My friend Thom Singer received a random email from someone he didn’t know asking him to retweet and/or blog about their product. Apparently he was in his car, on his iPhone/Blackberry/whatever, and was so “inspired” by this person’s message that he felt compelled to pull over on the side of the road and record this Twitter etiquette rant:

For the record, I feel exactly the same way. Relationship first…then you can hit me up for a favor. It’s nothing personal…I just already spend more time than I really have doing favors for people I already know. Get in line.

I was working with a client recently on their marketing, and they told me that they had some great testimonials from their customers. When I reviewed them, I found a few of them were very, very strong, but many, while generally positive, didn’t really support my client’s core message. Even the ones that did weren’t, shall we say, well articulated.

I was reminded of a story told to me by my friend Ben Mack (@BenMack), a slightly eccentric marketing genius who I credit as being one of the biggest influences on my business thinking recently. I heard it from him during a long evening at a bar at a Tweetup in Austin (the best place to hear a story like this), but he also tells it in his book, Think Two Products Ahead:

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A few weeks ago on Twitter, I heard about the Austin Makes a Book project, a book that will be crowdsourced for both content and funding. I’m already a published nonfiction author, but I’ve always wanted to have some of my poetry published as well, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. If you’re interested in participating, they’re accepting submissions as of today, and they’re taking the first 100, so get in while you can.

Here’s my submission, which I wrote a few years ago after a trip to the Museum of Modern Art in Houston: (more…)

This Wednesday, 9/23, I’ll be conducting a 90-minute webinar on how to use social networking and social media to grow your business.

Most of my recent webinars have focused on a particular tool (e.g., LinkedIn) or a particular business function (e.g., recruiting). The primary focus of this program will be how to do more with less, i.e., how to get the highest returns from your virtual social interaction with the least (or at least a manageable) amount of effort.

As much fun as Twitter, Facebook, blogging and so on are, it’s easy sometimes to get lost in all that activity and lose sight of the fact that if you’re devoting all that time, you’re hoping for some kind of results!

As we put it in The Virtual Handshake:

People who know how to leverage their networks are called successful. People who just know a lot of people are called socialites. Do you want to be a successful person or a socialite?

All cocktail parties come to an end, but on the Internet there is always another person with whom you can connect. This can be both healthy and hazardous; it’s very tempting to spend far too much time chatting with far too many people. We recommend focusing only on building your network to the extent that your marginal benefit equals your marginal cost. Otherwise, you will be so busy maintaining your relationships that you will have no time to leverage those you have formed.

So if you find yourself spending a lot of time in social media, but are still wondering when the payoff is going to come, you’ll want to be sure to attend this webinar.

Your investment is 90 minutes and $99, which includes a few cool bonus items and comes with a risk-free money-back guarantee if for any reason you’re not completely satisfied.

Register now

Which business practice is sustainable and ethical?

I recently switched my home/office phone over to MagicJack after being enticed by the TV ads and reading several favorable reviews. I mean, come on…no matter how much money you have, how can you NOT be tempted by spending about half as much for a YEAR of service as you’re currently spending on your phone monthly? Plus it’s portable, i.e., you can take your MagicJack with you and use your “home” phone anywhere.

Generally, I had a good experience getting it set up and working – a few things weren’t intuitively obvious in the user interface – I had to consult the online help a couple of times and call their support once. But they were prompt, friendly and resolved the problem, and within less than an hour we had it all set up, working, voicemail configured, a message on our old phone and so on (by the way, my new phone number is 512-938-7847).

And then…

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Why I don’t even bother with trending topics on Twitter any more:

The trending topics show up on the Twitter home page, and I was just curious to see what Kanye did now. By the time I read that short little article, there were 20,000 more results. Between the time I captured the image and the time I’m writing this, it was up to over 25,000 more results.

No point. Don’t even bother trying to throw your $0.02 (or 140 characters) in there to get noticed – it’s a drop in the ocean, a grain of sand on the beach.

Of course, if you’ll just feel better by expressing your opinion about what a jerk Kanye West is, fine – but if you think you’re creating any real value for yourself or anyone else, you’re not.

27,782 more results. I will not click “Refresh”.