Social Media Tip #1: If the shoe don’t fit…

Chinese shoes for bound feet, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don’t put it on!

There are  plenty of tips and tricks and best practices out there. And they come from very well-meaning people who’ve likely had some rate of success with them. But here’s the thing, just like we tie our shoes differently, whip up our favourite guacamole with different ingredients, or communicate with our friends, relations and customers in different ways, so to should we each be finding our own way to flex our social media muscles.

So, tip #1: It’s good to try out new tactics and strategies, but if it just doesn’t feel right, it’s okay to abandon it. It doesn’t matter who the tip is coming from.

Social media users from any network are pretty savvy people. They can smell a fake from miles away. And they’ll be the first to notice  if you’re doing something that’s just not natural for you. So if the shoe don’t fit… go try on a different pair.

Keeping Yourself Engaged

Cleaning Supplies for Spring Cleaning (Photo credit: Chiot’s Run)

When you first hop onto the social media band wagon, it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of discovering people you didn’t know existed, seeing how easy it’s become to find out about local events and goings on or exploring new topics. But there comes a time in each social media explorer’s life when the excitement wears off. You’ve ridden all the rides in the theme park and you need a new adventure. You don’t want to be rid of all of the friends you’ve made along the way, but your evolution to bigger and better things is inevitable. It’s part of the human experience. The challenge then becomes one of balance. How to embrace the new without alienating the old (unless of course you’d like to just let some of the old fall by the wayside) in such a way that the transition is the least disruptive as possible?

You could pull a Wendy and blog your frustrations on impulse… I wouldn’t recommend it. Or, you can refresh your approaches and your networks. This, I would recommend more. It’s what I did after I blogged my frustrations on impulse… and with much  more success.

How can you do the same? Easy!

1. Identify what you’re no longer satisfied with. My kind of news isn’t typically what I’d find in a local publication. I had resources coming to me through people I followed on Twitter, RSS feeds in my Google Reader and the likes to bring me the information I was seeking. But over time, some of my interests have changed and some of my sources have changed their content. Where I once had an entire network to spark my imagination, I found it growing stale… which brings me to point number two.
2. Whether it’s once a month, once a quarter or even once or twice a year, make the time to find new people to pay attention to, new relationships to forge, new niches to explore. It’s like spring cleaning for your closet.. you don’t keep the clothes you haven’t worn in over 2 years, do you? It’s okay to let some of these go. If you’re worried about hurting anyone’s feelings in your more person-to-person networks like Twitter and Facebook, consider using groups and lists to cull out who you’re paying attention to rather than completely unfollowing or unfriending.
3. Find your balance. And I don’t mean between reading blogs, surfing the web, emailing, tweeting or watching Youtube videos. I mean the difference between turning your phone and computer on or off, making an active effort to attend local shows, having a “laptops down” rule at home after 7pm… you know, ways to enjoy the stuff that life was made of before the internet and all things digital took over. I’ve been making an active effort to do more and more of those very things in the last 3-4 months. It’s left me time to relax back into being me, rather than trying to keep up and feel “connected” all the time.

Keeping things interesting for yourself and for those in your life is an ongoing process. What are some suggestions you’ve found to be successful in keeping your networks fun and fresh?

Foot In Mouth Disease

So… did you read my last rant post? Yeah, a mere two minutes after publishing, what should I check? Facebook. And what should I find? A tag pointing me toward my friend Reg’s post about his first ever podcast that has no name yet with Lonnie Taylor. And… it’s really interesting.

*foot in mouth*

At least I’ll admit it. :p

Now… go listen to it (and not just because they talk about me in it.)

The Exodus Of The Nerds

When you become an expert adventurer (oh snap… am I claiming to have expertise on a subject? Sure am!), having everything served up to you on a silver platter by way of online recommendations gets a little stale. I miss the surprise injections of ideas and stimuli from parties outside my social circles. Surfing through Facebook, flipping through photos on Instagram, aimlessly watching Twitter feeds waiting for something interesting to pop out and catch my eye… in moments, most of my connections seem to be talking about the same topic, taking photos of the same subject matter and so on. My only saving grace is the odd witty caption, joke or sarcastic remark from a few people who are known for such. I’m understanding why many of you only chose to follow a dozen or so highly entertaining people.

My world is about digging up what others know little about. And while online tools still help me do this, it’s now become more like rummaging through the piles that most people would pass by in order to find those little golden nuggets. What I once loved about the interwebs was that most of it was unknown. We were still pioneering it. And it was a haven from the relatively ridiculous and mundane  behaviours that had taken over things like email (Forward this to 15 people on your list or you’ll have bad sex for a year!). Now it’s getting to a point where it’s becoming a civilized place to live. We’re appointing sheriffs and local law enforcement to keep the peace so we can all co-exist. But in that, if it means tolerating the overwhelmingly useless dribble or spending hours putting the right filters into place to weed it out… quite frankly, I think I’d rather just go elsewhere.

It turns out, elsewhere is “offline.” What? Seriously… hitting the streets, walking through doors I’ve never opened without having looked it up online, picking up books to read based solely on the cover (or off the recommendation of the staff in the bookstore who can’t ever shut up about the last insane book they read)… yes, finding the real nerds. Social networks are making the world too big. And when it gets too big, it loses its value for me. It’s harder to connect, harder to have genuinely interesting conversations. So, see you later interwebs. I’ll be back to use you for writing and publishing and the sort, but as far as supporting my adventuring pastimes, you just aren’t bringing me what I need. Expect an exodus of the nerds in the coming months. Surely, I’m not the only one feeling this way.

Attn Biz Owners: Quit Checking In To Your Own Business.

Whether it’s on Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Google or some other mobile check in platform, if you’re a business owner, there’s no way in hell you should ever be checking in to your own business. Why?

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.