Today is Thanksgiving Day here in USA, and I am feeling very thankful. I hope that you are feeling thankful, too. When you consider the things to be thankful for in your life, it is nice to set aside all of that other stuff that diverts you from what matters the most.
I am thankful for many things, and I am going to share this with you and hope you can relate to it. This is not my typical blog article about social media, but it does include a very happy social media success story.
I began thinking about thankfulness and things which affect me and make me better. The list of thanks I owe is longer than I can dare to write in this short time I have while I prepare for my family’s Thanksgiving Day feast. I just want to distill this to my short list of things which really matter the most.
Good Reasons for Thanks: The People
Thanks for Family:
Above all, I must list my family. I have been blessed with a loving and devoted wife and three healthy and happy children. They are the kindest people I ever met, and beyond question, they are the best things in my life. They make me feel real, and they provide me with amazing joy from even the simplest things. I really cannot define the love this family brings to me, but it is my greatest source of joy and inspiration.
Thanks for Friends:
I am thankful for my many friends who bless my life each day. Some of them frequently have coffee or lunch with me, while some of them are thousands of miles away. Some of my friends counsel me when I need advice and caring, while some of them accept my counsel when they need advice and caring. Some of them have never shaken my hand or looked me in the eye, but yet, they are there every day … standing strong and carrying a flag for me.
Some of these friends I mention may not even receive very much attention from me, and they often know far more specifics about me than I know about them. All the while, these are people who drive me to do more, care more, and think more about every little thing I do. I thank these friends very warmly for this, and I hope that I may repay you in some way.
Thanksgiving Social Media Success Story
Today marks the 10th Thanksgiving holiday I will spend with my wife. In those ten years since we met right here on the Internet by way of social media, our lives have been blessed in ways which I could only describe as “astonishing”. The most astonishing of all is the people.
As you give thanks on this holiday, I hope that you will give some thought to these words. Without those people in each of our lives … and even those on the perimeter of our lives, we would not be the same. On the other end of that social media communication is another person who may be more important to your life than you credit them with.
Every Thanksgiving Turkey Has a Wishbone
Every turkey has a wishbone. My wish has not come into precise words for me just yet as I consider pulling on that wishbone. What I know for sure is that the things which matter the most for me are those people in my life, in every capacity, who drive me to carry on and always keep getting better. The people are my greatest cause for thanks, today, and that includes you! My wish may not name you specifically, but you are most certainly included.
Making friends is fun. Some of them just touch us for a moment, and some of them last a lifetime. Social media has changed a lot of our communications, and sometimes for the better. Usually it is for the better, but not always.
Over the past decade and a half or so, I have acquired a lot of contacts online. I try to keep a sense of closeness with them, and I still enjoy the friendship of many old friends from the once-popular AOL and Yahoo! social networks. In fact, one in particular stands out. We met ten years ago and became close as members of a Yahoo! chat group that got together every Friday night. We were married eight and a half years ago, built multiple successful companies together, and have three darling children now. A sad and frightening thought that occurs to me is whether with today’s astonishing level of social media static and frenzy to reach so many people, whether she would have even heard me.
What Happens When Social Media Gets Too Noisy?
I really care about my social networks, and they bring a lot into my life. I enjoy reconnecting with old friends from way back, and reminiscing about our crazy times as kids. I enjoy the many business relationships that I have built through social networking. I enjoy meeting new people who can make hot coffee shoot from my nose as I laugh at their uncanny wit, or who make me feel more love and compassion with stories of their lives. I suspect that you can relate to this on some level.
There is scarcely a day when I do not receive something that I hold dear, if only for a moment, that has come to me by way of my social networks. I think this is true for many of us, or otherwise social networks would likely lose much of their audience. We would lose much of our audience of friends who bring smiles with their presence.
In the past few years, the world has created a lot of “friends”, “followers”, “connections”, and etcetera. I guess that made it feel cozier when we call people “friends”, even if they are just another random person willing to check out our lives in exchange for checking out their lives. After all, by having “friends”, it is pretty easy to feel as if people like you, or at least pay attention to you. They express it every time they “like”, “comment”, “share”, “retweet”, and etcetera.
Social media satisfies our need to connect with others. Sometimes it just satisfies our need to be heard. It makes us feel popular, and it validates us. It is often something emotional, even for those who do not acknowledge it as emotion. We each want to connect on some level, and social media does that for us. It lets us collaborate, connect, share, and feel a sense of togetherness that is otherwise unlikely or impossible through pre-Internet channels. It is usually just fine, but if you are not diligent and attentive with social media, it can all begin to sound like static.
How Could Social Networking Possibly Go Wrong?
My short answer to how social networking can go wrong is that it can go wrong in more ways than it can go right. Perhaps the worst of all is a sense of static noise from having so many people trying to communicate with you, and not having an orderly way to keep the static down and let the important information through.
I am not saying that there is a defined “right way” and “wrong way” to enjoy your social media. What I am saying is that it is really easy to overlook the things which make it more fun, productive, and sustainable for long term objectives … whatever the objectives may be. Some of us want more friends, love, admiration, or perceived respect for having a squillion “friends”. Some of us want more business, more consciousness, more votes, or more peace of mind knowing that we are not all so different after all. The individual reasons we use social networks are as unique as our thumb print.
The worst thing that I see go wrong within social media is static noise. It is really common that people will pick up a huge number of “friends”, “followers”, “connections”, and etcetera, but then have absolutely no use for them, or value to them.
Have you ever sent something out there to your social networks and wondered how, with all of those so-called “friends” that it could possibly happen that none of them responded? Sure, it could be that you just said something so mundane and boring that staring at a blank sheet of paper would have been more exciting to them. This is usually not as likely as the possibility that they are overwhelmed with static from so many other people (their “friends”), that they totally forgot about adding you to their special list of people to give attention to.
Can you relate to this? I mean, have you ever found out that an old friend was sick, dying, or just had a fantastic day … or maybe just got the job promotion they so clearly deserved? Did you ever find out much later than you wish? I have, so I am certainly not pointing any fingers.
Sometimes life gets in the way, and we are surely each guilty of doing less than we could. The possible causes for the disconnection are numerous, but there are usually more reasons to reconnect with old friends. So, give it a try. What is the worst that could happen?
What is the Solution? Reconnect! … But How?
There are a lot of possible solutions to help avoid this tragedy of communications gone the way of static noise. Of course, there are a lot of great social media monitoring tools, but even with all the technology in the world, you still have to use them to get any benefit.
My suggestion today is that you take a little time to go through your list of friends, followers, and connections and try to reconnect with them. If they are somebody you found a particular interest in, or has shown an interest in you at some point, add them to a list or subscribe to their comments. Most social networks have the capability to create lists to help keep you in touch with people. Keep up with what they have to say. Let them know it, too. Interact, engage, communicate … you know, all of those things you used to do with them. Give them some feedback! If you have a blog, go back through some old comments and find out who used to always be there, but is less active than they once were. Do the same thing across other social media channels. Think about the people who provided some influence to you when you needed it. Bring them closer and don’t let the static get in the way.
If you feel like you have too much to keep up with, a little list-making effort will help you remain close to the ones you care about or respect the most. If you think really hard, I’ll bet there are some pretty great people who just slipped through the cracks of your everyday life. Reconnecting with these people and keeping them in a special list can be a huge help when struggling with all the static noise.
What do you think? Have you ever been let down, or let somebody else down just because their communication got lost in the static? Don’t be shy … be social! I have a comment form here on my blog, and it is there to connect and share. Tell others what you think, and if you have suggestions for managing relationships, by all means, share it!
Wouldn’t it be great if all of your marketing efforts worked just exactly as planned? Just imagine how great it would be if every piece of marketing material that you put on the Internet or elsewhere was a smash hit. That would be amazing! You could cut your expenses, earn squillions of dollars, enjoy more leisure, and retire early.
Now rub your eyes, grab another cup of coffee, stop daydreaming, and get to work. This is the real world, and we welcome you to come back and join us.
Nobody is brilliant 100 percent of the time. Some people come closer than others, but none of us walk on moonbeams while tending to our herd of unicorns. It is just not going to happen, but that should not discourage you from trying.
What is more important than creating 100 percent brilliance is to keep trying and testing new things. Even the least glamorous of your marketing efforts can have some level of success. This is more important to remember on the Internet than any other place. If you are holding back your efforts because it doesn’t peg your spectacular-ometer, you will miss out on a lot of what makes your brand what it is. Like any brand, your brand is made up of people … people and their opinions. These people are not all the same, and even some of your bottom percentile marketing efforts will be appealing to some of them.
Marketing with Juran’s Pareto Principle
A historic man named Joseph Juran observed that approximately 80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of causes. Many people know this as the 80 / 20 rule, and if you consider it carefully, you will likely find it to be both fascinating and virtually unbreakable. If you are unfamiliar, I strongly urge you to read the astonishing findings of Juran and the economist he named his studies for, Vilfredo Pareto. You may read more about The Pareto Principle and related Pareto Distribution at Wikipedia. Note that The Pareto Principle is not guesswork. It is a diligently researched, mathematically defined, widely documented, and well accepted socioeconomic principle.
Some ways the Pareto principle of 80 / 20 may be observed in your Internet marketing are as follows:
20 percent of your website pages receive 80 percent of web traffic.
20 percent of your marketing receives 80 percent of social media sharing.
20 percent of your blog articles receive 80 percent of reader comments.
20 percent of your marketing efforts can be tracked to 80 percent of your sales.
There are many other examples in which you will likely discover this principle to hold true, but I just want you to consider it and how you may apply it to your marketing efforts. Applying The Pareto Principle to your marketing may surprise you.
It is important to remember that if you reduce the 80 percent, you will also proportionally reduce the successful 20 percent. Do not neglect or devalue your 80 percentile efforts, because it has a purpose, too. Consider this: Have you ever received a compliment for something that you didn’t consider your best effort? I have, and sometimes for things that were not very popular or amazing to the masses, but were just right for somebody. I offer you this example that started with a home video of a little girl named Madeline from a few years back. I saw a message in it, so I put it on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. It did not have amazing results, but a few people thought it was cute. Those few people were worth it, and the video brought me just a bit closer to my next great 20 percentile effort. Plus, it is another tiny piece of branding that makes up the whole mix. Is it brilliant? Perhaps it is not brilliant, but do I think is it valuable? Yes, without a doubt.
Do Not Neglect Your 80 Percent Marketing
It is certain that you cannot achieve 100 percent brilliance, but even that 80 percent that is just “pretty good” may be what somebody was looking for. If you keep it to yourself, you will miss many opportunities for exposing your work to that smaller percentile of people who will think it is brilliant.
Nothing is an out of the box success. Any product or service offering will require a lot of effort to become successful. If you look at the 80 percent of less-than-brilliant efforts as simply wasted, it will not mean that the 20 percent left is all perfect. It will just mean that you still have only 20 percent of that 20 percent that is the most effective, but there will still be 80 percent that is less effective.
When you consider your marketing, remember that it cannot all be your best. There will always be a portion of your marketing which is more successful than the rest. If you try to reduce it down to just the things which are “perfect”, you will reduce your reach of a message that will work just great for some people.
So where does this article rank among my marketing efforts? I do not expect it to be a top 20 percentile piece of work. That does not matter to me as much as the fact that I am still trying, and getting even closer to my next 20-percenter all the time.
Another Blogging Tool for Your Toolbox
TweetMeme is huge, and bloggers know it. It is a wildly popular way to help people share the brilliant content that you have worked so hard to produce. You will find the TweetMeme button on many popular blogs. Another thing you will often see on blogs is a row of Sociable links. In case you are not familiar, Sociable is a WordPress plugin that makes it really easy to add social sharing links to a blog. I use both of these, and I like them. Kudos to Joost de Valk for creating Sociable and fav.or.it for creating TweetMeme.
Sociable is really cool, but the “Tweet This” button really left me with a need for more. By default, it did not shorten the URL, add a title, or include the “RT @murnahan” that I wanted. So, I thought it would be cool to add a TweetMeme button within my Sociable links rather than to have the extra bulk of both of them at the end of each of my articles. Including TweetMeme and Sociable together just made it look a bit nicer and it keeps all of those sharing links right there together in one place. Now it looks like the image below (see the bottom of this blog article for the real thing): TweetMeme Button Within Sociable
In your WordPress panel, go to “Plugins” where you will see a list of your active plugins. Find your “Sociable” plugin and click “edit”.
Don’t be intimidated if you are not a programmer. You are just looking for a little piece of code that looks like the image below. Simply search within the page for “sociable_tagline” and you should find it easily.
The part you will be working with is actually the very end of this, right after the closing “div” and immediately before the double quote (“) followed by a semicolon (;). This is the spot where you will add the snippet below to include your TweetMeme button. It will need to be formatted a tiny bit differently than you would use in other places. Below is a snippet for you to edit as necessary.
The code above will work, but you will probably not want to stop there. You may want to add things such as your Twitter username to retweet, which you may add by putting “&source=yourusername” right after the word “permalink”. If you want to add information such as a Bit.ly API key, that is easy, too. If so, just add it in the way you normally would, according to TweetMeme documentation, but be sure that you have a “\” slash before any double quotes (this is easy to overlook).
Of course, there may be slight variations in different versions of WordPress and Sociable, and if so, feel free to include your experience in the comments here. As with all programming, you work at your own risk and I will not be held responsible if you blow something up.
