Yes, real relationships take longer to build. Yes, real relationships don’t look at glamorous by their sheer numbers.  But, in the end, those relationships are the one’s that build your business the fastest and to levels no amount of Facebook “fans” or Twitter “followers” could.  Here’s a case in point, and something to think about when you’re using the social web to market your business, ministry, or products.

I just received an email from one of my favorite personal branding experts to exist on this planet, Dan Schwabel.  He received a heads up from, another one of my favorite social media and PR experts, David Meerman Scott that negativity was swooping through his Amazon reviews for this AMAZING personal branding book Me 2.0.  Dan made a call out to his people, his relationships to get the help he needed to fight the malicious actions of others.

Here’s what happened the moment I received that email. I emailed Dan back and said, not only was I disappointed in the actions of our colleagues and the other malicious people involved — I was going to take action immediately, as he requested.  And, I did.  Why?  Because Dan has built a real relationship with me.  He’s take the time to send me personal notes, he’s taken the time to reach out and ask my opinion and respect my expertise, as I respect his.  He’s treated me like a real human being, not just another subscriber, Facebook “fan,” or Twitter “follower.”

Because of our relationship, I took that attack personally. I felt violated just like Dan, because we were connected in a relationship.  I knew that I would make the time to act on his behalf .

Had Dan not built a relationship with me, a one-on-one relationship… honestly, I likely would have done something if (and only if) it came to mind when I had time or found an opportunity on my schedule.  After all, Dan would have been one of thousands I was connected to across the web.

But Dan did build a real relationship with me and I did take that action… immediately.  With one email, Dan was able to mobilize me, request a piece of my valuable time, and call me to action.   That’s Impact.  That’s the power of real relationships.

Another case in point… the amazing Danny Brown, another one of my favorite social media and PR experts.  I’ve always been a big supporter of anything Danny does, because he reached out, he had real conversations with me and built a real relationship.  On the 4th, Danny picked up the phone and called me.  Not to call me to action, not to promote something, not to ask for something — but to say hi and say thanks for my support of his projects.  That’s it.

Guess what, from that day on, I’ve been racking my brain to figure out more ways to support Danny. Why?  Because Danny showed he valued me as a human, a support, and a friend.  No pitch, no hidden agenda — just Danny doing what Danny does.  Danny mobilized my mind to take action.  Impact… relationships.

Just some things to think about the next time you spend an hour or two a day, mass adding people and neglecting the many real relationships you could be building that could be much more beneficial to you and your efforts.

… looking forward to connecting with you!

Maria

photo credit: Search Engine People Blog

Scr.im Step 1

Enter your email and choose your shortened URL for the email.

Scr.im Step 2

Click “Tips” and record your new groovy email link and/or “share” to spread the word!

Scr.im Step 3

Try it out, use it, share it. Whenever you share your email via the social web, use your nifty Scr.im address…

When someone clicks on the email link, they will be asked to verify they are human and not a lame spammer!

Enjoy!

… looking forward to connecting with you!

Maria

]]> http://www.mariareyesmcdavis.com/scrim-protect-your-email-from-spam/feed/ http://www.mariareyesmcdavis.com/scrim-protect-your-email-from-spam/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/websuccessdiva/~3/rOLegOpHLas/ http://www.mariareyesmcdavis.com/facebook-changes/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:29:53 +0000 Maria Reyes-McDavis http://www.mariareyesmcdavis.com/?p=633 Every time Facebook sneezes, there is an uproar. New groups pop up with people mad about the type of sneeze, how the sneeze will affect them, blah, blah, blah.  Today, Facebook announced many pending changes that will start to cycle themselves through sections of users over the next months.  Basically, they make it easier for users to manage privacy and share information past their networks.  Here’s a brief summary of what you need to know as a blogger or marketer using Facebook.

Facebook Privacy: Simplicity

Rather than managing your own privacy settings over many different areas, the recent changes will trim down all privacy controls to one page. Managing your privacy will be much simpler.  What marketers need to know is that people can now shut you off quicker and easier if you are pitching, pitching, pitching.  Privacy will include sweeping options to share with everyone and groups in between, as well as customizing to share with only specific people.  You’ve been warned.

Facebook Regional Networks: Gone

Thank goodness.  They never really made any sense to me anyways.  After all, the social web is about no boundaries, no borders. People are no longer stuck on regions, locations.  Particularly those finding the empowerment of social networking.  If my recollection is correct, most users were not even assigning themselves to regional networks (some numbers I’ve seen close to half not joining).  What this means is not much, except that stats and regional based information will be no more.

Facebook’s Lessons Learned: Transitions

Since faultering several times in simply implementing sweeping changes and seeing the backlash, of course, Facebook also announced transition tools and notices that will help you “ease” into all these changes without being side-swipped.  When the changes hit your profile, you’ll notice requests to reaffirm your privacy settings and more information about the changes.  In fact, they have a whole transition tool itself that will help you in the process of understanding the new settings/changes.

And, don’t worry.  According to their blog post, if you’re happy with how your profile and privacy are set, the transition tool is automatically set to respect that.  So, there’s no need to form a group to gripe about it

Check out the full details on Facebook’s blog:

Improving Sharing Through Control, Simplicity, and Connection

Why Twazzup for Twitter Search

Real-time data, literally. You’ll see exactly what’s been tweeted on a topic the moment you’ve completed the search.

Top trend makers. You’ll see the Twitter peeps who have been the most instrumental for the particular topic.

Related photos. You’ll see all the related photos that have been posted for the topic you’ve searched for.

Most popular links. I love this one, great for digging deeper.  You’ll see the hottest links that have been shared based on that particular search.

Contributors. By tweets, be retweets, by name and by date.  Great way to find people to connect with related to topics.

Twazzup just gives more information that can help you get more out of Twitter.  I’d highly recommend it, if you’re a serious Twitter user.

Twazzup Real-Time Twitter Search

Looking forward to connecting with you!

Maria

Twitter Tracking Tools for Bloggers

Tools that help you dig deeper into the millions of conversations happening on Twitter are important for bloggers for many reasons. First, you’ll gain insight into the areas of content that are hot and trending topics of discussion at the moment.  By following Twitter trends you can make your blog more relevant, which can inturn create a great area of traffic.

If you’re a local business using blogging as a communication and relationship building tool, tracking local Twitter conversations can not only help you be more relevant - but you’ll also gain access to additional Twitter peeps who can help you spread your blog virally, locally.  Not to mention, these same tools can also help you understand who to connect to based on influence and analyze not only what people are saying, but how and why they are saying it by measuring sentiment and beyond.

And, perhaps the most important reason for all bloggers to start using Twitter tracking tools is the fact that each and everyone you select, based on the information provided, can and will help you gain incredible insight during your listening and monitoring activities (I call this gathering Impact intelligence).  You’ll understand what people are talking about, what they are not talking about, the flow of the conversations, and much more.  As with everything else in social media marketing — the deeper you dig, the better “feel” you get to help you make more intelligent marketing decisions.

Best Twitter Tracking Tools

Twitter’s popularity is insanely high and tools seems to pop up daily.  Here’s the list of best Twitter tracking tools that we use consistently and have found to be the most useful.

Happ.in

http://www.happn.in/

Happn.in collects and aggregates popular phrases used on Twitter within 20 miles of major cities. The ten most popular phrases each hour are posted to this site, and are tweeted four times a day to the Happn.in Twitter account for each city. To receive updates for your city, you simply click the ‘follow’ link below your city on the home page.  This is a great tool for small and local businesses.

Hashtags

http://hashtags.org/

Hashtags.org will allow you to easy follow the trends of popular (and not so popular) hashtags across Twitter on just about any topic that exists. What’s great about this, is that most hashtags are used for Twitter chats, or creating the ability to follow topics across users and platforms, giving you the ability to connect with peeps based on those same topics and chats.

Klout

http://klout.net/

Klout is a great tool for tracking influence across your social graph (your connections and beyond). You’ll be able to see how your opinions, recommendations, and shared links actually spread throughout your social graph and gain valuable insight into your actual influence.  More importantly, you can also check out other Klout users and gain insight into their influence.

Re: Tweetist

http://www.retweetist.com/

Retweetist is one of my favorite Twitter tracking tools because it allows you to discover more people, more topics, more trends to help you effectively grow your Twitter following and connection to conversations.  You can check the status of the top Twitter peeps by amounts of retweets they receive, and also do the same for URLs, or those that are retweeted the most.  Great information to take a look at.

Tweetmeme

http://tweetmeme.com/

If you’re a techie like me, you like to follow hot trends and topics as they happen (although I don’t recommend this for the newbie).  Tweetmeme is a great way to see hot topics by link/URL as they happen, and within a certain timeframe or topic. It’s a ton of information to filter through but a great tool for the advanced Twitter user.

Twitter Tracking Recommendations

As with everything on the social web, start small and focused.  There really is no need to be an obsessive compulsive information filter on anything and everything that happens in a particular topic.  Your goal should be to focus on what is intelligence information for you and your business, period.

Also, set yourself to a schedule.  Don’t attempt to filter information daily and randomly, you’ll lose track of time and get lost in a sea of information. Unless you’re planning on becoming the next Mashable or MarketingPilgrim with constant updates throughout the day on breaking news, segment your time and do it consistently - rather than obsessively.

I personally have two times a week set aside to stay abreast of what’s going down throughout Twitter. I spend an hour each time, filtering and making note of what’s relevant in my Impact spreadsheet (my marketing spreadsheet) and I go back to it to dig deeper.  I know my audience is more interested in relevant, helpful information than hot topics and trends of the day — so that is where my focus is.

The point is, figure out what’s your purpose in digging deeper into Twitter and how can you use the information you’re finding to help you better connect, communicate, and empower your audience.

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Looking forward to connecting with you!

Maria