Tag: facebook

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Innovation, People Helping People, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Yesterday, I posted something on Facebook about reaching a real, and sympathetic, human being on the White House Comment Line. Since the US election last November, I’ve called my elected officials a lot more than in the past. Someone wrote back, saying I was “like the Energizer Bunny” with my consistent activism.

My reply revealed the secret:

Actually, [his name], it’s less Energizer Bunny and more a matter of what I call “the fulcrum principle”: doing not all that much but doing in ways that leverage and multiply the impact…I use my time strategically so the 10 to 15 hours or so I spend on activism per week has a big ripple. Of course I never know when a meeting or demonstration is going to be worthwhile and when it will be a waste of time. I have guessed wrong on a few meetings lately—but then I go to one that’s so energizing and activating and inspiring that it actually recharges me. I went to one like that Saturday and hope the ones I plan to attend Wednesday and Thursday (and the socially responsible business conference next week where I’m MCing two sessions) will be just as awesome.

A fulcrum is the bump underneath a lever that allows that lever to magnify its force—to quite literally create leverage. This concept inspired Archimedes to say, more than 2200 years ago, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

Three men on river structures with ladders and levers. Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/06e13eb0-8a8e-0131-0778-58d385a7bbd0
Three men on river structures with ladders and levers ” New York Public Library Digital Collection.

I’ve played with this metaphor for a long time. I was able to find rejection letters I received for my original The Fulcrum Principle: Practical Tools for Social Change, Community Building, and Restructuring Society book proposal as far back as 1992—and a printout of the proposal itself, though not the electronic file.

Looking at this proposal 25 years later, it would have been a big, ambitious, world-changing book. And other than

  1. Adding in recent developments such as the Arab Spring, Climate Change activism, Black Lives Matter, and of course the massive resistance to the new US president, and
  2. Technology shifts including the Internet and social media, smartphones, 3D printing, and the amazing breakthroughs in green design,

The proposal is still remarkably relevant. Let me share a few highlights:

  • The Fulcrum Principle lets us “achieve the greatest result with the least amount of effort,” including finding others to do some of the work
  • Change happens as fast as possible, but as slow as necessary
  • Why we need both “shock troops” and “put-it-back-togethers”
  • We build momentum for change by presenting the possibility (and manageability) of positive change, finding points of agreement with our opponents—and then expanding those points, changing enemies into allies
  • This momentum can change the world—and it has, many times
  • It’s accomplished more easily when you remember to have fun
  • Grassroots organizers can learn a lot from business (and with 25 years of hindsight, I’d add that business can learn a lot from grassroots organizers); similarly, Left and Right activists have lessons to share with each other
  • Economic and environmental goals can work in tandem (did I really understand that all the way back in 1992? I’ve gone on to write five books that explore this idea)
  • Organizers have quietly developed lots of tools we can harness to make this journey easier: new approaches to everything from how to facilitate productive meetings to how to get the most information in the least time by dividing up a book among different readers who report their insights

The proposal also touched on a raft of social issues, among them:

  • Nonviolent alternatives to the military
  • The role of multinational corporations
  • True democracy going far beyond elections
  • Does it even make sense for change organizations to chase after funding?
  • New ways of looking at drugs and crime, housing, healthcare, transportation, parenting, world distribution of resources, and even sexuality

Interestingly, without revisiting this proposal, I essentially put it into practice when I founded the movement that saved our local mountain in 1999-2000. And I think that’s a lot of why we won in 13 months flat. The “experts” thought we couldn’t win at all. I felt sure that we would succeed, but even I thought it would take five years. I didn’t realize at the time that I had already created the roadmap years earlier.

Perhaps I should dust off this proposal, update, and resubmit.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,
Shel made friends with these three Australians while traveling in Turkey
Shel made friends with these three Australians while traveling in Turkey

Pretty much every networking guru agrees: sending handwritten notes, especially thank-you notes, is one of the best ways to grow your importance in the minds of the people who receive them.

And I know that the hand-written thank-you notes I’ve received stay in my own mind for years, even decades.

But maybe, like me, you have terrible handwriting. And maybe you also get very bad writers cramp. So I hereby give you permission to build your network through other tools. Here are a few of the ways I do that:

  • If I don’t recognize the caller ID: “Good morning/afternoon/evening, this is Shel. How may I make your day special? This starts a lot of great conversations.
  • On the discussion lists I participate in, I do my best to answer people’s questions with friendly, helpful, useful advice—and to answer a lot more questions than I ask. For about ten years, this was the biggest source of new clients in my business, and all it cost was my time.
  • Of course, I add value when possible. On social media, this is so easy: retweet, Like, and share good posts, sometimes engaging in dialog or bringing others directly into the conversation (tagging them). But outside of social media, you can add lots more value without a whole lot of work. Make e-mail introductions to people who could benefit from knowing each other, even if you have nothing to gain from their connection. Send an article or video link you think will interest your contact. Be of service as a volunteer. Interview movers and shakers for your blog, your telesummit, or the book you’re writing.
  • Each year, I select a cool oddball birthday greeting (this year, it’s space aliens singing Happy Birthday). Whenever a Facebook connection’s birthday comes up, my assistant sends them the greeting. When they thank me, I often ask how they’re doing,w hat they’re up to, and when they respond to that, I fill them in on my own very exciting work turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. NOTE: since many of my FB friends know each other, I typically do these as private messages rather than wall posts.
  • I’m always ready to start or join conversations with strangers—such as the three young Australian women in the picture, whom I met while hiking in Turkey. I’ve actually formed lasting relationships on public transit, at conferences, and yes, even at business networking events.
  • Thank people publicly. When you make people look good in front of others, they remember.

 

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Networking, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

Last night, I opened an e-mail about the Occupy Wall Street protests from one of the people who send me progressive political mail.

To my amazement, it was forwarded from an old boss of mine (1979 and 1980)—someone I’d wanted to stay in touch with and had searched for online. And suddenly, there he was. I wrote to him last night, but he hasn’t written back yet.

I still remember the first time something like this happened: I was still on AOL, so this was 1994 or 1995—and in came an e-mail from an old high school buddy. We’ve been in contact ever since.

We all leave footprints all over Cyberspace. And those of us with somewhat uncommon names can connect again. I’ve done it dozens of times now.  Facebook makes it particularly easy for connections like old classmates, because you can actually search the alumni of your school. But Facebook is not the only game in town. Last year, I tracked down two high school friends through their own websites.

Who would you like to have back in your life again? Maybe they’re out there, waiting for you to reach out.

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By Posted on Posted in Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

1. Listen before you talk.

2. Share advice and resources at least 8 or 10x as often as you self-promote.

3. Be friendly, helpful, and interesting; provide useful and accurate information that builds people’s trust in you.

4. Amplify your message across different channels, but only in ways that make sense and don’t annoy.

5. Reach out to others, both individually and in groups (as appropriate).

Using these rules, I’ve grown my business more from social media (all the way back to 1995) than anything else I’ve ever done to market my writing and marketing/publishing consulting services, and have also sold a fair number of books and other information products.

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By Posted on Posted in Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

In the better late than never department, I am finally posting my social media policy. I’ve resisted in part because no matter what I come up with, it doesn’t seem ideal—but when you reach a certain degree of online popularity, a policy really becomes necessary. I currently have 4570 followers on Twitter, over 1200 on Facebook. LinkedIn stops counting at 500, which I surpassed long ago. And I wish I could simply follow everyone back and actually keep up, but I haven’t figured out how to clone myself. I think I’d need at least four of me, just for social media.

In the interest of transparency, I should explain that I dip in and out quickly. Most of my status updates on both Facebook and LinkedIn originate on Twitter, via a Facebook application called “Selective Tweets.” My other participation on Facebook usually starts with following an e-mail notification link to a comment on my wall or a private message. While I’m there, I look around quickly, Like or comment on a few messages, and scan my home page. I interact with LinkedIn primarily by participating in discussion groups.

On Twitter, I tend to follow more links, look for things worth retweeting or posting to my Green and Ethical Marketing pages on Facebook and LinkedIn, check out a few of the latest people following me, and follow some of them. I try to spend no less than 15 and no more than 30 minutes daily on all social media combined.

Facebook and LinkedIn:
On these networks, I accept almost everyone who reaches out with a connection request, unless your profile is empty, you focus on things I find disgusting (sleazy get rich schemes, sexual exploitation, bigotry, ways to fool the social networks—stuff like that). If you abuse the access I give you, I unfriend you—which, fortunately, doesn’t happen often. However, it may not be instant. We do them in batches, and we have found that with Facebook, it’s best not to do more than 20 at a time, so as not to set off their internal alarms. If there are 50 or 60 waiting, it may be quite a while. My VA visits your profile and determines whether you’re a marketer, activist, environmentalist, etc., and sends you an appropriate message that I’ve prewritten.

For both Facebook and LinkedIn, I will open direct messages when I get the e-mail notification—but those notifications don’t always arrive. LinkedIn asks me sometimes several times a week to verify or update my e-mail account because notifications are bouncing. Twitter does likewise—this happens whether I keep the former address or switch to an alternate at a different domain. Yet other times, the mail goes through just fine.

Twitter:
I pay much closer attention to direct messages and mentions/retweets/suggestions to follow me than I do to new-follower notices (which, as noted, don’t always even get delivered). If you @ me with a retweet or an attempt to engage me based on some meaningful connection (NOT trying to sell me something random, which will get you blocked), I will click through to your profile. If I like what I see when I get there, I follow back.

Because Twitter feels so much more personal to me, I’m fussier about who I follow. Your profile has to interest me, and that’s going to be personal, quirky, and in the moment (I might come back a different day and feel differently). But I can tell you a few guidelines:

  • If I notice that your screen name or real name has words like Green, Eco, Enviro, or Peace, I’m likely to click over for a look
  • If your whole screen is just lists of names (such as Follow Friday lists), I am not likely to follow
  • If you live in Western Massachusetts and especially if you use the #westernma hashtag, I’m pretty likely to follow back.
  • If your Tweet stream focuses on something that doesn’t interest me, I’m not going to follow. I once clicked on a follower’s profile to find a very well-done stream all about online gaming. While I admired the quality of his content, I have no interest in the subject and didn’t follow back.
  • If I recognize your name or remember meeting/corresponding with you, I’m likely to take a look.And I confess, I can’t keep up. Whether I visit your profile right away is going to depend on how many other new follows I got since I last checked. If I have 5, I’ll likely visit them all. If I have 30 or more, I’ll scan for people I know, then look for a handful with interesting screen names. If I happen to notice something in your bio about sustainability, social media, or other interests of mine, or if I see a high follower count, I’m more likely to click through.With 3879 people that I’m currently following, I barely glance at the “All Friends” column on TweetDeck. I pay slightly more attention to it than I did before I figured out how to reduce the update frequency. Before that, it was scrolling by so fast I could barely read a tweet, and clicking on a link was basically impossible.

    TweetDeck is my favorite tool for interfacing with Twitter. I use it to manage mentions not only of my twitter handle but also my name and my most recent book title (Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green), Direct Messages, and a small subset of people that I want to pay closer attention to. I also use it to search, to schedule Tweets ahead, and to keep track of certain topics.

    I do like the serendipity of the All Friends timeline, and therefore occasionally go to Twitter’s own interface to see people I don’t often see (especially if  happen to be on my iPad).

    Is this arbitrary, capricious, and unfair? Yes, I’m afraid so. And I’ll happily entertain any better ideas: post on the comments here, or Tweet me at ShelHorowitz

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, privacy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

Acording to no less a source than London’s well-respected Financial Times, Facebook has admitted hiring a PR agency to spread stories questioning Google’s privacy policies.

I’m no fan of Google’s approach to privacy, and one of the reasons I still keep Eudora, my “throwback” e-mail system where the e-mail resides on my own hard drive, is that I don’t particularly want Google to have access to my outbox (I do filter some incoming mail through GMail). However, I’ve never particularly trusted Facebook on that score either. I simply stick to a policy that assumes anything I post anywhere is public knowledge, and I try to not post anything, anywhere, that would come back to bite me. Fortunately, I live a pretty transparent and ethical life, and I don’t really have much to worry about. And I’ve never been afraid to be controversial, or to be “ahead of my time.”

I’m also willing to stand up for what’s right. If Facebook chooses to “get even” with me for expressing outrage over this action, and suspends my account, so be it. I managed to live my first 50 years without any help from Facebook. At 54, I could live another 50 years without it if I had to.

Nonetheless, I am deeply appalled. Don’t we have anything better to do than to take our opponents down? I’m much more a believer in cooperating with our competitors (something I discuss extensively in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green). And if you are going to attack your competitors, at least have the decency to do it out in the open. This kind of smear campaign is what I expect from the lunatic fringe that has hijacked the US Republican Party, not from a company that has built its entire business model on cultivating surprisingly deep openness among its users.

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By Posted on Posted in Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

Thirty-one years ago, the housemate with whom I’d found an apartment moved out, and I invited a poet friend of mine to take his place. We shared that apartment for several months, until he, too, moved on, and another friend moved in.

Today, I went to see that poet friend for the first time since around 1980. We’d been completely out of touch–but about a year ago, a mutual friend tracked my wife down on Facebook. Turns out that mutual friend also convinced my old housemate to join Facebook, where we found each other a month or so ago.

The friend who moved in after him stayed in that apartment after I left, but later moved to Vesey Street, two blocks from the World Trade Center. It was a primitive form of social media that let me know, finally, that she was OK, two weeks after 9/11.

And there are a number of others.

I remember very clearly the first time something like this happened: AOL was still my Internet portal, so that fixes it somewhere in 1994-95. All of a sudden I got an e-mail from a high school friend. Tom and his wife Liz came up to visit (we live four hours apart), attended my wife’s book party in New York, and have generally reentered our lives. As have Lew and Katherine, the friends who connected us with my old housemate. A few months ago, they moved up from New Jersey to two towns away from us in Massachusetts; we hadn’t seen them since a falling-out somewhere around 1989. Now, we’ve seen them several times. In fact, we’re seeing them tomorrow.

Oddly enough, when I’ve searched for old friends, I haven’t had much luck finding them. But quite a few have found me.

I’ve forged or deepened many connections via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and other communities with people I hadn’t known before–but those reconnections from 20 or 30 years in the past are particularly special.

(A slightly different version of this article was published on Technorati under the title Technology Helps Me Cross Time Tunnels to the Distant Past.)

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By Posted on Posted in Networking, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , ,

Yesterday, I co-hosted a teaching call with the amazing George Kao, a social media trainer who specializes in highly productive techniques for using social media (and who is socially conscious, too.

George gave me permission to share his very informative handout: his slides are at https://georgekao.com/socialslides

I also want to share a few of the takeaways

* Find the actions that provide the greatest benefit for the least work (he lists many of these in the slides)
* Balance the human and the professional/expert
* Find easy ways to show you care, like spending one second to click and say you like a comment on Facebook
* Multiple approaches increase likelihood of connecting
* Twitter is not only indexed by Twitter, but searchable on Google–BIG reach! Easy way to spread ideas
* Make your last comment of the day (or in a batch of posts) count–it has more staying power because it will be at the top of your page all night

This was the fourth call with George I’ve been on since June. I always learn so much! In fact, it was the incredible value of his content that made me reach out to him, form a friendship (we and our wives had dinner when I was in San Francisco this summer) and partner with him to deliver this call to my network.

I’m going to be participating in his 12-session coaching program on social media, and also his program on running webinars for fun and profit, and eagerly looking forward to both. I have *never* encountered a better social media trainer, and I’m an avid consumer of coaching calls.

You may want to as well. There’s a signup link at the end of the slides. Each course is usually $720, but I’ve arranged a discount–you can learn form this “Jedi Master of Social Media” (my term–he’s much too modest) for $480. Mention my name. If you order both of George’s programs (normally $1440) with the one-payment option, it’s $920. Mention my name (Shel Horowitz), and George will paypal you a $200 rebate on this double package.

Full disclosure: yes, I make a commission on this. But more importantly, you get a tremendous education in social media that can knock months or years off your learning curve, set you on the path to profitability, and save you hours per week.

Will I see you on the calls?

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

Social Media & Webinar Expert George Kao: Free Teleseminar on Success with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook in 15 Minutes Per Day

In addition to being very socially conscious and eco-aware (he was an administrator for the largest Green MBA program in the US), the amazing George Kao is a social network trainer who knows social media better than anyone else I’ve encountered. I’ve been marketing seriously via social media since 1995, and it’s been my primary source of clients all the way back to 1996. And yet, I learn so much from listening to George that I not only sat in on *three* of his calls in the last two months, but also made a point of seeking him out for a dinner meeting when I was in San Francisco.

I’m absolutely thrilled to be co-hosting this call (with my friend Allison Nazarian). If you only pick one teleclass to attend in the next few months, make it this one.

Mark your calendar: Tuesday Sept 22, 5 pm ET/2 pm PT. And dial in early to avoid being closed out. (There are only 250 seats.)

Sign up at https://georgekao.com/922s . Note: the call will be recorded, but the replay will cost $80.

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By Posted on Posted in Customer Service as Marketing, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

When a lot of people think of crowd-sourcing–harnessing the network of common wisdom–they probably think first of Wikipedia, which is written by its users. But Wikipedia, and Wikis in general, are only the most visible piece of an amazing phenomenon that dates back to the earliest days of the Net. Maybe eight or ten years ago, I was interviewed in some publication about how to get support and problems-solving for free or very low cost. And I described, among other things, how I got technical support from my then-most-current social media strategy: e-mail discussion groups.

It’s usually easy to find an informed and intelligent group of people who are delighted to answer your question. Online communities have been solving people’s problems for several decades. The form keeps evolving–from BBSs to -L listservs to yahoogroups, and now, to communities like Twitter, groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc. But just as TV did not replace radio and radio did not replace print, this is an additive process; the old ways still work.

Just today, I ran into a problem with my home phone somehow forwarding to my business line. I didn’t set this up and couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. So I posted on Twitter, and a few minutes later, I had the answer. But I also have an issue with Amazon.com’s Advantage program, and I won’t look for the answer on Twitter or Facebook. I’m going to be asking on the two yahoogroups publishing discussion lists I follow. I expect I’ll find the answer. Knowing which audience makes sense for which kinds of questions makes a difference. And it also makes a difference if you consistently provide value to others within the community; people will be much more helpful if you’re seen as one of the “good guys.”

So…with all this free consulting (not to mention free information on the Web, already posted)…why do people still need consultants? Simple: Responses on social networks are typically off-the-cuff, general advice that may or may not be relevant to a specific situation. Even if someone spends 20 or 30 minutes answering a question, that person doesn’t know your specific situation, and won’t be expected to go into depth. In fact, social networks are an excellent way to demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about, so that when people do need to go deeper, they turn to you.

Yes, this really works; I’ve actually built my business on it. And just as an example of the free-to-fee model, I’ve given you the skeleton here. If you want to know the nuts and bolt, I have various infoproducts that can help, including my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

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