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Amber: Dialogue about Social with cL Community

So now that I've given you all of these kind of misconceptions, was there anything in there that surprised you? I don't have it so much surprised me, but something that I've always really kind of focused on a lot or have always felt like it needs to happen right away like it happened. Now everything needs to happen right now, and I kind of get myself into such a pickle, you know, feeling that way. And it really And then I get analysis paralysis and I stop. Don't do anything right that nothing's really happening and right, sad that nothing's happening. So how do you address that? Now I really have to remind myself that it doesn't all have to happen right away. And I have to consciously tell myself that, Yeah, and I have to kind of like, focus on the breath. You calm down a second and realize, you know, kind of like you said, You don't want to be this Internet rock star. You don't want to be famous for that. It's about building a sustainable business. Absolutely. And so it really helps t...

o kind of hear you say that. You know, I don't want I don't want to be a rock star and and that it doesn't all have to happen at one. And I'm still not on all the platforms. You know, there's so many different places that you can be in social media and I'm a bit of, ah, simple person. I'm on Twitter. Facebook is much more of a personal thing for me. I don't use it a lot for business. Um, simply because my particular audience isn't gonna hang out on Facebook and wait for awesome, like consultants content, you know, like you're not hanging out on Facebook waiting for my latest book. So we don't use a lot of Facebook in our own particular marketing, and and we have a small firm. So I live and breathe the whole marketing a social business, small social business thing. But I'm Twitter and my blawg are really the lifeblood of my social presence. Not on Instagram. I'm not on Pinterest. I'm not. I have a linked in profile, which I used to look at people's phone numbers once in a while. But, you know, there are some people who are amazing at rocking all the platforms at once, and I'm not one of them. But I guess I'm living proof that you don't have to do it all. And you can still be successful doing it that way. I mean, it's really good to see really e. I love that. I'm glad that's reassuring, because really, you don't have to be doing everything all at once. It's a lot easier. Another question? Yes, well, just a take away. Really? Um, so this is more for my own business than the businesses I manage for. Other people there has managing for other people. I always have their business in mind. I'm not really as personally connected for my own dog treat business. It almost seems like social can take. You almost have to have a better social media page, then how good your business is. It almost seems like it can take over on what I took away was really remembering. Get your product. You know, good, because that one person who complains on your page you know everyone's going to see that if you forgot because you were so busy finding that meaningful, you know, inspiring post to do today. You know, the focus is a little bit lost. So that's what I took away as a business. Wow. You know, just remember you're driving that you're building a business. That's the purpose. And I'm so glad you called that out because I really believe in some ways the explosion of young startup companies that are relying very heavily on social to carry their marketing because, you know, it's it's lower cost its its intensity of time lives. But it's not a lot of capital outlay, so people flock to it. And then I really worry that the substance of their business isn't getting built because we see it happen all the time. In the corporate world where the issue isn't that you were on social media and somebody criticized you, the issue was that your product sucked. So somebody had an issue with that. And you have to fix that problem because commenting on Facebook isn't gonna fix the fact that your product isn't where it needs to be. So all of this is frosting on the cupcake like you've got to have a really good cupcake. Otherwise, the frosting is totally pointless. So don't don't lose sight of investing in the core of your business because you will survive without social media. But you will not survive without a viable product. Yeah, so being that, you know, the blawg is my hub and just drive business back. There is what we learned yesterday taking this goal and being aware of the pitfalls and understanding, though What is the goal of my business? Yes, that these air tools, in order to make my business successful so exacting that main goal of why I'm in business or what it's about, exactly way talk a little bit about building our roadmap in our platform. You will here be emphasized over and over again that you need purpose and focus, purpose and focus, purpose and focus. And neither of those things have anything to do with what Internet tool you choose to do, because those are just the means. It's like whether you choose to do advertising or by a print ad or do a radio spot. You know, marketing is a whole ecosystem full of choices, and if you're using social for marketing, that's all it is, is a bunch of tools. Now I think the intent of social and the the spirit behind it is actually much bigger, and we'll talk about that, too. But the idea is that the social is really a mindset. You know, it's really an attitude that we bring to our business that says, I want to be accessible. I want to be communicative. I want to be open and fun and have some personality. And I want to showcase my brand in a real time kind of way. But you can achieve that through any number of things. So the intent of being social is much more important than what mechanism you used to do that because you could make a case for and against any of these tools on every day basis. Madam. Yes, I would love to read off what some people are saying for you this morning because they are loving this already Excellent, lively. I love it. So divan Telly is saying that you are really just injecting a bit of sanity here, which is a welcome change this morning. Clearly, they don't know me very well if they think I'm saying, but that's cool on what yes and girl is saying is you are amazing. Can you come visit for cock coffee and giggles mixed with swearing and artwork. If you have a speaking schedule in Europe. I actually I'm not. I'm not in Europe. Any time that I know I might be in Brussels later this year, but yeah, I can. I'm always for swearing and artwork in coffee altogether. You seem like that. And if there's wine later, like don't perfect. Yeah, absolutely. But we have some questions coming in as well, right? We dio and I had a question, actually, that relates to one of our online audience members. Fantastic J big media was asking in reference to choosing your voice and avoiding missteps, being careful about what you say. How I relate to that is, how do you know how much personal stuff to put into that business posts or Twitter? Whatever. You're right, wherever you're reaching out. Teoh to keep it interesting and bring the content and interest back to your business. Yeah, that's a really great question, and it is one that a lot of businesses and people struggle with because it's clearly it's kind of a complicated thing, and my first answer is it depends because it's a some of it is personal taste. My mom freaks out at the idea that people put pictures of themselves on the Internet like that is such a foreign idea to her. To me, I put pictures of my kid and my dogs and whatever, because this is very native to me being on the Web and being part of it. But here's what I guess my rule of thumb for the that sort of content. I want lots of personality in what I dio, because part of that helps filter my ideal audience. I'm a little irreverent, you know, I'm a little bit brazen. I a no nonsense kind of person, and I want to work with a certain kind of client that sees the world like Ideo. So if somebody is a little put off by my personality, they're probably not gonna be the best client for me to work with. On when I was freelancing, which before I started Sutera works, I did a lot of independent consulting and freelance communications work, and that was part of my choice was to develop a persona that very much reflected the kinds of clients I wanted to attract. So we'll talk about this concept called creating gravity, which is pulling people towards you instead of trying to just push everything out. And in this audience of however many of you there are, some of you are probably really drawn to me, and some of you might be totally put off by me, And a lot of that is very personal. So in your business, people are going to be attracted to you for different reasons, and you're never going to be everything to everyone. So having enough personality and there is really important. Now the flip side of that coin is I'm not gonna put anything on the Internet that I would be ashamed for my mother or my daughter to read. So if I'm gonna put something out there, I probably broken that rule once or twice. Maybe. But for the most part, I want to be proud of that. And if somebody were to go and dig up and on Earth, my entire online presence, I want it to be something that I can look out with pride. Even if I look at those like, maybe it was a little cranky that day. But overall, I want to look at it and be really proud of what I've put out into the world. So I guess that's sort of my balance is being proud of off what you say in owning it. And if it suits your personality, great. But it needs to be something that you can look at 10 years from now and still feel good about. Okay, So a question from Johnny L. A In your experience, is there a tipping point on the number of followers When a brand really takes off, much more numbers come in on something like Twitter. Yeah. So just making that bigger, like do the numbers matter or is it relative? It is totally relative. And my point is, Johnny Noh, there's not a tipping point. Um, there can be, I guess, you know, relative to any particular company. But for a really small niece, um, custom car seat covers with unicorns on the business there. Might there Tipping point might be from 50 fans to 500 you know, that might be a huge step for them for businesses like Coca Cola. They have three million Samad fans, and you know that's a whole different world. So, as faras tipping point, the more important thing to me is when you are creating a community that is not just driven by you is the business, but that starts to build itself, and we'll talk a little more about that concept later. But the the community starts to sort of nurture itself. That's the tipping point to me is it's not a quantity thing. It's Ah, it's kind of a sense of all. These people are here for a common purpose, and they all believe in kind of the same things. And so they're talking to each other and you'll find in really mature, great online communities that much like Creativelive. There's people in there asking questions and answering questions without any involvement from us. So really great communities. That's the tipping point is when you can get people talking to each other and that could be 10 people or it could be 10,000. So that totally depends. Yeah, Oh, our sunshine wants to know Socialist part, responding to current situations and events and part planned posts. Now, what percentage of time approximately? Do you think that the post should be responsive and reactive to current events vs following a plan strategy? Oh, that's a really great question. So time management is a really big issue in social and one of the reasons that I didn't put it as a particular part to talk about it, because we're gonna end up talking about it all throughout the way. But it's good. This is exactly why I wanted to take some questions, because knowing what's on people's minds. Time management, um, in terms of what the balance of what you post. I like to say that 20 to 30% of your content should be you driven content. So it's my post. It's my stuff that I'm sharing with the world. I want to say that 60 to 70 if not 80% of the content that I put out is either sharing other people's work responding to things that are happening online. And I spent a good chunk of my time just listening, and we'll talk about that kind of a strategy to because it's really important to observe social media. We started get into this like we have to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. But you can learn so much by simply absorbing some of the information that's out there doing some searching on current events and just watching the stream. You can get a pulse of the Internet in no time just by paying attention to what's happening. So it's kind of incredible. Teoh put something out there and remember that content has a shelf life. So I know we talked. I know that Kim talked yesterday about, you know, the life span of a tweet is like 30 seconds. Um, but I believe that the first time around, you know what happens to me. People will find in retweet things that I posted two years ago, and it's like I don't know where they found it or why they found it. But it could have been that they were searching on something or what have you. So I like to have a balance of content that is evergreen that can be out there and people will find it and stumble upon it and and those kinds of things. But it's probably no more than about 30% of what I do. And in my particular world, um, I think I'm really out of whack because I think I probably share one post of mine and then you'll see, like 50 replies to other people on Twitter. So I spent a lot of time, chatting and conversing and listening and absorbing and sharing information. I'm actually really lousy at my own self promotion. So something about the shoemaker's kids and shoes and things like that. So, um, but I think the balance is usually if you're gonna air in one direction. It's do a lot of interacting and responding and being immersed in current conversations and things online and allow a smaller fraction to be that content that you put out and share with the world anything. Yeah, and I think this is definitely a hot topic for people. Lakota Wolf. Just kind of building on that with all of the I D theft in the Internet world, Is there a guide us again? How much personal information is actually safe to put out there in conjunction with what to put out for business? I know common sense plays a big part of this, but what about that safety factor? It does. That's a really and that's a great question on. I am buying no means of security or safety experts, so I just need to disclaim that right off bat. I tend to be pretty conservative about that, even as broad as my Web presence is. I have my name out there, but I do not use my daughter's name. For instance, I use nicknames. I call her kiddo. I call her kid lit. I call her all kinds of things, but I very rarely put her name out there because I want her to make the choice Sunday of how she wants to be present on the Internet. Obviously, things like birthdays, you know, face one of Facebook's like famous functions is that it reminds you of that friend whose birthday you forgot. Um, I'm terrible with birthdays, and if it weren't for Facebook, I would never remember anything. But there's an argument to be made of. Do you really want your actual birthday out on the Internet? Because that's a really important piece of information. Think of how many forms you fill out that ask you for your date of birth, your address, your phone number, your Social Security number. I try to keep my phone number off the Web, but anybody with Google if you dig you can find out how to call me. Um, I think the my generalized advice would always be to err on the side of caution and put less out than you think. Obviously, things like Social Security numbers or any individual personal identifying information should never be anywhere near and unsecured. Anything on the Internet. And the thing about social media is that we can get a little bit like post happy like who, and we're not thinking about the fact that we might be sharing some very identifiable information. I'm not a paranoid person, but I do say that you need to pay attention to it with some caution. Because, um, more and more people are doing domain DDOS attacks. I don't know if this is a is a technical term, but it basically means people are hacking into other people's websites to pull customer information and bring down sites. And it's it's really messy, and those databases can get, you know, compromised in short order. So in general, I would say, Be conservative, assume that there's going to be some sort of breach of security at some point on one of your accounts on and keep that information at a comfortable level. I'm trying to pronounce Devin telly. I think that what are you using for your analytics numbers and What are some specific things that you can measure? We talked about how it is measurable. Yeah, that's great. And we'll get into some of that in a little bit. But I'll totally borrow some of my content from Leader and, um for analytics. If you're talking about analytics for your site, like your home home base, blogged website, whatever, you can't be Google analytics. It's free, and it is incredibly powerful. So, um, you have to kind of dig in and use it, and you can learn a lot of amazing information. I frankly, um, because traffic is not my number one concern. I don't pay a lot of attention to those kinds of analytics. I pay attention in my business, too much more business focused metrics. And I look at our communication efforts overall and how they drive things like awareness, lead generation, referral, those kinds of things. Um, but if you're really concerned about tracking a specific metrics, here's my advice. If you're gonna look at something like your website traffic and you're gonna look at how many people come and visit your blog's on a particular day, try it. Speculate about what other metrics in your business that could impact because the power in measurement is not in a single metric. It's actually when you look at how metrics relate to one another. So if I'm going to say I had 500 visitors to my blawg in the last two weeks now did I see any other upticks in things that matter to me? Did our email subscriptions rise? Did I get any leads from our form? Did people also download our e book? So can I get a sense of how these things relate to one another? Because I don't want to just build traffic for the sake of building traffic. I want to build traffic to move another needle, presumably because traffic in and of itself, isn't something that's valuable. It's only valuable when it compels another action. So when it comes to Social Media Metrix, for instance, I don't really particularly care how many Twitter followers I have. I don't care at all. I actually don't know how many, but I don't care unless there are people that are coming from Twitter to come talk to me about my business. Those are the people that matter, so whether it's five of them are 500 of them. So from from an analytic standpoint, the metrics that I track for my business or woefully simple and I actually think we overcomplicate measurement sometimes because if you find three really amazing metrics to track for your company, that's all you need. And I'll share a little case study with you later. That is a company that did just that. So we'll learn a little more about metrics. So remember we talked about the importance of communities, and a schmoopsie has asked. Is Reddit considered social media Absolutely And red? It's kind of this funky place. Don't even know what Reddit iss Yeah, explain it, read it. Read. It is kind of a corky site on the Internet. If you go to reddit dot com and you've never been on Reddit read, it looks pretty unsexy like it's really no frills. It looks kind of like an old school forum, so you have a bunch of comment threads and you click on a post, and that's really what it is. Is It's a whole comment interaction thread, but read it has a personality of its own. Andi. It's sort of like the the Hipster Zone of the Internet. Kind of. I guess there's there's There's a subreddit, which is like a subcategory on there for just about everything you could possibly imagine. Good, bad, ugly, scary you name it. And they had these really passionate communities and you confined hysterical photographs. And but one of my favorite subreddit last year was when that was called a random acts of Christmas, and what people would do would actually post that, you know, they were they were having hard times or whatever. And here's the wish list for my kids and other people on Reddit would then come by the presence and then send them. So there's amazing things happening all over the Internet, crazy and not, but by very virtue of that, that interaction, that sort of sense of community. I would say social is core to read it, and it's probably what it's all about. If I could just share a little reddit story, please, because it's I was. I looked at it and I was overwhelmed. What is this thing? Yes, but my uncle is, um, is a musician, just kind of in his own, not in a big band or anything and my cousin posted a YouTube video, um, of him on Reddit, and it was him singing this very James Taylor ish song. That was what my cousin said on Reddit, that his dad would sink him every night before he went to sleep as a kid. Ah, it was just a beautiful rendition. It went crazy and he got over 100,000 way it firm bed it and I and I was. I hadn't even been on Reddit before. I heard this story, so it was really interesting. A different community, but really interesting to see. I don't think read. It has a lot of direct application in a business context. It's a really chaotic kind of splintered community. But when you're talking about seeing all sides of humanity read, it is really the melting pot of the Internet. It's it's kind of crazy. There was just a reddit thing where some kids that were in a hospital cancer word posted on their window, they taped to their window. Please send pizza room, whatever it WAAS. And of course, the reddit community went absolutely crazy. The hospital was overwhelmed with pizza deliveries for these kids, so, you know, read it is a very powerful community, for better and for worse. But it's an interesting if you haven't spent any time there, I don't know what you're gonna get a lot out of it for your business, but for entertainment purposes, go check it out. It's really fun. Okay, because that was kind of the follow up was like our businesses on reddit. Yeah, I haven't seen a lot, but but here's what I will tell you. For instance, I'm a bit of, ah, the one, my one girly indulgences that I love makeup and I have a huge, like, ridiculous makeup collection. And there's a couple of makeup communities on Reddit, and there are some companies that are trying to get their MAWR independent, growing cosmetic brands into the hands of people who might use and evangelize them. So they're turning to communities like that on Reddit, not in a, but they're not really using it for marketing. They're not getting out there and saying, Hey, here's our new thing. They're just getting in there and chatting with people and sharing their love of cosmetics and their interest in. There's one that's on vintage cosmetics and all these people get in there and chat. So people start getting interested in their brands and what they do simply by virtue of them becoming part of the community. And I think you know that's a kind of a good overarching rule in general is that businesses participating as one of us in the community makes a really big difference and read it is probably more suited to that kind of. I've seen a few. Yeah, right, Honey Comb also asked, Can you be good at social media if you're not good at socializing in person if you're an introvert? And I'm sure the question also would follow up with just how, how any tactics that you'd suggest. That's a great question and one that I get all the time. And this is going to shock all of you, I'm sure. But I am a I am a qualified introvert, top to bottom. Yes, when I get off this days, I'll want to go hide in a corner somewhere. And what's interesting about introversion is that the misunderstood thing is that introverts or not, were that were not social and really, what it is, is it's where we get our energy from so social interaction drains introverts. In other words, I love being with you, and I will be so exhausted at the end of this day that I'll need silence. So the long answer to the short answer is absolutely social can be great for introverts in a lot of ways, because it helps sort of familiarize you with people in a comfortable way. It's sort of a double edged sword because there is the world of not so nice people hiding behind their keyboards and using that to lash out to the world. But I think social is actually a great gateway for people who are traditionally very introverted. For instance, you will never find me at a networking event ever. You know, the whole like name tag. Oh gosh, that's the most uncomfortable world for me to be in. If there's not somebody I know in that room, I'm gonna be over there on my phone like you know, So I'm not a good traditional networker, and social media has actually really helped me connect with people in ways that I wouldn't ordinarily be able to do because I'm not that kind of person. So Social also has the advantage of eliminating factors like geography or circumstance and even asynchronous time. So I can talk. I can say something to you on Twitter, and you may not be able to respond to me for six hours, but we can still have a chat. So I think it's a huge boon for people who are introverted and trying to build a business. The entire developer community has exploded because they're traditionally very kind of back behind the curtain type of people. But they're out there now building software, communities and building resource is and interacting online in ways that I have never seen before. So I think it's actually a really powerful tool for people who are introverted but still trying to do something effective with their business. Yeah, we have another question that line in, um, from yes and girl who wanted you to come to Europe and we're gonna hang out and have a beard are apparently s Oh, this is interesting. What currently annoys you the most about social media And how would you change things for the future if you were queen of the universe, as you should be? E, I don't really I don't understand how that memo got lost in translation. But what annoys me? I would say the recurring theme that I keep bringing up is that the hype around social tools, the shiny object thing bothers me, mostly because I believe that there are an incredible in a number of businesses out there that are brilliant, that are viable, that are run by really creative, smart people. And they're getting lost in the labyrinth of Pinterest instead of focusing on core things in their business that are really critical. So I think, and this is this is not new. This kind of hype of things is not new. We went through that with the Web and with email, and they'll be something else down the road that we hype by from a business as a business woman. I really want that to normalize because I feel like it's and it's doing a disservice to businesses to give them the idea that social is the Holy Grail and that it's the magic bullet that's gonna make everything awesome because the reality is building a business is still really hard work, whether you have social media in your world or not. So I'm anxious for kind of the the hype to die down and for the idea that social just becomes part of everything that we do. It's not this, like, huge party in a box that we have over on the side somewhere, that it really is an integrated part of our business. That just is a natural way that we that we work. So that's my big pet peeve. IRA would like to know if you're new to an area and beyond joining groups or communities, what other things could you do to build these new relationships in social or in community? That's a great question, and it's one that we're going to tackle when we talk about building a platform for yourself. I think the most important and underrated activity and social like I mentioned before is listening, so we tend to want to jump in and participate. We think that the only way for us to get all that stuff out there is to come in and be like who I'm in here and I'm talking and I'm part of this community and very truthfully we can actually find the places where we should be and find the places that will be the most comfortable, interesting, exciting, useful for us as businesses by listening by building a sort of a little framework where we can search for things online, eavesdrop on conversations. So I think the most important thing to do is find those interest areas that are important to you and start looking for where other people are. It's not just a matter of where you participate. It's also what you learn so that you can figure out what problems to solve in what country. What Teoh contribute back to the community from there. Absolutely awesome. Another great question, which I had asked you this morning from Domenichelli. Your scenario works your your business. Website says he uses the phrase social business and not social media. Do you care to discuss the difference? And sure, exactly that was my I haven't heard of that term. Yeah, and so social business is a bit of a new term, and you may or may not be hearing it already, and it's really something that is more relevant to larger businesses right now, just in terms of what they're trying to do with it. But social media to to us are the tools social media is the technology in the platforms and all those things. Very the mechanics, social business, tow us. What we help companies do is adapt all of the other stuff inside their businesses to what social is compelling. So in other words, the social Web is exploded and made everything faster. Made demands on people's resource is made everything crazy, demanding and in terms of response time. So now if I expect customer service on Facebook, I expected now, like right now. Thank you. Um, so we help companies adapt things like their operations or how their teams air structured. We help them do culture development. So social business is really the idea that you've internalized all of these intense and ideas around social and made them an operational part of your company. Now, you guys all have a really big advantage, because if you are independent or if you're doing a small business kind of thing, you can be a social business from the very get go, because that becomes the just part of who you are and what you dio. And bigger companies struggle with that a little bit more because you can imagine turning a big battleship is not an easy thing. So the Social Revolution is really more of a cultural one than it is an operational one. You know, you can learn all the tools and tactics, and that's no problem. But you have to have a certain mindset to want to do these things as a business and to want to be more open and social and engaging with your conversations. So we help companies kind of bridge, that gap between where they want to go tomorrow and where they are today. And social business is really sort of this mindset that's emerging and companies, and it'll be called something else down the road when social is not cool anymore. But but it's really just a new way of doing business. That's kind of driven by the things that happen on the Social Web. Yeah, okay. Anymore in the studio? Yes, I have a question about something that you spoke about earlier. So you had mentioned that, uh, during blogging. If in the beginning of blogging, yes, it was very slow and it's a slow process and you have to be really patient. So I'm wondering in a new business I'm launching a new platform. How long are there these mile markers that we can watch out for or think about? Okay, I'm not getting any comment, so I'm not yet seeing any traffic there. So what should I be waiting for? Looking out for eso that I know came on the right track, but I have to be patient or lead, and that's a great question. And I'll actually give you some really specific answers. Based on my own experience. Your mileage might vary somewhat, but for me, I think I gave in a good six months of writing before I ever came up with a commenter like, I don't think anybody commented on my post for months and months on end. I was like, I'm writing to the air, But in a lot of ways, it was really good for me because it really helps me shape my voice and my old post. My very first post are still up on my blawg. So if you want to go toe like page 130 or something, you can look at all my very first post and I just look at them and go. Oh, did I write that I mean, so part of it is really just learning the flow of blogging and having a voice, so don't be discouraged by that. But I'd say within six months you can start to tell whether you're moving in the right direction. Do you feel comfortable writing about your topic? Do you feel like you have enough content to work with? Is there you know, are you listening to the community and what they're talking about? It is that prompting content from you you'll get a sense in those 1st 6 months as to whether you're kind of going in the right direction or whether you're kind of struggling to take hold. I've seen blog's take office quickly, as you know, a few weeks. I think you guys had Derrick Helper in here once before and high Derek, Um, and he, uh, he was here talking about. I'm sure all of the stuff that he's already used, but I think Derek's Blawg went from, like, zero toe Mach four in weeks, you know, so it really depends on the niche that you're in the audience that's actually paying attention to what you write. I had an advantage because I'm a social media person writing a social media blawg about social media. So with social being such a hot topic, I had a baked in Hungary, audience of people who wanted to read and learn about this. If you're writing about, you know, albino a Packers or something like that, you're probably gonna have a longer time to build audience and engagement. So it really depends on where you are. But I think six months is that moment where you can kind of decide whether headed in the right direction. That's where the hell no, yeah, that does a lot. Thank you so June forever. How can you use social media to overcome some negative reviews or feedback on sites like Yelp or Yahoo, where you have no control? And so maybe the bigger question about what to do with negative comment? Yeah, that's great. It's a topic we will touch on. And it's really tricky when you're talking about sites like Yahoo or Yelp, where you don't control what's happening. So first of all, the one thing else tell you is a cardinal rule. Never delete negative comments unless they're inflammatory, defamatory, unless they're there legally, trouble some never, ever delete criticism, even if it seems like it's really off the deep end because that makes you look more guilty than anything else in the world. The best thing you can do if you have the opportunity, is to respond. And there's two words on the Internet that are more powerful than anything else and that people use to infrequently. I'm sorry. So if something goes sideways and somebody posts a negative review about your restaurant on Yelp, the easiest thing you can come on and do is say, I'm so sorry You had a bad experience. I hope you'll give us a chance to make it up to you. It's not complicated. It fixes everything almost in an instant. You'd be amazed at how many people turned from angry to effusively thankful when you've actually taken the time to come and say that you were sorry. Um, and if you want to talk creative responses, there's actually a great picture going around the Internet somewhere of a company that must have gotten a bad review on Yelp for their meatball sandwich, and so that they have, ah, one of those sandwich boards outside that, you know, on the sidewalk that wrote about their daily specials, and it says, Come in and try the worst meatball sandwich that guy on Yelp ever had, and I would go in and eat it, you know? I mean, I thought it was a really clever way to take a negative and turn it into something positive, because they're poking a little fun at themselves. They're not shying away from somebody's criticism, and they're using it to pique people's interests and show a little bit of their personality. So I think negative commentary is actually one of the gold mines of the Web. It's your canary in the coal mine to see what people are saying and feeling and thinking, so don't fear it. It's not gonna, you know it's not gonna hurt you if you watch some of the drama that unfolded around. There was a bakery that had a bunch of negative reviews on Yelp, which made its way to read it. And then the community exploded and the woman responded in not too flattering fashion. And she would get on and yell and holler and scream, and I'm going to sue you, and that's not the way to handle it, because what it ended up doing is just making. It's all about how she reacted and if she had just simply said, I'm really sorry. You had a bad experience and here's a coupon for a free dessert Next time you come back, you know, it would have been that big a deal. So I think we need to, like, chill a little about the negative comments and just realize that your best policy is open, honest and contrite like Sorry, you had a bad experience. Would love to make it up to you. Yeah, absolutely. For sure, SMU P asks. And be like That's the best name ever Spooky. You can't take yourself seriously. What right have you exactly any steps to start blogging? I've started and stopped several times, not sure how to keep up the momentum or tips to blogging. If writing is not your favorite thing, I certainly can relate to this. I write a block and a lot of you can. A lot of people can so and I would say blogging is not for everyone. So that will be my voice of sanity is to say that not everybody belongs blogging, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a home based on the Internet. You should still have a site, and you can still do all kinds of. And we're gonna do a whole segment on content creation. So we'll talk about blogging is one tiny little piece of all of those things. And really, if you don't love writing, find another way to share information, do interviews of people on your blogged. Do videos share photographs, share customer stories? There's all kinds of ways to get around that if you aren't really loving the whole creative writing process. Um, but staying inspired to keep writing, I've been writing my blawg for I don't know how many years and some weeks I would write every day, and I don't think I've posted in like three weeks. So I'm so not the poster child for regular content blogging. But as a general rule, I would say, as a business, you want to be consistent, so a couple of times a week is actually a really kind of good benchmark to go by. So if you're not feeling it and you're having trouble getting content for that, I would say concentrate on gathering ideas. It may mean that the focus of your blog's either to broader too narrow. So you're having trouble finding inspiration. You have too much and don't know what to write about or you don't have enough to work with. And the bloggers secret weapon is a notebook, whether it's ever known on your phone or whether it's my trusty mole skin in my bag. The blogger secret weapon is to be capturing ideas everywhere you go. So writing down block posters, they occur to you in the car. I've used my daughter shower Kranz to write that I'm not even kidding. Seriously, she has the little bathtub. Kranz and I've written block post ideas on the wall when they occur to me, so I don't forget them. So you have to kind of get yourself in the frame of mind that I'm just gonna write this stuff down wherever, Ah, and it's okay to have a lot of things unfinished. I have about 110 block post drafts going on at any one time, and some of them are headlines, and that's it. Like I have an idea, and I haven't written it yet. Some of them are very messy drafts on Some of them are close to being able to publish, so that if I missing content for a day, I can dive into my my archives and pull something out. So right when you're inspired, not just on a schedule. So sometimes if I'm feeling the groove, I will blast out six posts and save them up and publish them on a schedule, because I don't right methodically. My co author, J. Bear, and I joked that, um, we had no word counts that we had to turn into our editors, and I would. He would write 1200 words a day every day for six weeks, and I would wait till two days before our deadline and write 30,000 words because I can't force that kind of thing. So blogging is the same kind of thing. If if you're a sporadic writer, I think it's great to sort of stockpile stuff. And right when you're feeling in and don't sweat. If it's not coming to you for a while, it might mean that you just need toe tweak. Your focus a little in practice is really, really great advice because I'm with you waiting till the last minute and you know, just having that being okay with the fact that and accepting that that's the way em, Yeah, I'm a lot of do as I say, Not as I do. I could give you all the best advice about ideal world blogging and then I don't post for for weeks on end. So it's no joke. It's a hard thing. It's very time consuming in an effort driven. So there's but going back to your point of It's not for everyone and again looking at what your needs are and what your strategy is. So absolutely, yeah, I am. Go ahead. Yes, we've got a question over here thoughts on kind of getting out into the blogosphere and like commenting a lot on other people's posts, and it's a great way to connect with other people. It's a lot of the early days. That's a lot. How I built my own community was getting out in other places and sort of traveling on the Internet and going out and participating in other people's community is to bring them back to mine. So if you've got the time in the inclination, by all means, I think it's a really rich important strategy that I'm glad you brought it up because it's it's one that I don't think a lot of people think of. But it's really and plus it's a gold mine in there. When you see what people comment on or how they disagree with a post, or how they agree with the post or the questions they have, that is content fodder for you, right there to come back with and be able to take and say I This is a great question for me to address on my blawg and I totally cheated like that for years. I go to other people's comments, streams and be like, Oh, that be good post and I go over here and right post. So I think it's a brilliant idea, and then you can find people to interview also on your absolutely. And people are really open to that kind of thing when they're flattered. When you reach out to them when you're like I'd love to talk to you about this in the very early days of my blawg, I was very fortunate that Scott monty it Ford. I didn't know him very well at the time. Now I do, and he's awesome. He was the best pocket squares ever. Best dressed man and social media by far like he's just He's always so dapper. But he gave me a little nobody Blogger a total interview about what they were doing in Social at Ford and allowed me to post it on my blog's. So that kind of outreach is absolutely gold, and you never know until he ask. I used to do a food blogger way back when I did it on block spot and I stopped. And I'm about to start Another blogger also food related on guy sort of put it out to my personal Internet audience like Who is your favorite? You know, host for blogging. And I had this really mixed response between Tumbler and um and ah WordPress and I am so lost as to where to start. I know it's not the most important thing. The content is the most important thing, but goodness gracious, yes and no. And I have a very strong opinion on this one. Uhm, use WordPress or use another CMS buyer domain name. Host your own block. Here's why building your most important asset on rented land, which is essentially what you're doing if you build it on Tumblr or Facebook or something else, is putting all of your best information in somebody else's hands. So it's a very minimal investment. You know you can host for 10 bucks a month. You can. WordPress itself is free. You can get a great WordPress theme for, like, 30 or $ it's not a whole lot of cash outlay. But you'll end up with a sophisticated looking site that you own you manage and you control. And to me, in a world of every Internet, everything all over the world you want to own that is the most important piece of your online presence. So don't surrender it to somebody else. That's I know people love Tumblr, and there's lots of really creative, fun ones out there. But for business purposes, I would never use that as my home base. I would invest in building something on a WordPress or another CMS, but there's squarespace and there's a couple of other ones that people like to. But I'm a WordPress girl and I could use it and it's, you know, it's pretty easy to customize so I would go that route for me. KP The presentation thus far has been so interesting I'd be interested in hearing more about creating gravity. Yeah, um, it's a concept that we use at Sierra Works. My business partner and I are complete space nerds. So Sarah is a space thing. Our whole back story is like Jupiter and Galileo and, like you know now it's so when it comes to creating gravity, the whole idea around creating presence online is that you really want to draw people in. There's another book kind of around. This concept, if you haven't read it, called The Power of Poll by a really smart man named John Hagel. John Hagel is absolutely brilliant. If you haven't heard of him before, I highly recommend Don't Pass, go don't collect $200. Read this book because it really is in a nutshell. The philosophy that we believe and it's really the underpinnings of what social businesses about is creating something that attracts people to it. So you want to be cool enough, smart enough, fun enough interesting enough that people are beating down your door so that it's not if you're having to rely too heavily on push advertising and you know there's a it's important to have a blend of all this stuff. But when I started radiant six, for instance, several years ago we were a software start up. Our advertising budget was zero, and we built an entire company marketing on social media because our whole concept was built a community of passionate people who believed in the potential of social and give them something to want to be part of, and that takes it a level above your brand. So it's not just about creating products and services that are awesome. It's creating a purpose that's awesome. It's creating something for someone to believe in, and they decide I want to be part of that. I want to be associated with what they're doing, and that's a big task to demand of businesses. But I think that's what we're here to dio. All of us have a business that that says something functional, but we got into this world because we believed in something bigger, even if you're doing videography, if you're doing dog treats like I'm an animal lover, I actually was just saying that. I'm hoping that after this segment, I'm gonna be able to go down toe Los Angeles to rescue a dog. So, like you're like, my connection to you is not about dog treats. It's a shared love of animals. So your gravity is drawing people to you that are all about Amal's. That's your purpose. And so we get so mired in these tools and technologies and things that really are true. North needs to be why we were there to begin with. And creating gravity is about putting that out into the universe and hoping that you draw in like minded people around you.