Sometimes you will be pretty darn good

Let me start the year with an encouraging quote by Robert Middleton, the person whose e-zine and blog I’ve been following for several years now. In fact, you could say Robert is one of my virtual mentors (now you know that, too, Robert…).

I’ve talked about perfectionism jeopardizing even the best efforts to be just “very good”. Read what Robert has to say about this:

If we expect perfect every time or even “our very best” every
single time we will inevitably disappoint ourselves sooner or later.
Many people have this realization and it leads to resignation: “If I
can’t be perfect or do better than others, why even try?” So we
settle for mediocrity.

But people of great accomplishment know they will never be
perfect, not even always the best, but never give up because they
know that once in awhile their work will be, if not perfect, “pretty
damn good.” When they have a down day, it’s just a part of the
process of success, not a failure in any way.

Let’s have this in the back of our minds when starting our journey into 2012!

5 things not to do online

I’m sure we all have our pet peeves as far as other people’s online behaviour is concerned, but listening to other people and adding my own, you might want to reconsider if you’re doing any (or, horrors, all) of these:

1. Post incessant Foursquare updates. Okay, if you’re looking for company when sitting at the local Starbucks between meetings, fine, but people who send their whereabouts every 25 minutes just drive their readers crazy.
2. Automatically cross-post everything. I know many people are present on multiple social media platforms, but for heaven’s sake, make those hangouts of yours differ from each other SOMEHOW. It’s really annoying to read the same thank-yous for Twitter FFs on every site you can be found on.
3. Post all your Klout +Ks. This might be a built-in thing Klout does without you even wanting to (I don’t know), so my apologies if I’m accusing you wrongfully.
4. Wander too far away from the topic your audience perceives you as an expert in. Personal blog posts, tweets and what-have-you are OK occasionally, but you’ll just perplex your readers if you usually blog about social media and suddenly spend two days on dog breeding.
5. Rant or swear. Differing opinions and dissent are fine. But nobody wants to be in the company of someone who’s permanently whining or cursing. The F-word is a great attention-grabber, but what does it say about you as a professional?

Perhaps I should add number 6: write yet another “X things not to…” post. What’s your take?

Why I don’t follow many of the Twitter Big Names

Yeah, I’ve come across many Big Names on Twitter. Suggested to me by Twitter itself, or being retweeted or otherwise recommended by someone else.

But the thing is, I don’t follow anyone without first checking their, hm, credentials.

Sounds arrogant, doesn’t it — me, a relative nobody, talking about the credentials of the gurus?

I think many of the big shots have a problem, from an outsider’s point of view (like mine). They’re too popular.

Ehh… what?

Let me explain. Looking at their Twitter streams, all I see is them hobnobbing with their friends (as much as you can have “friends” on social networks).

The waterfall of “Hey, nice to see you”, “Yeah, wasn’t that great” and “How you doing” tweets doesn’t really give me much. No wonder, though, if they have 30,000+ people to rub shoulders with, that’s probably what you’ll end up doing: replying to thousands of messages coming from all sides.

The point of social networks, at least to me, a nobody, is to learn something new. Participate. Exchange views. Being a bystander on the outskirts of a conversation is not what I’m looking for.

So, in the absence of anything interesting or original to say to me, sorry, I’ll pass you.

 

Are you using guilt-based marketing?

An online marketer sent me this email:

Hi NN,

OK, I do have to call you out.

I’ve noticed that you haven’t purchased my X Product and I’m wondering why.

Is it the money? Remember, it’s less than $10!

Do you feel like you’re not ready? There’s no rush to dive-in instantly… you have access to X Product for LIFE.

Are you worried it’s a scam? I know, it DOES seem too good to be true. But, all I can say is that it really IS only $10.

Does it seem too cheap? I’ll admit it, it IS too cheap. But, I’ll also admit that it’s filled to the brim with ALL of my marketing secrets.

Sorry, but all your guesses were wrong. The raw truth is…

…your offer is not interesting.

Maybe next time try to give me additional, tangible reasons to buy instead of harassing me like a street peddler.

Which web would you choose?

When you look at this passage from CNN Money’s article Facebook vs. Google: The battle for the future of the Web, which one would you choose?

In Page’s web, everything starts with a search. You search for news or for a pair of shoes or to keep up with your favorite celebrity. If you want to learn about a medical condition or decide which television to buy, you search. In that world, Google’s algorithms, honed over more than a decade, respond almost perfectly. But in recent years the web has tilted gradually, and perhaps inexorably, toward Zuckerberg’s world. There, rather than search for a news article, you wait for your friends to tell you what to read. They tell you what movies they enjoyed, what brands they like, and where to eat sushi.

I know, it may sound like choosing between two evils. Yet, I’d personally vote for Google. I want to search what I want, not have my friends tell me what to do.

What about you?

Social media reciprocity is much overrated

Okay, so you’re following someone but that someone is not following you back?

Horrors. I’m not worthy? I’m not popular? I’m rejected?

Out of curiosity, I just checked whom I’m following who are not following me back. A total of 100 people, it seems.

Hmm. Robert Scoble. Walt Mossberg. Chris Brogan. Jill Konrath. John Jantsch. Joe Pulizzi. Pete Cashmore. The list continues.

Now I should be bursting into tears, right?

Ahh, you’ve got better things to do with your life than fret over things like this. If you find someone worth your attention, it doesn’t automatically have to mean they should be enthused about you.

Let’s face it, we’re all nobodies to some people. Yet, they might have something to give us. And you did follow them because you wanted to learn from them, to get to know them and their views better, right? Not like those who wish to “engage” with someone famous to get backlinks or comments to have their ego stroked the right way?

In my case, the people I’m following but who don’t follow me back make up about one-sixth of those I follow. Come on, that’s 15 percent. I can easily live with that. Especially when these folks (mostly) know what they’re talking about and act as my unknowing mentors.

Then there are those people who appear in your followers list one day, only to disappear from there after a couple of days or weeks.

Don’t worry about them, either. They’ve most probably signed up with an automated “get 1,000 Twitter followers a week” scheme and, disappointed when it doesn’t work in your case, drop you. That’s only good.

While it is good manners to follow people back, there’s a caveat. Just following you doesn’t automatically make them worthy of your attention. If they’re outside your sphere of interest, you don’t need to have any qualms ignoring them.

How do you feel about non-followers?

The sun revolves around the United States

I’ll admit to stealing the headline from the comic strip B.C., but it’s relevant in its own way.

With access to the internet, we all live in the global village, right?

Then I see this in my Twitter stream:

When you build a web form that asks for country, please go ahead and default it to ‘United States’ because typing U takes you to Uganda.

Living in Europe, with its 50 sovereign states and 230 languages, I’m instantly up in arms. Okay, if your business operates mainly in the US, by all means default to the US. But as an umbrella recommendation, this is way off the mark.

Let’s consider internet usage by region (from Internet World Stats):

In North America, there are 272,066,000 internet users (and remember this includes Canada).

In Europe, 476,213,935 users.

In Asia, 922,329,554.

In the global context, North America accounts for 13% of the world’s internet users. The rest of the world for 87%.

Maybe the writer would like to reconsider?