Why Should I Join Your Group Anyway? Part #1

OK my friend – buckle your seat belts and observe the NO SMOKING signs. Today I’m climbing on my soapbox. BUT, I promise you, in the end you will appreciate what I’m saying and you’re even going to agree with me – I hope!

You see, lately I’ve been getting a rash of emails that are really annoying, to put it mildly.

On a daily basis, I get boatloads of honest, well-meaning people showing up in my inbox, posting on my group and profile Walls – trying to get me join their group or become a friend or be part of their business opportunity and get amazingly RICH.

In principle, there’s nothing wrong with asking others to join you in your program or to develop partnerships or Joint Ventures. That’s at the core of building a business.

It’s no different than someone desiring to get married – at some point you’re going to have to pop the magic question – WILL YOU MARRY ME? But you wouldn’t show up at your sweethearts’ doorstep on the first date and drop such a question?

Would you? Not if you’re hoping to someday live in wedded bliss.

But that’s exactly what you’re doing when the first message I get from you is all about you and what you want and need from me, without ever seeking to develop rapport with me.

There’s no doubt that in order for you to be able to establish any kind of dialog with your Facebook Friends,  you’ve got get them into a group or a mailing list external to FB. That way, you can stay in contact with them, share ideas and even conduct business with each other.

But when you’re approaching me (or others), be a little more professional and leave the gimmicks and stunts for the circus. Just the other day, an individual tried to lure me into his group with the most mind boggling stunt I’ve seen so far. This well-meaning person made a bold promise that if his group reaches a 1,000 members he would have a gender change operation.

Come on – get real… and his group was listed in the business category? That does nothing for me – that’s all about him. Most people aren’t motivated by only helping you out. They have to see something in it for them as well.

In the next post I’ll talk more about giving value to people so they’ll come knocking at your door, rather than you having to chase after them.

Before I go, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not intending to be mean-spirited or to put others down.  If I’ve offended you or your best friend, don’t hold it against me. A lot of what I’m seeing is really funny. But at the same time, I know the folks using these techniques are serious and aren’t getting the results they’re seeking.

If you’ve had a wild and crazy offer to join someone’s group, please post it below. At this point I need a real big laugh. 

Peace!

Jim Turner

Need More Twitter Friends?

Twitter is becoming more and more popular as a social networking tool. It continues to explode onto the scene, although it has been around for over a year now. No one really knows how many tweeters there are – currently estimated to be in the millions.

Even with all the negative press that Twitter gets due to it well-publicized outages, new users continue to pour in. The problem that many of these newcomers face, and maybe even you, is where do find other tweeters to follow.

Just recently, I asked members of my Social Media Marketing Network to follow me on Twitter if they weren’t already. The results were a little surprising – overnight I had 73 new followers.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a list they call upon to follow them. But thanks to some ingenious programmers, the task of finding new twitter friends has just gotten easier.

Thanks to a site I just came across called WhoShouldIFollow.com finding new Twitter friends is easy. Here’s what you do: Just enter your Twitter username [your password isn’t needed] and WhoShouldIFollow will crawl through your existing friend network, see who their friends are, look for connections back to you and suggest a list of people to start following.

Even though I’m currently following over 800 tweeters, the system did find several new connections for me.

So, if you’ve just jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon and want to expand your friends and meet some new people – first make sure we’re connected, and secondly, give WhoShouldIFollow a try.

If you know of any other ways to find new Twitter Friends, please comment below.

Cheers!

Jim Turner

Are You “Down with SEO”

Okay… this is fun Friday. The work week is over. Depending on where you live, you might be heading to the beach, going on a bike ride, or even doing a little rock climbing.

But how about listening to so SEO Rap. Maybe you’ve been struggling to learn about SEO techniques in plain English, now I’m going to share SEO with you through the lyrics of a Rapper.

You may have already seen this YouTube clip, but it’s entertaining and educational.

Cheers!

Jim Turner

Micro-blogging on Steroids

A week ago I blogged about how important it was to promote your business or cause through Facebook or LinkedIn  Status line. It’s a powerful, but non-intrusive way to get your message out.

The problem has been, if you have multiple social media sites, as most of us do, it’s a chore to update them on a daily basis. So, if there was a tool through which you could update all of your different sites in one fell swoop, that would be heavenly.

Well, wait no longer, Ping.FM is on the scene to do just that. As I’m writing this post it’s still in the beta stage, but if you plead your case strongly enough they just might let you try the service. [UPDATE: try this code for today, 4/20... "pingfriends"]

Right now you can update your Status on the follow social networking sites through Ping.FM:

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Bebo, LiveJournal and Hi5. They’re continually adding sites, so look for that list to continue growing.

Imagine the power this will give you to propagate your message throughout your social networking world. You will be able to update your networks from anywhere using AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, WAP, iPhone, SMS and emai.

To learn more about this service rush on over to
http://ping.fm/blog/

Until next time.

Jim Turner

Conversation Marketing and the New Influentials

Are you using outdated marketing methods?

As the world around us changes and technology has its affect on just about everything we touch, media and those that want to reach those who consume it are finding greater challenges than ever before.

It is no longer a world of mass media but rather it is a world of communities of customers and consumers. In an attempt to keep up with the changing world that the Internet has brought, the media world has embraced such things as websites to reach their customers, but it isn’t enough. Consumers have gravitated to social media and that is where Influence is finding a significant home.

Influencers or Influentials are a group of very active consumers involved in “conversation marketing” where word-of-mouth is becoming a significant power in spreading dialog with customers, listeners and viewers. It means creating a conversation with your consumers in which useful information is exchanged so that both parties benefit from the relationship.

For a more in-depth discussion keep reading… http://xrl.in/3a9

Jim Turner