of groups about new tools for marketing their business. These tools include blogs, social media sites, search engine optimization, email marketing and more. I am so excited about the line of work I am in. I think this marketing shift is a powerful thing to be a part of. By marketing shift I mean more control, opportunity and techniques to measure your own businesses marketing efforts and becoming less and less dependent on third party marketing services.

At most group discussions I am a part of there is at least one comment, usually at the very end, of someone saying “Well don’t you think this is just a generational thing?”

Short answer: Probably, yes but there is more to it than that.

How each generation works is different than the generation before them

A large point for more experienced workers is that they don’t consider participating in social media as “work”. Those who use social media tools don’t consider it “work” either. We consider it a tool for communication, like the phone, fax machine or email. Millennials and Gen Y’s are under the microscope from Boomers because how they are choosing to work is vastly different than those before them. They are using new tools, have new ways of reaching out to customers, work different hours and blur the lines between what is work and what is not.

Redefining what we call work

The Millennials, who are coming right up in the work force, is the only generation that doesn’t cite work ethic as one of its “principal claims to distinctiveness”. The same percent that cited work ethic also cited clothes as a claim to distinctiveness. This will probably change as it did with the stereotypes Gen Xers had to deal with.

What IS true is that what is defined as work is changing. The traditional 9 – 5 is getting stretched to its capacity. First it was 8:30 – 5, then 8:30 – 6 and now many of us are checking our email, preparing content and speaking with clients at all hours of the day.

I spoke with a nice gentleman recently who told me he ‘didn’t know how I did it’, carrying around my phone all the time, making time to tweet and write, checking email at all hours of the evening, etc. I told him the same goes for me to him. The thought of coming into my office and checking the emails that have piled up over night causes me anxiety. If I get 30 emails overnight, my whole morning is ruined with just checking emails. Now I know what is coming in and can plan out my day better. I feel like I hit the morning ground running. That is what works for me and it doesn’t work for him. I am not wrong and he is not wrong.

The term ‘weisure‘, work+leisure, was developed to describe this blurring of the lines of work and leisure time. Are we more willing to work on our free time because work is more fun? Or maybe we just have more work to do then can be done in a traditional work week?

“Social networking as an activity is one of those ambiguous activities. It’s part fun and part instrumental in our knowledge economy.”

Dalton Conley via CNN article Welcome to the ‘weisure’ lifestyle

Blending Work and Pleasure means losing your privacy

As we work more in our leisure time and we participate in social media sites while we work – the lines are getting blurred between the two. Most people have a public version of themselves and then they have a private one seen only by their family and friends. As we use Facebook to connect with business partners or add tidbits about our weekend life on our Twitter stream everyone needs to consider what they and their company are comfortable sharing on social networks and in their personal lives. Younger generations seem more comfortable on social networking sites with countless pictures and videos of them and their friends. At some point that content will be reflected on when they join the workforce in a more professional sector. We work with businesses often about setting social media policies to outline exactly what the business and the employees are comfortable sharing publicly. Whether or not you make a policy, these are important discussions to have with your staff.

New Tools mean new workspaces or lack thereof

With smartphones, online meeting services, social networking sites, real time searches, video phones and web cams does this mean people who are comfortable using these tools still see value in sitting in an office from 9 – 5? Gen Xers and Millenials are more apt to look for businesses that offer a work from home option or more flexible hours.

Work Shifting is the popular term for people who web commute to their jobs often, if not daily, and work from coffee shops, restaurants and hotels. In a recent article from Work Shifting ‘How Millennials Are Shaping the Future of Work‘ the author tackles some of the major things Millennials have contributed to change the way we work. She points out how technology and human interaction go hand in hand, marketing is a two way conversation and change is just part of the way the world works now.

Technology and Social Media keep changing

Millennials seem more able to change than any of the other members of the workforce. This generation grew up with quick advances in technology, unlike the ones before it. Change seems to be a way of life and not an unwanted inconvenience. As we have discussed on this blog before, not all the changes (very few honestly) will have a major impact on your business. If you are going to incorporate technology and take control of your own marketing align yourself with an Internet Marketing Travel Agent or someone you trust who is inline with your company goals to keep you in-the-know about advances in technology that will affect your business. For example I do a weekly recap of internet news that I think may influence the small to medium-sized businesses and B2B businesses that we work with.

Those are just a few of my thoughts on the changes in how we work through generations. So yes, I do think ‘it’ is a generational thing but the ‘it’ isn’t social media, the ‘it’ is how we work. How we work is different and social media is just a new tool to communicate in our workday. How we incorporate it (or don’t) is up to each organization and each person.