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Are you practising Mindfulness?

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There is an issue with the word ’Mindfulness’. It sounds like ’Mind-full-ness’. It should be called ’Mind-emptiness’. 

As I viewed my Apple News app for my daily fix of world headlines, I’m totally blown away by almost every other article talking about the US Presidency. Whether it's tapes, emails, quotes, the constitution it's all over my News app. There's almost no space for anything else. I really should stop looking. 

But that's the problem, it's hard not to. We're so wired-in to streams of content from all directions, that trying to ignore it is almost futile. 

It really is like living inside a Star Trek episode featuring The Borg. 

This is their quote:

“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.” 

Seriously that's how I feel sometimes. And when someone says to you, ’did you see...’ and I act all clueless, they look at you as if you've committed a crime. So does that mean we all get sucked in to mindlessly having to read, watch and absorb content that we'd prefer not to?

Being distracted by so much content is becoming a task in itself. How to decide what to read, what to watch and how to relax is now as stressful as work. I'm convinced that there will be a new career in helping people to switch off from ’content overload’. Helping them to identify the real things that are truly important in their lives and will move them forward in achieving their goals and dreams. One thing’s for sure, spending mindless time on Social Media and watching TV is not going to deliver that for us.

So what advise should I give you? I haven't a clue yet is my honest answer, as I've also been assimilated. However my goal is to chunk my time in 20-minute slots. I now even teach people what to do on LinkedIn each day in just 20-minutes per day. Feel free to have a browse through the slides below.

When you chunk your time in say 20-minute slots you will not feel as overwhelmed by it all. If you do need your daily fix of news and social media, just spend 20-minutes per day on it, that's it no more and no less. 

Test it our for a day. 

  1. Catch up with the news for 20 minutes in the morning.
  2. Sit down for breakfast for 20 minutes.
  3. Catch up with email in the office for 20 minutes.
  4. Perform some of your outstanding tasks for 20 minutes at a time.
  5. Attend or chair a meeting, make it last just 20 minutes.
  6. Spend some quiet time during the day, take 20 minutes.
  7. Maybe go for a walk for just 20 minutes.
  8. Spend some time with your kids, even if it's 20 minutes.
  9. Catch up with the news in the evening for just 20 minutes.
  10. Workout for a power exercise session again just 20 minutes.

And I could go on. Chunk it down into 20-minute slots and you will be surprised how much you can achieve. Be patient with yourself, experiment and try it out, even if you don't apply it to everything. You could never watch a film in 20 minutes and that's okay. Just try it out on a few things, especially Social Media. I'll be doing the same!

Let's share how you're getting on and enjoy the process.

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 @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/

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

@stayingaliveuk

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Is anyone in love with Your Brand yet?

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Shakespeare was way ahead of his time and he was maybe and probably THE best storyteller that ever lived. He didn't focus on his brand, maybe he didn't even know what his brand was. 

But he knew that people loved stories.

You may not even realise it, but you are the biggest story ever told. Everything about you, your journey, your experiences, your challenges, your failures, your successes and breakthroughs, your experience of love and of not love. All of it has made you who you are today. One BIG story. You are your own biggest brand.

I have a phrase that goes something like this. 

With the advent of Social Media you have now become a personal brand. You'd better take that responsibility seriously!

And why wouldn't you take that seriously? The way you show up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. tells the viewer a story about you. One thing's for sure, they will judge you in an instant. Some positive and of course some negative.

It's no surprise therefore that every Social Network is focussing more and more on STORIES. 

Why?

Because they know that every single one of us crave stories. We search for them every single day and you don't even know you're doing it. We're literally hard-wired to look for stories. Not sure? Okay, this is what you might be doing every single day:

  1. Wake up and pick up your smartphone. Look for any news, check-out Facebook, Twitter and maybe even LinkedIn. It's not that much will have happened overnight, it's the stories that are breaking first thing in the morning. And guess what, all the news media have been working the previous day and also through the night to make sure that fresh news is there for you to satisfy your daily appetite.
  2. Some of you, although it's becoming less, will pick up a newspaper that the paper girl or boy left in your mailbox in the morning. Or you pick one up on your daily commute to the office.
  3. Even before that, you may be eating breakfast or drinking your daily fix of caffeine whilst watching the news on your TV news channel of choice.

On average you are spending one hour per day on Social Networks. You may be sharing your stories through photos, videos, live transmissions and on top of that you are reading even more stories. Stories that inspire, stories that make you laugh, cry and feel disgust, stories that will make you unfriend someone, stories that will make you judge. 

And all because you LOVE stories.

To be a great storyteller you need a great canvas. Your canvas are the Social Networks that you are part of and appear on. To begin with you can do a quick self audit with these key areas and ensure some consistency across all of them:

  1. Are your Social Network handles all the same?
  2. Is your profile photo the same across all of them?
  3. Is your strap-line or headline the same across all of them?
  4. Is your long description broadly similar, I know they all have different allowable character counts.
  5. Is your header or banner image the same across all channels, I know they all need different sizing, but the same is always best.

Whether you run your own business or whether you work for a great organisation, developing yourself as a great personal brand is the best story you can create for yourself. Success!

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 @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/

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

@stayingaliveuk

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Have you installed THE BEST Customer Service message button yet?

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Twitter has given us all a brilliant gift.

‘A button for our websites to receive direct messages via Twitter.’

Twitter direct messages is very under-used I feel.  The only way Twitter users are utilising it is by auto-messages when you follow them. I’m sorry but that’s a massive turn off for me. It’s not personal, it’s not intimate and it’s not engaging. I have stopped responding to those, because I know there was no real individual involved in sending those.

If you are a business, no matter how small or large, you must be on Twitter and you must have a direct message button on your website. In my experience, I have sent countless customer service tweets to companies, which have resulted in a fantastic response and outcome. I really value it when companies respond to me using Twitter, it’s way better than the email, way better than the voice-automated call routing and usually far more personal.

And now that we can add a direct message button it means the customer doesn’t have to send those bitter tweets publicly, they can message you direct without all that embarrassment.

‘Provide your customers with a direct message facility and you will be able to jump on those questions super fast and privately’.

Right then some instructions on how to do this, because it took me a while to figure it out. Twitter’s instructions are not that crystal clear.

Go to your Twitter account. Desktop only. Click on your profile photo top right and from the drop down, select ‘Settings’.

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Select ‘Security and privacy’ from the left hand menu.

Scroll down in the right column and at the very bottom of the ‘Privacy’ section, there is an item titled ‘Direct Messages’. Select by ticking the box next to ‘Receive Direct Messages from anyone’.

This is THE most important step, as without it nothing works.

Stay inside the same screen (Settings) and select from the left hand menu, one from last on the list ‘Your Twitter data’.  Underneath Account history is your Username and User ID (I have blanked mine). You already know your own username and please make a note of your User ID. You will need both.


Visit https://publish.twitter.com/#. Enter your Twitter handle in the box below ‘What would you like to embed?’ Click the arrow or press enter.

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Next you will scroll down to 4 options for embedding Twitter code on your website. Please select ‘Twitter Buttons’.

This will generate a pop-up with 5 options. Please select option 5 ‘Message Button’.

This will generate a second pop-up. Please enter your Twitter Handle and User ID from item 5 and click ‘Preview’.

Next are some customisation options, for example you can pre-fill some initial text and decide whether you’re like a large button. Click Update and a preview will be displayed below, together with the HTML code that is needed to supply to your webmaster or you can copy yourself and add to your website, maybe on the contact page.

Now it's your turn, go to your Twitter account and start grabbing the information you need from there and then head to https://publish.twitter.com/# 

And if you enjoyed this tutorial and it worked for you, please send me a DM via Twitter. Success!

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Have you been on a 'CONTENT' diet yet?

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If you haven't already, I am sure you have contemplated it.  The name has a nice ring to it as well 'Digital Detox'.  There are now millions of self-proclaimed addicts to digital content. Soon to be billions.  And there are plenty of us that are in denial as well.

I want to make sure you have some facts to begin with.

Brandwatch shared some mind-blowing stats in March 2016. Here are just a few.

And you can find even more stats here: 

https://www.brandwatch.com/2016/03/96-amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts-for-2016/

In years to come, all those content spewing platforms will be asking us our preferences.  Once they know our preferences they will only serve up those bits of content we have asked for. No more no less.  Unfortunately this means that we have to make a decision.  What do we really need to see on a daily basis?  Not what we want to see but what we need to see.  

There is a big difference, because as an addict we have many wants and we have to slowly wean ourselves off a lot of the content that we are already addicted to.  

The trouble with all of us, we are constantly in FOMO, 'fear of missing out'.  That's why we are addicted.  If you want to learn why, read my article, 'Do Social Networks Sell Drugs'.

By watching the video below you will also learn what the Internet is doing to our brains. 

Most of us are on the Internet on a daily basis and whether we like it or not, the Internet is affecting us. It changes how we think, how we work, and it even changes our brains.

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 @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/

Each week I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, insight and meaning of the words and illustrations.

@stayingaliveuk

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Have you ever compared Facebook groups vs LinkedIn groups? [Infographic]

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When LinkedIn changed their groups at the end of 2015, there was outrage by the group managers and moderators. LinkedIn had gone one step too far in trying to make groups more accessible to more people. Result?  A lot of groups folded, moved to Facebook.

I'm noticing each day that Facebook are doing many things right, so I decided to examine the major functionalities and compare them on each platform.

I thought I would create an infographic.  Superman (Facebook) vs Batman (LinkedIn).

Points are awarded merely based on the amount of functionality options that exist on each platform. 

There is no doubt that Facebook has a significant advantage over LinkedIn in many areas and it makes it a far better and more enjoyable experience for the user and the manager.

Every business needs to have a Facebook group and indeed there are 620 million Facebook groups already in existence, compared to the very small 2 million on LinkedIn.

I hope you enjoy the infographic.  I would love to hear your comments and opinion on groups?

@stayingaliveuk

data about the no of Facebook groups dates back to 2010

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Have you ever considered engagement?

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The first English-language newspaper, "Corrant out of Italy, Germany, etc., was published in Amsterdam in 1620.  I never knew that and I was born there!  "Corrant", was a translation of Courante, which means running or stream.

Nearly 400 years later and we've all become publishers. Who would have thought that.  Now we're all desperately looking to find readers of our published content.  There are literally millions of us writing and publishing updates about our work, our lives and on top of that writing millions of blogposts all over the web.

Why?

There is only one reason and that is to get noticed.

We want to be found, to become more successful in our work, maybe to leave a legacy and some of us even want to be famous.  

And by publishing content we believe that we may achieve these goals one day but we often overlook the human interactions that are needed for our content to be taken seriously.  I am no longer active in LinkedIn groups because I see everyone posting their blogposts, not even asking for comments, not even asking a question about the content they are sharing. 

To believe that human interactions with your content will just magically appear by what I call 'spraying and praying' is a crazy strategy and although you may experience a couple of successes here and there, in the long-term it will fail.

By all means write content, create eBooks and even become an author and then start finding your audience by engaging with them first.  Find their content and engage with it by liking, commenting and sharing it so more readers will find it. Ask them questions about their content, you may even wish to be challenging at times or have a decent (virtual) debate about some of it. 

The other day I was chatting to Julie Bondy Roberts and we agreed that all our time spent writing and publishing content is actually a marketing expense. So multiply your hourly rate by the hours you spend publishing your content, maybe curating content and even sharing your story updates across, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, plus all the others. I reckon most are spending around 3 hours each day, 90 hours per month (including weekends). Just multiply by your hourly rate and it's a very big number!  Are you getting a return on that?

Just saying...

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 @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/

Each week I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, insight and meaning of the words and illustrations.

@stayingaliveuk

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Attention is a Currency

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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 @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/

Each week I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, insight and meaning of the words and illustrations.

Let's do the first one, which is actually the cover and a very important one.

The sentence I'd like to examine a bit closer is;

“Why now is the time to invest in digital experiences that matter.” 

Well, my consideration here is about ensuring that we start examining our digital time spent by ensuring that we only receive information and data we actually need.

And for marketers, which I can include myself in, we should be ensuring that we know our target audience (avatars) and share with them relevant information and data that will expand their knowledge, plus improve and speed up their decision making process.

Hence the ’matter’.

Now it's your turn. I'd love to hear your views and opinion about that sentence.

To assist you further you may wish to download a couple of eBooks via:
http://www.stayingaliveuk.com/33socialtips

http://www.stayingaliveuk.com/storytelling-ebook

Or share all your comments via Twitter @stayingaliveuk

Image credits: @gapingvoid and @linkedin

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Did Microsoft break Skype's password recovery process?

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Well it certainly looked that way to me.  My Skype app on my desktop just opens and logs-in automatically. I have never needed to enter my password, for years.  I wanted to get a link for my Skype name from Skype's own website and naturally it asked to me login.  I haven’t logged into Skype’s website for years, which was confirmed when my password wasn't auto filling after entering my email. Generally I save all my passwords.

After trying to log in 3 times, it suspended my account, gone. I couldn't login any longer on the Skype app anywhere.

After a fair amount of research, I discovered where I could reset my password. When I completed my email, it said, no such account exists.
When I tried a different one, I only have 2 emails, same answer. Oh shoot what happened?  There was still another route, but this is where it all totally broke down. 

Here are the key questions that you must answer to reset your account and be verified again.

  1. "What name, first and last name did you provide when you first registered". Fair enough that should be straight forward, I haven't changed my name.
  2. "What country did you select when you first registered?" Hmm, A little bit harder, but should still be correct, as I haven't lived in any other country since 2004.
  3. "What email did you provide when you first registered?" Now this one is quite a bit tougher. Actually I haven't got a clue, we all have more than one email address right? So it could have been one of three emails, not too bad, but genuinely I haven't a clue.
  4. When did you create your Skype account (mm/yy)? Busted!! Who actually remembers that? I could guess at the year, I was definitely an early adopter, so maybe 2004, 2005 or even 2006. I had to look up when Skype actually launched, which was 2003. So I would have to guess the year and try to give a few option, but as far as the month is concerned, no chance!

These 4 questions had the * against them, which means they are required and if you fail any of them, your account doesn't get verified, which of course was the case with me. 

In the slideshare below, you will see the full form and also my email correspondence with Skype customer service.  In fairness they varied the text slightly in every email, but essentially it said the same. “If you don't complete the form correctly you will remain unverified. Do go through the slideshare, you will love it!

 

At the same time I reached out to Twitter and although it took them a while to get back to me, have a look at how they resolved it. Very simple really.

Thank you to Twitter, for enabling a platform that just works for customer service. I guess its because you're visible there and they can verify you better compared to email, which anyone can send.

Big lessons: 

  1. Microsoft screws with their acquired platforms and stops us from getting anywhere to solve problems, it's the usual customer service loops, which I experienced years ago from Microsoft.  
  2. In the case of Skype, workflows become customer unfriendly and restrictive. With the exception of their Twitter support.
  3. Write down which month/year, I signed up for any internet based service. Yeah, that's never going to happen.
  4. Use Twitter for customer service, every single time, don't even bother with email or telephone support.

I think I will stick with Google Hangouts, Zoom and even FaceTime, instead of Skype in future.

@stayingaliveuk

Below is the Twitter DM messages with Skype Support, which thankfully resolved the situation.

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What are your KPI’s for Microsoft & LinkedIn's marriage?

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Now that we’re all over the shock of this surprise partnership and have looked at the justification both Satya Nadella and Jeff Weiner have so beautifully crafted in their slide deck (see below), we can start developing our own KPI’s to hold both Satya and Jeff to account and ensure they deliver to their promises.

So often do we hear heads of large corporates promise the world to us as consumers of their product, leaving us disappointed and disillusioned in the process when they don't deliver their promises.  So let's hold them to account.

Both companies have something we can not live without these days, but they aren’t really held to account by us are they?   The stock market holds them to account and here lies the problem.  Public companies exist to satisfy their shareholders. Forget about the hype and wonderful stories they spin about customers and employees. They are just fiction. Shareholders count, period.

Right,  so I have started my own list of KPI’s and I would love to hear yours too, please feel free to add yours in the comment field below.

  1. LinkedIn UI: The LinkedIn user interface and menu navigation is in desperate need of updating. It has to emulate the mobile experience much closer. I’ve seen some design evidence inside the slide deck, so it can’t be that far away.  Timeframe: By end of July 2016
  2. Regular Skype: Every LinkedIn member will be able to add Skype on their profile (a space already exists) and it will integrate all your contacts who have Skype inside the Skype address book*, allowing you to instant message or video call one to one or group call right inside LinkedIn.  Timeframe: August 2016
  3. Skype for business: I have used Skype for business and it’s completely different compared to the regular Skype you may have sitting on your desktop. This feature has been long overdue inside LinkedIn and I highlighted this in a post last year. This needs to be made available to all LinkedIn premium members as soon as possible.  Timeframe: By end of September 2016
  4. Inviting and accepting invites: This might have nothing to do with Microsoft, but I am hoping when their engineers start examining workflows, they might uncover a workflow that is completely broken. This whole process needs to be overhauled, including creating a clear dedicated section inside LinkedIn for your network (similar to mobile) and a forced situation whereby you have to write a personalised invitation every single time. Timeframe: October 2016
  5. Microsoft Dynamics CRM: CRM has been a major issue for LinkedIn. There are parts that can work like CRM, but the dots are not joined up, so it remained as a bit of a maybe-run CRM. A CRM needs data and LinkedIn can provide that. All LinkedIn premium members need to be given a Dynamics CRM account as part of their package, integrated probably with Sales Navigator.  Timeframe: November 2016
  6. Yammer: LinkedIn attempted to create some sort of messaging system, but have failed miserably. Yammer was the first corporate social network, which unfortunately got bought by Microsoft and is available to enterprise clients now, never to be seen in the public domain again.  In order to compete with Slack, there is the perfect opportunity to integrate Yammer inside LinkedIn for all paying and non-paying members.  Timeframe: December 2016

These are my 6 KPI’s for the next 6 months or maybe you can call them wishes for the Microsoft & LinkedIn marriage.

Now share yours below.  Keep in touch via: @stayingaliveuk or email me michael@stayingaliveuk.com or chat via +44 (0)7866 471596

* I have been testing Skype by the way and found that Microsoft Account allows you to import your LinkedIn contacts or so I thought. See below screenshot of the error message I got! Tried about 8 times, without success.

Here is a video of the full announcement of Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn, including a short interview with Satya and Jeff followed by the investors call on Monday 13th June, 2016.

This video includes a short video interview with Satya and Jeff, followed by the full investors announcement recording and slide deck of the announcement in sync with the announcement.

 

 

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Are you still receiving TOO MANY LinkedIn Emails?

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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

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Do you have a favourite Messaging App?

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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.

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Did you know you could sync your Calendar with LinkedIn's App? (iOS Tutorial)

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Prepare, review and follow up on all your meetings using the LinkedIn app, even though you might not even be connected yet.

The LinkedIn app, released in the Autumn of 2015, has received a fairly significant update that has gone almost unnoticed.

If you have appointments in your calendar with either 1st or 2nd level connections and you have their email address in your Calendar, LinkedIn will locate them for you and serve up reminder cards in your 'My Network' tab. Note: The email must be a match on their LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn members often add their personal email as their primary not their business one. If you are in that camp you may wish to amend that.

Here are some text instructions for enabling the feature, which is very simple indeed. Below that there are some screen shots to accompany each action.  I have also recorded a video to walk you through it step by step.

  1. Tap the Me tab in the navigation bar of the app.
  2. Tap the Settings icon.
  3. Tap Sync Calendar.
  4. Tap Sync your calendar to confirm. 
  5. To remove calendar sources, follow the above steps and switch the sync calendar toggle to the left.
  6. There are also some real live examples of actual appointments from my calendar (or diary in the UK!), 'prep for your meeting tomorrow', 'prep for today's meeting' and 'you met with [connection's name and yesterday's date]. The last one prompts you to send a follow up email as well.

http://stayingaliveuk.com - Short tutorial on how to sync your calendar with the new LinkedIn Mobile App and receive network updates about upcoming and past appointments. Connect, engage and learn with me 😎 LinkedIn: http://styin.me/LinkedInvite LinkedIn Company Page: http://styin.me/linkedin-companypage Twitter: http://twitter.com/stayingaliveuk Facebook: http://facebook.com/stayingaliveuk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stayingaliveuk Snapchat: http://styin.me/add-sauk-on-snapchat Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/linkedin-student

If you have any questions or queries reach out and I will be happy to answer them.

Twitter: @stayingaliveuk

 

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Is LinkedIn on your Job Description?

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You own your LinkedIn page, it is not owned by your employer,  even though you might use it whilst at work. 

However your employer must encourage you to use your LinkedIn every single day.

Why?

Because you are helping your employer to get noticed. And if you are helping your employer to get noticed, they may benefit from social exposure and word of mouth recommendation, which in turn means more sales and job security for you and your colleagues.

Most LinkedIn profiles are left to gather dust, showing poor profile photos, badly written headlines and summaries and a sparse experience section. As well as an incongruent list of skills and insignificant educational achievements. 

That’s why employers MUST add LinkedIn to your job description and train you to create a great profile and to use it each and every single day.

My mantra is ’LinkedIn 20-minutes per day’. Even before you open your email.

But what do you do there every single day? Well here are 7 things you can be doing in your 20-minutes per day.

  1. Grow your connections. The more connections you have the easier it will be to connect with potential buyers of your employer’s products and services. Connecting to colleagues is a must, so is past fellow students, teachers, professors and yes even family, including your Mum (Mom) and Dad.
  2. Send personal invitations, not the standard ‘LinkedIn’ boiler plate invitation. It really sucks when you do that. You are basically saying, I don’t really care about you, but I want to connect with you.
  3. Send personalised thank you emails for those who have taken the time to click the accept button. It’s just polite to do so.
  4. Share an update, which could be an interesting article you’ve read on Pulse (LinkedIn’s news channel) or a simple status update about your efforts at your employer. Be mindful and careful about posting unauthorised company news though.
  5. Read your home newsfeed and like, comment or share interesting posts by your connections.
  6. Make sure you join industry and client groups on LinkedIn. Be actively discussing, commenting and liking. Avoid posting your company blog or news, boring!
  7. Write recommendations for your colleagues, suppliers and clients. Also endorse their listed skills.

A lot of people commute to work by train. You can do these 20-minute activities on your mobile. LinkedIn’s mobile app has been getting better and is still improving and soon most of us will be more active on the LinkedIn app compared to the desktop.

And remember you don’t have to do all these activities every single day. You can just do a few each day, the important thing is consistency and making sure you form a habit. After all you have a habit of reading your emails each day and often first thing each day, maybe even before you get out of bed. You might as well make it a LinkedIn habit each and every day. 

Just 20-minutes per day!

And in case you are totally maxed out during the day, I am sure you have 20-minutes in the evening, when the kids have gone to bed and you are watching mindless TV.

So here’s the 20-day challenge for you. 

Let’s see if you can spend just 20-minutes per day on your LinkedIn for the next 20-days, so that you can start to form a habit.

And whilst you’re at it, share this article with your colleagues and the HR department. Let’s get them all thinking about this and consider including LinkedIn on everyone’s job description.

As an interim step you can ask your boss to add it to your objectives for the next 6 months, so you can both evaluate your performance for this. You know what they say; ’What gets measured, gets done’.

Let’s see which employers have the courage to add LinkedIn to job descriptions. And I’m not just talking about Sales and Marketing Professionals, I mean every single person in the company including the cleaner.

Wishing you massive success with your 20-day challenge and do let me know how you’ve got on.

@stayingaliveuk

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Do you have questions about Social Selling and LinkedIn? - *Updated Weekly*

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Top left: Brynne, Top right: Michael, Bottom left Ted, Bottom right Bob

Top left: Brynne, Top right: Michael, Bottom left Ted, Bottom right Bob

We (Michael de Groot, Bob Woods, Brynne Tillman and Ted Prodromou) hold a weekly Blab on the subject of Social Selling and LinkedIn. You can join us and get your questions answered. To join the Blab you will need a Twitter account.

Just visit SocialSellingWednesday.com to subscribe to the next upcoming episode.

Takes place weekly at 8am PST, 11am EST, 4pm BST (3pm GMT), 5pm CET

In the meantime you can always catch the previous episodes below as a YouTube video replay or a Mixcloud audio podcast.

For more in-depth discussion and free information;

  1. Follow our showcase page on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/social-selling-wednesday
  2. Join and contribute on our Slack Community Channel: https://slofile.com/slack/socialsellingtips
  3. Ask to join our Social Selling Discussion Forum.

Social Selling Wednesday Replay Playlist on YouTube

Social Selling Wednesday Replay Podcast on MixCloud

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Is Email Enhancing or Destroying Your Reputation?

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Email was invented in 1971 and became popular during the late 90's. We've been using it seriously for 20+ years. Some of you reading this will remember how amazing it was when we all started using it. Remember your first email address? Mine was with Yahoo! Millennials will snigger at this, I know they will, some haven't even got an email address!

And although we've had enormous change with email, most of us are still basically using it for the same purpose. To send messages, share files, photos and opinions. 

And of course with all new inventions email soon became a method for spammers to hack servers and send us all emails promoting goods and services we weren't looking for. (SPAM) 

And then there is the ’Email Newsletter’. If by chance you shared your email address on a website or purchased some goods online your email address could be added to a list. The owner of the list could then keep you informed of their news, which often included promoting their goods and services too. You may have even wanted those newsletters, but now they are a pest!

Over time newsletter clients, like Constant Contact, Mailchimp and others started to emerge and provided some rules around uploading email addresses. One of those rules would be obtaining authorisation from the email owner before adding them to a list. However as long as you tick the box that confirms you have authorisation, they allow you to upload your list. And then you can legitimately email (SPAM) your contacts.

Let’s not forget Data Protection in Europe.  The Data Protection Directive (officially Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data) is a European Union directive and was adopted in 1995. It regulates the processing of personal data within the European Union. In essence it means when you hold personal data, like an email address, you must have obtained it with the owners permission and provide any recipient of your email newsletter the opportunity to unsubscribe.

Nowadays the best process for obtaining authorisation for using someone’s email address is using a double opt-in process. That means the email owner has to confirm authorisation and knows without a doubt that they are being added to an email list. This is by far the best process in my view. BUT many don’t bother with this process.

With the creation of LinkedIn, it means that your connections have access to your email address. They can download your email address to add to their email list whether they have your authorisation or not and then start to email you their newsletters (SPAM). 

I've been unsubscribing from newsletters for over 4 years and receive very few unsolicited emails these days. However I still receive around 4-6 newsletters I never signed up for per month. Plus the instances of poor practices in those emails, where you are unable to unsubscribe seems to occur more often. I send those senders a polite email to ask how I got added and ask to be unsubscribed. Below is the text of a recent (March 2016) email I sent to the sender of an unsolicited email I received.

You really need to be considering your ‘Email Newsletter Strategy’. Are you really adding value to your readers or are you promoting, selling, funnelling and spamming?

Now let’s discuss the ‘email signature’. Have you got one? How much detail do you think should be in your email signature and do you really believe that the receiver needs all that detail? The chances are that the receiver is already known to you, you’re probably already connected on Social Media somewhere and they more than likely have your business card. Here are some of the crazy things I see in email signatures:

  1. Email address. Why? They have just received your email with your email address on it, why on earth do they need it in your email signature as well?
  2. Website address. If you using a business email address then they will already know the domain address of your website, after all it’s in your email address. And if it’s personal email then you won’t need to share a website address do you? And small businesses who still use a free personal email address should really examine what they are doing to their Brand.
  3. All your Social Media channels. Do you really think they have time to click through to all those URL’s and connect or follow you there? If they were so interested in you, they would take the time to search for you on those channels anyway and may have already done so before they even get an email from you. The chances are that you’ve also already done this and at least have connected with them on LinkedIn. It’s totally redundant and just lengthens the email message.
  4. Logos and Images. And although Broadband speed has increased and  mobile internet is getting faster, attaching images to your email is totally impractical. Branding I hear you say? Rubbish! Have you seen how your Brand gets destroyed when you start emailing back and forth and all those images get removed, scrunched and destroyed in some way. The email thread is a mess, more scrolling required to discover the real text that has to be read and with all those missing image links, additional contact information the important text can easily be missed, often resulting in quotes like ‘I never saw that message’. I’m not surprised, it was hidden in between unnecessary promotional nonsense.
  5. Street address. Seriously? You’re kidding right? Why would they need that in an email? You are emailing each other, not sending each other postcards. If you do have to visit you almost always look up their website and find out directions and jump on to Google Maps.
  6. Disclaimer. Thank you 80’s  and 90’s lawyers! They all scared the s..t out of us, because we weren’t sending letters any longer and it was entirely possible that your email could end up arriving somewhere else and then you’ve said something so awful that they could take you to court. OMG! The disclaimer is often 3 times longer than your actual email message. And you really think it protects you? The receiver has nothing better to do then read your disclaimer every time they receive an email from you? (Raising my eyes to heaven)
  7. Environmental Statement about printing. How many folks actually spend time printing emails out, apart from lawyers? Enough said.

If this sparked any interest, you can read this thought-provoking article by Kevin Zawacki @kevinzawacki on Slate.com http://slate.me/1REJekw

This is 2016 and none of the above is needed any longer. Let’s use email as it was intended. Keep it basic, short and to the point. and Don’t copy the world to ‘cover your a..’.

Reduce your email signature to your mobile number and one keyword for search. After all you don’t have a massive email signature on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube etc. The world is changing, please join me in spreading the word about email signatures and get them reduced to just two bits of information.

Email won’t exist forever, certainly unlikely in larger organisation. There are now other products on the market who make internal communication more productive and simpler. Email is likely going to be reinvented by Social Media and Messaging apps like Slack, Asana, Trello, Yammer and others? I’m looking forward to it, because it could signal the end of email as we know it. Yippee, no more spamming!

So let’s ask the question again. ‘Is Email Enhancing or Destroying Your Reputation?’

Answers on a postcard please! Just kidding, comments below please or via email if you wish, michael@guess the domain.com? No seriously, I need you to guess the domain. For starters it's easy if you did some research and secondly, I would like to avoid the spiders adding me to a list.

@stayingaliveuk

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Does LinkedIn Help confuse you?

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They say Robots are the future, but maybe they have already arrived at LinkedIn?

They say Robots are the future, but maybe they have already arrived at LinkedIn?

Well, I can confirm most definitely, I am totally and utterly confused with LinkedIn's Help. For years now I have received responses to my queries where the support team at LinkedIn, haven’t really got a clue what I am talking about.

Maybe it is me and the way I ask my questions is not clear enough?

I don’t know about you, but I find that all I seem to receive is a bunch of ‘template’ responses to try and close my ticket as soon as possible. In fact LinkedIn Help already closes the ticket, when they deem that my question has been answered satisfactorily by them. Most times I have to reopen the ticket to send a follow up response or question.

This brings me nicely on to my latest example, ‘The Reminder’.

This feature was introduced when LinkedIn had a major upgrade, released maybe a couple of years ago.

It allows any member to schedule a reminder on a connection’s profile. The reminder can be set for 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or recurring. A strange way of setting reminders by the way, normally you would specify a specific date. Anyway that’s the way it was set and is still the way it exists.

The 'Reminder' feature appears under the 'Relationship' tab, just under the Profile Header.

The 'Reminder' feature appears under the 'Relationship' tab, just under the Profile Header.

When this new feature was introduced, LinkedIn then also started to email us all a daily digest of our connection’s major activity, like a job change, a work anniversary and their birthday. If by any chance you had set a reminder, this would also arrive in the same email. Thereby listing all your reminders and you could take action on those. A great way to be reminded about your reminders don't you think?

In the past 12 months LinkedIn have changed their policy on the volume of email, because of some public criticism they had received.

I agree there was just far too much. However this has meant that they have done away with the 'Daily Digest' email, but you are still able to see your connection’s major activity under the ‘connections’ section and engage with your connection’s activity by sending them an email message, like or comment on their activity. You get daily new notifications on your mobile app too, although you can only message your connections to congratulate them, like and commenting at time of writing is not available on mobile. I won't bore you with the ’Connected app’ that was retired recently, which was created specifically for this purpose. 

Anyway, it now means that ‘The Reminder’ notification via email is missing in action. You no longer receive an email, because the ‘Daily Digest’ has been retired and it also doesn’t receive a flag, which would have been the most sensible thing to do, but it does appear under your ‘connections’ section (desktop), although you may have to keep expanding by clicking the ‘see more people to contact’ tab underneath the 9 cards that will show up.

Anyway I did know about the failure of this, but decided when I saw a forum thread on the subject to investigate further and ask LinkedIn Help the question about reminders.

Below is a screenshot of the thread of my email conversation exchange with them. In conclusion the reminder feature is no longer very useful, unless you are disciplined enough to view your connections page on a daily basis, just to check for reminders. 🙄

You’ll see from the email thread that support completely gets the wrong meaning of my question to begin with. Why? Answer: ’Template responses’. 

Conclusion:
1.  The ’Reminder’ feature will probably be retired very soon. 
2.  LinkedIn Help agents are robots 🤖?

Wishing you success with LinkedIn's features. Just remember that one day those features may be rendered useless or retired, you just never know. Whether you are a paying premium member or not, it doesn't matter.

@stayingaliveuk 😎👍

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Did you know LinkedIn has been removing features for years?

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If you have been an active LinkedIn user for a number of years you might remember that LinkedIn removes features on a regular basis from their platform. At least one per year I would say.

Who remembers ‘Events’, ‘Polls’, ‘Reading Lists’ and many more retired features? And then there are features that just stop working without any warning, like 'Reminders', but that's another story altogether.

Share your favourite ones!

The reason sited always is that features are removed because they are not being used as much by members and therefore are retired to the internet abyss.

Below is an image of an email confirming their latest such action.

This particular feature, saving a profile to your contacts, which is being retired at the end of February 2016 is a handy little shortcut when you are searching for individuals that you wish to connect to.

You can (for now) save them to your contacts by clicking the star underneath the profile header or you can click the dropdown on search results and save them that way.  Especially handy when you have saved a favourite search for Lead Generation. See the images below on how this is allowed to be done currently. But not for long.

Maybe I’m a little suspicious.

I am a premium member and recently my premium account got a fantastic free upgrade. ‘Sales Navigator’.  A brilliant and very useful tool for Lead Generation and Social Selling. Really I mean it, it’s great and very useful. So now I don’t actually need to save anyone that I find on search to my contacts, I just add them to Sales Navigator and I am able to do much more with those profiles in Sales Navigator compared to the regular LinkedIn.

But there are lots of folks that are not on premium and have no intention of upgrading, but still would like to do some interesting stuff,  like saving and tagging people on LinkedIn without having Sales Navigator. 

Could this action by LinkedIn just be a ploy to promote Sales Navigator to us all?

I know, I know, actually not many of you realised you could do this anyway. I agree it isn’t very obvious at all and no-one actually advises you that you can do this, apart from LinkedIn Trainers.  And this is the reason, I guess, why LinkedIn are retiring it.

So my question to many of you is, ‘if you had known about this feature would you have used it or not?’

Be honest because this is like my straw poll to see what responses I get and maybe just maybe we can ask LinkedIn to reverse their decision. Now to help me,  please share this with your own network on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Answer just 2 questions below.

I really appreciate your help with this.

Success!

@stayingaliveuk

Image credit: @gapingvoid

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Have you ever wanted to step off the world?

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On the 8th December 2015 at 15:50 when I received a call from Clair, my darling wife, I certainly wanted to step off the world.

Luke, my 14-year old stepson, ran away from school apparently very upset, he ran for over a mile and jumped 40 feet of a structure to hit the ground with force to try and end his life. I will deal with the ’why’ later.

In case you're wondering, he is alive, but...

He has multiple injuries and has been in several hospitals every since, indeed so has Clair, nurturing, supporting and encouraging him back to life.

His injury list makes painful reading, multiple skull fractures, brain injury, eye socket fracture, multiple fractures in one elbow, punctured lung, pelvis fractures, spinal injury, nerve damage to his bladder (causing him to be currently incontinent), broken ankle, crushed heel. He's had major surgery to his pelvis and spine and to his elbow.

Needless to say he's receiving some counselling for his state of mind as well.

This is going to be a very very long journey and currently this is without doubt THE biggest mission Clair, Luke and I are facing so far during our lives.

We’d like to think that our thought process is different compared to most and indeed we have learnt a lot from many thought leaders over the years, which will help us to get through this very challenging episode of our lives. However nothing can prepare you for something like this, not even the most enlightened and trained. It certainly has knocked my positive mindset for six. I’m sure it will be back, but it will be a while that’s for sure.

We believe ’Intention’ is hugely powerful, we use it in our lives every single day and now more than ever in our lives we are asking everyone we know to hold an intention for Luke’s healing and recovery. The ’Intention’ is shown in the image below. If you are interested in joining us with this ’Intention’, we would of course be delighted.

We know that already in a very short period of time our ’Intention’ has resulted in a positive change in Luke’s condition. I wrote and circulated the ’Intention’ within hours of Luke's accident. Luke was placed into sedation to assist his pain and also prevent any brain damage, as he did have some bleeding on the brain. When after a few days they brought him out of sedation and then when he could communicate slightly, he was able to know who he was, how old he is, who his family members are and all their birth dates. The consultant doctors thought this kind of a recovery of his brain injury was nothing short of miraculous (their words). 

I first learnt about intention setting during the summer of 2006, where I participated in the first ever group ‘Intention Experiment’ hosted by Lynne McTaggart in London with very interesting and successful results. Lynne is the author of The Field, The Intention Experiment, What Doctors Don’t Tell You and The Bond. You can check out her website and learn more about her.  She certainly has done some fascinating research.

I won’t even try to explain how intention setting works, because I have no idea, except that I have read studies and witnessed many of my own personal examples. You can probably divide the world into 3 camps, the scientific, the religious and the spiritual (non-religious). And there are some that hover somewhere in-between. I completely acknowledge the fact that some of you will say that 'Intention’ is just ‘prayer’ and at some level I do agree with that too.

Anyway for now you have to decide whether you believe or not.

Apart from creating some images with the intention words, I have also asked Lynne McTaggart if she could share the intention with her audience. She has very kindly agreed to send an email blast to her database asking them to take part. This will have potentially hundreds and maybe even thousands of people who are going to be taking part. Below are the two emails that went out her community, but there were many more things that she did, including writing about it in her book, The Power of Eight and also blogging about it at Thanksgiving in 2019 and in this article too.

I have also created a meditation audio track, which you can listen to on Mixcloud or YouTube. The embedded tracks are below.


I promised to share with you why Luke decided to commit suicide.

Truthfully we will never really know, except to say that he had planned it and had even written a suicide letter, which he handed to his ex-girlfriend, who he had only 48 hours previously broken up with. This was Luke’s first ever proper girlfriend at the very young age of 14 years. Luke is a very balanced young man and committed to his word. We believe that he had to follow through with it because he had committed himself in writing. He has managed to briefly speak to Clair about it at times when he has wanted to. The good news is that he does want to get better and fit again.

Back in 2014, I wrote an article about suicide to highlight the dangers of those thoughts in young people. Far more needs to be done to help younger people have a better understanding about their emotions in early relationships and that they need to talk about their feelings. Easier said than done.

Thank you for reading and thank you so much if you are deciding to take part. I will of course post an update on Luke’s progress in the coming weeks and months.

Much love and gratitude ❤️

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Are You Interested in Trust?

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Maybe you are or maybe you aren’t. One thing’s for sure every relationship is built on a solid foundation of trust. If trust doesn't exist, a relationship can't exist. But what are the constituents of trust? I believe there are 3 main principles for trust to develop in your relationships. I've called it the 'Triad of Trust'.

1. Give more than you receive.

The principle here is about giving of yourself and searching for ways you can give support without expecting anything in return.

Nobody can force you to do this, it has to be the life force within you that decides that you will step out of your ego and give of yourself. I have witnessed many example of folks who really don’t get this right. Giving without expecting anything in return is really a tough concept for most to grasp. 

For just a few seconds think about your current relationships, your relationship with your line manager, your spouse, your kids, your parents and even your clients. Do you give consistently without expecting anything? We’re usually looking for some sort of payback, something that will make us feel good instead of focussing on making the other person feel great.

Putting this in the context of Marketing means that we must avoid too much self-promotion and instead share stories (or information) that will assist others and inspire them. 

Whenever I have a new connection on LinkedIn, I ask each connection who they wish to get in front of, i.e. what leads they may be looking for. I record those details on their LinkedIn profile. You'd be surprised how many actually don't bother answering, because they may be suspicious and believe I might have a different motive for the question. I guess it's human nature to be suspicious. Basically they don't trust me yet.

2. Listen generously.

Listening is the hardest skill for us to master because as soon as we hear someone speak we begin to formulate a response. This also happens with all types of mobile digital communication.

Who doesn't struggle with listening? Be honest, you can't wait to say something when you are listening (and thinking) when someone is speaking to you. My challenge to you is to hold back until you believe the speaker has completely finished. You’ll know when they have finished, because they’ll ask you a question. 

For example, I'm sure you've experienced attending a networking meeting. Imagine you meet someone for the first time there and often the first question will be, ’So what do you do?’. Instead of reeling off your rehearsed response, pause and say, ’Actually why don't you go first?’. 

This puts you in a state of listening straight away. And instead of waiting for them to finish and then jump into your own blabber, ask them a few questions. Listen out to truly understand and ask even further questions to understand at an even deeper level. It actually doesn't matter if you don't get your chance to say what you do. Understanding someone else’s story is much more important and they will remember you for it. 

The term listening generously I learnt from a client in the USA, http://winningdynamics.com, who I produced a Whiteboard Animation for. Be well worth watching, as the message is brilliant.

 

3. Share your knowledge willingly.

Our knowledge is precious and worth something. However, sharing your knowledge willingly with others builds trust. After all, you too learnt your knowledge from someone else.

We arrived on this planet with no knowledge and relied on our family, our teachers and all the different people we met in our lives to teach us what we know today. Therefore we actually learnt most of what we know from others. Just think about it. It's only with this knowledge that we've been able to potentially shape it into new knowledge that we create ourselves and then sell or share with others. Just like I'm doing right here.

But you don't have to sell all your knowledge do you?

You must give most of it away. You don't own it and our job is to pass it on. After all, your knowledge is only temporary, you can't take it with you when you depart this planet. You might as well start sharing it now.

I would love to learn from you how you ’Give, Listen and Share’ in your world. Feel free to share your comments below, so everyone can benefit from your experience and advice.

@stayingaliveuk

 

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Are Your Suffering from 'Social Deafness'?

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How many social networks do you belong to? The average person has five social network accounts and spends around 1 hour and 40 minutes browsing these networks every day, accounting for 28pc of the total time spent on the internet.

Probably a combination of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube and substituting with LinkedIn, Tumblr and Google+ (other Social Networks are available). However, most will be struggling to stay on top of them all.

It’s just too time consuming these days.

’Social Deafness’ is a phenomena that I'm describing as the reduction in our ability to take in all the social messages and content being pushed out on your social networks.

Before social media came along, our lives were already quite busy and we didn't ask for these networks to occupy our lives, but as these networks have grown and expanded it has become common place in the modern digital world for us to belong to many of them. Furthermore with the expansion of mobile computing, it’s become super easy to engage with your preferred networks through apps and on the web whilst on the move.

Much has been said about our addiction to these networks, but the addiction is not necessarily with our connections but more about what we as individuals can get out of these networks. When our connections, like, share, retweet, comment and repost, we feel loved. That feeling of love releases dopamine in the brain, which is highly addictive. We're then looking for the next hit, the next bit of engagement. I'm sure you have seen this play out on Facebook when your friends post comments that have left you wondering what's wrong with them. Comments like ’I'm feeling very annoyed’. Having no clue what they're annoyed about it causes you to ask the question and giving them some desired attention (love). Whether you think it's appropriate or not, this is current reality with social networks.

We're all looking for attention (love).

As we become more used to all the social media noise that's going on across social networks, we actually start tuning-out and developing what I call ’Social-Deafness'. It's just an abbreviation I’ve coined for describing how you are starting to ignore social media (network) noise. Even those cries for help are starting to be ignored, as we intuitively know that folks are in fact seeking attention. We all know the saying:

‘The girl (or boy) who cried WOLF’.

By the way it's not their fault, they are just copying what others are doing in their networks, noticing the attention others are getting and hoping for the same. Plus of course the networks keep emailing us telling us that we're missing out and really should be going back to our networks. Just try for 5 days to avoid one of your favourite networks and they will be in touch with you for sure.

They play on our instinct and a condition called FOMO = ‘Fear of missing out’.

When this ’Social-Deafness’ spreads across global social networks, it makes the job of marketing to us so much tougher for big brands and even Micro Enterprises. It’s much harder to get noticed and develop sustainable engagement.

This is why more and more folks are spending more and even more time publishing content to these networks hoping that something will stick and develop some sort of engagement at ’scale’ (a fashionable and trendy term used by LinkedIn management a lot!).

The only way to develop a sustainable engagement strategy is by bringing people on board one person at a time. The execution of that in reality is more time consuming and not always guaranteed, but the potential results are easier and more predictable.

The challenge is to build trust in your network over a sustained period of time, which will potentially support a level of conditioning in your connections’ brain to believe that they already know you. A feeling of trust that makes them think you've already met and they know so much about you already. This potentially (note there's no guarantee) means that when you contact them by email or even by phone they believe they are communicating with a long standing acquaintance.

This method is actually no different to what advertisers use by repeating their adverts regularly to you. Even if you think you're not paying that much attention to adverts they all go into your brain and over time you brain has been conditioned with a product or service. Ever come home from the supermarket with a product you didn't need it, had never bought previously and then wondered why you bought it?  Now you know what I mean.

Do you believe that you are suffering from ’Social Deafness’?

Have you managed to build trust with your connections on social networks and how did you make that happen?

Would love to know your perspective and your experience.

@stayingaliveuk - ’Share Your Story’