Archive for August, 2009
Written by Kelly Rusk on 26 August 2009
Our parents and teachers spend a lot of time and energy enforcing good values on us. The most memorable–and important–is the golden rule:” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Makes a lot of sense, right? Then why is it often lost in the business world?
In my general observation and experiences, most companies don’t follow this rule. Fortunately there are some fantastic examples (Zappos obviously comes to mind!), so not all hope is lost.
Here’s a few examples:
- Do you enjoy receiving unsolicited bulk email? No, you don’t. No one does, so why send it?
- Do you like when old high school friends (or whoever) send you mass Facebook messages daily to promote whatever it is their doing but never actually send a personal message? Probably not.
- Do you like when someone follows you on Twitter, so you follow back, but then only floods your screen with self-promotional tweets and never engages in conversations? Not likely.
The positive side…
We can also look at it in a positive light:
- Do you like being complimented? (I bet you do!) Why not try and compliment someone else every day?
- Do you love your tweets being re-tweeted? Take some time to re-tweet whenever you can. (Hint: don’t always re-tweet people like Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki. They get lots of love already, look for the hidden gems.)
- Do you love having an old contact/friend reach out to you randomly, just to say hi? Why not take the time to re-build some old relationships, you never know where you may end up finding a great business connection.
Just a random thought for the day. I’m sure we all know and understand this, but I think sometimes a little reminder can help us all. What are you doing about it today?
Posted in marketing, public relations, social media | No Comments »
Written by Kelly Rusk on 21 August 2009
If you are a member of the Ottawa Social Media Book Club group on Meetup, then you would have received an email today saying that I have left the group as an organizer and that it will shut down in 30 days. First of all, neither I (and Scott) or the Social Media Book Club are going anywhere. And I’m sorry about the confusion brought on by the email. We’ve only decided not to use Meetup.com anymore.
So here’s the *whole* story: When I started the Meetup group in January, there was an initial cost of $36, which I gladly paid for six months of service. That lasted until July. I figured Meetup would send me some sort of renewal notice. They didn’t and since I wasn’t using the group after the cutoff date I figured I’d be charged when I tried to use it again… Until I looked at my credit card statement and saw that I was billed $85 .
$85!!!
I am not prepared to pay that much to use Meetup for six months. Apparently when I first joined I was informed about an auto-renewal program where it would continously bill my credit card without notifying me in anyway whatsoever. If I had noticed this I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place. I emailed Meetup support who coldly informed me that *if* I had contacted them within 30 days they might have been able to do something about it.
Yes, I had no idea they charged my card, did not see the statement until *after* 30 days and they’re saying too bad. So naturally I wrote a second, more strongly worded letter about Meetup’s poor customer service and dishonest policies.
I get a reply that states only “Please let me know if you have any more questions.” It does not tell me that they are shutting down my meetup group–which I only find out when it messages EVERY member of the group saying it’s shutting down. It doesn’t tell me if I’m getting reimbursed any money. I still don’t know what’s going on with that.
Bottom line is Scott and I most definitely will continue the book club, just not on Meetup. Unfortunately all though I paid for the service, when I tried to download the member list before causing a fuss, I realized it does not give you access to your members’ contact info. So please spread the word to others as I want to ensure everyone knows what’s going on. I do have the list of names of members so I will try to seek you all down!
Again I’m sorry for the confusion this has caused and I will update you when we have a new plan.
Posted in random | No Comments »
Written by Kelly Rusk on 20 August 2009
A couple years ago, I realized the importance of being “Google-able.” I spent a lot of time commenting on blogs, starting up this blog, building up my profiles in various social networks and developing my online portfolio. I was pretty excited when I dominated the first page of results for my name.
I admit, it was relatively easy as I don’t have a wildly popular name, nor do I share it with any celebrity or historical figure. However, as social networks have become more popular, more and more profiles with my name (that are not me) have been sneaking up in the search results.
This is worrying if you’re concerned with your personal brand–someone searching for me could mistake one of these other people for me, and who knows what they’re posting on their profiles…
Now, the worst has happened. Look at the number 1 search result for my name. (hint: it’s a MySpace profile I greatly assure you this is NOT me).
So what do I do? Beg you all to link to my stuff? Start producing more content? Send a cease and desist letter to ’sweetsmoker420′?? (lol!)
Posted in random | 5 Comments »
Written by Kelly Rusk on 18 August 2009
So I realize it’s only Monday, but I got a beef with #FollowFriday, and time to write about it so here goes.
If you don’t know #FollowFriday is a popular Twitter meme started by user @Micah who suggested everyone recommend someone to follow on Friday. A great idea. In theory-you trust who you follow already so a recommendation from one is the best way to find new people to follow.
Unfortunately it’s gotten a little out of hand.
Every Friday, it seems my Twitter stream gets flooded by Follow Friday recommendations, from people who post tweet after tweet of a list of Twitter users with no rhyme or reason for the recommendation. I sent a tweet out asking if people actually even clicked through these types of FF tweets and got several replies that made it obvious others were a little annoyed.
Later in the day, one user I had previously unfollowed–but who noticed and made me feel bad about it, so I re-followed–was flooding my stream with such tweets. I sent the person a DM saying (nicely) that probably the reason I unfollowed was the Follow Friday stream invasion.
The person replied to me publicly basically saying I should lighten up. As someone who values the people I follow, I don’t like my stream clouded with insincere #FF tweets. It takes away from other valuable info I could be reading, I don’t think I’m being uptight about it.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people do #FollowFriday really well. For example, when they state what the people have in common (even as simply as also tagging #Ottawa to suggest they are fellow Ottawa Tweeters) or with a little more effort: I love @GiniDietrich’s approach, who posts her detailed recommendations on her blog and then links to it. But as far as just multiple tweets with something generic like “Cool people to follow!” It’s sucking up useless bandwith and taking up space that could be used for valuable tweets.
BTW-the person I butted heads with over it… I checked their stream, last Friday they posted over 60 #FollowFriday posts, all exactly the same, with a list of random names. I clicked through a few and some of the recommendations were even spammers! I went back a little further and saw the person only seems to post 2-3 times all week, and then the #FollowFriday recos…
Am I uptight? Or do you agree that’s a big waste of tweets?
Posted in social media | 8 Comments »
