It’s lame.

You’re there everyday. Say hello to us, comment on our check ins. But quit stealing our thunder.

Check ins. Highly social. Very much a game. I fight other users for my dukedoms on Yelp. And it’s cool, cuz we’re on a level playing field. But the minute a business has its owner or one of the employees as the duke, mayor, whatever other “winner” of the game, I stop checking in. And when I stop checking in, I stop telling my friends where I’m frequenting the most. It’s cool to be the most “regular” of regulars at the shops I love. It’s shitty when I have to compete with business owners, employees and anyone else that has an ulterior motive. And frankly, as innocent as it may seem, I put it in the “black hat” social media tactic category.

So if you’re in the habit. Please stop. A better alternative? Become a player yourself. Check in to the businesses you love… but here’s the real kicker… make sure they’re ones you aren’t affiliated with. Then you’re one of us, we trust you and we’re all better off.

The advice? Focus 100% on your audience and visitors. Who’s reading your blog? What’s a great takeaway? What will they find useful? The Wendy-ized version of the three tips suggested are as follows:

1. When it comes to blogging, ignore the SEO experts and focus solely on creating the best damned content you can offer.
2. Make new friends. As in… linking was, is and always will be the best way you can build your audience base and search ranking. But don’t go on a spamming link building spree. Think this through and make connections and links to other blogs that make sense for you and your readers. Look at you adding more value!
3. Don’t ignore the SEO experts when it comes to your domain name. That shit still works. Pick one keyword, then find a domain name that works for you.

Care to read more? Check out the original findings and explanations as posted on ProBlogger’s Forget Everything You Think You Know About SEO by Mark Collier of DropMining.com.

Today, armed with the last 4 digits of the bank account I’ve got hooked into Paypal, that’s exactly what I did. It was easy, painless, seamless and fast. The steps:

1. I phoned their customer support line. The automated voice was able to confirm who I was using the last 4 digits of my account number.

2. Once I was confirmed, it automatically (and instantly) sent me an email with a password reset link… and it actually worked!

3. I clicked on the link and the automated system gave me a 5 digit code to enter into the page I was on.

Paypal Password Reset

4. Once I clicked “continue,” I was brought to a page to reset my password and security questions.

5. Voila! All logged in and all under 5 minutes.

If you’re using an automated system in conjunction with your website, make it this easy and people will appreciate it almost as much as a talking to a person… almost.

Either way, password recovered, payment made and one happy Paypal customer served!

What made this worth blogging about? Well, for one it’s always nice to shout out companies when they’ve done something right, especially for an area they might not otherwise hear much about (like password reset processes and experiences) and I think it’s an example for the rest of us to strive for. There were no wait queues for the help desk. I didn’t have to press 1 to speak to an agent or try to explain my entire issue to three different people because I phoned the wrong department. They kept it simple, clean and fast. Thanks Paypal!

“95% of your tweets should be about product or promotion.”

To which I respond:

“Would you rather be an interesting person someone met at the party? Or the annoying announcer nobody wants to listen to?”

Social media isn’t hard people. Quit trying so hard to make it hard. Be yourself. The organic (and way more lucrative) opportunities for your product or promotion will come. Just quit trying so goddamned hard. Or if you must, put that energy into being the life of the party instead.

Image via Wikipedia

Last December, I saw a Facebook status update for cancer awareness that I didn’t like.  I didn’t like it because I didn’t think it was effective.  I conducted a little experiment with my own Facebook status to see if I could improve on the idea.  You can read more about it in my blog post entitled “How I’m doing my part to find a cure” but the gist is that I encouraged people to share their cancer stories on my Facebook page.  For every story shared, I would donate $2 to the Canadian Cancer Society.  The experiment was quite successful.  I had over 40 stories shared and enough people jump in and match my donation out of their own pockets to bring the total donation up to a whopping $500.00.  All from one Facebook status and a desire to just do a little bit more.

Today, one of my Twitter mates, Michelle, took it upon herself to revive the idea on her Facebook wall.  Inspired by Breast Cancer Awareness month, Michelle has made her status update the following:

Here is my cancer awareness post: Facebook says I have 666 (yikes!) friends. Instead of telling me your bra colour or where you like to leave your purse, share a memory of someone in their lives touched by cancer by commenting on this status or leaving a note on my wall between now and November 30. For every comment I will donate $1 to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Now, if you know Michelle, please go share your story on her Facebook page.  I would love to see her make a $666 donation.

At the beginning of the month, another of the Calgary Twitterati, Jillian Walker, posted a blog post about her encounter with breast cancer.  A brave and inspiring move, she told the story in detail from discovery of an unusual lump in her breast through to surgery and recovery.

We’re not all cancer survivors, and many of us still (thankfully) haven’t been directly impacted by cancer.  But just because we may not have a personal story to tell on the matter, doesn’t mean our participation in a campaign as important as this one can’t have an impact.  Online social networks give us each a voice.  It’s easy to forget how little it takes to go a thousand steps further than we’ve ever been able to before today.

The point here is that we have a chance to be better.  Everyday, we can live our lives better, we can share and inspire others better.  It doesn’t take much, just a little creativity… and everyone’s got at least a spark of that in them.  Before you jump on the next meme, think about what’s behind it.  If it’s something silly, have at it.  Enjoy.  But if it’s something that is genuinely attempting to accomplish a goal as important as cancer awareness, please give the subject matter the respect it deserves by at least taking a second or two to think if your participation actually makes an impact, or if there’s a chance that you can make it better.  Without the effort from each of us as individuals, the whole will never get better.  Help out those you’re trying to support and just be better when it counts.

—

If you’d like to find ways you can help, from volunteer opportunities to making a donation in Alberta, the Canadian Cancer Society page has the resources you need.  If in another province, try visiting the homepage and navigating to your province and the “how you can help” tab from there.

Related articles:

What could I have done better?

It’s common to want to improve areas where we noticed weak spots to strengthen our overall game, but what if we flipped this around and asked ourselves:

What did I do right?

So many people are still trying to figure out this ‘social media thing’.  It’s new, it’s overwhelming, and the rate at which things change is scary.  Examples of what not to do are abundant, but how do you know what you can do right?

1. Take a look at your existing business and identify your strengths, talents, and areas that are going well.
2. Spend some time analyzing these areas and why they are your strengths, talents, and areas that are going well.
3. Take what you’ve observed and apply them when you begin to engage in social media.
4. Tweak and adapt as necessary to meet your objectives.

Chances are if you’ve had success offline, you’ll have success online. There are always the basic dos and donts, but they’re nothing more than acting in a publicly socially acceptable manner.  The rest is up to you.  So take a moment to look at all the things you do right and then rinse and repeat with social media.

I just read this post from Matt Good’s blog called “Trying to Pull Chairs Out of the Floor.”

I’m disgusted (though not surprised) that anyone would use the opportunity and direct links to others that current communication technologies allow us so ridiculously.  This has been on my mind as of late with a myriad of conversations I’ve been seeing, the post above is just adding to a long list.  Why does the fact that we can now say whatever we want, to whoever we want, whenever we want  mean that we get to neglect the fact that the people we are talking to are people too?  The social web is becoming more human, and yet it’s making us less so.

Seriously people, there’s constructive feedback, there’s making quality connections and then there’s being dumb and insensitive.  A lot of which is coming out on these tools.  It’s easy to get sucked into this kind of behaviour, so this next bit is as much a reminder for me as it is for you:

Quit taking something good and turning it into your playground for petty games and grade school politics.  It’s your opportunity to impact somebody directly.  The impacts of what you put out there are hard to measure.  We don’t know how far our actions and words can reach, but the web today takes everything… EVERYTHING… and amplifies it by at least a thousand times..  So if your one of these berating fans, or engage in these petty childish games I keep seeing, do the rest of the world a favour… grow up and be accountable or just shut your mouth.

Say what now? You heard me. Internet. BAM! Gone. Finito.

I’ve been all about creating efficiencies and alignment with the things in my life and with my activities lately. I recently turned my attention to my landline and thought ‘what is this still doing here?’. Hardly anyone phones me on it anymore… They all call my cell phone. Coincidentally my Internet came with my phone… I could have kept it. I know it works without actually having a phone. But I’m still in the midst of ‘FREE’ by Chris Anderson, at the time I had gotten to a part where he was talking about how cheap it was for him to work… He had a $250 netbook and free wifi in coffee shops. There are 5 or so coffee shops within about a 5 block radius from where I live. So I’m giving this a try.

I’m not completely cut off, I still have my email, Twitter and Facebook.. You know… The essentials via my iPhone.

But I also have something less. A little more time. Because now my Internet usage is that much more conscious. Monday night I spent 2 hours playing around with my guitars relatively uninterrupted. I can’t remember the last time I did that… My auto pilot would have checked my computer for something interesting happening online at least every 20 minutes before. But there’s always something interesting to find online… There’s only so much time for me and my guitars…

Today is day 3 of my ‘no internet’ experiment. If I go completely nuts, it will be back. But if I have my way, my time, my focus and my efficiency will all benefit.

If you think there are, break them.

Be disruptive.  Make people think.  Go against the grain.  Be creative.  Trust your gut.  And don’t ever listen to anyone who tells you it’s against the rules.  Because really… there are no rules.  It’s the internet.

Go be a free spirit.  Go spread your wings.   Go show me and the rest of the world what you are capable of.   If you fail, awesome.   At least you tried.   The internet takes away the excuse not to try.   It’s so EASY to at least try. And then when you’ve seen how easy it is to try the first time, it’s even easier to pick yourself up and try again.

Do you only have 5 minutes a day to spend on something?    Do it.   5 minutes once a week?  Do that too.   There aren’t any rules about that either.

Maybe you want to blog but don’t think your writing skills are up to snuff?   Or that you will run out of ideas of things to blog about?   There are no rules about quantity, topic, quality, etc.   You may want to think about what you put out there and how it will be perceived, but there’s nothing stopping you from publishing something.

Do you think you need a strategy?  It could be a good idea to help make the most effective use of your time (and if you have a brand to look after).  But if you’re a one person show… you may make things up as you go along anyway.  That in and of itself is a strategy.   A strategy is nothing more than a way of approaching something.

Think like the pirates… they live by The Code – but they’re more like guidelines anyway.

If there is a way to do something without creating more work for myself, I am the first to go looking for it.  So, what did I find?  A way to export ALL of my RSS subscriptions, much like you would export your contacts from Outlook to import somewhere else.  It’s called an OPML file.  All I did was head to the ‘file’ tab in my reader, and click on ‘export subscriptions’.  It automatically bundled them up into a handy little opml file that I saved to my desktop.  Next stop – Google Reader.  Importing your feeds to Google Reader isn’t front and centre, but it’s easy to find.  At the bottom of your feeds list is a link that says ‘manage subscriptions’.  From there, there is a link to ‘import/export’.  All you have to do is then upload the opml file you created from your desktop reader, and Google Reader does the rest.  The same would go for installing your feeds on another desktop reader, or a different computer.  Export the feeds as the opml file, then import the same file into the reader.  The technology does the rest.