That’s not meant to sound creepy, I refer to those people that are quite happy cruising around the web and watching what is being said and what others are up to in either a business sense or social sense, it really doesn’t matter.

It took me a little while to realize that these web watchers are out there, soaking up some of the best information available, and using it to achieve something in particular, but they never let on that they are there. You might find them in LinkedIn groups, industry forums, or as fans on Facebook pages they are interested in, but they are there.

Let me give you an example or two.

Only recently I was attending a conference in NYC and obviously needed a place to stay so I searched Google for hotels in the area I wanted to be in. I narrowed my search down to three hotels of which there really wasn’t much between them. They were similar prices, had similar facilities and in a similar location. How was I going to choose which one? Who has a Facebook page that I can visit to see actual customer experiences and comments?

Only one did, and on visiting that page, I could see that the hotel itself was being helpful by adding information about local events and attractions, as well as comments from happy customers who had thought the hotel and staff were great. Not only that, but if you mentioned Facebook at the time of making your booking, you got a free upgrade!

At this stage, I am just a web watcher. But I now have a good reason to start participating and let the hotel know I exist. After making my booking, I then communicated further with them through their Facebook page rather than email, very often quicker and easier with some companies.

I’ve copied this next story from my book “Learn marketing with social media in 7 days”

During a recent conversation with a company director, he told me about a prospect that had called him after doing his due diligence on his company. If he was going to part with a large amount of money, he wanted to see if the company practiced what it preached.

He looked at the team’s LinkedIn profiles to see if they were all of the same standard and displayed the same company message, that the company Facebook page followed suit, and maybe even looked at some of the other sites to see if everything was ‘on message’.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t consistent all the way through.

Now if that person had not picked up the phone and called the director to tell him what he’d found, he may have simply just decided to not become a client and no-one would be any the wiser. What it did do was make the director’s company sit up and take note that it needed to get its message consistent, and pronto. How many other prospects has it lost that they don’t know about because its social media message was not consistent?

My point? Remember they are there. They are possibly your business prospects just watching how you operate and work with others before they decide to commit to your product or service. Be aware that not everyone out there on the web is happy to make themselves known to you, you simply don’t know who is taking in what you or your business is doing, good and bad.

Image from Annah Stretton website

There are some activities you do simply because you have always done them that way. You clean your windows every month because you have always cleaned them every month. You change your window display every month because you have always changed your window display every month. So are you missing out when an opportunity arises simply because you haven’t thought to see the opportunity?

Whangamata is a small coastal town that usually has around 4000 residents for most of the year, but for the kiwi Christmas and New Year period, the population swells to around 23,000, so a massive increase in people wandering around the town. With an opportunity like this, the massive traffic increase, I saw no evidence of retailers taking advantage of it. Except one. Well done Annah Stretton

They saw the opportunity and changed their window display DAILY. I bet their sales rocked through the holiday period because they really capitalised on the extra traffic. They thought about their opportunity.

Are you missing out on  opportunities because of your processes?

LinkedIn etquette

Very few people ignore you in a real life face-to-face networking situations.  So why do they do it to you online? The simple answer is because they probably don’t even realize that they are!

Be honest, do you follow up every Linkedin connection request you get? No, probably not.  I bet you click “accept”, and that is as far as you go.

When someone requests to connect with you and you simply click accept and then make no effort to carry on the conversation, you are simply both saying hello to each other and it stops dead there. The only thing you gain by doing this is a string of connections that don’t have any real value.  You become a connection collector.

So how can you use social etiquette to really make your LinkedIn connections valuable and stand out from the crowd at the same time?

Follow these 4 steps below and watch your reputation grow.

View LinkedIn as your own boardroom of connections versus your coffee shop connections on Twitter or Facebook. They tend to be managers, directors, business owners, CEOs and the like. 

#1: Send personalized connection requests.

When you first send a possible contact an invitation, do it from their own profile page by clicking the “add to your network link”.

We will use Paul as an example. By adding Paul this way rather than simply going to the “add connections” tab, you can send a personalized message, such as “Thanks for the coffee yesterday, it was great to catch up”.

This gives you the opportunity to remind Paul where you know him from.  This is particularly useful if you’re getting back in touch after a long period of time, say from an old job or your school days.

If you simply send a connection request from the Add Connections box, there is no facility to personalize your message.

This might be a quick and easy way to add a handful of new connections, but spend the time and do it right by adding your personal touch to each one individually by following the steps above.

#2: Reply when accepting a connection request.

All too often I receive the standard email from Linkedin that says a connection request has been accepted, but I rarely then get a short message from the new connection saying “hi”.

When Paul has accepted my connection request, he could then send a short message back. I like to take a look at my new connections profile if I am not too familiar with them, and find something I can comment on.

Now that may be something like he comes from my home town, or works for a company I know well, or perhaps I can see from his interests that he is a cyclist and so am I. Whatever it may be, try and find something to start a short conversation to build on your relationship together. Make the effort to find out more.

So I’ve covered a couple of the initial and basic steps we tend to forget about.  Now let’s look at composing a message to a group of our connections.

#3: Composing a group mail out.

First, you can only send a message to 50 people at any one time.  This is a good thing; otherwise I am sure you would see a lot of spam. There are a couple of things to note here:

1. Your Opening:  If you’re sending an email to a group of connections, think about your greeting. How are you going to address them?  I suggest you start with something like “Hi everyone” or “Greetings to you all” and then immediately say “Please excuse my lack of personalization of this email as I am sending this out to a group of connections”. That way, you can be forgiven and you have addressed any possible bad manners critics.

2. Hide Other’s Emails:  Always uncheck the box that says “allow recipients to see each other’s email address”. This then makes it a BCC or blind carbon copy. Value other people’s privacy by not sharing their email address with everyone else

When you receive a message yourself this way, respond where possible, depending on if the content is relevant to you or not. If the sender has followed the rules below about message content and what to add, hopefully you did find something of interest.

What about the message content?

If you want your connections to leave you in droves, then feel free to write about all the good things you do or can offer from your company!

I have made this mistake in the past myself and then I came to my senses.  I realized I needed to treat this form of communicating just the same way as my newsletters. By adding valuable resources.

People don’t want to hear about you all the time and what you can offer, but they do want to know about how you could possibly help fix one of their problems.

Nowhere in my messages is there anything about my company; simply bits of information I think would be great to pass on. Maybe a great book that most businesses could probably utilize, a free business event being put on and a website address that may save a business a bit of money on cheap stationery for example.

By keeping in touch this way, my aim is to simply add value, but at the same time, put myself back on the radar of my connections.

#4: How to ask for recommendations

Recommendations are a valuable part of your Linkedin profile and could be the one thing that gets you the deal when a possible client is comparing you to your competitor. Most people only have a couple of recommendations so you can stand out from the crowd with a good number of genuine and applicable recommendations. I suggest 10 as a minimum, but feel free to ask for more.

You will notice it’s another auto generated template that needs personalizing, not only the body of the message but also the subject line. I like to change mine to read something like “Recommendation request” as the subject line and “Are you able to write a recommendation about the presentation I did for your company last week?” in the main body. Don’t make the request too long, but be clear on what you want a recommendation for.

If you are asking Paul for a recommendation about a seminar he attended that you spoke at, you could change the message to say “I hope you enjoyed the seminar last week. If you feel that you are able to write a brief recommendation about how you found my presentation and speaking skills, I would appreciate it. I totally understand if you would prefer not to.” Kind regards…

There is no need to open your message with Dear…, as Linkedin will automatically add that in for you.

For the subject line, you may want to keep it simple such as “recommendation request please”.

In a nutshell, you should look at personalizing every aspect of LinkedIn that you can, making each and every standard template your own. It may take you a little longer, but the value you’ll get from doing the job right, will far out way the effort.

Ask yourself, if you were meeting face to face, what would you be doing differently? 

People easily judge on first impressions, so make yours a great one, each and every time you connect.

Who owns your LinkedIn profile, you or the company you work for? Do they have the right to tell you that you cannot write a recommendation for someone? Do you think it does look like the compnay is endorsing you or simply the person who wrote it?

I can see that whilst you are working at any company, your own LinkedIn profile does represent that company, it’s hard not to, but I’m not so sure if a company can tell you who you can and can’t write a recommendation for. Or maybe they can is this digital age?

I would love your thoughts and your experiences. Who is right?

Nothing remarkable has happened, and yet I have this real feeling of helplessness today, sort of a “fish out of water” type of feeling, or a visitor from Mars. I even said I was from Mars when I bought my lunch in a small café today in Brisbane.

Let me explain.

Catching a flight anywhere usually means an early start, even when your flight time doesn’t seem to be too early, but by the time you have got up, packed, driven to the airport at the allotted time, when you work the time backwards, it’s early. Then there is the time difference when you get there that can throw you off kilter, and the general feeling of not knowing where you are, or how far away you are from where you need to go, that out of control feeling. Like you’ve just landed from Mars.

There was a lady on the plane, who laughed her socks off the entire 3.5-hour journey, and I don’t mean a giggle, it was a full on, head back great – big – laugh. All the way. Trying to put the finishing touches into a presentation for tomorrow, it was annoying to me, I couldn’t concentrate, but as the time passed by, and I thought about my agitated feelings, I felt bad. Why shouldn’t she laugh, and laugh loud? Perhaps I needed to stop being a grump and join in too? A good old laugh is a great tonic to anyone, me included.

I checked into my room and went in search of a cold drink and something to eat, but the only place around my hotel is the enormous, multi building Brisbane Mater Hospital, which spreads endlessly, with buildings for radiotherapy, oncology, and plenty more. As I wandered into a small café, I felt very aware and thankful for my good health and the good health of my loved ones around me. The lady working in the café had Cancer herself I suspect as she had a completely baldhead and wore a headscarf. My grumpy feelings from earlier on the plane, seem very stupid all of a sudden, and quite right too.

How lucky I am.

Laugh lots, love lots, and keep it real.

Run by a great bunch bunch of people in Australia, you will find heaps of useful information to use to maximise your online presence. Don’t wait too long, limited places.
Click here to visit Grassroots Internet Strategy. and find out more.

So what is the current status of the two main parties and a selection of the smaller ones? Take a look.

Labour

Phil Goff has a Facebook page with around 5500 fans and there are posts generally around once per day, so if you are a fan of Phil’s page, you may miss the one post that comes out, but what I do like about his page, is the live chat that he has been doing, where you have to assume that it is really Phil on the other end answering your questions live. The down side of this is that the last time he did a live chat was back in September, so some time ago, and I’m sure there are plenty of Labour supporters and non supporters who would like the chance to have a live chat on air with him during this campaign. To me this is a huge wasted opportunity. Set it up, publicise it and get on with it, come on Phil.

National

John Key’s Facebook page is looking a whole lot healthier with nearly 68,000 fans and around 5 postings of video, photos and articles posted up daily, so you would have a fair chance of catching some of that information he is sharing in your news feed. There are also several other pages within the Facebook page where you can find out more information on policies, news and subscribe to “Key Notes”, a fortnightly newsletter. There is also a really clear page policy to keep the page “family friendly” and any abusive or racist comments can be removed swiftly with offenders banned if need be.

John Key is also on Twitter with around 31,000 followers there, and as far as I could see, the only politician promoting his page on the latest platform, Google+.

What neither of these two front runners are doing on their Facebook pages or twitter feeds, is engaging in any conversation at all, it is all push, push, push. There simply is no dialogue from either leader, which is a shame when you think of the opportunities they are both missing. Perhaps they are both a little scared of what might happen if they delve in?

Take a look at the Green party, they are doing a better job. Even though they only have around 14000 fans, their page is full of extra useful information that really makes it easy for the visitor to navigate and find out what they want to know. With extra pages on child poverty, clean rivers, about the party, policy and then extra twitter and YouTube links too, there is plenty to read. They really have done a good job, and they DO engage with their fans. Ask a question or take part in a discussion, and someone from the Greens will respond somewhere during the thread. Very cool and well done the Greens.

Compare our politician’s efforts with Barack Obama who has more than 24 million Facebook fans. Now he really does have a community to connect with, and whilst Facebook fans are not the be all and end all, community supporters in a politicians case, have got to be a massive bonus.

There is even a shop for you to “get the T shirt” and a “Donate” button for you to give generously.

The rest of the parties really don’t have much of a presence at all and so are definitely missing a trick, not only for now, but for the future too. There isn’t even a page for United Future, although Peter Dunne does have a personal page if you want to be his friend.

There are about 1.7 million New Zealanders on Facebook, so a sizable chunk of the population and within that community, might like to interact with their politicians a little more, even if it’s just to get to know them a little better before the big election day. People buy from people they know like and trust, so even though the political parties are not selling anything, they are certainly hoping we will give our vote to them.

They could do so much with these channels and really get to know their voters if only they acted the same online as they do in person, by having a proper two-way conversation.

Come on guys, let’s see the real you, engage with us, show us what you stand for, keep it easy, and make me want to vote for you.

Most of us now take a “frothy coffee” sometime during the week if not as a daily ritual, and apart from the taste of the coffee, is there really much to set one coffee shop aside form the rest, make them remarkable?

I have just spent some time at Venice Beach in LA, and just up the road at Abbot Kinney, there are a few good local stores, and a few coffee shops and restaurants, making it a really nice little place to hang out mid morning in search of a coffee fix. In this small area, there must be around half a dozen places to get a coffee, but there is always a very long queue at one particular establishment, and it never seemed to shrink, no matter what time of the day or night. So why?

The place is called “Intelligentsia”, and they do coffee, tea, and apart from the odd pastry, it’s really just coffee. Let me run through what happens in this place:

• You queue
• You reach the top of the line and 1 of 4 or 5 barista’s will welcome you over to their machine
• You place your order, 2 soy latte’s in this case
• They tap out the old coffee and wash and wipe the coffee holder in front of you
• They put the correct amount of soy milk in one jug and the correct amount of soy milk for the other coffee in the other jug
• They heat up one jug of milk whilst brewing one perfect shot.
• They poor the coffee shot into your cup, and make a great show of the adding the correct amount of milk on top.
• They repeat this for the other coffee.
• They then wash the milk jugs with specially designed jug washers, ready for the next customer and repeat the whole process

Its immaculate, and no chance of getting an upset tum from reheated too many times milk.

What really blew me away when it cam time to pay, was how my transaction was handled. I only had large notes and $8 in $1 bills, and as the coffee bill came to $10, she simply said “$8 will be fine”. Wow.

So it was the theater of the whole experience that made for a leisurely but very good coffee experience, one that I returned for many times during my stay, as did many other people.

They have found a way to do a regular job nicely, and set themselves out from the rest. It’s not always about price, it’s also about giving the right thing. Remarkable.

You do have to be a page administrator to do this though, so review who currently is or isn’t and add people accordingly. Don’t miss out. And don’t miss out on my social media book either

Man, I was soooo close to him

If you have read “The Purple Cow”, that was the basis of his thought provoking presentation. Over many years, we have focused on making average stuff for average people and it’s not good enough anymore. We have so many choices and so many channels to communicate those choices and there really is no way of controlling them all. You just have to be different. If what you have is boring, you can’t grow.

Sitting on the 3^rd row back directly in front of the podium, I could almost scratch Seth’s ankles, and his presentation enthralled me. Such passion and meaningful content that kept the audience glued to his every word. The man speaks a lot of sense.

I read Seth’s blog regularly and one of his recent posts has really stayed with me. It was a post about being so damn different, or special, or great, in fact,  just being better than average. So much so that now at the end of each day, I ask myself “What really blew me away today”? What have I experienced from service and contact with others that really has blown me away, what has made them so different, so remarkable? And do you know, there isn’t much.

It’s actually quite difficult, but not impossible, so what do you do that “blows people away”?