This is a guestpost by Bradley Gauthier, a Digital Nomad.

As the social web becomes more important for online success, I’ve noticed a major flaw within Internet marketing:

Most online content marketers have it wrong.

Or at least partly wrong.

But before you storm off for the pitchforks and torches, let me explain through a quick story:

The Band Promoter

A few years ago, my roommate at the time was obsessed with a band. He owned all their albums and memorized the lyrics to every song.

When that band’s new CD came out, he let everyone know. Of the people he made listen to the tracks, they often would buy the album.

Of the people he simply told about the new album, they normally would give a warm smile and kindly tell him they’d check it out later. Some did. But most others clearly didn’t care whatsoever.

After watching him talk about this new CD for months I could tell he didn’t understand why people weren’t rushing to the record store on his verbal recommendation.

That was until he found out the band was coming to play in our city. With renewed vigor, he eagerly signed up to be a promoter.

A week later, (and much to my dismay), the main room was packed with signs, banners, and other marketing material the band’s record label sent him to help promote the concert. He was ecstatic!

After a day or two of covering the college campus with the concert signs, something remarkable happened. People who once could care less about that band became interested.

How did this happen?

Easy. The band relied on their marketing team to create buzz. Not my roommate.

My roommate was no salesperson, as witnessed from his futile attempts to get his friends to buy their album.

The record label assumed this. And they especially didn’t expect the fans to create effective flyers to fill the seats.

They gave their fans the marketing collateral necessary to become effective promoters.

Your Audience as Promoters

Now back to my bold statement about most online content marketers and how they have the system partly wrong.

The general wisdom is that by creating great, high-value content, it will be shared with others. But this logic is missing an essential piece of the promotion pie.

Effective content marketers, e.g. great bloggers, not only create high-value content that demands others to share it.

They assume the person sharing it is not a salesperson.

Optimizing for Social Sharing

Just as my old roommate couldn’t convince others to buy his favorite band’s album, you mustn’t assume your website’s visitor has any skills to promote your post beyond clicking share.

Instead, you must take control of how the tweet, +1, like, or share outputs on the user’s social network feed.

The more attractive the link looks on the social network, the more likely their friends and followers will click it.

But how do you do this?

It starts with understanding what happens when someone clicks a social network’s share button. (I’m assuming you have share buttons already installed on the page)

Depending on the social network, a few things are generically pulled from the backend of the web page: the title tag, the meta description, and an image.

Caveat: Specific social networks may require your site’s coding to include additional tweaks, I’ll mention them shortly.

Title Tag

No longer is the title tag only an SEO-thing. It’s now the main show of all social sharing.

The title tag is used by default for the clickable link of a Facebook share, a Google +1, a LinkedIn share, and pretty much every other social network. It’s even more important for Twitter, as their button uses only the title tag for the main text of the tweet.

Therefore, your title tag must be well thought out.

Don’t be cute. Be compelling.

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
~ David Ogilvy

Also, keep in mind most content management systems will automatically create the title tag from the headline. But if you use WordPress, I highly recommend you use an SEO plugin or a premium template with SEO features because you will have the ability to choose specifically what your title tag outputs.

For instance, some websites include a lot of excess information in their title tag such as the site name, tagline, blog post category, date, etc. which looks messy and cluttered when trying to share. But by only outputting an attractive headline, your sharers will be much more effective as promoters.

And one more thing about the title tag. The length from an SEO viewpoint must be less than 70 characters. This is a best practice. But there may come times when more characters are needed while optimizing for social sharing. If so, remember to place your targeted keywords early in the title tag for SEO purposes.

Meta Description

From an SEO perspective, the meta description is the details below the title tag in your search engine result.

But from a social sharing standpoint, the meta description is the additional information that shows up when someone shares the web page on most social networks.

Which means that by using the meta description wisely, you have space for a few more sentences to pull the reader into your content.

However, one important consideration to be aware of is Google’s search result page limits the length to 150 characters at most. But as I mentioned for the title tag, I wouldn’t let the limitation hold you back. Use whatever makes the link as enticing as possible while keeping the best stuff up front so searchers see it too.

Featured Image

A picture. Believe it or not, this is the best kept secret ingredient of great content marketers.

And will often make or break the success of a shared link in Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Reddit… the list goes on and on. Because except Twitter, almost all other social networks allow the sharer to include a picture.

With your link competing with hundreds of other status updates and posts in a person’s news feed, an amazing picture may be all that is needed to catch someone’s eye.

But the picture must be spectacular.

Therefore, when crafting your page or post, it’s an extremely valuable use of your time to search for the perfect picture.

And while you can always go buy some generic stock photo, my goto source for interesting photos is the Creative Commons search on Flickr.

There are some wonderful pictures on Flickr that only require attribution for their use.

However, if you have multiple images on the page, be sure to include this attractive picture on the top of the post. Mainly because the social network will often default to the first scanned picture of the page.

Specific Social Network Tweaks

Want even more control over what happens when someone shares your page?

Luckily, there are some great network specific tweaks to take into consideration.

Facebook

Facebook’s generic Like button on web pages isn’t very helpful. Because oftentimes it won’t pull additional information from the page, such as the picture. Which defeats the marketing purpose of selecting a great photo.

Therefore, when someone hits Like on your website, it shows up in that person’s news feed as a text link. Which is pretty boring and will rarely catch someone’s eye.

A quick fix to this problem is to use the Facebook Share button instead. Which is the exact same concept of copying the URL and pasting it in Facebook’s Update Status box.

But the Share button is no longer supported by Facebook.

Facebook instead tells developers to use the Like button with their Open Graph system.

The Open Graph Protocol is a set of coding that you install into the website to delegate what web page pieces goes where when someone hits the Like button.

Unfortunately, it’s much easier said than done. So you may need to hire a smart web dude to help you implement the code.

But once it is installed, your Facebook Likes will be extremely attractive and will gain much better traction on your audience’s News Feeds.

Twitter

Besides understanding that the title tag is most likely what will be used for the text when someone hits Tweet, there aren’t too many coding tricks.

But there is one thing to consider. If you are heavily reliant on Twitter for your marketing campaign, you can include Twitter-only mark-up, i.e. hashtags and @replies.

For instance, if your blog post is referencing a certain Twitter Chat, include the hashtag in you title tag. By doing so, whenever anyone shares the post, their Twitter followers will be exposed to the hashtag link. Magic!

Google+

Love it or hate it, we must consider Google+ a dominant player in the content sharing arena. But the nice thing is its sharing system is extremely similar to Facebook, meaning the web page includes the title, description, and an image.

However, while not as cumbersome as Facebook’s Open Graph, Google uses custom code to decide how the page will output when shared.

Called snippets, Google allows you to include specific images and content when someone clicks the +1 button.

Again, the installation of this may require a little external web coding help. But it’s worth it to ensure proper sharing output.

Others

You’ll drive yourself crazy if you worry about the hundreds of other social sharing services out there.

So unless you heavily rely on a certain social network for web traffic, by doing the above steps you’ll have the foundation set for most sites, such as LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. because they take the default info from the website.

A Sea of Promoters

As you go forward with your content marketing, remember that my old roommate wasn’t a marketer, and neither are your readers.

You cannot rely on your Twitter followers to create a witty title when tweeting your post. Or assume they will include a wonderful introduction when sharing your website on Facebook.

By consciously attending to each portion of how your post will be displayed when someone hits share, you will gain much more traffic from your audience’s social networks. Good luck!

Bradley is Co-Founder of New Methods. A project to help entrepreneurs take the leap into 21st Century business. And he has launched a digital nomad blog teaching others how to create a lifestyle designed for travel. You can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

Photo Credit: marfis75

Usually when other blogs post your content is a good thing, you increase your visibility, you get some extra traffic and depending on the blog, it could even be good for your search engine ranking.

But wait! There is also a negative side to it. There is a fine line between aggregation and just hijacking content. In this posts we’ll review two different real-life scenarios based on the same piece of content and we’ll discuss the etiquette for good honest aggregation, what not to do and how if affects the source.

We’ll take one of SocialMouths posts from just a few days ago: 13 Quick Tips To Write A Successful Post, a piece that was republished by a few blogs in different ways.

First let’s look at how HolyKaw! does it, I’m sure we’re all familiar with the site but in case you didn’t know, it’s ran by Guy Kawasaki on AllTop.

The Proper Way

So let’s pay attention to a couple of items here:

• HolyKaw! has slightly modified the headline of the post
• They wrote their own excerpt, a short couple of paragraphs using their own words to describe or summarize the story
• In this case, since it is a list, they have only included three items
• They are even using their own photography
• Proper credit to the source was included (in red), with a link
• They have included a call to action to visit the source

Traffic

What HolyKaw! does is aggregating content, what they consider interesting. People trust them for that and this usually results in you getting traffic from a trusted source. This is not the first time a SocialMouths post gets picked up by the site and I can tell you that it always drives a nice amount of traffic, this time, an extra 1,129 visits in only 5 days I wasn’t planning on.

Not all sites will offer that kind of traffic, we’re talking Guy Kawasaki here… but every month a few blogs here and there do something similar and that can bring you a couple of hundred visits. Awesome!

The Dark Side Of The Moon

Not all aggregation is created equal and while it doesn’t necessarily mean there are bad intentions behind it, it still affects the source. Let’s take a look at this other case…

I gotta admit this example has a couple of elements that are funny or even ironic, they have emphasized the first line of the post, which reads “Writing content is not easy, no doubt about it.”, which I didn’t in the original post, you know, the one that was not easy to write…

Also, at the end of the post, in the related posts section they list a post called “Tips On Creating Content For Your Blog“. Are you kidding me?

The previous image shows the beginning and end of the post because it’s too long to show the whole thing.

Now to the serious stuff:

• The headline is exactly the same as the original post
• The byline says that the post is “by kwpreston” (the “kw” stands for Keller Williams)
• There are parts in which I wrote in first person and they were left like that giving you the impression that is actually kwpreston writing it
• They have posted the entire content of the post, which has a word count of 1,280
• They are also using the same images without any attribution to the sources
• At the end of the post, they give credit to SocialMouths WITHOUT A LINK and gracefully added a nice call to action that reads “Check it out”… There is nothing to check out anymore

But besides getting pissed off at someone that just hijacked your content, there are other issues you need to consider:

• In my case, I make an effort to provide value week after week by offering free content, that means it is there for you and I hope you get to leverage from it
• Sometimes, people that reads my content turn into clients because they like what I do. Thank you for that
• Sometimes, people find SocialMouths on search engines because I wrote about a specific topic

So what happens now? not only we are misleading readers but we are also confusing the search engines by having duplicated content.

What To Do?

I’ll give you 3 more bullets before I go:

• Read this great post from Jason Falls: How Share Alike Copyright Can Hurt Your Brand And SEO
• Head over to Creative Commons and learn about how to protect your content (even if it’s free)
• And tell the blogger in question that you’re happy to have your content aggregated as long as it’s done the right way

What Do You Think?

So what’s the point of writing a post like this? First hoping that we all learn a little more on what aggregation is and how to do it properly and second, so we understand that even if you offer free content, you should protect it.

What are your thoughts on the whole matter? Share in the comments section of this post and feel free to disagree with me if you need to.

Photo Credit: Franz Patzig

Last week I posted the Poll “What Is Your Biggest Struggle In Blogging?” and with your participation, this week we’re doing a come back with quick advice for each one of those points.

I like doing polls as a way of starting discussions on topics that are important to you, that way it’s not just my point of view. So first, thank you all for being part of it and second, feel free to use the comments section to express your thoughts. Maybe you have something to add or you simply disagree, it’s all good baby!

Also, please let me know if you have any ideas for future polls.

Poll Results

Here are the results from last week. I can actually relate to that. My biggest issue is not so much establishing the frequency, which was pretty hard before, but taking it to the next level. I have been publishing 2 posts per week and wish I could jump to 3. I have published 3 posts in one week before and the results are very good.

So let’s dive right into it, here are the options on the poll and the advice to overcome them [in order of importance]:

Establishing frequency on content publishing

• Create an editorial calendar. Decide what you want to do on a weekly basis, how many posts, what kinds, what days and even times.
• Create content in advance. If you’re too busy during the week, try to prepare all your content on the weekend before.
• Look into other ways of publishing content, guest posts or even aggregation can help you increase your frequency or cover up when you didn’t have time to create something original.

Engaging Readers to comment

• Call-to-Action. If you don’t tell people what you want them to do, they don’t do anything.
• Finish your posts with an open question. Ask readers to provide their opinions on the subject.
• Leave room for discussion, if you have already covered everything there is nothing else for your reader to add.

Getting ideas for new content topics

• Get out of your circle. Make sure you have moments to step out of your niche and consume other type of content. Great ideas for original content are often triggered when you hang out outside your usual fields.
• Read your competitors, not to copy them but to see how the industry is moving and what kind of content is being published out there.
• Subscribe to feeds to get content from different sources on a regular basis.

Converting readers into prospects

• Again, Call-To-Action in the right places. Make sure your offer is strategically positioned as part of the blog layout.
• Clean-up. Eliminate all the noise. If you are a published author trying to increase book sales, avoid filling up your site with AdSense ads.
• Have a strategy for free and premium content. Determine what is part of your content marketing efforts and what is for sale as a service.

Finding my own writing style

• Read blogs with different styles. There are people out there with amazing writing skills and styles that sometimes you end up reading them even if the topic has nothing to do with what you do. Find these people.
• Usually your writing style gets buried by trying to craft longer posts or trying to sound sophisticated. Just be yourself, be clear and keep it short.
• Make sure that style goes hand-to-hand with your objectives and your readership.

Making the content shareable

• Have all the necessary tools available in each post. Retweet and Facebook Likes buttons, sharing systems such as ShareThis or plugins like Sexy Bookmarks. Make it easy for people.
• Pay attention to what kind of content gets shared a lot on different social platforms.
• Write a killer headline and a killer first paragraph, sometimes that’s all people read in order to give you a retweet.

Your Turn…

There are many other aspects to blogging, add some of them to the comments sections so we can discuss them. It could be maybe the technical side of it, not getting any traffic, whatever is a struggle to you.

Happy Blogging!

In my opinion, the whole conversation about what is the right way to use Twitter or who’s using it wrong just adds to the confusion of those on the early stages of social media.

There are different styles and it seems that we tend to go one way or the other. What’s important is that the objective of using Twitter for your business is clear to you. Your voice, as some call it, will develop naturally.

What I want to do with this post is provide some basic understanding and clarity on the different styles to see if there is in fact, a right way to use Twitter. If you navigate through some of the accounts of the biggest names such as @guykawasaki, @chrisbrogan or even @aplusk you will be able to see the differences in style very clear.

So who’s using Twitter the right way? Who cares… what’s important here is that YOU as an entrepreneur or brand, reach your goals. So this is how it looks like from a basic point of view:

1. Conversation

Conversational users are the ones where you see a heavy use of @replies, not so much of self-promoting or even sharing content. This is the way to get to know and interact with actual human beings, Retweets are important but not real interactions.

Business opportunities are created this way, seriously.

On the other hand, users enjoying of some level of popularity sometimes are turned into a constant thanking for praises from their followers and there is no real value provided. The other thing that’s very common to see is users interacting with only a small group and ignoring the rest of his/her network.

2. Aggregation

The user gathering information to share on Twitter, hopefully valuable to those in the community. Mostly links from blogs in a specific niche.

If you share useful or interesting articles in your industry, you become resourceful. People will trust you with the information you share, specially if it’s not so obvious. Sharing is good karma, if your competitor published a great article, share it with your network and you’ll see what I mean.

Also to consider is that there is no real engagement in sharing, while you will get retweeted, there is no interaction with other users.

Don’t become a Mashable feed, believe me, you will annoy everybody. Besides, nobody needs a link to Mashable to find it (you get the point, right?).

3. Self Promotion

A biggy, up for some controversy for sure. Self-Promotion is how you share your own. There is nothing wrong with sharing your content, events or work with your network as long as that’s not all you do. Great content doesn’t promote itself (read my post “10 Steps For Self-Promotion“).

You really have to be careful with this because constant self-promotion will make you look as spammer in your community, besides, nobody likes a pushy salesman.

4. Personal

Photo Credit: Femto Photography

People sharing what they’re doing, which was the original purpose of Twitter, at least until they changed to “What’s Happening?” I guess. We used to say nobody cares if you’re having coffee but apparently now we do, as far as you tell us where you are having it.

It is important to humanize your content, people also want to know about the person and your points of view. Always having in mind that nobody cares about every single step you take during the day, unless you are Tiger Woods, of course.

Don’t turn your Twitter into a Foursquare broadcaster, perhaps you should only be on Foursquare…

So Which One?

How about none! The problem is not that, the problem is that we lean towards one. If we focus on being ourselves and not on what others think or the so-called social media experts advice us to do, we’ll do just fine. During the day (on the real world) you establish conversations with co-workers or potential clients, then you tell somebody about a great documentary or article you read, you probably tell a friend you’re having coffee at the corner and even tell somebody about your new product. You don’t walk around just sharing news all day…

Represent yourself as who you truly are, technology means nothing.

A Matter Of Time And Work

What nobody seems to mention is that this is also a matter of time and work, people that get retweeted a lot without even posting their own links have been actively working on their own business, building trust on their communities, providing value and sharing their knowledge.

Let me tell you a short story (and sorry to use myself as an example…). In my previous business, besides the traditional advertising methods (yes, in the “before Twitter” era) I developed a distributor program to enable independent people to represent and sell my product. It was very hard at the beginning to get in front of as many people as I could and then convince them, even my small office was playing against me, but it was built over time and a lot of hard work. There was a point in which all I had to do was show up for a few hours once a week to say hello to people and chat, share a few laughs.

I don’t think being fully conversational works for just anybody at just any time. In reality, the timeline would look something like this as your network grows and you build trust:

Over time, conversation slowly replaces everything else, sharing other sources will still be important, self-promotion will almost vanish to probably an occasional blog post of your own because your community will do that for you and personal sharing should slightly increase as they want to know more about the person.

Are there exceptions? of course, @guykawasaki is all aggregation, @mashable is pure self-promotion. That is what they do. Take in consideration that you should develop your Twitter style thinking of your objectives.

Now it’s your turn…

What’s your point of view? Do you think you fall into one of these categories? Is it possible to have a balanced Twitter style? Share with us in the comments section.

There are 2 ways of sharing content on Twitter. This is a very basic and visual guide of how to do this properly:

Crafting Your Own Tweet

It’s not the same as just Retweeting something, in this case you are writing the tweet from scratch, usually when you find a post at a blog and you want to share it.

Just Retweeting

What Are We looking At Here?

Piece of content

• Usually the headline of the post you’re sharing.
• You can also use your own phrase, just make it relevant. Don’t mislead.

Credit the source

• Critical piece of the tweet.
• Make sure you’re crediting the source.
• Common mistake: Leaving a space in between the “@” and the name. Why is this so important? Because it becomes a link to that person’s Twitter account.

The URL Link

• Also very important.
• Use a short URL. Do not post the whole address.
• Get familiar with short URL services.
• You want a recommendation? Bit.ly

The Hashtag

• Totally optional.
• Have some balance if you use them, not every single tweet needs one and don’t use 3 hastags in one tweet. Looks like you’re writing code…
• Again, no spaces in the middle or the the whole point of using a hashtag is lost.
• I’ll share this video if you want to know more: “There’s a #Hashtag for that” from Baratunde Thurston, which is also very funny.

The Role Of The Short URL

• Besides just having 140 characters in the tweet…
• It’s a great way to measure your performance.
• Track your clicks. Even if you’re sharing other people’s content you still want to know how you’re doing.
• See what your network appreciates as good content and share more of the same.
• Try sticking with one service so you have visibility of your performance in one place.
• Find the one that fits your needs.

Sharing Is Damn Sexy…

It doesn’t matter what your style is as long as you keep some basic elements in there but what’s really important is that you share. Share information with your network to become a good resource and support good content at the same time.

What are your thoughts?

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Are you feeling like you are the only one that doesn’t get any results from social media? Are you getting nothing but frustration while everybody else and their grandmas are talking about monetizing, getting prospects and all kinds of success stories?

Questioning your strategy is a good start. Here is a list of items that might be damaging your personal brand or preventing you from achieving those hard to get goals…

1. Your Content Is Self Centered

I said it before and it doesn’t sound very nice but nobody cares about you or your product. People care about how your product can provide a benefit or cover their needs. Turn it around and think about others. How you can be of help and provide value to your potential prospect. A good exercise to get started is to not allow yourself to write in first person.

2. You Don’t Come Out To Play

You are so focused on creating content and making your blog better that you forget about getting out and interacting with people in other platforms. If you don’t come out and play, when you finally decide to go to the park the other kids don’t even know who you are. A great way is to visit other blogs and comment, but don’t just say “Good Job”, have an opinion. Stay in your field, after all, you know what you’re talking about.

3. You Are All Strategy

If you are so attached to a strategy that you’re not even allowing yourself to experiment a little, you need to let go. I don’t care if you read it from a Social Media superstar. Test different things, allow yourself to make mistakes. When Gary Vaynerchuck was asked (on CNN) what was his strategy, he responded that there is no strategy but to follow your heart. I’m not against having one but leave enough room to be spontaneous. You don’t want to be a robot…

4. You Are Only Promoting Yourself

You’re suffering from the “me me me” syndrome. Nothing wrong with promoting yourself, the problem is when you become a broadcaster of your own message. This is different than any other media, in traditional media you wouldn’t run an ad promoting somebody else. Find content that you thing would be useful or interesting to your prospects and share it with them, I don’t care if it’s your own competitor. If you haven’t noticed, competition has a whole new meaning today, but that’s another post.

5. You Are In The Wrong Place

You might be hanging out in the wrong network. Most likely you know your target market, all you need to do is identify where the hangout is. I’ll use myself as an example (sorry…), I get no love from Linkedin members. Why? Because I’m talking to people, entrepreneurs and independents, not to companies. When I used to own a skateshop, my hangout was MySpace. Eliminate any networks that you feel are not right for your kind of product or service and focus on fewer ones.

6. You Are Not Engaging

I’m sure you heard this a lot and I’m sorry to tell you that if you don’t start conversations with real human beings, nobody is going to notice you’re there. Engage everywhere, not just when people comment on your blog. You can also engage in existing conversations, provide help or answer questions every chance you get. Also, make sure you always interact with the intention to help others, not yourself.

7. Your Content Is Not Being Shared

Make sure your blog is providing visitors with the necessary tools to share your content. Use tools such as Tweetmeme or Digg buttons or sharing systems like ShareThis. Make it easy for them, some people will share your content anyways if it’s worth it but don’t expect anybody to go the extra mile for you.

8. Your Blog Is Not Converting

If you are driving traffic to your site but you are not converting, you should probably take a hard look at it. In my previous post “12 Things To Consider Before Launching Your Blog“, I talk about different aspects you need to consider to have your blog work for you and help you reach your objectives. Are your messages clear? Are you using calls to action? Do you have too much clutter? Take some time to question everything about it and pay attention to successful people in your niche.

9. You Are Focused On Closing Sales

There are no direct sales here, you better forget about it. “Cold-Calling” is dead. You need to focus on building relationships instead and have the patience to let your prospects come to you. If you are used to pushing sales, think of a new concept: PULL instead of PUSH. A hardcore salesman gets no love on social media.

Be generous with your knowledge, people are going to ask you questions and you need to see this as the perfect opportunity to knock their socks off. Now they’ll remember you!

10. You Are Not Familiar With The Etiquette

I’m not saying you need to become a pro but at least get the basics to make sure you’re using the different networks properly. Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter are not the same thing. There are different ways to communicate, to approach people or to share content. Making mistakes is only human and asking is also allowed, making the same mistakes over and over again will damage your personal brand.

A good example is when you’re sharing content, learn how to properly credit the source or how to use short URL’s.

Final Thought…

Question everything. Test new things. Do your homework. The Internet is like putting things on paper, so make sure you represent yourself honestly.

Feel free to add your thoughts to this post…

Photo Credit: len-k-a

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“Do not covet your ideas. Give away everything you know and more will come back to you.” Paul Arden

The other day I heard a friend talking about a workshop she recently attended. Something about how to get clients online, a topic that has always been fascinating to me since I literally hate chasing business.

The main point was that there is a fine line between what you put out there for free and what you keep as a premium, in other words, create a need by leaving your prospect wanting more. Nothing new really… basic marketing.

It took me back to the last time I faced that question. I remember not being totally clear about why but made the decision not to think about it anymore and just follow my heart. Today, I can explain why I think you should give it all away… and these are the main reasons:

Nobody Owns Anything Anymore

Ask the music industry if you don’t believe me… while top executives were questioning themselves on how to reinvent music distribution in a profitable way, we decided for them. Music will never be handled the same way. Don’t think too much about it because you no longer own the information you are holding back. You must understand that other people are providing that same information this very moment, and for FREE that is.

Just like bands are becoming more performing than recording artists and records are becoming more of a sample for their live show, you are no longer compensated for knowing what the rest of us don’t.

Generosity Kicks Ass These Days

Have you ever asked a question to somebody you considered an expert in the matter and got a vague, superficial and just lame response? I can guarantee you that people also notices when you go out of your way to provide real value, I mean share your knowledge, provide some resources or even mention your competition if you think it is a better solution in that particular case. Just be generous, be human and walk away from that conversation with the feeling you made a difference.

That is creating positive impact, the long-lasting kind.

Valuable Content Replaces Your Sales Pitch

Spread all your knowledge and experience out there, if you are true to yourself and your audience, soon you will be dropping your elevator pitch and your tie to let your valuable content represent you. There is no better way for a prospect to really see who you are and what you do. Does it take time? Of course it does, I’m talking about pushing a sale versus letting the perfect prospect come to you.

People Will Hire You More Than Ever

Just because the internet holds thousands of nutritional resources and there are hundreds of books, magazines or entire television networks around it doesn’t mean nutritionists are not been hired anymore. Of course they get hired everyday. Only one thing changed, today the consumer is more educated than ever, but if you are the one providing all that information… you have secured a position in the marketplace.

Final Thought

There is something magical in all this and it’s that you should NOT do anything expecting something in return, what I’m suggesting here is being transparent, being human about what you do.

Photo Credits: sueanna, rubenshito

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You hear it all the time, “social media is a 2-way channel”, “it’s all about others” or “it’s like a cocktail party…”

All good concepts, but what do you actually do once in front of the screen? Social media is about Karma, I have built a little list of things to do in seven days that can get you some positive vibrations…

Day 1: Don’t Think About What To Say, Just Listen

Most of the time we are focused on what to say. Hell, half the time in a face-to-face conversation, we’re just dying to see the other person finish talking so we can give our very valuable point of view. It is often said in Sales that you can close more deals by listening to your client, because the client is providing you with the necessary tools so you can cover his/her needs. Have you ever been in front of a sales rep that is running his mouth about something you don’t need?

If you listen carefully, you will know exactly what to say and when. It is no different in social media, would you interrupt in the middle of a conversation? Or would you listen first? Besides attention is one of the most beautiful gifts you can give.

Day 2: Visit 2 Blogs And Comment

We all follow at least a couple of blogs. Instead of just enjoying a good read and then surf away, make a comment, interact, provide your opinion. That is exactly the format to do so. If you provide a valuable point, at least one person in the thread will be interested in following you back to your site to see what else you have to say, not to mention the site’s owner.

A simple comment on a blog can be the beginning of a conversation or even a friend or follower.

Day 3: Talk To 2 Complete Strangers

Remember your mom telling you never to talk to strangers? Re-wire your brain. I’m not telling you to go talk to just anybody, in real life you wouldn’t engage in a conversation about Formula 1 if you didn’t know anything about it… Find somebody that shares the same topic, that is involved in the same line of business, stay in your arena.

Exchange ideas. Provide value. Don’t think the other person will reject you, that’s what social media is all about.

Day 4: Share Somebody Else’s Content

There are people in your industry providing very useful content in different kinds of media, stuff that can also be useful to your network. Share it with them. There are a few benefits behind this practice starting with the possibility of establishing a new relationship, getting in front of the other person’s network, your network will see you as somebody that’s providing useful resources and of course you are increasing the chances of the favor been returned.

There are different ways of sharing others content, you can Retweet an article, post a link on your Facebook Wall, submit the story to Digg and many other ways. One thing to consider, always make sure you are crediting the right people and you are sharing the original story.

Day 5: Introduce 2 People That You Think Can Benefit From Each Other

This is also a practice that will get you a positive return. Be creative, there are other possibilities besides providing someone with a referral for a sale. You can introduce two people in the same industry, maybe two people that can complement each other or are simply talking about the same topics.

You will be remembered if the relationship takes off.

Day 6: Answer 2 Questions From People You Don’t Know

Questions on any kind of topics are being asked everywhere every day. When you answer a question you are positioning yourself as an expert on the matter and it is a great way of becoming part of the conversation.

How to find these questions? Let me help you with that. Search for existing conversations on whatever topics you wish, you can do this on Twitter or Yahoo! Answers, both good places to find questions. Do it with the intention of providing a service, don’t use it as a promotional vehicle to pitch your services. Provide links to resources.

Day 7: Think About What’s Needed, Not What You Need

You need to contribute to the conversation and want to do it with something of value, if you have been listening, you’ll know how to do that. When you are writing a post on your blog or simply engaging in a conversation in one of the social networks, think of others first, think about how to cover a need.

Make sure you are not using social media just to promote yourself. Do you like that guy that’s always talking about himself and never makes a pause to listen to others? Me neither…

In Other Words…

This thing is more about others than yourself and it sounds a lot like leadership to me. Apply some common sense, this really works as in real life, if you start caring about others they might just start caring about you too…

The other factor that can’t be ignored is the touch of brutal honesty. Represent yourself as yourself.

“People should be impressed by who you are, not because you’re trying to impress them.”

Talking to Sandy Weiner the other day, she asked me why I don’t post links to the blogs I read. Big part of social media is spreading love, so I decided to write a post listing all the bloggers I follow and at the same time, hopefully some of you guys will find something useful.

So here is the list organized in my favorite topics:

Productivity / Simplicity

Zen Habits by Leo Babauta

Not only one of my regulars but one of the most popular blogs in the planet. Leo also wrote the book The Power Of Less and while I don’t follow any productivity systems, this one made change how I see the whole concept on getting things done, eliminate the clutter and only focus on what gets me closer to my dreams. The little stuff gets done by the universe (great virtual assistant by the way…)

He posts daily and you can always count on getting a positive message that you can truly apply to your life. Love the simplicity of the layout, it is very clear that what counts here is the message. You can also follow him on Twitter at @zen_habits.

Entrepreneurship

Mixergy by Andrew Warner

Mostly video interviews with great personalities from Seth Godin to Gary Vaynerchuck, but what I love the most is his own story as an entrepreneur, maybe because I went through something very similar.

So great content from the best entrepreneurs of our times, very inspiring. Follow Andrew’s tweets at @andrewwarner.

Blogging

ProBlogger by Darren Rowse

The authority in all blogging matters. It’s nice to have all this information in just one stop, at ProBlogger you can learn about how to monetize your blog or how to build a better blog or improve the one you have, tips about writing and much more. I don’t care if you’re a beginner or an experienced blogger, you need to make this one of your regulars.

Darren Rowse also provides a lot of very useful info on Twitter at @ProBlogger

Social Media

Mashable and TechCrunch

Obviously the two sources for all social media news, even though I try not to get into all the hype, it’s always good to take a few minutes to scan these sites for relevant stuff going on. Here is where you are going to learn about what’s hot that day, a new iPhone App or the latest launch from Facebook.

If you want to learn more about a particular network, just search Mashable and you will find a few articles about it. These 2 sites are major blogs posting 10 to 20 articles a day. Also find them on Twitter at @Mashable and @TechCrunch

Other Blogs I Visit

White Hot Truth by Danielle Laporte – Just rocks.

Illuminated Mind by Jonathan Mead – Even though I broke out of cubicle jail like 15 years ago, I still find it is a great read and I love his writing style.

Smashing Magazine – Lots of resources for designing, tutorials, inspiration…

Mnmlist – Also from Leo Babauta.

Urban Monk – On personal development.

Chris Brogan – Author of Trust Agents.

The Naked Elephant – I’m just in love with this girl, seriously.

I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting a couple, next time.

So what blogs are you following and, do you spread the love? Comment…