Messaging

AI

So where am I seeing AI in my day to day dealings on the web?

Well I use LinkedIn and here is why I have experienced the most. Actually LinkedIn promised us a very long time ago that they would be introducing AI (Artificial Intelligence) in their messaging system. It’s only just being put into practice now at the kind of level I had anticipated at the start.

Obviously they needed to work on this for a while. I’m noticing that they are quite accurately suggesting ‘one tap’ responses to messages in my inbox. At first they used to have just very limited suggested responses, like ‘thanks’ and now the suggested responses are becoming far more sophisticated.

The other place where I’ve noticed AI is Facebook. Not in their messenger but in the fact that I’ve been less active there and they’ve started emailing me with a trick email, suggesting that I had been trying to log-in to their platform and they noticed ai was having problems, supplying me with a one click button to log back in.

They obviously noticed that I had not been active and they need to uphold their active users figure, so giving me a one-button login on my email means that when I click that, I get straight back in and boom I’m included in the active users figure for that day/week/month.

So now all my excitement about AI has just been delivered a terrible blow.

Keep intelligent!

Michael de Groot

Are you guilty of using the ‘sheep dip’ approach?

FullSizeRender.jpg

 I am sorry to say, I'm guilty!

It's not that I'm not wishing to be super personal and to engage with one person at a time and appeal to their specific goals and aspirations.

The truth is there are just not enough hours in the day to engage with every new connection request and every new follower at a level that I would ideally like. So some automation is inevitable. I'm still experimenting too and have already adjustedsome things.

I'm not using autobots as such, but I am manually adding new connections to my CRM and an automated process and messaging them with the same template message. And no, I don't feel great about it, but it's working at the moment.

My goal is to be engaging and strike up a conversation, share some valuable content and information that is free and at the same time being careful not to pitch anything. Its totally not my intention to do any kind of pitching. Eventually I'd like to have a conversation, which I call a discovery call. And that again is to provide some value, not to pitch.

I have carefully designed this process after weeks of testing it and receiving some deeper level of engagement with new connections, especially on LinkedIn. Anywhere else it's much harder to do. Email is still one of our default go to apps each morning. I know it's Facebook for most too.

I state very clearly in my auto emails that my purpose is to engage at a deeper level and invite recipients to unsubscribe if they wish to and indeed some do, but not as many as I had originally expected. Maybe one every 2-3 weeks.

I do receive a fair bit of engagement from these new connections and I also notice a lot don't. I'm surprised because they asked to connect with me in the majority of cases, at least 95% of them are incoming requests. Usually with no reason given for wishing to connect by the way.

The real engagement occurs when after a few touch points, which are a combination of engaging with their profiles and sharing some content and information, you manage to get agreement for a discovery call. When you are able to engage in a conversation with your connections, more clarity about who they are and what their goals are means that you can start to look out for clues and understand better how they'd like you to engage with them in the future. Over the years I've come to realise that this is by far the best method.

The goal always is to end up having a conversation. I believe by phone and usually Skype with video is best. I'd like to try other methods too, like Facebook messenger with video, although having tried it twice, it's still a bit unstable.

If you'd like to skip all the automation and go straight to a discovery call then by all means go for it and head over here,

http://www.stayingaliveuk.com/lets-talk

in the meantime let me know how you're feeling about my automation and by all means share your ideas and strategies that are working for you? 

LinkedIn created a brilliant eBook with my favourite illustrator. @gapingvoid (Hugh Macleod) creates the most amazing messages through his illustrations. Read more about him and@gapingvoidhere: (http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/)

Occasionally I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, interpretation, insight and my meaning.

@stayingaliveuk



#contentmarketing #content #socialmedia #engagement #marketing #socialselling #sales #empathy #distraction #purpose #relevance #trust #love #mastodon #why #linkedinlectures

Online is great and talking is even better. Everyone's ultimate goal in business and life is to make real connections, where you meet someone face to face. Before that meeting a conversation is the ultimate icebreaker. I value my LinkedIn connections and realise that I don't really know you or what your goals are and how I might facilitate or support those goals. Feel free to click through and book a call with me (https://www.stayingaliveuk.com/discovery-call/). I have blocked out only Fridays each week, excluding holidays, for calls. Hope to speak with you soon.

Are you still receiving TOO MANY LinkedIn Emails?

image.jpg

On July 27, 2015, LinkedIn announced that they were reducing the amount of emails they would be sending to members. 

As a consequence they also stopped the daily email, which summarised Job Changes, Birthdays and Career Anniversaries. And in the months following all emails that are sent by LinkedIn have gone through a steady change in layout and branding. I have to say for the better. However I am still receiving lots of them each day and each week. How about you?

let’s have a closer look at this.

Below is a list of all the emails that LinkedIn currently sends to us (well, most of them that I received):

  1. Invitation to connect, standard template invitation.

  2. Invitation to connect, personalised invitation.

  3. [Person's name], has accepted your invitation.

  4. Invitation awaiting your response.

  5. Email message notification.

  6. Messages you've missed.

  7. Unread messages.

  8. Open profile messages.

  9. [Person's name], mentions you.

  10. What's new with your posts. Providing you are publishing on Pulse.

  11. New endorsements waiting. These are endorsements extra to the ones you have already listed. (Note: Only click through if you wish to add them to your skills list).

  12. Connections have endorsed you. These are against your existing skills list.

  13. Your connections have been mentioned in the news.

  14. Updates from Pulse. These would be based on your channel preferences, including posts by your connections.

  15. Groups trending discussions. Based on how many groups you belong to, you could be receiving several each day/week, unless you have switched off the email digest setting for that group.

  16. Congratulations on your new job.

  17. Someone has commented on your photo.

  18. Group comments in response to your discussion post.

  19. Latest leads (Sales Navigator only).

  20. Your account updates (Sales Navigator only)

Did I miss any?  Yes I probably did. Do please let me know if you have some that I didn't mention and send me a screenshot. Thank you!

how you can reduce the amount of emails you're getting from LinkedIn.

This advice is only valid if you've got the LinkedIn app. Nowadays we interact most of our time on mobile inside our social networks and I highly recommend that you spend more time on the LinkedIn app and that way you can stay up to date without being bombarded by emails.

Please watch the video to fully appreciate the changes you need to make in your settings inside LinkedIn. You can make these changes either on the desktop or inside the LinkedIn app.

Here is the full list of push notification on mobile LinkedIn app (iOS iPhone and iPad). You will see that this will provide you with more that enough information on mobile, instead of receiving all those individual emails. Click on the image to enlarge it further, but better still just go on your app and view it me>settings>communications>push notifications.

If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out via @stayingaliveuk

Do you have a favourite Messaging App?

When I heard that Google is launching a new messaging app, 'Allo', I immediately thought of the British sitcom from the 80's by the same name 'Allo Allo'? Most Brits will remember it for sure. The  sitcom was set during World War II and chronicles the French resistance. Although everyone spoke English in the sitcom they all spoke in different accents giving the viewer a clue which language they were actually speaking. It was hysterical!

Anyway, the amount of messaging apps on the market is like all the different languages in the world, how are we going to make ourselves understood?

I am not looking forward to being exposed to yet another messaging app. It's going to be very confusing to decide which one is going to be the best and most popular.

Which one should we actually be using?

I know that WhatsApp is very popular and I have used it maybe 10 times, that's all. My primary messaging app is still the native iPhone messages app. At least it ensures I can reach Android users and also iMessage users on iOS, providing they know how to switch iMessage on, which still many don't! 🙄

According to Statista, WhatsApp is THE most popular with 1 billion active users each month, Facebook messenger is the next most popular with 900 million active users each month.

Most popular messaging apps as at April 2016 - source: statista.com

Most popular messaging apps as at April 2016 - source: statista.com

Right then I, it's your turn. what are your favourites?.

I have compiled a poll, where I just need you to select all your favourite messaging apps or maybe just the ones you use the most. I believe we all use at least 3, but I won't know until I manage to get a good selection of results.  Please do share this poll with your network too.

Thank you so much for taking part. After a few weeks, I will make sure to publish the results here. If you would like to be notified of the results, please complete the short form below and I will make sure to notify you. Note: I hate spam and will NEVER use your email for anything else other than sending you a notification to come and see the results.

Powered by Typeform

If you'd like to be notified of the poll results, please send me your details by completing your name and email address.

Update 31st January 2019.

Messaging apps continue to be confusing and we’re all still very aware that our privacy is compromised. Since I wrote this I did delete my WhatsApp account, as well as my Instagram account. Unfortunately I do still have Facebook and Facebook messenger.

There are a lot of worries about WhatsApp and the security and privacy of being there. I decided like many to move to telegram, at least for now they are independent and very secure. One of my readers, Emma, suggested this article, which lists 5 of the best alternatives to WhatsApp in terms of privacy and security.  Thanks for suggesting the article Emma.

https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/best-secure-alternatives-whatsapp/ 

Hope most of you will also choose Telegram. Success.