Okay, well, apparently every month or so I get a wild hair and decide I’m going to offend 99% of the world’s population. Last time, I went on a tear about productivity blogs. This time my foe has grown. Welcome, in the red corner, weighing in at one berzillion pounds, the undefeated Facebook.
Ding! Round 1
I’m starting off the round with a pretty wicked feint. I have to admit I actually think Facebook is pretty amazing. I mean, you can leave messages for your friends, chat with them, find someone to have sex with, send people fake beers, play fake cards, check your fake horoscope and about 80 zillion other mostly not-real things.
Not to mention, you can’t really go complaining too much about something that is just an application. Until it’s put to use, it’s just an inert thing. Like a chainsaw, which is just sort of ho-hum until you saw someone off at the ankles. At which point your family picnic becomes a whole different type of awesome.
So the problem with Facebook is with the people who use Facebook. For everything. All the time.
Instead of living.
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In which Charlie reveals why people might be dropping you from their Twitter lists like you’re a poisonous puffer fish coated in hot lava and rabid Saint Bernard slobber.
I‘m sure there are an infinite number of reasons why people might choose to drop you from their Twitter lists. I’m sure someone, sometime, with no thought about it, will drop you simply because they had a funky bagel for breakfast. That said, it’s fairly likely that two main overriding rules are the essence of any unfollow. If you’re the impatient type, stick with these bolded statements and call it a day. Then go make me some cookies1:
Remember why people are listening to you and then give them something they want to hear.
Each little tweet takes up a tiny bit of time and is, in essence, a brief interruption. Use that time wisely.
Those are fairly broad and general ideas, so I’m gonna break them down into a few specifics that will make you go, “Hmm,” “Ahhh,” and stroke your chin wisely.
A commonsense guide to using Twitter
The basics are already covered
Every single person on this planet eats, drinks, sleeps and uses the bathroom. Unless it’s really news, it probably isn’t really news.
If you just ate a real live pterodactyl or passed a fire hydrant through your digestive tract, by all means report it to the masses. If not, consider the newsworthiness of such circadian items before letting us all know.
Nothing disastrous about sharing personal things, but minimize it where you can. Give us the goods!
Who does it right? @sushiday. Awesome Twitter user and blogger. She transforms food into something I really care about, regardless of the medium. And that’s saying a lot for a guy who rarely remembers he needs to eat at all.
Don’t JUST be a reTweeter
If people are following you, it’s because they want to hear what you think. I’m all for supporting my friends and reTweeting when something awesome comes down the interwebs, and I’m not saying it should always be about you. Part of the magic about Twitter is how reTweets can turn something awesome into something awesomely viral in a nano-second.
But it sort of needs to be awesome first. “Bread belongs on sandwiches,” isn’t really worth the reTweet.
So reTweet the awesome stuff or come up with original Tweets of your own.
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Networking makes a lot of people feel dirty and arrogant. That’s because most people network like they are dirty and arrogant.
Which isn’t to say you actually are dirty and arrogant, but rather that your technique could use some polishing. Or maybe you really are dirty and arrogant. In which case using great marketing techniques won’t really work because then you’ll just look like a dirty arrogant person who has tricks up his sleeve, thereby making you dirty, arrogant and devious.
See, old-school networking (the kind we’re used to) is all about “me.” You know what I mean because you’ve been there. Might have been at a high-school reunion, or after a business meeting with colleagues or after some big-time finance seminar. Some dude with a nice suit and disgustingly perfect hairdo came up to you and let you know all about how awesome he was:
“I’m a marketer for a multi-national company. I win awards for the work I do. I’ve been thinking of moving on and starting my third billion-dollar company, but frankly my firm couldn’t get along without me. Oh…and I can eat an entire poppy seed muffin and not a single seed gets stuck in my teeth. That’s how slick and awesome I am.”
Or the used-car salesman attitude: “I’m the best salesman in the area. I got a plaque last year. Yeah, and check out my tie. I won it. It was made from the skin of a rare bird that is now extinct. Thirteen children died while stitching this tie together, but, you know, it’s cool because I get it dry-cleaned.”
This isn’t networking. This is acting like a human resume and hoping for the best.
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Welcome to part one of Ignite Living’s “Why You Owe it to Yourself to be an Entrepreneur” series. In this series we’re going to explore…guess what? That’s right. Why you owe it to yourself to be an entrepreneur.
We’re gonna start this series off with a subject that’s very close to our hearts, stomachs and landlords: money.
If I were to give my top two reasons for becoming an entrepreneur, the first would be freedom and the second would be money.
Now, how much money you make as an entrepreneur will mostly be in ratio to your industriousness, marketing ability and many other factors, so it wouldn’t be fully truthful for me to say all entrepreneurs make more money.
However, the potential for you to make sick amounts of cash is much higher as an entrepreneur. And I can illustrate this by telling you a real-life story that is entirely not even a lie. About me. In my old corporate job. At a HUGE company that I guarantee you’ve heard of, from which you’ve bought stuff and which should have known better.
Corporate suckiness
Back when I was in the corporate world, I out-produced my quota by double. I’m not patting my own back. It’s just the job was easy and I was antisocial and never once left my desk ever, hence production. After the third year of doing this, I asked for what I thought would be a fitting raise and was given the awesome response of “no.”
I wanted to know the reason for that so I asked, “What’s the reason for that?”
My pay, I came to learn, was actually part of a complicated mix of factors, most important of which was how long I’d been at the company. Having been there for X amount of years, I’d make X amount of money. Then later, when I’d been at the company for Y years, I’d be making Y.
Yay. Worst. System. Ever. Gotta love the Old People Win and Young People Get Screwed System of Rewards and Penalties.
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We’ve just ushered in 2009. We’ve got electric cars, skyscrapers and the ability to urinate while floating around in outer space. I mean…we’re like crazy techno freaks now.
So it struck me as sort of odd the other day when someone said to me, straight to my face, while looking in my eyes, “Money hates me and avoids me.”
I laughed hysterically for a while until I realized the person wasn’t laughing along with me and was actually quite serious. So I had to cover up and say, “Oh! Ahem…excuse me…that’s, uh…my allergies.”
“Allergies make you laugh at people?”
“Uh…it’s a…pollen…thing.”
While choking back more laughter, I had to struggle my wits around the statement.
“Money avoids me.”
Despite our ability to split atoms and walk on the moon, there’s still this odd voodoo/mojo/magic/aura/mumbo-jumbo thingy about money and how it comes and goes. Or fails to do so, for the less fortunate.
Well, I took it upon myself to do some ultra-scientific tests about money, how it works and how it gets from one place to the other. Preferably your hand to my wallet.
The Truth About Money
Seriously now. As we all embark (or wish to) upon business and life, the first thing we need to do when it comes to making money is banish the thought that it’s not ours, that it somehow avoids us and that we don’t deserve it.
People are afraid to even dream about hoping to commence upon considering the possibility that they may, someday, if the stars align, start a business. They worry, first, that they may fail. That worry is at partially based on a false idea that money is somehow self-motivated and out of one’s control. Like money is out there and just chooses to grace Company A with profits and inversely runs screaming from Company B willy nilly, nothing we can do about it.
Ain’t so. My very scientific researches uncovered the truth about money and I’d like to share them with you now:
- Money has no mind, no thoughts and no personality.
- Money doesn’t know your name or where you live.
- Money doesn’t know if you work 1 hour a week or 14 hours a day. Nor does it care in the least.
- Money is not drawn to people with strong personalities.
- Money isn’t offended if you smell like rotten armpit.
- Money does not avoid people who wear excessive plaid.
- Money doesn’t have a favorite color, but if it did I bet it would be “off-magenta.”
- Money doesn’t desire to drive a nice car or have slumber parties with its friends.
- When it gets up in the morning and thinks about what it wants to do today, it has absolutely no fucking clue.
Do you get what I’m saying here?
Money is dead. It’s paper. It’s a thing, with no more mind or personality than a brick or your left knee. (For people who actually do keep their personality in their left knee, my apologies.)
Nobody deserves money more than another and nobody is more entitled to it than you are. Money is created and earned by much less complicated means than all of our strange ideas would suggest.
“Well, what about me?” you ask. “I’ve been working hard for 20 years and I’ve got about six nickels to rub together. Money avoids me like the plague.”
Bummer, and I understand. I’ve been there too. But money is NOT avoiding you because money can’t avoid anything. Avoidance assumes a power of choice, and money’s ability to make a decision ranks somewhere between that of cardboard and a chicken nugget.
If you currently have no money, it means you haven’t earned, haven’t saved or both.
So let’s be done with these frilly other-worldly explanations. Money is not based on magic, karma, your facial features, childhood memories, freckles, height, luck, beneficent blessings from The Great Creator or leprechauns.
Okay…maybe leprechauns. I’m still looking into this one.
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