Warning: Social Media Requires a Personality

Everywhere I turn these days, someone is shouting 'get on the social media bandwagon!' to all who will listen. And trust me - they aren't wrong. I'm 'Zafra' on Twitter, and even before my recent push to actually 'use' it properly and actively seek out new followers, I'd gained 50 people. No effort, nothing. LinkedIn is for business, and I have more than fifty contacts there, as well. So why are there still so many people with no followers? Why do people start, post a couple times, then stop?

One reason is, they don't understand Social Media. I can't count the number of people I've seen who think it's just one more way for them to virtually stand in front of you, waving their arms like a lunatic, trying to get you to pay attention to whatever product they have decided to get behind this month. They think if they 'tweet' "xyz product is the bomb" fifty times, you'll care. Or, if they constantly re-hash the same boring quotes and links, you'll care. I recently un-followed someone for just that reason. Social Media is exactly that - it's *social*. If you're that person who went to the school of sales that says no matter where you are or what you're doing, everyone is a prospect, then I guess I can't fault your attitude. And if you only joined to keep up with your Aunt Betty in Hoboken, I can't fault that, either. But...

Social media requires something more. Like, you know, a personality.

People buy from people they know and trust. This is the new mantra in our era of consultative selling. If you're still standing around with your briefcase of product info waiting to pounce on the next un-suspecting person, social media may *never* work for you. If you're someone who can let your inner self fly online, but be reserved enough to ask yourself 'if this fails and I'm looking for a job, do I want a prospective employer to see this?' - social media can be your playground.

Be honest. You'd be amazed how much you can cram into 140 characters, and the information stacks up quickly. This fast-paced communications platform will call-you-out if you aren't true to yourself, your customers and your vision. Depending on what you talk about, you're probably not the only one tweeting it. If you want folks to follow you versus someone else, you've got to give them an engaging reason beyond simply existing.

Be helpful. Quotes are nice, advice is better. Directed advice is golden. The best way I've seen Twitter used is when a company is using the search feature of whatever application they post with (seesmic, twhirl, etc) to find customers talking about *them*. Then, they reply and either answer the question, un-prompted, or take whatever steps are necessary. Want to look even more omnipotent? Search for what you do, and answer questions from potential customers! Why wait for them to find you? See above - there's quite the number of fish. If they have a question, you have an in! Trust me, most individual users don't do this. They simply search for like terms and follow people to boost their numbers. Who cares about numbers on a screen? I care about numbers in my bank account, personally!

Have fun. This is marketing at it's best, in my opinion. Where else can you chat, and potentially do business, with folks you've never met (and may never need to meet) about subjects that interest you, without fear of being hit-on in a chat room, or belonging to some clique forum? If you tweet it, they will come. You have to be available to interract, and if you are there are absolutely no limits on where you can go and the people you can impact.

The Trouble with Money

I read an article today in which, I feel, someone did a very good job explaining the origins and functions of money in the most basic and one-dimensional way. Perhaps they felt their audience would be random internet surfers and regular folks looking for those most basic of facts. It truly disturbs me to think this was written for business people, entrepreneurs and investor-types. I’ll do the author a favor by deducing his view of the education regarding money is as bad as mine. You can read the full article here.

The trouble with a very basic explanation like this, however, is in not accounting for the varied ways that money in the modern world is a fallacy. For example, the money I carry around, be it in the form of my check card, cash or even a credit card, is the equivalent of thin air. On our money it says 'backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America'. Essentially what that means is, should enough folks around the world decide our deficit cannot be repaid and we have nothing but our bluster and weapons keeping us afloat, our money would be worthless, overnight. You can argue about the logistics of that happening and read books about it happening to other countries, but the fundamental truth remains. We are not the ones putting value on our own money. That is why the dollar fluctuates on the international market. We have nothing else of value to give in place of our money. The gold standard was abolished after WWII and now the government prints money to manipulate the market because there is no stockpile of gold with which to counterbalance our debt. Need to stimulate jobs? Upgrade infrastructure? Don't have any money? That's ok! We'll just print some! It'll be great! It'll get paid off eventually, if not by this generation then by the next generation of hard working Americans who wave the flag and pay their taxes.
I'm not one of those financial armageddon folks, I swear. However I do believe we are more ignorant of our own self-made lies with each generation. Most kids today have no idea how money is made, who decides to make it, how credit is extended or at what interest - I could go on. It is all well-and-good to have a standardized system of value. Indeed, as the article does point out, it might cost an orange grower the crop from an entire tree over the span of several years to afford a macbook. By having a standardized unit of measure in place, it simply makes bartering easier. Don't want to wait for that orange tree to re-fruit? That's ok - go buy some oranges at the store with this currency. The problem isn't the standard of currency, itself - the problem is how the currency is backed. It is not necessarily wise to back that standard with unknowns. Yet, that's exactly what our money is backed by: the idea that future earnings from taxes and other revenue sources directly from citizens will keep this country going. All we are really doing is collectively carrying debt from birth - a debt that will never be re-paid, so long as new debt is easily, and legally, manufactured.

Amazing how few articles people want to link to about that.

Are you really an Entrepreneur?

If you listen to some of the sales pitches out there, you'd think the entire world should be working an MLM. Words like 'work the dream' and 'dying at your job' are thrown around to make it sound like working for someone else is the ultimate punishment. But is it? Ask some would-be entrepreneurs what the ultimate punishment is, and they might sound similar to a plaque I once had on my wall -

"The only thing more over-rated than natural childbirth is the joy of owning your own business"

Bottom-line - entrepreneurship isn't for everyone. Before you take that leap into 'working the dream' or just deciding once-and-for-all that you can do much better than your boss at keeping clients happy, remember these words:

1) There are no paid days off - if you don't work, you don't make $$ (residuals aren't much to live on!)

2) More interests and hobbies have been ruined for people who decide they should make money doing what they 'love'.

3) Most Entrepreneurs know nothing about running a business - they are not 'business owners' as much as they are 'job owners'

4) Family and business often make for terrible results. Step-back from your personal feelings and ask yourself if you can fire a family member if they aren't producing. If you waffle at all with answering this question - DON'T HIRE THEM! I can attest to the fact that working with your spouse is a delicate matter. We do ok, but we could do better. Take stock of work personalities and areas of expertise before going into business with *anyone* - especially your life partner!

If it works out right, owning a business should eventually give you more free time, less direct day-to-day responsibility and steady income. Unfortunately, getting there is no easy road. If you don't think you can handle not knowing how much money you're going to have in any given month, for example, entrepreneurship may not be for you.

Financing can be a hurdle, as well. Many small businesses, mine included, were self-financed. If you aren't producing a product and you aren't making the rounds of Venture Capital firms, Visa and Mastercard may be your only available financing vehicle. Beware of this - when you start out, you are optomistic about all the great success your company will have. You need to keep in mind what the future might bring - if it brings failure, will you be able to weather the storm of accumulated debt? And because I didn't see this advice before it was too late - don't finance your company with your house. It's one thing to rack-up credit card debt and declare bankruptcy. It's quite a different story to lose your home to default.

Starting your own business can be very exciting and rewarding - so long as you accept there are things you *don't* know, and solicit advice on those topics from mentors/partners willing to help.

Good luck!

I wrote down my schedule...

I should know better, but I have been stuck in a time-use rut for quite awhile. My rut is simple - work like a mad person on one particular issue that's out-of-whack, while simultaneously ignoring everything else. Once that's taken care of, I usually have a couple days of being 'off' since I'm mentally exhausted - then the next crisis hits. I don't know about you, but I'm 35 now and it's starting to wear on me. Not physically but mentally and emotionally. Having a child tends to put many things in sharper focus. Seeing her get bigger and bigger serves to not-so-gently remind me that time is passing by and I'm still struggling. 

So, what do I do about it? Dare I say it - before I went to see a therapist and got on the Adderall I take now, trying to keep a schedule up was a never-ending battle. Hyperfocusing is a hallmark of ADD people. The common mis-conception is that we are flighty and can't pay attention to anything. That's not true - we can pay laser-focus attention to things that interest us. This is often what will garner an ADD person's label of being selfish. We're not selfish on purpose - we just get incredibly excited when we are actually able to focus on something! 

After starting the drug in March, I went berzerk and completely cleaned-up and organized tons of paper in my house that was in need of either filing or tossing (I found stuff from the 90's - serious.), rearranged three rooms of furniture and ‘stuff’ to accommodate my daughter's waking-up at night...*gasp*. Now I think it's time to start working on not perpetuating the same time-problem. All this stuff has been accomplished by the same mode I'd always employed - spend all weekend moving furniture, filing, sorting, putting-away, etc. During the week, focus on trying to get business work done. Time for a new plan – but what is that plan?

I started-out by making an excel spreadsheet of my current time usage. I did add-in a few things I *want* to have happen, like going to bed at 10:30pm and waking-up at 7:30pm. (Yes, that is 9 hours of sleep. I need that!) It was nice to see it all placed on paper for me – you can mentally think of something, but if you’re like me you don’t *own* it until you see it in black-and-white. Or in my case, colored blocks. I discovered I have days with large blocks of time, and days when I have very little time for work either AM or PM, due to monthly meetings/training, etc. This helps because one of the trends I've mentally noticed is that I am somewhat complacent in the beginning of the week, and then as things move closer to the weekend I  either get hit with something (deadline/bill not paid, etc) or remember a task/project I need to be working on. This becomes problematic if I have somewhere else to be! I also forget several times I have a meeting to attend, which only adds to my problem. Then I feel horrible because ‘I never have enough time’. My spreadsheet shows me I have plenty of time, I’m just not using it properly. Darn spreadsheet.

My goal now is to build two things into my schedule – time with my daughter, and time for just me and no work! I’ll be using part of the Flylady system to accomplish this; one thing she talks about is how you must adjust things to make them work for you. I have to remember that this ‘schedule’ is not set-in-stone. No one is going to punish me if I re-arrange when I handle something or, forbid, not attend a particular meeting. I’ve done the ‘schedule’ before, but I was militant about it. There is no fun to be had in scheduling your day down to the last minute. (not-to-mention un-realistic) My goal is to find a happy medium between ‘manic’ and ‘mania’.

Marketing 101: What doesn't work

We’ve all been to marketing 101 where they teach you about branding and corporate presence and all that stuff, right? Well, if not, let me spare you the money of taking a course and then jumping headfirst into all the beginners traps. There are quite a few strategies I see out there, that I have tried and frankly – they don’t work.

1). Those car magnets / vinyl lettering
 Raise your hand if you’ve ever grabbed a pen or your PDA while parked at a red light (or worse, driving) to write down the number off some car or van 2 lanes away… yeah. Didn’t think so. I think in the sum total of the last 10 years I’ve been in business, I’ve called 1 other business that way. I don’t write numbers down of cars I randomly see in parking lots, either. I’ve talked to other small business people and they’ve told me the same thing. They don’t’ get returns on their vehicle advertising.
So where does this come from? Why do so many companies do it? Well, here’s the honest truth. For a large company, it helps to build brand awareness. I can remember eyeing the 3M'd PT Cruisers when they first came out for some local stores and thinking 'cool...' But for companies like mine who have no store to visit or web cart to buy from - forget it. They'll forget you. So don’t expect to put magnets on your car and then sit back and wait for your cell to start ringing from the guy three cars over. It might help you find your car in a parking lot, though. Which does ‘pay for itself’ in lost time wandering around hitting your ‘unlock’ button and listening for the horn.

2). Matching office supplies
 My goodness – you wouldn’t be caught dead without letterhead and pre-addressed envelopes would you?! The shame!
Please. No one has ever told me ‘I won’t do business with you because I didn’t get that proposal on letterhead’. We happen to have a form we use, that does have our logo on it – but I don’t have pre-printed anything. If I need to write something on ‘letterhead’ I bring up my blank form in Word, type my letter, save-as, and print it on heavier stock paper. Voila. Unless your home business somehow involves sending out tons of snail-mail to try and attract customers (in which case may I remind you that direct mail’s world-class best returns are 5%) there is no need to go crazy with this. People are in business to provide this type of service and in order to stay in business, they’re going to want to sell it!

3). The wrong promotional item.. possibly any promotional item
 Right now I bet if I counted, I would have at least 5 different pens from different companies in my desk pen holder and my purse; possibly more since I just came back from an industry convention a couple weekends ago with loads of stuff. And you know what? I’m going to use it exactly how someone advocated using them at the show – as office supplies. Why buy your own when so many companies devote entire budget sections to producing them for you?! Sure, it doesn’t have your company’s name on it but who cares?! Your customers aren’t using them. Doctor’s offices have perfected this art. I bet every time you go to the doctor, you sign with a pen labeled with a drug. Possibly fill-out your medical information on a clipboard labeled with a drug. They never have to buy that stuff, it’s provided for them. And the best thing is there’s no contract saying you have to use that company’s services. Ever. So next time you get that urge to buy a promotional product as a giveaway thinking of all the potential customers that will have them in their hot little hands – ask yourself how many of the pens you have in your collection you’ve given business to. And then put away your checkbook.