To change this option, go to Privacy Settings > Personal Settings > Bathroom Settings > Smacking and Stealing Settings, and un-check the Shenanigans box. Facebook kept this one quiet.

Please be sure to share this one with your network to alert the unaware…

Someone in my network posted this in their status and I laughed out loud when I saw it. I thought it might give you a giggle too. Enjoy your day!

This is a common question I’m asked from most clients. Of course it’s always unfortunate if someone says negative things about you online, but there’s really nothing we can do about it. Social media has made everyone a publisher and people will voice their opinions whether we agree with it or not.

Some people think that in order to avoid this, they just won’t participate in social media. The reality is whether or not you are present online, people are still going to say good and bad things about you online. Just like a little kid covers their eyes and thinks that you can’t see them because they can’t see you, we all know better. It’s not going to go away if you’re not there.

So what do you do if you see that someone has spoken or posted negatively about you or your business? The best strategy is to address it head-on and engage that person directly.

Even if you’re not familiar with the specific circumstances the person is referring to, you can always say something along the lines of, “I’m really sorry to hear about your bad experience dealing with our company. I’m not familiar with the circumstances but I assure you that we strive for excellence when dealing with our clients. I’m wondering what I can do to make things right for you?”

Now lots of people are thinking, “Doesn’t this just open up a whole new door for refunds, discounts and other special treatment to correct the wrongs?”

The truth is that most people simply want to get it off their chest. They voice their complaint online and never come back because most businesses ignore this type of engagement and people are used to that. But when you step up and address it head-on, you’re doing that extra 10%. You shine like a star because most people don’t acknowledge people’s issues.

Even after you make an effort to make it right, most people will never respond to it. So what’s the point then? To everybody else that is watching this engagement take place, they think, “Wow, this business really cares.” And that’s the key to success in the social media world. The number one strategy to be successful in the digital world is to simply care about your customers.

How do you think it looks to everybody else when someone complains and nobody ever acknowledges it? It has the exact opposite impact. People see it and think, “Man, this business doesn’t care.” Maybe you didn’t even know there was a complaint. Too bad! People make judgements and snap decisions. Is it fair? Nope. But it’s the truth.

When it comes to social media, we can’t control the actions of other people. All we can do is use the tool to influence the situation as best we can to play in our favor. Businesses will always make mistakes. That’s the nature of human beings. We’re not perfect. But when we take a moment to let people know that we care about them and that we want to ensure that people have the best experience possible when dealing with our brand or business, we’ll always shine above the rest.

Your Fishing Boat

When it comes to online marketing, your fishing boat is your website or blog. I recommend to new clients that they build their websites on WordPress so that you can have a website with built-in blog functionality. Having a blog is essential for all businesses.

If we think about fishing, the whole purpose is to get the fish into the boat. We do the same with our online marketing. We want to get the people from our online communities back to our hub or our home base which is our website (our primary goal).

Once we get them back to our website, the goal is to get them to opt-in to an ethical bribe or click Like on our Facebook Page Widget. This allows us to identify them (our secondary goal).

Your Fishing Nets

The fishing nets we use are the various social media networks we are engaged in. The key is to remember that different people hang out in different networks (kind of like different schools of fish swim together!)

Your Bait

In order to catch the right fish, you need to use the right bait. The bait that you use on the social networks is usually teaser copy for blog posts. You can post all different kinds of content in the social networks, but for the sake of getting people from our communities back to our website we want to focus on teaser copy for blog posts. When you post a new article, video or photo album to your blog, then you post a little blurb along with a link back to the content on your website into the various social media channels.

So let’s see an example of how this would look:

Let’s say I own a carpet cleaning company (my favorite example!) I just finished writing a blog article on the Top 5 Ways To Protect Your Carpets From Pet Stains and Odors (my bait) and now I want to go fishing and pull some new people from my online communities (the nets) back to my website (the boat).

I prepare a few short little messages that I can post to my social networks and a short one to send out to my email list as well. Here’s what they might look like:

“I’m constantly asked by people how to protect their carpets from pet accidents, stains and odors. Anyone you ask has a different suggestion, but I’ve prepared my list of the Top 5. You can read it here: http://www.mycarpetcleaningwebsite.com/top-5-ways”

I take this message and I post it to each of my social networks that I’m involved in, as well as send it out in a brief email message to my email list. The key here is that I’m not selling. I’m providing valuable information to my various communities. My intent is to get them back to my website to read my new article. I make sure at the end of the article to ask the readers to post their comments and share the article with their networks (remember people need to be told what to do next).

To make sure this process all flows smoothly together, I’ve made sure at the end of my article to make mention that not all of these Top 5 ways to remove pet stains will always do the trick and that they may need to call a professional carpet cleaner to come in and take care of the really bad ones (I haven’t directly sold my own services, I’ve simply dropped the hint that they might need to do that at some point.)

Lastly, at the end of my article I have a little blurb that encourages people to opt-in to my ethical bribe. In this case, I’ve written a short report that’s called “The 7 Ways That Carpet Cleaning Companies Rip You Off”. In order for people to download my free report, they have to opt-in to my email list. This is how I’m identifying my traffic and building my email list at the same time.

As you can see, social media plays an integral role in your online marketing strategy. The question remains, how does more traditional offline marketing fit into this strategy? The exact same way. All of your offline or traditional marketing should also drive people back to your website. Social media marketing and email marketing all cost next to nothing but do require an investment in time. When we can capture people on social media or in our email list, it reduces the amount of money we need to spend on traditional offline marketing and advertising.

I go on to explain to them that social media is merely a leverage tool. It can be used to do a lot of good for your business or brand, or it can do a lot of harm. The problem is that the power is in the people’s hands. All we can do is try our best to influence what people are saying about us online.

The best way we can influence what people are saying about us online is to forget about the products and services you are selling. Start focusing more on the experience of doing business with your company. If you make it your objective to consistently blow the minds of customers that do business with you, you’ll end up having a lot of raving fans that will do your selling for you online.

In order to influence the conversations that are taking place online you need to engage your audience. If we aren’t actively participating in the conversations, we can’t really influence what people are saying. This is why I believe that every business, every professional, every brand MUST have a presence in the main social networks. This always brings up the next most commonly asked question:

“What if someone says something bad about us online?”

That’s unfortunate, but whether or not you are present online, people are still going to say good and bad things about you. Some of my clients are fearful that if they create pages and profiles and platforms for their business, they’re inviting these bad apples to come to their page and complain about their less-than-perfect experience.

I think this is a good thing. Why? Because no business is perfect and everybody knows that. Every business has dropped the ball at one point or another. Businesses are operated by humans and as long as they are, they are bound to make mistakes. And when someone points out that we have made a mistake, this gives us the opportunity to make it right. When we make an effort to make it right, we’re doing something most businesses do not do and that helps us to shine above the rest.

Every business fears bad press. But the reality is that anyone with an iPhone or Blackberry or other brand of smart phone can walk out of your business after having a bad experience and tell 500 people about it. Social media has made everyone a publisher.

What’s worse is that word spreads like wild fire on social media. That one person makes a post on Facebook and out of their friends, someone else has had a bad experience too. They join in on the conversation and now someone out of their friends list see’s it and chimes in too. This is how word can spread to thousands of people in a matter of a few minutes.

Now the reverse is also true. Someone could walk out of your business after having received mind-blowing customer service and they could post about how amazing your business is. Then someone else chimes in, and then another, and then another.

Again, social media is simply a leverage tool. It can do a lot of good or a lot of bad for your business. That’s why we need to be engaged. We need to be active in the networks. We need to do everything we can to keep the conversation on the positive side of the scale and when something negative pops up, we engage that person directly and handle it in a fashion that screams to the world that we really do care about our customers and clients.

So yes, I believe that every business should DO social media. Get onto the social networks and start engaging people and do your best to have other people rant and rave about how awesome your business or your brand is. These people are our best sales people.

Social media is a web-based platform that was designed to help friends better connect and interact with friends online. Social media is all about the interaction between people and provides a platform to allow people to share information about themselves. It’s about building community, engagement and relationships with other people.

The most important thing that you need to understand about social media is that it’s a communication tool, not a sales tool. This is the number one mistake I see most businesses and entrepreneurs make. Most of them look at social media as a free marketing tool that they can broadcast their promotional messages to as often as they want to.

Buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff! Sale, sale, sale! This is absolutely the wrong way to approach social media and one of the quickest ways to upset people and have them tune you out.

Your primary objective with social media is to engage your audience or community and build relationships. This takes some effort and work. You have to keep in mind that building solid relationships with people online doesn’t happen overnight. Relationships take time to build whether online or offline.

The most over-used analogy most people use when talking about social media is to think of it as sort of an “online” cocktail party. We go there to meet and interact with people. I’ve never been really fond of that analogy for people looking to use social media for business. 

I prefer to think of social media as a networking event. You shouldn’t treat networking online any differently than you would treat it offline. If you wouldn’t walk up to someone and blast them with a sales message offline, why would you do it to people online?

The reason people go online to various social media sites is to make new connections and new friends. As a business owner or entrepreneur, we rely heavily on creating new connections to help us grow and expand our businesses. This isn’t done by attempting to “sell” everyone we come across.

When making business connections, we usually look to give first. This proves to be the most effective approach. If we can help find a solution to someone else’s problem, if we can introduce them to someone that will help them grow their business, these are the types of activities that help us gain a level of trust and credibility with new connections.

The mentality you need to adopt to be truly successful with social media is one of giver’s gain. When we can help someone else get what they want, they feel a level of obligation to reciprocate. This is human nature at it’s core. Zig Ziglar once said “If you help enough other people get what they want first, you’ll get what you want.”

Remember when you’re on the social networks, take the time to develop rock solid relationships first. Find out how you can contribute to someone’s life or business. Be a go-giver rather than a go-getter. The result will impress you and you’ll find that your efforts will be much more effective.

And yep, it was a totally awesome experience.

Some of you may have missed it so I figured I would post this clip for you to see us in action.

Enjoy!

I chose to make myself and my life a priority for the last two months of the year so that I could finish on top. And I did it. I had my best year ever.

And this year, I’m keeping the momentum going. I’ve signed up for a 90 Day weightloss challenge, and I just saw my doctor today and got a prescription for Champix so that I could quit smoking.

2011 for me is all about No More Excuses. There’s many things that have been holding me back from doing everything I want to. At least, on the surface that’s how it looked.

It wasn’t until I unplugged to do my “deep thinking and reflecting on the year” that I do every December around the holidays that I realized that all of these “things” that were holding me back were really just choices I was making.

So I’m saying enough of this shit. Seriously. Why can’t I achieve everything I want to in my life? I have just as many opportunities as anybody else out there. I’m smart, capable, driven. I should have it all. I should be able to do what I want and be able to live my life on purpose, with passion.

What am I passionate about? My family. First and foremost. I would do anything for them. They are what motivate me and drive me to succeed each and every day. What else am I passionate about? You guys. My readers and fans (I think I at least have a few…) I’m passionate about Goldeye, the youth camp I volunteer at every year. I’m passionate about inspiring youth and motivating them to go after what they want in life.

My motto for 2011 is “I Live My Life On Purpose Every Single Day.”

This year I’m going to quit smoking, the disgusting addiction I’ve had for 16 years of my life. We’re done. It’s over. And I’m going to lose some weight. I’m nowhere near my heaviest, but I’m still not at a weight I’m happy with. You know what, scratch that. I don’t care how much I weigh. When I look in the mirror, I’m not seeing myself at a weight I’m happy with. I want to like what I see in the mirror. That’s better.

So hear me now world. This year is going to be a powerful transformation year. I will live my life by my core values, on purpose. I am the master of my own destiny (with the help of The Man upstairs of course). I’m doing this. I’m jumping out of bed every morning and attacking this world like an out-of-control freight train. I hope you hear me coming and you’re not in the way.

2011… I OWN you.

Frank and I are very excited to see how we were portrayed on the air. We noticed a few times during our pitch that when we were responding to questions, that they’d make comments that seemed out of context to what we were talking about.

What I mean is, at one point I answered a question, and handled it awesomely, and Kevin O’Leary responded with “That’s ridiculous.” I remember stopping and thinking, “What’s ridiculous about my reponse?” It kind of threw me off.

It wasn’t until I was talking about the experience with a friend of mine who is an aspiring director that he told me that reality TV shows typically employ 3 times as many writers as a sitcom does. The reason is that they film as much raw footage as they can, and then they present it to all of the writer’s and they piece it all together to intertwine drama that will make for good TV.

Interesting hey?

Anyways, the video below shares some of the behind the scenes footage I was able to grab with my handy little Flip camera. Unfortunately the quality is not what I would have liked, but it turned out not too bad.

Enjoy!

Hey, share your comments with me! And PLEASE share this on Facebook okay? The button is below…

The rooms were very luxurious and it led to a good night’s sleep (something we needed badly before pitching to the Dragons!)

Are you watching the show this season?

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