Tagging Etiquette On Facebook

In my previous post I talked about how to build a relationship with your network and how to increase your viral visibility by using the Share button.

Dangers Of Spamming

What I maybe didn't emphasise enough is the danger of overusing this tool and also of the potential for abuse by spammers who might choose to tag everyone who has a large network in order to utilise their wall space. With the new look facebook and the wall and newsfeed combined this becomes even more of a problem and is something I will be discussing in a future post.

A Valuable Lesson

I got a direct twitter message from Mari Smith, asking me to remove her from one of the tags that I had made on a post that was not directly relating to her.

marismith Ian - I need to ask you to remove your latest FB Note tag for me. It is not appropriate to tag peeps not mentioned in a note, imho

Mari made me aware of the dangers of abuse for this function so I would like to apologise if I have done something that is inappropriate and also use this as a valuable lesson so that others don't make this same mistake and facebook turns into a spam festival.

Ask People First

If you tag people make sure they are really your friends first and actually want to be tagged, maybe a good practice would be to send a person a personal message and ask them if they mind you tagging them in a note, That way you cover yourself and you don't abuse other peoples networks. I think that this would be a much more appropriate way to go and also stop what I can see as a real danger of abuse.

Differing Opinions

Each person has the right to decide where they stand in regard to tagging. There are definitely differing opinions. Some may want viral visibility others may want to keep themselves more private. Others only want to be tagged if the note directly mention them. Its up to you to find out first before you tag people. You face a real risk of being removed as a friend if you don't follow the correct

In my previous post I talked about how to build a relationship with your network and how to increase your viral visibility by using the Share button.

Knowledge Can Be Dangerous

Knowledge in the wrong hands and used in the wrong ways can be dangerous and have the opposite effect of keeping communication flowing. So I would like to urge people to uses extreme caution when tagging and sharing on facebook and to be respectful of each other. Only share something if you truly believe it is going to add some value to peoples lives.

In my previous post I talked about how to build a relationship with your network and how to increase your viral visibility by using the Share button.

Women Making Waves

At The Cutting Edge

I think one of the greatest things about facebook is how quickly you can discover the people who are at the cutting edge and leading the way in the world of Web 2.0. You can instantly have access to their wisdom and experience through their profile, fan page and blogs and begin to develop a real relationship through the communication channels that are available.

The Aztec Warrior Queen

Yesterday I was accepted as a friend by Nancy Marmolejo, She came highly recommended from a number of my Facebook friends. I found a treasure trove of great information on Nancy's profile page and one of her blog posts inspired me to write this article

Women Leading The Way

In Nancy's Blog post she explores why Women Are Leading The Way in Social Marketing. She gives a number of reasons based on the obvious differences in approach.

Men tend to adopt an aggressive hard sell, pushy, combative way of relating to people whereas women are more prone to the softer sell, attraction marketing and passive ways of building relationships based on a real heartfelt desire to connect to people in a genuine way.

Masculine And Feminine Styles

Not that all men and all women fall into these two neat categories but rather there is a masculine way of doing things and a feminine way. Women who have had to fight to get to where they are now in the business world are having to unlearn the masculine habits and internet sales training that they previously adopted as they enter the new WEB 2.0 World of Social Marketing.

Flexibility Is The Key To Rapport

It doesn't matter what sex you are its your personality and style that make all the difference. Having the flexibility in your behaviour to be able to gain rapport with anyone regardless of gender or style of approach will mean you will have a much wider appeal.

Destructive Criticism

I saw a good example yesterday from a person who was commenting on a friends Video that I had shared on my profile. It was basically a very aggressive negative criticism from a woman who claims to be in Marketing. Obviously she has no clue about marketing herself as her bitterness and bitchiness left me wondering if I really want to have someone like this as a friend. It would have been easy for her to offer the same advice but to deliver it in a way that gives constructive criticism and support instead of such a negative putdown. I deleted the comment as its added no value to the conversation

Getting Noticed For The Wrong Reasons

Another pitfall that Nancy highlighted was the way some people don't think carefully enough about the first impressions that they are making. Aggressively marketing and promoting yourself can often damage your reputation and can be likened to a person entering a room where a party is taking place and talking to all the guests through a loudhailer. The noise is so loud that everyone in the room is disturbed. If you adopt this approach you will get noticed, but for all the wrong reasons.

Teleseminar Series

Erin Blaskie a female social marketer who specialises in virtual assistant services has put together a one month series of teleseminars and has rounded up an impressive line up of speakers. I saw a Tweet from Mari Smith pointing out the Demographics of that list. 29 are women and only 3 are men. That's quite a huge discrepancy. I don't think its because men weren't invited just that those that were chose not to participate.

A Heart Oriented Approach

It's clear that women have now found the platform where they don't have to become like men in order to succeed. As Web 2.0 spreads itself around the globe women will find themselves more at the forefront of this new media revolution. And the men that are successful will be the ones who adopt a softer more heart oriented approach.

The Tubby Nerd

Ed Dale is probably one of the few male internet marketing gurus who has truly understood social marketing and embraced it with a passion. He has an army of followers watching his every move on Facebook, Twitter and in his 30 day Challenge that will start in August. He says that many of his male peers in the internet marketing world hate facebook and other social networking sites. Most male marketers make the mistake of transferring their manipulative sales skills from direct response marketing and google adwords campaigns and fall flat on their faces when they try the same tactics within Social Media where conversation marketing and relationship building is what is actually required.

Demographic Differences

Ed points out that for sites like Facebook the demographics show that women outweigh men quite considerably. You can see this very easily if you ever check out Facebook's Social Adds, you can see the exact number of males and females in any country. I googled and discovered one facebook user who had taken the time to work out all the figures globally.

I did my own research as his figures were slightly out of date

In the USA there are 11.6 million men registered and 14.5 million women

In the UK the ratio is 4.5 million men to 5.5 million women

Women Are More Regular Users

In places like Ireland and China women make up 70% of the user base. The question also has to be asked of all those people who have registered for facebook what proportion are actually regular users. I suspect the true demographics are even higher when you view it this way as women use it much more to maintain their family and social relationships.

Statistical Analysis

What Ed does point out and I believe is very important is that those that are really successful in Internet Marketing and business are the ones that study statistics and test and track everything they do. Analysis is more of a male quality so while there might be many women who rise to become New Media Stars, based on their personality, The people who will actually make the most money in the nuts and bolts world of traffic and conversion will be the ones that can understand and translate the analytics reports and optimise their performance based on these results.

Important Details

The really smart marketers will be the ones that measure and quantify the qualitative aspects of social media. Knowing that the clothes you wear or the background colour of your YouTube video can affect your conversion rates and having hard data to back it up might make all the difference between success and mediocrity.

A Dating Guru

Eben Pagan, the guy who runs a $20 million dating advice company, spends a lot of his time going to conferences. His whole business revolves around understanding women and teaching men these secrets.

He told a story about one conference that he attended that was focussed on Marketing to Women and was surprised that he was one of the only men to show up. Why are so many men in the marketing world ignoring the fact that women control the purse strings and are the main driving force behind the global consumer economy?

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A lot of very valuable comments have been left about this post on facebook, I seem to have struck a chord with a lot of women and several men. You can view these extra comments here.

I also have a PDF report that I am giving away, You can pick up your Free copy by following either link.

Part 1 - How To Avoid Having Your Account Disabled - The Definitive Guide

Part 2 -How To Build A Targeted High Quality Friend List

Death Comes In Many Shapes And Forms

A Dying Snake

I saw an unusual thing yesterday, I came across a large snake that had just been run over by a car, It was still alive but was going through its death throes. I have a great affinity to snakes, so I picked it up and moved it to the side of the road and watched as it died, I stroked its warm skin as the life ebbed away from it's body. It was unusual because you don't normally see such large snakes where I live, and its rare to get the chance to watch something die so closely.

Dead Trees

Later that day I took my girlfriend to see the body, and as we walked back to our house we inspected the tree's we had planted recently on our land, We have had a drought for the past 3 months and many of them have died, some are struggling and others seem to be doing quite well considering the conditions.

Struggling To Survive

I always wonder when I am meeting new people online which people are still going to be around this time next year. A lot of my friends are trying to start their own businesses online and are facing the same challenges that my trees faced. Thrown into a new environment and not getting enough of what they need to survive. Struggling to get their roots established and sustain themselves through those initial challenges

The statistics are not so promising, depending on what sources you use 95% to 99% of all small businesses fail within the first year. What separates that small percentage from all the rest? What is the difference that makes the difference?

A Different Mindset?

I know that it can't just boil down to luck there are a few key issues that will be the deciding factors and maybe the most important is Mindset. Having the courage and determination to keep going when things get difficult shows through in peoples characters. Its easy to give up and walk away and blame your failure on the faults of others. Not taking full responsibility for all your actions will always undermine what you hope to achieve.

Even in the past few months I have seen many friends fall by the wayside, disheartened or distracted into doing something else, or still jumping from one Idea to the next and never able to commit and move forward. Making excuses to themselves so that they can feel good about not fulfilling their potential. I know it’s a natural process that is occurring and my bonds of friendship gradually grow closer to those I have travelled furthest with. And I quickly forget those that drift out of my life never to be seen again.

Decisive Action

I was listening to Mari Smith and Kevin Nations yesterday and one of the concepts that I took away was about the need for taking decisive action. Making decisions and following through with action is a key factor that separates those that will succeed and those that fail. Even if the decision is to not take any action, it needs to be clear and decisive so that you can focus on what you need to do and not what you might have been doing, worried if it was a right or wrong choice. As Kevin said, if you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Death Is A Positive Force

Death comes in many shapes and forms, it makes way for new growth to take place. Each time you take decisive action you are killing off many other potential futures, you don’t need to dwell on the past, you embrace the death of all those other possibilities and keep focussed on the direction that you have chosen to take.

Embrace It

You might find yourself caught at that fork or crossroads in life and feel like the snake that I saw writhing in pain as it struggles to hold on to life. Unable to make the choice of which direction to take, unable to embrace death because you want to keep all your possibilities and options open.

Another Death

My Last post about the relaunch of SMMS threw up a lot of interesting issues and I had some great comments and feedback. There is a major shift taking place and old methods and ways of operating are now in their death throes too, we can see them dying by the roadside and nothing we can do will be able to bring them back to life. Social Media has brought about a much needed transformation in the way people relate to each other and do business together. Honesty, Integrity and transparency are the new currency. Those who can build solid long lasting relationships and establish their own credibility will be the ones who will reap the long term profits and rewards.

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