Many of my friends know that I have been struggling with maintaining a healthy weight for several years now. I am a strong believer in the motivational qualities of communities. That’s why the concept of Weight Watchers (WW) meetings where you interact with other members is very appealing to me. I am a lifetime member (meaning I successfully lost weight with WW in the past) and go to meetings every week at my local WW center. I find these meetings very helpful in motivating me to stay on track in terms of healthy eating and exercise and I depend on member interaction to get me energized and ready for next week. Today’s meeting was no exception. In addition to my weekly dosage of encouragement I also got a valuable lesson in staying true to myself and my believes.
Let me explain. We all go to Weight Watchers to be inspired by other members’ weight journeys. That’s why when somebody shows up in a meeting visibly overweight and starts talking about their exemplary ways to run their household kitchen, avoid temptations and how they figured out the secret behind teaching kids to eat healthy … well, I am sorry, but it sounds more like a pitch and not an honest account of their weight loss journey. We may be coming to Weight Watchers to get inspired and find solutions , but we are quite skilled at figuring out who is … well, just full of it.
Does this incident have to do with your participation in Social Media? I think it does, particularly for those of you who participate in online communities on behalf of your employers. In order to become a valuable member of a community, Weight Watchers, an online community or any other kind, you must be true to yourself and to other community members regardless of who you work for. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith describe this scenario very well in their book “Trust Agents.” They use the example of Robert Scoble who, while working at Microsoft, gained the respect and trust of his social media community by being honest and transparent with his product recommendations without favoring his employer’s products and by recommending products of Microsoft’s competitors if he thought they were superior. Am I advocating that you go ahead and bad-mouth your employer in social spaces? Absolutely not and neither did Scoble! But keep in mind, your relationships in Social Media are based on trust and once you position yourself as a poster child for your company’s products you lose that trust and become an outsider rather than what Brogan and Smith refer to as being “one of us,” aka somebody who is truthful to his/her beliefs and will not put their company interests above the well-being of the community they participate in.
Am I going to return to Weight Watchers next week despite this week’s lack of trust-worthiness? Absolutely. There are plenty of people I continue to trust, can relate to and most importantly rely on for help and encouragement every time I go there. There is great value in this community for me and as long as I contribute by giving a true account of my weigh loss journey, others will find value in that.
Did you know that my husband, Jeff, is a veteran? I also have a brother in law who served overseas during both Iraq wars. Holiday Mail for Heroes is not only a program I am deeply involved in because of my employer, Pitney Bowes, but because it is important to me.
What is Holiday Mail for Heroes?
The purpose of the program is to make it easy for you to send a holiday card to our men and women in uniform, veterans and their families. It works in three stages. You send a card to a designated PO Box address, Pitney Bowes processes the mail and ships it to over 300 Red Cross Chapters across the country and oversees where Red Cross volunteers sort it and deliver it to servicemen and veterans overseas and in hospitals across the country.
I had the privilege of participating in a card sorting event last year where 40 volunteers from Pitney Bowes processed over 20 thousand pieces of mail.
I brought my entire family to this event.
Want to help? It’s easy to get involved.
There are currently 1.4 million active duty US military men and women serving in our country and abroad. Many of them are going to spend the holiday season away from home. Is there something you can do to help? Well, glad you asked because there is. You can get involved and all it takes is a holiday card.
- Write a holiday card yourself and mail it to:
Holiday Mail for Heroes P.O. Box 5456 Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456The deadline for mailing your card is December 7th so don’t delay.
- Tell others about the project and direct them to www.redcross.org/holidaymail for more info.
- Use your social media channels to energize others. Use #holidaymail hashtag to mark your Facebook, Twitter or Flickr entries so that we can track them and thank everybody for their involvement.
- Bloggers, blog about the program. More info. in this post from the Red Cross blog.
- Feel free to organize card making events among your family and friends. It can be a great way to get your kids energized. Take pictures of your cards and post them online or add them to the Holiday Mail for Heroes Flickr group.
- Schools, houses of worship, community centers: get involved by encouraging your members to make a card.
- Contact your local Red Cross Chapter to find out how you can help sort incoming cards.
Want to know the progress we are making with the campaign?
Follow us on Twitter @mail4heroes or follow the #holidaymail hashtag to see what others are saying about the program
Check out Flickr pictures of past cards and card sorting events
Watch the Holiday Mail for Heroes program video , or an animated slide show of last year’s cards
Become a friend of the Red Cross Facebook fan page to to stay up to date.
And THANKS!
I’ve been reading Brogan & Smith’s book, Trust Agents, where Chris and Julien spend a lot of time talking about influencers in Social Media developing a habit of daily blog reading and commenting as the best way of incresing their social capital and drawing attention to their own blog content. I agree completely. I still remember the rush of reading the first comment I received on my blog. The very first thing I did afterward was to go and check out the commenter’s blog and I ended up leaving a comment there myself. This is exactly the behavior you want to attract by leaving commens on other people’s blogs.
I get a lot of question from corporate blog owners who complain that their blogs (usually B2B blogs) don’t get a lot of comments and often don’t get a lot of traffic despite frequent posting of quality content. My response to that: having a blog is one thing, but socializing with others in the blogosphere is another and very important component of your journey as a blogger. Reading and commenting on other people’s blogs is a key part of something often refered to as blogger outreach which, in my opinion, is as important as writing blog content itself. Why is it so important? Because it take what starts as a casual reading of each other’s blogs to the next level of developing a lasting relationships with bloggers who, just like you, are producers of content in social web. Knowing them and interacting with them will benefit both of you and might lead to a partnership similar to the one between Chis and Julien that lead to writing the “Trust Agents” book.
Activities to improve your blogger outreach
Not sure how to start your blogger outreach. Here are some easy first steps.
- READ OTHER PEOPLE’S BLOGS AND COMMENT ON THEM REGULARLY. Consider adding blogs to your Google Reader or better yet, set up your iGoogle page with feeds from blogs you want to read on regular basis. This way every time you open iGoogle you’ll see new entries from your favorite blogs.
- Mention and link to other bloggers’ posts in your own blog posts. Because of pingbacks these bloggers will be notified you’ve mentioned their content and will be more inclined to visit your blog to check you out becoming regular readers and contributors to your blog.
I realize that some people are afraid to send readers away from their own content. Well, get over it. Honestly, as long as you provide value on your blog readers will find their way back to you. - Include blogs you read frequently in your blog’s blogroll. Other bloggers will do the same for you.
- Invite other bloggers to write as guest bloggers on your blog and be open and willing to write as a guest bloger on theirs. I really enjoyed being a guest blogger on Christine B. Whittemore’s blog “Flooring the Consumer”
- Don’t forget to use your other social channels (e.g. Twitter, FB, LinkedIn) to mention other bloggers and their blog posts. If you promote them they will promote you.
- Use person-to-person interactions during industry events, conferences or more casual meetings. This is the best way to start new blogger relationships or cement ones that you started online. There is nothing more powerful than in person meeting for those who end up interacting online most of the time.
- Subscribe to a service called Back Type which allows you to sign up to receive email notifications when a blog comment is left on a specific blog post. I use it to keep track of the conversations on blog posts I left comments on. The service also allows you to set up keywords of interest to you and the system will automatically send you email notifications if there is a discussion re. this topic on social web (blogs included).
Chris Brogan recomments making it a habit to leave comments on blog posts that you’ve read. Set aside time for every day blog reading and commenting. No time for that in your schedule? Make time. Consider spending less time writing so that you can incorporate light blogger outreach into your routine.
When writing a blog comment please don’t forget about some basic blog commenting etiquette you should adhere to.
Blog commenting etiquette
- DO NOT SPAM which includes mass commenting on the same blog or across multiple blogs. Don’t leave comments designed to pimp your product or service or to send traffic to your web property.
- It’s ok to leave the name of your company along with your name at the bottom of your blog comment, but don’t leave links to your products unless you are a frequent contributor to that blog and the author and readers know you and trust you.
- Put some effort into the comment itself. Don’t just write a quickie that consists of a basic acknowledgement such as “great blog post.”That’s just boring and can be considered spamming if your signature and name of your company you leave as part of the comment are significantly longer than the comment itself. Instead, provide value, offer opinion, disagree (in a polite fashion). Be interesting or funny.
- Remember brevity is a virtue. Don’t write several paragraphs worth of text in your comment. The truth is that we are all busy and find it much harder to commit to reading large chunks of text regardless whether what’s inthere is really valuable.
- If you are being paid by somebody to engage in blogger outreach and/or to write blog comments on their behalf DISCLOSE IT. Recently issued FTC blogger guidelines are clear on that. Be fully transparent about being paid for your blogging or commenting or your blogger career will be short.
Do you have any other pointers regarding blogger outreach activities? Do you actively interact with your blogosphere network? What’s the value for you?
A friend of mine developed a Halloween-friendly app for iPhone that kept me busy tonight.
You can use their funky Halloween background and superimpose your photos on them and make them look like ghosts.
You can then email them right from the app. Cool!
Happy Halloween!
Best Social Media for Marketing content Twitter-style from MarketingProf’s Digital Mixer
Truly enjoyed my first day at Marketing Prof’s Marketing Digital Mixer. I did not bother taking notes, just tweeted and many of the particiants did the same. What a perfect way to keep one notebook full of great bite-size notes! Tweeps, YOU ROCK!
I also want to recognize MarketingProfs for live streaming portions of their event as well as Matt Grant for live blogging.
DO NOT FORGET to vote for best ideas from the event I did!
(BTW, I learned how to create this Tweet button from Michael Stelzner’ presentation today)
FUNNY
- MarketerBlog: Anyone else at #mpdm feel like a SM stalker today? I might have squealed more than once after seeing a “celeb”
- iamseanmcdonald: New fond term heard at #mpdm “google juice”. Everyone wants the google juice. (I’ll take mine spiked with rum).
- anwith1n: Talking tech, servers, security… sooooo tech awesome. What do you do when you’re Symantec & acquire a community? #mpdm
- TravelTrev: The air con here at #mpdm makes me feel like I’m at home in Canada. Where is my touque?
- bcarroll7: My teenagers think Twitter is stalking. They would never use it. Good reminder to understand your audiences tools. #mpdm
- anwith1n: Social Media is like a long term relationship, not casual dating #mpdm read more…
I am excited to be experimenting with a different way to produce content this week. Valeria Maltoni’s Conversation Agent blog post afrom Inbound Marketing Summit inspired me. The main message of the summit: it’s all about valuable content, baby! The more content the merrier particularly if you are willing to try a different way of producing that content. Enjoy and let me know how you’ve been experimenting with new content creation.
Show Notes
MICROPHONES
- Snowball by Blue (USB plug-and-play for both Mac and PC) Cost: $65
RECORDING SOFTWARE
- ePodcastProducer by Industrial Audio Software (easy to use with no prior experience with audio recording or editing) Cost: $199
- Audacity (open source software for Mac and PC) Cost: FREE read more…
Social Media in large B2B companies live and kicking – Business Development Institute event proved it!
Steve Etzler giving introductory comments during the event
Business Development Institute’s “B2B Social Communications – the Case Studies & Roundtables” event at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York is where I spent most of the day last Wednesday (9/16/09). I love events in the city since I can make a quick trip there and back in just one day. I attended as a guest of my colleague, Matt Broder, who was one of the speakers. Thanks Matt!
The BDI’s conference attendees included a mixture of corporate communication professionals from large B2B companies and PR and marketing agency folks. Not your average Social Media crowd for sure. The largest part of the conference included eleven 20-minute presentations describing how various brands (Intuit, IBM, American Express, SAP, Pitney Bowes, HubSpot and others) are utilizing Social Media to communicate with their customers and other stakeholders. read more…
Print 09 (a tradeshow for commercial, transactional, package and quick printers) started yesterday (9/11/09) at the McCormic Center in Chicago. It’s a 5-day show that gathers the industry once every 4 years (GraphExpo fills the years inbetween).
In the past years printing tradeshows were places one went to see big commercial printing presses, large sorting and fulfillment machines with incredible speeds. This year, based on just the first few hours of the show there is a breath of fresh air… There are fewer large machines on display while emphasis is on digital and rich media. There is lot of glitter of new interactive demos including Kodak’s Pipeline of Innovation (a 24-foot-long digital display with continuous stream of visual images), live streaming seminars and plenty of elaborate stage displays.
