My 9000 MySpace Friends
I was wondering about my MySpace friends the other day, wondering what they were up to. I don’t get on there as much these days. You can however find me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It was not so long ago that all the social media experts were saying that the focus is on MySpace, it is the place where your business and your brand really need to be. Before that it was, you really need to be on Second Life, that is where your brand needs to be, in a virtual world. Before that it was, your company needs to be blogging, you cannot run a business without a blog. Oh the memories.
Since things seem to work in cycles, how can we prevent our current networks from being old news a few years from now? Actually I am not sure we can. But I am sure that they will not fade too quickly either. Twitter is a great tool for networking and real-time conversations, Facebook utilizes rich media like video, audio and photos to provide more of a showcase for whatever you want to promote, while LinkedIn continues to be more of a professional atmosphere, focused on connecting business people through discussions and linking.
Current social networks have also learned a lot looking at the history of MySpace. They don’t want to make some of the mistakes that have happened to that site, such as interface and user experience.
I think the thing to do is to create a brand that transcends any current network, one that can be immediately applied to whatever the latest social network is. It’s funny, everyone was so passionate about MySpace, but now, it’s old news. Some of the current networks may face similar fates. It’s all about communication. When a better communication option comes up, people will typically move to it.
I always tell people to be aware and on the lookout of what the next big thing will be, as opposed to jumping in later when everyone else does. If you wait that long, you will be in lots of very crowded markets and communities. The “Next Facebook” is probably being developed right now, so keep an eye out for it.
Lately the cool thing to say is “I deleted my MySpace account, I am done”.
Not so fast.
Since most things do happen in cycles, I see a phoenix-like rebirth of MySpace down the line. It is a huge network that is not going to sit by and watch these new networks grab all the glory. I have no idea how or when it will happen, but it does make sense that it will.
It may be funny to think that you will be on MySpace again daily in the future (even if you are not Dane Cook) but keep in mind, 60 million people are on it this month. That is a big network that I don’t see suddenly vanishing.
Live in the social media moment, but do keep an eye on past tools you have used, they may make a comeback. And look for the next big thing, getting in early could be a huge benefit.
Finally since I don’t get on MySpace too much, I just wanted to give a shout out to my MySpace peeps. Friends, I salute you. I may be seeing you sooner than I think.
Are you still using MySpace? Do you prefer it to say Twitter or Facebook?
Have you moved on from MySpace? Will it indeed make a comeback?
Real Twitter Spam Begins?
I had always hoped social networks would be pretty locked off from spammers. At least that was the dream. However this morning I tend to feel different. There was a Twitter user, spammer, who I am not following and who is not following me. However what they did was put in their message, which was merely an affaliate link, the names of other users. They put myself and several others. So that way it would show up in my mentions. It would also come up with any search on my Twitter username, that I did, or anyone else did. As Twitter users we are fairly focused on our mentions, so this is pretty concerning. In fact, although I can block or unfollow someone, there does not seem to be anything in place to disallow anyone from mentioning my name.
Has this begun to happen to any of you? What could be the cure for it?
Curing Twitter Envy
In the social media space, connections are king. Not just the amount of contacts, but also the quality of those connections. However it’s hard not to look at someone with hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers and wish you were up there in the numbers. The fact is every one of those people started with a few, ten, twenty or a hundred people. You may well be on your way to achiveing even more connections then some of the people you are following. The main thing to think about is what is your goal for Twitter. Do you want quality of connections, fewer followers but a richer experience, or do you want as many as you can get, to maximize the opportunities?
Looking at competition can be a losing game, we covered this in Is Creative Competetion Wearing You Down and it’s the same concept, looking at others as a benchmark to judge your own success. The process is to be engaging to followers, so people will want to follow you. I have seen that typically be a mix of interaction and providing info. You help some people with answers, you chat back and forth, you provide some links, you repost a Tweet that you find helpful.
Often if there is someone you want to follow you, you will follow them and hope they will return the favor. Sometimes they don’t. Often because they get busy or don’t keep up with following people back. Instead of sitting and hoping, interact with them. While you cannot direct message people not following you, you can certainly interact with their conversations by replying (they will see this in their mentions) and you can repost info of theirs you find helpful. Even promote them on Follow Friday. Twitter is one big online cocktail party, so rather then standing around hoping a person will chat with you, be active and engaged.
Be the life of the party and others will come to you.
Soon you will see your followers rising as you become more engaged. And by the way, everyone says they don’t care about a lot of followers, this is often when they don’t have a lot of followers. You will almost always see thier numbers rising because they actually do care and are working to become more engaging on Twitter.
Do you have the amount of followers you want? What can you do to be more engaging on Twitter to attract the following you desire?
4 Steps To Take Social Media To The Streets
There is no doubt that the interconnected web of social media has probably produced an abundance of new contacts for you. You are connecting with more people than ever as well as conversing back and forth with many in your local area you have never discovered before. But try to take it to the next level. Go from online to in person. As well as you seem to know someone online, you could get to know them even better when you actually meet. Of course this is tricky if someone is on the other side of the world, but if someone is right in your area, or perhaps even an hour away, there are great opportunities to connect. Here are some tips on meeting in person:
1. Meet People Not In Your Industry
The common path is we gravitate to people who are doing the same things as we are. There is much to talk about and it’s always fun to trade stories. But it’s when you start to meet up with people who are not in your industry that you really begin to expand your scope. Even if there is not a lot of common ground at first, you may meet with someone who seems to be totally unrelated but you find much to discuss. This wider scope almost always provides a better pathway to success, either in the form of clients or just informational. Or even developing a new longtime friend. I have met with people and discovered entire industries I had little to no knowledge of, some of these industries I am involved in now, so you never know.
2. Meet People More Successful Than You
It’s always a mix, but set up some meets with people who are really succeeding. Being around these people on a higher level really can not only get you thinking in new directions of achievement but it also forces you to excel just to keep up. If it is a potential client, you may be surprised that they want to work with you, which may also help you ramp up your skill set in a short amount of time.
3. Don’t Just Talk Shop
It’s always good to talk about common things, but always float in a few questions aimed at finding out who the person really is. This could be hobbies, causes, interests…people are complex with lots of layers. Diving in to some off the grid conversations can really illuminate the proceedings. If all else fails you can ask them what they do for fun. Often you will be amazed at some of the things people are in to.
4. Follow Up
Keep the momentum going. There are some people who have meets all the time, one after another. Really it’s best to develop a relationship and keep the flow going, as opposed to jumping into the next meeting. You’ll find that even if you don’t have an initial connection, if you keep the conversation going and keep the person in your circle, new things will come up that had not surfaced at first. A circle of contacts is like a circle of clients, with clients you may not work with one and then jump on to the next, you probably work with many on a continuing basis, along the way discovering more about them and their needs. Do the same with contacts, focus more on getting to know them as opposed to jumping to the next one.
Every person you meet is a doorway to a whole new world. But if you run around quickly peeking into doors you’ll never get the whole story. Spend some time, expand your contacts and get to know them better, you may be amazed at what you find when you move from online networks to in person connections.
http://www.FranklinMcMahon.com
How Much Control Do You Have Over Your Social Media Content?
Aside from the fact that social media websites provide an amazing opportunity to get your content out to a mass audience, the downside is that you are typically accessing a free service that has the ability to terminate your account at any time and for any reason.
Most of the time you’ll never run up against this, unless you abuse the social media web site’s general rules. But their rules may surprise you.
For example, on both Facebook and Twitter, if you add friends rapidly, clicking to add multiple people in a set amount of time, you could get a warning that you are “adding friends too quickly”. On Facebook if you paste in an update that you had previously posted, or used their email system to resend out an email identical to a previously sent one, you could get a warning that you are posting or sending “duplicate content”. Twitter and Facebook both have algorithms in place to make sure that their systems are not abused. MySpace had this as well especially when it came to adding a lot of friends in succession. MySpace did not have much warning methods in place, and some people had their accounts shut down with little or no explanation.
Facebook spells out more clearly what you are doing to incur the infraction. And in fact often when you send an email in to their tech support, an actual person will provide some guidance as to why you received a warning. Twitter is a bit less threatening, with general “slow down” messages as opposed to Facebook’s warnings. Facebook also puts users in a penalty box of sorts, if you are snagged for adding too many friends at once, you’ll lose the ability to add anyone for a few days or longer. The problem resides in the fact that neither network has any posted guidelines on what is deemed too much, so it’s mostly a guessing game. The social network sites put in place these rules to keep spammers and over zealous users from making it a free-for-all. Twitter in particular has recently added rules to stop users from adding too many people by literally disconnecting the ability to add new friends. You may have gotten a notice recently that you are not able to add more friends.
Again, in general, most users never hit up against these roadblocks. But it does illuminate a really important issue, that your account and feature set, which you use to brand your identify, communicate with friends and network, could be shut down if the service decides it is best. So the key is to use the social network site as a speaker, not as the stereo. Your content should reside on your own server or website, on a site you pay for, a site you own, a site you can do anything you want. And then the content is pushed to your social network sites.
This can be done in a variety of ways, you can feed your RSS feed to Facebook quite easily, you can publish a link to your podcast, photos, audio and video to Twitter and Facebook in a few clicks. You can also duplicate the content from your website, domain or blog and have it also appear on the social network sites. But it’s often best to steer away from creating original content that only resides on these services. Always have a backup at another location and try to push the content to the social network site, so in the event, however unlikely, that your account is turned off, you are not losing hours, days and months of content that you cannot replace.
Social network sites are fantastic for broadcasting. Putting items on Facebook and Twitter specifically can gain your career at lot of traction. Just remember that these sites are focused on a prime user experience above all and their quality control growth has been helped by users not taking advantage of these tools and clogging things up. So continue to contribute to the networks, but do what most social media experts do, push out content to the social sites and always have most or all of it reside elsewhere, a place where you have complete control.
Do you have a website or domain that is the centerpiece for your content? Are you planning on creating one? Or do you use a social media site for your content?
Branding Your Name On Social Networks
These days your brand is often you, it’s you and you alone. Even if you work for a large company, are part of a big enterprise or have a successful company that has a distinct name, when you are online, you are known by your name. Often on networks like Twitter, people will use usernames or handles, such as kim345 or tedphotoguy. These are great for log-ins, but don’t do much to extend your brand.
Facebook ensures you must use your real name, but it is more flexible with creating Pages, you can pretty much name them anything. But keep in mind that your name will never change (well marriage may alter that..) even as you move to different companies and get involved in various enterprises. In fact someday if you move from working for “the man” to heading up your own empire, you’ll want to ensure that your actual name has a good brand and a great following. If your current online name is based on an industry or company, remember that in 5 or 10 years you may be completely done with it. Maybe less.
So as you create accounts, as you dive deeper into the vast array of social networks, as you register a domain name, as you create a new account, remember that your name is the brand. FirebirdConsulting.com is nice, but KimSanderson.com is a lot more personable and recognizable. It all starts with you. It all starts with your name. People may remember your clever handles or usernames, but they will never forget you.
Are you marketing your name?
Your Creative Career is Online but Where is your Digital Legacy?
One thing to focus on weekly is looking at what you are contributing to the community and what you are contributing to your online legacy. Your community is your contacts online, the people you interact with, share info, help and connect with. Your legacy is your body of work, what you create, what you develop and share with your audience. Most of what you share with people should be focused on your body of work, because that is the most permanent. That will provide you the most traction for advancing your creative career.
For years I have had various websites, email newsletters and podcast/online shows going in one form or another, it has been a way to get out information and convey to an audience what I was up to. The focus on keeping people in the loop built a following which kept everyone involved. Of course I do realize that doing something like a weekly show is work, but producing content on a regular basis is key to growing your audience.
Lets put it this way: you spend two hours interacting on social networks or you spend two hours doing some blog posts, maybe a video for your fans or updating your website. Both sessions involve some work, both can be fun and both have you contributing. But the two hours in social networking can be fleeting and not very permanent. 10 comments on a variety of blogs, chats back and forth on Twitter, checking out various links and images posted on Facebook, etc. You’ll get something out of it, you may catch the attention of some people, take part in a fun conversation, maybe find some new links and that will be about it.
Now think about two hours working on a blog update or doing a new video. Once you post those, its permanent and accessible. Every person you connect with can look back at the items, at any time, for years. It builds on your previous work, it grows the body of content you are pushing out to the masses. If anyone wants to see what you are up to, popping into your website is one easy stop. If your website has not been updated in weeks, it almost appears that you have not been making progress to the interested viewer. Show what you have been up to. Try to work to keep everyone up to date.
Lets take it to an extreme. You spent a year interacting on social networks, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. You’ve made some connections, got a lot of info and contributed to the community. But a few years from now, most of those items will be long gone. Say you spent a year updating your website or blog often, daily or even weekly, with video, images, opinions, tutorials, etc. A few years, even a year from now, you’ll have an amazing body of work that anyone can access at any time. And you can look back with a lot of satisfaction, you’ll suddenly start saying “wow…I did a lot” as opposed to “where did the time go and what did I accomplish to gather interest in my own empire?”.
Look at the people you really admire online. Chances are they are pushing out content on a weekly or daily basis. Chances are even better they have a large following. They do work the social networks, but the main difference is they have become a resource. They are a landing point. They are essentially putting on a show and more people are gathering around it. I am not saying to avoid building up your Twitter streams and Facebook pages, but keep in mind, you are building traffic and an audience primarily for Twitter and Facebook. Work more on your own site, your own house. Use Twitter and Facebook as secondary tools to keep people aware of what you are up to, but the focus is best if it is on your own website and domain.
It is important to take part in the community. Digital connections are vital. But if all you have are connections and interactions, with no content, your career may be much harder to build. You may spend more time going after people and clients, as opposed to building something that brings people directly to you.
You give someone your business card, they take it home and go to your website. How big is the world you want them to explore? How compelling is it? When was it last updated?
Really start to think about building up your empire online. Your digital legacy. Try building your own house, rather than spending all your time visiting other houses.
What can you do now that can ramp things up? What have you done lately?
Have Too Much Web Info and Not Enough Outfo?
Most of us read blogs daily, check out websites, catch up on news. Even though the web has made it a lot easier to access news quickly, it also spirals into reading more and more info. A quick trip through your Twitter feed will no doubt have you exploring some interesting links, links to new sites, links to more news. You may add a few more sites to your RSS reader, you may bookmark some new ones, you’ll discover information avenues you did not know existed. The problem comes when this is done daily, weekly, monthly…the info really starts to stack up. You may have started visiting your 5 favorite websites, but now it has expanded to checking in on 20 sites every day, several times a day even.
I just wanted to let you know: you don’t need them all. The fear settles in that you may miss something. Well you will, but that’s OK. The bottom line is you may be sifting through huge piles of info for one or two pieces that are actually relevant. I recently discovered this with a tech news blog I liked to frequent. I started to count how many items I was actually interested in, as opposed to how many I was actually viewing. The score was dramatic, it averaged that I was looking at 20 posts when I would find one that I was actually interested in. Now if you multiple this times 5 sites, or even 20, several times a day, you begin to realize that you have moved from getting the news to a daily quest to find tiny nuggets of information.
All of this results in an amazing waste of time. Time when you could be producing content. We’ve all seen the alarming statistics about how people watch hours and hours of TV per day. Just zoning out and absorbing. We all think “that’s not me” as we spend hours and hours zoning out on the web. Yes we gain info, but not all is relevant and that time could be spent building our empire, producing content to engage our own audiences. You may spend two hours a day exploring websites, while your own website or blog has not been updated with your latest projects and info in several weeks. You’ll realize this when you meet people in person and they say “So…what have you been up to?”. I assume you won’t say “Surfing the web!!”.
I feel your pain. I know, I know. You love the web! I love the web too! I am just suggesting a balance, between producing and collecting.
To eliminate info overload, one tactic I do is to periodically purge or delete all my feeds and news site bookmarks. The ones you really find valuable you will remember and add back in. A lot will fall by the wayside. But you won’t miss them too much.
I realized that I myself was spending a lot of time pouring over gadget sites, reading reviews, spending more time looking at what other people had linked to and produced on news and social media sites. I decided to take that time and focus on creating a blog, to offer some advice and tips on being a better creative media artist. Remember it’s good to take in info and be informed. But when that process is taking more time than actually producing content, building your empire online and getting work done, you could be wasting huge amounts of very valuable time while leaving little to nothing for a digital legacy.
Do you absorb more info than you will ever really need? Is it worth trimming back incoming to focus more on outgoing?
How To Set Your New Alternate Facebook Name
Facebook added a pretty cool feature today that everyone can use right away, “alternate names”. My professional name is “Franklin McMahon”, but a lot of people know me by “Frank McMahon”. So if you were to search for me on Facebook as “Frank McMahon”, I actually would not come up. Now with the option to alternately add in another name, if you type either name into the Facebook search, I will pop up. Keep in mind when you add your second name, that it will take up to 24 hours to process. Your alternate name can be anything, a nickname, casual name, professional name, anything you want.
If you want to change your own name on your Facebook account, just go into your Facebook Settings and click on Name “change”.
Have fun creating your new (second) name 
http://www.facebook.com/franklinmcmahon (add me on Facebook)
(sometimes known as Frank)
The Creative Secret To Gaining Followers
Every media artist with a creative career wants followers, but how do you build this up? We all brand ourselves and our talents online and in the real world, but how do we get people to join in with us? One of the genuine secrets to attracting others to yourself is to also be in a state of wonder over things. Looking at the world and being fascinated is a compelling feeling to a nearby observer. Talk constantly about yourself and people will eventually get burned out. But look and explore something intriguing, while asking questions yourself, and others will step over and explore with you.
Reality TV became huge not because we like to watch people but because we like to watch people experience things. A talk show where someone is going on about their latest project may be interesting for a limited amount of time, but a show where people are amazed by what they are experiencing is much more compelling.
You probably know someone like this. Someone who is intrigued, curious, seemingly amazed by even the smallest things. Their attitude of wonder can be quite compelling. One of the best recipes for success is being curious, but what is often not mentioned is being curious attracts others who are curious to us.
But don’t feel you need to have all the answers. Yes doing a talk about something or positioning yourself as an expert is great. But once you back up and start to ask questions about the topic yourself, and include others wondering as well, that is when you really start to gain traction.
If you want to build a following for your creative career, either online or in person, think of yourself more as a tour guide, leading people through what you find fascinating. You’ll be surprised how many followers begin to move in the very same direction.
How To Pick A Facebook Vanity URL
Facebook has opened up the option to use Vanity URLs for the first time. If you did not grab your name, you still can, just visit:
http://www.facebook.com/username/
I received a lot of questions from clients and friends on the importance of this, what name to choose and even some who were mystified by the whole experience. Also if it was better to use the “.” dot or not. Here is some advice:
- Using the dot does not matter, facebook.com/samjones works as well as facebook.com/sam.jones. Try it.
- The importance of a Vanity URL is in making your Facebook profile easier to type out. It’s shorter and more descriptive. Especially important if you are a creative media artist who is promoting their brand or work on Facebook.
- What name to choose? For your profile I would highly recommend your full name (if its available). Your name is your brand. Your brand is your name. Your name will outlast any current career you are now in. So if you choose facebook.com/samJmusic, that may work for now, but a few years down the road you may move into a new career (actually..you probably will) so the Facebook name will always anchor you to the past. So your profile should be your exact name, so it pops up immediately if anyone is searching for you.
- Also avoid things like facebook.com/sjones. It is much harder to brand yourself using just your first initial. S could be anyone!
- Don’t name your profile after your blog, podcast, username, anything but your actual name. This advice can be applied to all your social networks, such as Twitter. People follow you and you lead them to your projects. If people follow one of your projects, that project may change and you may get lost in the shuffle down the road. And if you don’t think you’ll be doing your main project 5 years from now, look at 5 years ago, and see if you are still doing a project from then.
- As for Facebook Pages, that is different, and there you have more options to use different names. However look at using your name for this too, again it is all about branding.
So when you are staking out your identify on Facebook, make sure you are branding your actual identify. Stick with /samjones as opposed to /sam345 or /musicsam. Because the common theme in every one of your projects, is you.
http://www.facebook.com/franklinmcmahon
(yep…that’s me by the way!)
