As a social media controller, manager, person…whatever you want to call me, I have passwords and logins for all of my clients’ accounts, and this includes their Twitter accounts. Once a month, I take the time to go through and unfollow inactive accounts, people who are not following, people who aren’t a good fit for my clients, etc. In essence…I “clean house.”

What blows my mind as I am doing this are the number of accounts that just….drift off. There are tweets, tweets, than suddenly… no tweets.  3 months, 9 months, 11 months go by and businesses have given up.  It’s all just silly, in my opinion.

Every single person I’ve interacted with in real life that is on Twitter and using it to create relationships along with getting business stuff out there, has indeed GOTTEN business.  Even MUSICIANS.

Case and point: Cathy Hurt (@cathhurt) just joins twitter. She really doesn’t know why… she just does it.  Ashley Plummer (@ashleyplummer), guitarist for Neon Love Life and Butler University video and web producer extraordinaire, is tweeting that we’re looking for a female sax player. You see…we recently had the opportunity to play Indy’s Tonic Ball and one of the artists that was covered, was David Bowie. Since we have an all-female band, we wanted a female saxophone player for our version of Modern Love.

Ash tweets of our need. Someone responds with Cathy’s name and twitter handle. Cathy then gets to experience the Neon Love Life madness in 6 rehearsals and a killer performance that was tons of fun. ALL BECAUSE OF TWITTER. Let me also mention that Cathy has always wanted to play Tonic Ball and finally got to. ALL BECAUSE OF TWITTER. (Her experience was of course, the biggest factor. I mean, she was prepared and came into the first rehearsal nailing it. She was a joy to work with and was utmost professional.)

This may be a small example to you, but not to us, and not to Cathy because it was a perfect fit.

Sometimes it may take some time to find your individual perfect “fits.” But I urge you, DO NOT GIVE UP ON TWEETING because Twitter IS as Tweeters DO. Take the time to ‘do.’

Questions? Please ask.

Experience? Please share.

So to my readers, I apologize for my sporaticism…(yet another made up word). Here’s what’s on my mind today. I’ve been running across a million posts lately about how social media marketing is pretty much recession-proof. At least, that’s my all-in-one sentence summary.

This is good but at the same time, kinda scary. Because that means my mom, who recently joined Facebook (we’re talking less than two weeks ago), could hop on the social bandwagon and think she can be business development in the next 6 months. Wrong. She can’t. (Not that she would even consider that…she just gets to be my lucky example.) It’s a scary thought, and now, more than ever, it’s high time companies, large and small, understand who they’re dealing with when it comes to the voice of their company, if they’re hiring outside help.

Stretching Too Thin

Prime example: I began my company, Linzstar Inc nearly three years ago. I am extremely fortunate and blessed to still be here and growing…to the point that I get to pick and choose who I get to work with. I have a client I dedicate most of my time too, because for many SM marketers, it’s easy to let their plate get too full with different industries. In other words, people like us are already of the social sort, so when we’re out there, it’s easy to chase rabbits down holes. So easy in fact, that sometimes, clients can get buried in the dust freelancers are kicking behind as they try to grow. Been there, done that. For greedy people, this may not be a problem. For me, I hate the thought of others not thinking I’ve done my part for the money they’ve spent. My job is ultimately to create such a positive social and user experience, that a company grows…period. It’s been an interesting learning curve over the past three years, but one I wouldn’t change.

I’ve also learned that to be successful in this environment, it’s quality clients, over quantity. It’s like one of the five top rules of the social media mantra, right?

So, while this industry is on the rise, which means I perhaps have some job stability in my field, it’s still insanely important to learn what you can about whom you may consider for your company. Find a marketer that places you as a priority and work out budgets around that. I know one great thing for me and my clients, because I’m such a small company, I get to work with people that may not want to spend 40-50K a year in their online marketing.

So, as we round the curve in social media marketing, you know, that one that had people arguing over whether or not the job of an online marketer was sustainable a few years back, it’s still very important to pick the right fit for your industry.

Even the greatest of writers and bloggers sometimes struggle with new ideas or concepts to share. What often inspires me when I’m going through the lull of idea birthing, is reading what other people are sharing. Another thing that helps inspire me is to get the heck out and DO something. Go to a networking event, go to a social media meeting or tweet up. Meet people and share. Sometimes the most trivial of conversations can strike up ideas.

As a ghost blogger and content creator, many of my clients want to know what the perfect solution is. And really, over and over I let them know that there is no perfect solution. It’s about creating content that people need. It’s about being real with your audience. It’s about talking about what your kids did that day and how it clicked with something you experienced. It’s about the jerk in the traffic that cut you off that made you think of a time you did that and what was going on at the time that caused you to do what you are now cussing about.

We all experience the same emotions, some more often than others. I don’t care who you are, what your station is in this life, or how much you’ve been praised as a child or adult. Sometimes the most personal experiences then sharing of those experiences have the most profound affect on your readers. Never be afraid to share. (note: use discretion here…not EVERYTHING is good for a business blog.)

The main point of this is that sure, we all get the contential blues sometimes. Don’t be afraid to go in a different direction in order to pick the momentum back up.

Happy writing.

Examples? “Content is King,” “You must be ‘engaging’ your customers,” blah, blah, blah. As a matter of fact, I’m sure I’ve used lines like this before in my presentation of new media marketing and search engine optimization.

But the reality is that content isn’t king, and who really writes the rules of engagement anyway?

Raidious is a content builder, strategy creator–all things online in one stop. But we’ll get to that in another post. For this one, I want to focus on making … creating.

What’s really so important about creating new stuff for your brand anyway? (Great question!)

There are hundreds of thousands of brands out there. I don’t have a percentage, but I think it’s safe to guess that probably ¾ of them have websites. I mean I’ve seen hundreds of websites…some good, some bad, and some downright ugly.

Just because you have a website, doesn’t mean it’s going to get you what you want (and what you want–or should want–is brand loyalty and sales … just in case you were wondering).

A static site is not going to get that for you. What I mean by static site is one that gives you a whole lot of information. One that sells, sells, sells! But most importantly, one that never changes. Like, “Here’s our site that we created two years ago. It’s had the exact same thing on it for two years!”

I’m not a huge SEO (search engine optimization) girl. I understand it enough to work with it, but I just don’t know the crazy google-ish science behind it.

What I do know, is that a strategy that prioritizes creating new, helpful, clear, and understandable content on a regular basis not only helps with SEO, but also helps your clients and customers.

So, yes, content creation is certainly important, but just as important as regularity. So, get out there and make, create, dominate.

(side note) I wrote this post for Raidious a couple of months ago. View the original here.

Fast-forward a year and a half. I’m now pretty situated and feel like I can share this. Or more so, feel I need to share it. Not sure why…but I am.

I, along with my family and my daughter’s father decided the best situation for her to have a stable routine was to be with her dad…as I was moving out of town… away from my family, starting a business from the ground up, as well as being in a rock band. I’ve been judged because of this. I’ve had people say mean and nasty things to me, call me a bad mother, mouth off some stuff about priorities…the list goes on.

On the flip side, I’ve had major supporters (my family included and constantly encouraging), people who completely understand, and people who believe what I did, was the best thing for my little girl in this particular situation. I definitely side with this crowd. It wasn’t an easy decision by any means, but ultimately, but allowing my self to not be in control of everything, I’ve seen an evolution of love. I’m with my daughter every week. I love her more than anything. She helps me be a better person and I hope she grows up understanding that she can be and do absolutely anything she wants.

Now, when you have a child with someone and it doesn’t work out, it can be nasty and devastating. I know. We were once there. Bella’s father is an amazing artist, tattooist, writer, and since we’ve had Bella, a devoted father and now husband to a wonderful woman. He has been in my life for 14 years. It was love/hate for most of it. But he’s changed into an incredible man. Not one for me, mind you…but a great one for his wife and my (our) baby girl.

Last week, I was hanging out with my good friend, Dave Quiesser. Dave owns Locals Only Art and Music Pub. I kinda love Dave because he’s pretty awesome. Anyway, we were spending some time talking about how lucky I am to be able to drop off my little girl, and never have to worry about anything. I don’t have to worry about a resentful ex talking smack about me and vice versa. We’ve been blessed to have grown into two adults who are so lucky to have this amazing little person with a great big personality. We get to show her that love can evolve into anything she wants, and that there is no such thing as normal…that we create whatever we want in our lives and make the best of whatever situation we face. My family didn’t stop. It only grew, as I now have his wife’s family as part of mine. That’s what happens when you choose for it to. No matter what you do today or this week, remember that people come into your life for a reason…and almost ALWAYS to teach us something that we can either pay attention to or choose to ignore. Here’s to evolution and more importantly, to love.

I’m an emotional being…sometimes too emotional. But as an artist/writer/creative type, I feed off emotion. It paves a way for me. That’s the first point.

Point number two: I’m an entrepreneur…a businesswoman. I help businesses blog and build relationships online. I help teach them how to be real with their audience and help build their audience. That being said, a question that often arises is, “What should my blog be about?”

My response? Everything.

Now, you may be thinking, “what about target audience?” or “what about business?”
Yes, all that too. The thing is, there really is no right or wrong way to write a blog. And there’s really no ‘this thing’ or ‘that thing’ that it should be about. Sure, if you’re a business, you definitely need a blog about that business, but it doesn’t have to be ONLY about business stuff. Sometimes I write about business, sometimes I write about passion. Sometimes I write about other people’s businesses, and sometimes I write about music…or my daughter.

The thing is, pretty much anything we write about can circle back around to what we’re passionate about. It’s more a matter of just doing it. Chris Brogan is brilliant at this. He can take some random thought or experience that happened in his life that exact day, and mold it into a couple paragraphs of relatable brilliance that typically circles back to business and the humanization of it.

My advice…don’t think too hard. Just do. And if you’re still not sure, have someone go over your blog post before you post. Write about your experiences and how they’ve made you learn about X lesson. Write about something your child did that made you think back to how you could relate to others in the workplace. Make business personal. That’s when people really relate to you.

So let’s talk about “klout.” I’ve had a lot of friends ask me about this recently and been asked to write about it…what exactly IS it?…how do you get your klout score up?…is it important?…should we be competing for klout? Stuff like that. I’m not exactly a “klout” expert, but here are some great tips from Erik along with killer resources to help you get your klout in check, which btw, Erik’s klout score is way higher than mine. If any of you wanna team up with me to kick his butt, let me know!

Take it away, Erik!

Five Secrets I Used to Trick Klout. Sort Of.

It’s really been grinding Douglas Karr’s gears that my Klout score is higher than his, even if it’s only by a couple points or so.

He mentioned his anguish during a recent talk at a Northwest Indiana tweetup, and then again on his Marketing Tech radio show, so I know it’s getting to him. Still, Doug has set the bar plenty high, so to even come close to him on something is a pretty big deal, let alone beat him. (And since it’s the only thing I’m going to beat him in — ever — I want to hold on to this for as long as I can.)

It’s possible to game the Klout system, but it takes a long-term strategy. Sure, you can try to work it in short bursts, but the system will weed out people who don’t stay dedicated, mostly because they use cheap techniques that take too much energy and effort for an extended period of time. So I came up with my own system that will work, by tricking Klout into thinking I’m actually a model Twitter citizen. Here’s how I did it.

1) Be choosy about who I follow.

One of the things Klout pays attention to is the follower/following ratio, how influential my audience is, and whether they take action on my tweets. Having a big network doesn’t do me any good if I’m following junk accounts, abandoned accounts, or spammers.

I use Manage Flitter to unfollow people who don’t follow me and haven’t tweeted in the last three months. This way, I clean out all the deadwood on my network. Why run up my following count on people who won’t use the system more than once every 90 days? They don’t provide value, so they’re out.

I also carefully consider whether to follow someone. I’ll follow people if they provide good value, if they are real people and not brands, and if they don’t tweet crap, constant news headlines, or motivational quotes. I avoid the spam accounts, bot accounts, and the accounts that follow 2,000 people but have never written a single tweet. By following people who know how to use Twitter properly, my network is made up of people I’m happy to read and retweet.

2) Be choosy about who follows me.

I am actually a little choosy about people who follow me. I will “block & report for spam” any porn accounts, anyone who uses Twitter to promote their MLM or money-making system, or is going to do nothing but sell crap. By eliminating these people, my network is more engaged and more likely to read my tweets and react to them. I don’t need to artificially boost my follower account by letting in these spammers and fakers, and I would certainly never join one of those “find followers fast” networks that promise to boost my numbers.

3) Tweet good stuff.

If you want people to pay attention to your stuff and retweet it, make sure you say something useful. I will never tweet out motivational quotes, daily “good morning tweeps” messages, or news headlines after news headline. Instead, I send out things that will be useful, interesting or funny to my Twitter network. Since my network is made up primarily of social media folks, writers, and people with a sense of humor, I make sure at least half of my tweets will be appealing to one or more of those groups. The other half are real conversations and responses to other Twitterers.

Read the last two tips here: Five Secrets I Used to Trick Klout. Sort Of. | Professional Blog Service

Now, is your klout score going to make or break you? Nope…I don’t think so. When you’re real on twitter, it doesn’t really matter that much. Make it count. Or don’t. I think this klout stuff is fun for us competitive social media types…and to be honest, I don’t pay that much attention to it. But for those of you who are interested, I hope Erik’s post is helpful.

The comment section is open for your thoughts! Cheers!

The Horse: I’ll call this blogging. I don’t know about you, but your blog is the meat, or the horse of your business…at least when it comes to online content. You can have the best website in the world, but when it comes down to putting up content and getting Google to recognize you’ve got new stuff, you’ve got to be doing SOMETHING.

Blogging is such an integral part of web stuff. I started writing this blog the other day, and it just so happens that last night, Chantelle Flannery, one of the authors of Corporate Blogging for Dummies, and my buddy, Jason Falls, were talking a bit on the topic at the newly formed Social Media Club Indy. Blogging equates to search results. Period. Your blogs are a little slice of YOU, YOUR BUSINESS, YOUR EVERYTHING. Blogging is important. And if you can’t blog, or don’t have time to, or suck at it, you hire me. (Shameless plug, I know…) But do you get the point?

So let’s talk about the cart. The cart typically comes after…when you actually have something to carry. Social media is your cart. It’s the platform in which you place your blogs and stuff on. The cart is Twitter, Facebook, Stumble Upon, Reddit, LinkedIN, and all those other places you can link to…and what does linking do? It causes search results.

And carts sometimes break down. Something Chantelle pointed out last night…Twitter and all these other social media platforms that we have become semi-dependent on, may not be around in a few years. Yes, it’s a scary thought but it’s truth…yeah, remember Myspace? Exactly. If the cart breaks down, at least you still have a horse you can ride.

It’s so easy for businesses to get caught up in social media, but what exactly are you carrying if you don’t have good content and information for the people who need it? And trust me, if you don’t do it, someone else will. (Also, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT THE BE ALL END ALL. It’s only ONE part of the marketing spectrum…)

However, when it comes to this part of that spectrum, the cart and the horse go hand in hand. If you’re a new business, or just getting started with the whole web stuff, I’d be more concerned with a healthy horse. Then, when the time is right and you’ve got that content…you can carry it out to the world.

Giddy up.

How appropriate for how I’ve felt lately. Somewhat lost…knowing I need to do something…anything…but have lost motivation. I’m going through some personal development right now…having to give up something I love because it’s not healthy for me. I get so caught up in thinking one way, that it inhibits my thinking in other ways. Does that make sense?

I think all entrepreneurs go through this. Often. And it sucks. We ebb and flow through high times, low times, personal demon times, and times where we feel we can conquer the world. And this goes beyond entrepreneurs. Everyone feels this way regardless of the label you give yourself. The big question is: How do you get unstuck and out of the hole you so desperately want to climb out of? How do you let it go and move on?

I think we’re often our own worst enemies. My business coach, Deseri Garcia, just wrote a post about the “wall.” Since she’s a long-distance runner, she references this “wall” as the one who hit where you’re nearly halfway to your goal and you feel as if you can’t go on anymore. You’re ready to give up…stop…and then rationalize by telling yourself that everyone else experiences it. I do this. I’m guilty. I tell myself whatever I have to, and this has to stop. I know this.

So, maybe it’s this blog post that will gear me up. Maybe I need to write yet another song of what I’ve been going through. Or perhaps I need to look in another spot. Something new.

One of the best parts of being alive is the ability to make choices. When something isn’t working, you’re able to turn around – given you allow yourself to do that. We’re able to have the sense to learn from our ventures. Even though things may not be the “same” as they were before, we can’t view our failures as mistakes. My friend, Christian Long, will be the first to shout out the importance of failure. And failing big is where brilliance comes from.

I guess the point of this post is to give encouragement if you’re having a bad day, week, or month. It DOES pass. It WILL pass. You just have to know that it will. This is as much for me as it is for you.

So, as we enter into this beautiful fall season and fourth quarter, don’t allow external crap to get in the way of what you see as your future. Whatever you do, own it. Go big. And love life.

Video marketing…have you ever thought about it? Or vlogging…aka video blogging?

You know why I love video so much? Because I feel like I “get” the person when I see them talking about what they love or sharing so we can learn. There’s a sense of connection even when there may not be a direct “connection.”

I’ll be honest, I’m a marketer’s dream. You reel me in…I’m yours forever. I’m writing about video for two reasons: 1) I’m enthralled with it right now. 2) I think timing is everything. It just so happens that I was having a conversation with one of my clients out of NYC, yesterday about this very subject matter. Video is enticing and lends a hand in understanding people.

Maria A. Andros, video marketing queen, out of New York believes it’s absolutely essential to incorporate video on your website in this day and age. So, really, why video? Why now? (Especially since you’ve finally been convinced to start blogging…) Well, it’s similar to blogging…only better. Video helps:

• Build relationships with clients
• Build trust
• Build authority
• Creates real connection

I have a client who does videos over particular subject matters, pops them over to me, not only do I KNOW that client’s voice and how they speak, it also brings much more to the table. A personality…not just typed words. Voice inflection…not just capitalized efforts to show emotion. It’s a whole new ball game, really, especially if you’re a visual person. Video lends a hand in understanding where people are coming from.

Read the rest over at Fusework Studios