I’ve seen a lot of stuff, it’s been more of the same…this has some more of the sameyness but it’s got a degree of customization that’s really sweet. It’s called “If this, then that.” Ifttt.com

Watch my video blog and let me know what you think:

Video Transcript:

It’s kind of a syndication tool so you can take content from Facebook and have it show up on Twitter. But it’s more flexible than those other tools because you can publish to SMS, craigslist, send emails, whatever. Another cool feature is that you can choose to be discriminate about what content gets syndicated. so, just tweets with certain hashtags…I’ll show ya.

So first we’re going to tell the service where to look for content. I’ll go with a Facebook page. Most of the options you see, when you click them, you’ll specify what the service will look at. For the Facebook page I’ll tell it to look for status messages.

Sometimes there are fields to customize the trigger but in this case there aren’t. So I’ll click create trigger. Now we’ll tell the service what action to take once it has found some new content.

In this case we’ll be boring and we’ll post to Twitter. Safe and easy. So how is this supposed to look? Is it posting a tweet based on the Facebook page post? Will it be an image? I don’t know how that works considering we don’t have an image…or post a new user to a list? Those don’t make sense so we’ll just post a new tweet.

Soon this page, the message in the curly braces…that’s going to be the text from Facebook. It’ll automatically be inserted inside there. If you want to add extra text, anything you type outside the braces will be the same every time. Why would you want to customize this? Maybe you want to give people context. So, “Posted from my Facebook page”.

So we’ll create the action. Describe it so it makes sense later. We’ll create it and…we’re done! Easy. But now we’ll get more elaborate.

This time we’ll look to Twitter. Look at all these options. Tons of possibilities. I’m going to look for a new tweet with a hashtag by me. What is that hashtag? #Testing!

Now what action should IFTTT take? I want it to post a note to my phone via SMS. In the curly braces, the text from the tweet goes to my phones. I’ll add onto that by providing context by explaining where the message came from…and then a description…and viola! It’s done.

So these are two relatively simple examples. 

One quick note is that the service only looks for updates every 15 minutes. As far as I can tell that is not customizable. So if you post to Twitter, nothing will happen for 15 minutes.

You can also check the “recipes” section to see what other things people make. You can sort by popularity which is great. Lot of nice ideas in here.

This is an awesome service. It doesn’t cost anything. It’s really easy to use. I’d love to know how you used it and what you did, or if you didn’t why you didn’t. Leave a note in the comments, can’t wait to read ‘em. 

But first, the rules

Over the years I’ve developed a bunch of loose rules to follow when I’m doing “outreach,” also known as “posting links to stuff on the Web.” I recently broke one of those rules and that’s what prompted this post. So here they are:

1. Invest in the community. Posting “cold” on a community you’ve never taken part in is commonplace for marketers, but it makes sense do more, and try to participate in a community—especially the ones that are most important to you and your client. That means posting and building up a legitimate history you can point to in case people ever accuse you of being a worthless shill.
   

   The typical forum response to anything posted by marketers

2. The first sentence of your post should state your name and what your intentions are. Example: “Hi, I’m Erik Sebellin-Ross and I’m posting here on behalf of my client, Acme Ink Company, because I think people in this forum might find our newest pen of interest.”
3. No bullshit. If you don’t know the answer, say so and try to get it. If getting an answer is really difficult or not feasible, be honest about it and don’t set expectations you can’t meet.
4. Subtlety is best. The link to your news/product/service should be buried underneath things of genuine value to the community, if you can get away with it. This balances the negative (shilling something is perceived as negative no matter what you do) with the positive (things that are genuinely interesting).
5. Know the rules of the community where you’re posting. This one is really tough to keep track of.

So what rule did you break, Erik?

I broke number five. I was posting on a forum that I’ve been a regular member of for two years—won’t name it because doing so usually brings the wrath of the gods of the internets upon the discloser—about my wife’s new Kindle book. I was immensely proud and knew people on this forum would get a kick out of it. But I couldn’t leave well-enough alone. Instead of just a plain old post, I made it a Q&A. I’d field the questions and respond to them with her answers. And that’s where I fell afoul of the rules—you can’t “share an account” on this forum, and a moderator not only banned me, he also deleted my thread, which was going pretty darn well and had served to generate some sales in a short period of time.

Thus ended two years of work on my behalf nurturing this account. It also deprived me of my history with a community I genuinely enjoyed taking part in and had gotten great results from marketing to in the past. Yes, I could create a new account anytime, but my cachet was gone.

What’s the lesson?

If you’re participating within a community, the rules typically aren’t a big deal. Odds are you’re taking part in threads that others have started and you run no risk of being banned unless you are trolling, or post something offensive, etc. Common sense is a good-enough guide.

But when you’re proactively initiating something with a community—starting a new thread—it pays to go through my list and make sure everything is kosher. And, when in doubt, contact an admin or mod for permission.

Why do I need to read this?

One day — it could be tomorrow, it could be in ten years — you will find yourself at a fork in the road. One path represents something you don’t understand, and at the end of that path lays the possibility of great things. The other path is what you do understand, and at the end of that path is an expectation of success. More often than not, we choose the path of success. In fact, that’s probably the responsible thing to do. But that other path, that’s dangerous.

Taking the dangerous path will result in one of three outcomes for your work: Failure, “meh”, or success. But it also has another outcome that is incredibly important — you’ll grow and benefit from the experience personally.

Because I’ve been willing to get out of my comfort zone when I believe the risk warrants it, I’ve learned to edit audio and video, have live-streamed content from conferences, understand Photoshop, build Web pages and blogs, setup servers and fix computers, and more. I’m versatile, and I didn’t have to pay anyone a cent to learn it all. This lead to exciting projects, many of them successful, some of them not. But in the end I came out better for it and able to offer more services to my clients in the future and make more informed decisions.

God Erik, you talk too much! How do I learn new software or technology quickly?

Forget everything you know about learning. Follow these steps and you’ll be fine.

1. Stop and think. Do you have time for this? It’s decision time kids. In addition to needing time to learn, you’re going to need time to put your hard-earned knowledge to work. If time is tight, I suggest you take the safe route.
2. Time and focus. Not gonna lie, this is gonna be tough. You need to set aside, minimum, 3-6 hours per day until you get whatever you’re learning. You mustn’t interrupt yourself. Plan your learning time ahead so you don’t interrupt the rest of your schedule. Do this and you can skip weeks of classes.
3. Just do it. Take the thing you’re trying to learn — a Web service, a new video camera, or video editing software — and start using it for Pete’s sake. Forget about manuals – how do you know you’re reading about something relevant? Start tinkering with anything and everything, try to screw things up — and, when the function of something isn’t instantly obvious, research it.
4. Drown yourself in research. This is the hard work. Any time you don’t understand something, you need to look it up. In this case, the Internet is your friend — chances are, someone out there has already encountered your problem and fixed it. Prepare to spend up to 30 minutes reading up on each problem until you feel you’ve understood it.
5. When in a tight spot, band-aids are good. Sometimes you’ve got to fudge things. Perhaps you don’t know how to seamlessly insert introductory text at the beginning of your video, so you create another video that looks like what you want and splice the two together. Perhaps you don’t have time to make the Web site you want, so you go find a template that looks just about right and you edit it to suit your needs. Band-aids are an excellent way to get things done and learn, but don’t use them if failure or rejection is a risk, and especially if you’re going to have to go back to the work in the future and set it to what you originally intended. Never do the same work twice.

Examples of when this process will not work

1. Programming, Web or otherwise. I’ve tried. Unless you’re a bloody genius you cannot learn to program quickly, nor can you cut corners. You’ve got to put in the time.
2. When you need to produce top-notch, award-quality work. I will never be confused for a true film editor – I’m YouTube grade, and I don’t even kid myself that I can match the professionals. Nor should you.
3. You have a history of not finishing what you start. I’m not going to mince words with you, we’re all adults here. If you are the kind of person who starts projects and never finishes them, this is not going to help you.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Here’s another article listing TweetDeck, an obscure FTP client, and an RSS reader I’ll never use. Next!”

Well, you are wrong. You’re wrong because I’m hardcore. I eat new apps and services for breakfast. My ADD is Level 18 with hundreds of hit points. So, here are some awesome apps and sites you probably don’t know about. Be warned: Your mind will be blown. Also, your friendly local IT people will probably hate you for installing (or wanting to install, as the case may be) some of this stuff. Not that it’ll damage your computer or anything, it’ll just increase their workload somewhat. I refer you to what my friends at Gartner were talking about a few years ago: The consumerization of IT, aka IT exists to serve the needs of the business, and you are the business.

Item  #1: Stardock’s Fences (Free, with a little catch)

Does your Windows desktop look like this?

If you answered “Yes,” then you need to do yourself a favor and install Fences. It’s free, and will help you group your icons and documents, to find what you need faster. As seen here:

You’ll only have to put up with one inconvenience: You need Stardock’s Impulse service to run Fences, and about once a week it will pop up a little message about a sale Stardock might be having. Considering Fences is free and I’m benefiting so much from it, I consider the sales messages a small price to pay.

Item #2: Copernic Desktop Search ($49.95 US)

This is another tool to help you manage information overload. If you’ve ever tried to search for an email in Outlook and waited, waited, waited for it to find something, this is for you. If you’ve ever had to find a document on your computer, or worse, on your corporate file server, it’s for you. Copernic creates an index of every word in all the emails and documents on your computer, and it uses it to quickly find anything you’re looking for. For example, a search through my Outlook inbox for the word “event” took two minutes to complete. Copernic had the answer right after I hit enter to search. I don’t even try to keep track of where files are on the network anymore—I use Copernic to search for words within those documents, which ultimately leads me to where the document is stored. You can even preview the document before opening it to ensure it’s the correct one.

By the end of the year, Copernic will have saved me from countless hours of lost productivity. Pull the trigger and buy this.

Item #3: Techmeme (Free)

People are frequently in awe of my amazingly deep and comprehensive knowledge of what is happening in the consumer technology and social media space. Really. I could tell you that I spend ten hours a day scanning obscure tech blogs, or that I have intricate filters set up in Google Reader . . . or I could just give up the ghost and point you to Techmeme (not pronounced tek-me-me). The site tracks a few hundred influential news sites for any stories that appear to be going viral. How many inbound links is a story getting? How many comments? The most popular and widespread stories make their way onto Techmeme.

Yes, it’s true that you’re not getting the news first here, but it does save you from having to spend hours a day scanning dozens of sites.

Item #4: Evernote (Free, paid option provides more features)

How do you take notes? Well, stop it, it’s not good enough. Evernote is a note-taking app on the kind of steroids that steroids take. Sure you can take notes with it, but it’s what Evernote does with those notes that is so remarkable. First, Evernote will sync your notes to cloud storage. From there, you can access your notes from its website using a web-based version of the program. You can also download Evernote’s apps on all the major mobile platforms as well as on Windows and Mac.

In other words, you can access your notes bloody everywhere! But wait! Evernote indexes your notes so you can search them super-easily (just like Copernic, above) and (this is my favorite thing ever) if you save a picture in your notes, Evernote will OCR the document for words—making it possible for you to conduct searches based on words in your picture’s notes!

What are your amazing apps or services?

Okay, that’s enough of spilling my secrets. Do you use any amazing apps or sites? I’d love to hear about them.

Many years ago, when I was first getting into the public relations business, a boss of mine told me all about an article that she said she lived by and was really affected by. It was “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters. Written in 1997, it highlights the fact that people change jobs so frequently that longevity at any one place of work is meaningless, and the only thing that will help further your career is your brand, which you are responsible for defining, maintaining and marketing. At least, that’s how I interpreted it, but I’ve been told I have an absolutely bizarre way of looking at the world! Anyway, it pleased me tremendously to come across Maureen Johnson’s Manifesto recently, via io9. She reminded me that the most important thing in life is you, not your brand.

When I read “The Brand Called You” I realized I was in a lot of trouble. As a born and bred introvert, I needed to show off my good work and skills more or I was never going to get anywhere. So I became extroverted as a result, and I think it served me well in my career…the problem was how uncomfortable it made me. I wasn’t being me, I was being a brand I manufactured to be more attractive to employers. And honest to goodness, I didn’t even realize what I’d done until Maureen opened my eyes to it.

I’m a busy brand! Bottom line this already

All right, so what does this have to do with you? Let me quote Maureen:

“I don’t want a brand, because a brand limits me. A brand says I will churn out the same thing over and over. Which I won’t, because I am weird.”

I have bolded, underlined, and, er, redded the key word in that sentence. Limits! Brands impose limits. What Pantone colors to use, what tone to take, who to talk to and how to say it. Branding makes perfect sense when you’re selling a commodity—it helps you stand out. You would think that, with the job market essentially being a commodity market, you’d need a brand too, right? I call bullshit. By boxing yourself up you’re ultimately forcing yourself, a square peg, into a round hole, and limiting your possibilities. The reality of the job market is that your personality, more than your skills, gets you the job and helps you keep it. If you’ve ever interviewed people for jobs, you know this, because you soon drop all altruistic notions about judging people evenly when you face the prospect of hiring either an absolute nutcase who is so qualified or a friendly, quiet, competent person who has a great attitude but might need some training.

Too long, didn’t read

I’m verbose. Sorry. Here’s the real bottom line: Don’t be shy about your achievements, and don’t be afraid to speak your mind. Just don’t be obnoxious and spend all your time promoting yourself.

Bonus

In closing, I want to excerpt another bit of Maureen’s manifesto—it’s fun, with great things to consider. Especially #5.

1. You should probably not be taking advice from me
2. Don’t write boring stuff
3. Have more fun online
4. The people online are real people and they matter
5. Please bring me a snack

Well, that’s the only way I love it. I have a hobby of glancing at the clicks supremely influential users get, and I long ago came to see how important having a strategic growth strategy really is. After all, Twitter success isn’t about the number of followers you have, it’s how many of them interact with you. I’m shocked to see how some users, with follower counts in the hundreds of thousands or millions, get clicks in the hundreds, or low thousands. Their followers aren’t invested! What a waste of everyone’s time.
The shining paragon

On the other hand, here’s an example of an account with overwhelming influence—@cwgabriel, one of the daring duo from Penny-Arcade. Gabe announced on his website that he had created a Twitter account in February and hit 40,000 followers instantly. His bit.ly clicks routinely see tens of thousands of clicks (here’s just one example) and he is awash in @ replies. His audience adores him, and you can bet he isn’t wasting his time when he fires up Tweetdeck.

What’s heavier, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?

I’ve managed quite a few Twitter accounts in the past couple of years and I’m really starting to appreciate the value of an organically grown and cultivated account. The followers are genuinely interested in what you are sharing, and that makes chatting with them a pleasure. But for every account I’ve helped to carefully grow, there are many I’ve inherited that were built with an emphasis on growing followers, and damn the torpedoes. If you’re working this way…

1. Follow hundreds of people.
2. Wait a few days for them to follow you back, then un-follow everyone and start over.
3. ???
4. Profit!

…you’re doing it wrong.

OH MY GOD I DID IT WRONG! What do I do now?

Writers have a saying: “Sometimes you have to kill your babies.” I know you’ve spent a lot of time building up your following, but I’m afraid the only thing left to do is prune it back and do things properly. It will hurt…but we can make it through this! Follow these steps and you’ll be set straight:

1. Make a list of your followers who you’re certain are valid targets.
2. Go to Twitter Karma and log in with your Twitter credentials.
3. Wait for Twitter Karma to do its job. Yes, it takes a long time, depending on your number of followers, the time of day, and the whims of the gods. If it fails, start from scratch.
4. Checkmark the boxes of all the people you are sure aren’t valid targets, then DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR WORK.
5. Purge the list.

Aargh, okay I’m done—what now?

There are a ton of ways to grow your following legitimately. My favorite? Go to WeFollow, search for a tag that coincides with what you are trying to promote, and start following everyone on the list. The beauty of WeFollow is that people list themselves voluntarily—so you can bet, for example, anyone you find under Chefs cares about chefs, cooking, and food.

What about you?

What’s your preferred method of growing a legit Twitter following? Sound off in the comments!

Social media experts need to stop making up words. Now. But I digress, dear reader, I digress. This post is actually about Facebook’s recent move to block the Suicide Machine from doing its job. I think they just wasted their time and energy. Read on to get a glimpse into my thought process on this one.

The virtual suicide barrier and George Clooney

Suicide Machine makes it simple to erase your online presence – except from cached search engine entries of course – in case you want to make a clean break…or start over. This reminds me of George Clooney’s character in “Up in the Air.” The movie is the story of a man ready to make a connection. He does, but then it goes sour and he’s left with nothing. Remind you of any social media platforms you know?

Clooney’s character provides an example of his philosophy, where he likens carrying everything you own and everyone you know in a backpack. He points out how heavy that must be, then asks you to consider the one or two things you would take out of that pack and keep before setting it on fire. This is an exercise we all run through every now and then…or should, anyway.

And now, my point

Let’s look at the kind of person who may want to cancel a Facebook account:

• The Abandoner: “I haven’t logged in or done anything in months or read email updates. I’m just going to shut it down.”
• The Victim: “I’m the target of cyber bullies and need to get some space.”
• The Changer: “I’m going to switch to <insert social network here> and ditch Facebook.”
• The Peer-Pressured: “All my friends are switching to <insert social network here>.”

I can’t imagine a world where any of these user types would be stopped in their tracks by Facebook’s move. Especially considering how easy it is to deactivate your profile:

1. Log into Facebook
2. Click Settings (top right)
3. Click “Deactivate” under “Deactivate account”
4. Tell Facebook why you are deactivating your account

Then again, this step might be enough for some people to say “to hell with it” and go watch a surprised kitten video. Facebook would know best.

Bonus: A conspiracy theory!

Newspapers and magazines have long dealt with the suspicion that they’ve padded their readership numbers in order to demand higher payments from advertisers. I’m guessing Facebook may be doing something similar: Every single user, active or not, helps Facebook attract advertising dollars.