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My First 'Social Letter'

  1. The 'Social Letter' will only come out once per month
  2. If after reading it you don’t believe there is any value in it, just unsubscribe at any time
  3. And I will share just 3 topics with 3 tips each month around my own learning in Social Media and Social Learning

Anything in this 'Social Letter' is based on my own personal opinion and has been developed through my own research and daily experiences.

This month my 3 topics are;

Social Language

Personal Exposure

Social Tools


Social Language

Michael, do you agree that the Internet appears to have found its niche? Social Networking has exploded across it like a tsunami and instead of sinking we have all taken to our boats and are exploring the high seas to see what effect it will have on our daily personal and business lives. Why is it then that I still hear such outdated language via email, blogs, press etc?  Why is our language not changing or are we just afraid of letting our guard down?  Here in the UK I believe it is going to be particularly difficult for us to speak in a different (social) language, we just seem to be afraid of being more social in our discussions.  A ‘Social Language’ that is more engaging, more holistic, more inviting and asking both clients and friends to join the discussion.

My 3 tips for a new Social Language are:

  1. Stop promoting yourself or your business (people do not like being sold to on Social Media)
  2. Start listening and communicating
  3. Become more engaging by asking great questions and sharing views

Personal Exposure

Are you worried Michael about your own personal exposure on Social Networks?  Let’s turn the clock forward, let’s say to 2020.  A lot of teenagers will be well out of University, looking for jobs.  Guess what their employers will be looking at?  Their Social Network footprint and their language in those networks.  There is no better way to get to know a person, then to look at their Social Networking sites and see what they have been up to.

Sure lots of students will be trying to hide their profiles from their employers with the fear of being ridiculed for the games they play, their chats with their friends, the apps they use, the places they check-in to and much more.  Now, it's not that difficult to learn about someone,  so much of what you say or do on Social Networks is indexed by Google.  Good luck to those students who will be trying to hide 10 years of social media exposure! This infographic (to download click the link) illustrates nicely the case for transparency versus the case for anonymity.

I know you are happy Michael for your business profile to be in the social domain, but what about your personal profile?  Why do we say, I want to keep my private life separate from my business life?  I don’t want people to know that much about me, but very happy to share what I do for my work, because I could earn from that.

Well I have some news for you.  People buy people first and when we are in a business lunch or networking event and after we finished talking about what we do for a living, we start asking questions like...where do you live?...where are you going on holiday?...how many kids do you have?...what sports do you follow?...who do you support?...and so on.

I think you are probably getting my message, we all need to start getting used to the idea that you need to be more personal on social networks and share something about yourself.

My 3 tips for creating Personal Exposure are:

  1. Make your profile open, so that anyone can find you on Social Networks and can get to know you
  2. Consider the view that everyone is a personal contact, don't consider them to be different, just because you met them in the workplace
  3. Be careful to judge people that blend their personal and business lives (this is done regularly on Twitter)

By the way here is a great blog post by Social Media Examiner; http://bit.ly/mGyaCU

Its called Facebook 101 for Business: Your Complete Guide.  Some great learning in there for you and how to develop a more personal relationship with everyone!


Social Tools

Certainly in my research and learning, I have come across so many different sites, tools and apps that can help me in my social media endeavours.  So, Michael I decided to share a couple of tools with you, that help me keep track of all of these.

The first one is Google Bookmarks.  A great way to have all your bookmarks available on the Internet (Or do we now say the Cloud?).  I found that having these in the 'Cloud' is really beneficial.  You can also install a plug-in to your browser, which then allows you to quickly add them when you are on a site that you need to bookmark.  You can also keep bookmarks organised by list for easy retrieval.

Start creating your bookmarks here: https://www.google.com/bookmarks.

The other tool I use is www.oneforty.com.  Here I can record all the different Social Media tools I use, currently I use 58 different ones, whether through the web, desktop or mobile.  They have a library of all the different tools and its a great way to learn about what they can do for you and keep track of all the different ones you have signed up to.  I have looked at many other tools too but these two for me have made life a lot simpler.  Plus you can share it with your colleagues too.

My 3 tips for managing Social Media Tools are:

  1. Save all your bookmarks inside Google Bookmarks, for easy sharing or retrieval.  And get the plug-in for your browser.
  2. Create a spreadsheet on your personal computer and record all the urls, usernames and passwords and make the sheet password protected.
  3. Use a tool like oneforty to record all the tools you use and also find other tools.

For next month I have in mind to cover the following 3 topics:

Are you ready to go back to school?

Does using video to teach your colleagues work?

Do you really understand Social Media?

Michael, if you have time to discuss this 'Social Letter', ask more questions and engage with me, please stop by on www.facebook.com/stayingaliveuk Let me know if I met my promises and any suggestions on how could I make it even greater for you next time?

Have a great month and I hope to catch up with some of you either face to face or in those amazing social networks.

Michael

More about me!

Is the Email Monkey Male or Female?

After a few years absence from the email newsletter scene, I decided to venture out and try it again.  I used to be with constant contact, but having seen better alternatives, I decided to give MailChimp a go. I had used them previously for a small list and now that I have changed direction in my business it was time to email a bigger list.

I have spent some time building my list of trusted contacts on LinkedIn, so I thought why not start with them as a base and build from there.  After all most of them do know me and if I ask nicely, maybe they will just stay 'opted-in' to my list.

I got down to drafting my email and this time I had to refrain from selling or promoting what I can do for them.  So thinking of writing something that would get them to genuinely believe me and that I wanted to have their permission before they would receive the first newsletter.

So an opt-out email was the plan and making it clear that I only wanted to send them an email in the future with information they could use, free of charge and no selling.  Tough one really because sending someone an email, they automatically think you are selling to them.  I think we have just been conditioned this way.  I really did not want to do this, my aim is to give something away for free to people who have taken the trouble to link or follow me.

If you wish to have a read of it by all means check it out here:  http://bit.ly/k78Mug

I was reasonably pleased with it. I know you can always improve it, ask some others to proofread it, but I decided it was good enough to get some feedback.

Oh boy, feedback I got indeed!  But not what I had expected.  I got unsubscribes, plenty of them, but that’s what I wanted, so that was ok.  I sent emails out to 663 people and I got 50 unsubscribes.  Fantastic, at least people were reading my email and they responded.  It means 613 did not unsubscribe yet!

What I had not expected was to receive written feedback as well and in some cases great feedback.  So instead of paraphrasing it, here are some of them for you to read for yourself;

Hi Michael…I can hear the Bee Gees song in my head ! Happy to receive your newsletter..I use Linkedin, Twitter, Google alerts and my website….not Facebook so much.  Mark

Like the idea! Nice way to start it as well by offering people the opt out. Will keenly keep an eye out for your first one. Jack

I *love* this approach! I’ve been toying with whether I should send an e-mail out to my user base, but am a very strong believer in “permission marketing”.

This is a wonderful approach. Do you mind if I S.W.I.P.E it? Richard

Yes, go for it!  Look forward to receiving your next newsletter. David

Certainly, I will look forward to your updates etc. Karen

See below - high praise indeed coming from Jeremy, somebody who I consider a leader in our field! If you’re not reading his blog – go read it now! Richard

Brilliantly done! Jeremy

I just wanted to drop you a quick line to say I think your newsletter is great. As a graphic design agency, helping businesses with newsletters is something we do pretty regularly - I found yours warm and engaging while still being professional and informative. It's obvious that you do this for a living! Liz

That was delightful email,and yes permission granted. Dev

I'm intrigued, count me in. Rene

Thanks - I really appreciate the fact that you've asked, and I'm happy to hear what you have to say. Richard

No problem with you contacting me in the future. Ken

Sounds good right?  Well what I had not expected was this email from the Monkey!

We want to make you aware that that your campaign from your account with the username stayingaliveuk  generated an unsubscribe rate of 3.05%.  At this point this is just a notification of the activity occurring on your campaign.  Your account is still active but we want to make you aware that we will continue to watch this campaign and may send additional warnings.  As an ESP, we’re required to enforce an unsubscribe rate of 1% or less (1.01% is considered to be over the limit). When this is exceeded, ISPs and SpamCop organizations begin to question the integrity of your list which can cause blacklisting or blocks for both your domains and MailChimp domains and IP addresses. It can also indicate there are readers on the list who do not want to receive your content and were not expecting to receive it.  If the unsubscribe activity continues and exceeds the 1% limit this can lead to account suspension and further investigation into the matter by our compliance team.  At this time we want to make you aware of the activity and provide some steps to help reduce the issue in the future.

Not so great then after all!

There I was thinking carefully about not spamming people and asking them for permission and BOOM, I got my wrists slapped by the email monkey!  I was a bit concerned to say the least.  Thankfully they have confirmed that my account is still active, so I will be able to send my first newsletter out as planned very soon!  So if you are planning a new newsletter to a new audience, using a new email tool, be careful!