In Jodie's Brain

I have a general bone to pick with anyone who wants to tell you how you “should” be using Twitter. The only rules I think everyone should follow fall under basic civility, decorum and kindness (oh, and no spam-ness). Other than that…

Who.
Freakin’
Cares.

That being said, if with Twitter (as with Facebook, or blogging or site-building or… hammering a nail) you want to accomplish something specific – you have a certain goal in mind, then by all means, model, copy and emulate those who have gone before you. Ask for guidance. Read books.

Imagine you’re using a spoon. Doesn’t matter how you use that spoon. It’s your spoon. You can use it to pry thumbtacks out of the corkboard. You can use it to scrape the peel off of ginger. Use it to spread filler into old picture nail holes. It would be very rude to have a staunch soup-eater come up to you, unannounced, telling you that you’re using your spoon wrong.

If you WANT to eat soup, great… learn all you can about how to hold that spoon and move it. However, it was still rude of the soup-eater to approach you and say “you’re doing it wrong.”

Go ahead – scoff at the rules! Use your spoon to fling broccoli across the room! Dig to China! Eat Nutella out of the jar! Hang the damn thing off your nose! When you’re ready to eat soup, look for the people who say “Oh! Awesome! Let me know how I can help – and, what kind of soup do you like?” and learn from them.

I don’t care what you do with the spoon…

If you’re doing something that interests me (like, say, eating Nutella) I will follow you. If not…

…someone else will come along and be in awe of your spoon bending.

Trust me.

:D

Those of you familiar with Facebook already know what a ‘poke’ is in that context. For the uninitiated, a ‘poke’ is the equivalent of a wave across the office, a hello, a “yoo-hoo! I see you!” or a “hey, you know what, thinking about you.”

It’s used either when you don’t actually have a full idea to share/thought to articulate or to be cheeky; akin to someone looking at you, sticking out their tongue and both of you giggling.  A pull of the pigtails, a tap on the shoulder, then walking away – with a smile, mind you, and a hint of a “hey, engage me on some level.”

Those of us who use Facebook as part of our social media “strategy” (or probably more apropos: our “Procrastination Strategy”) have become accustomed to this even more fly-by way of connecting with people. Now that we have included Twitter in the buffet of staccato communicating choices, what’s a poor tweep to do when all we want to do is poke?

Earlier this morning, I got a friendly ‘poke’ from @GDGeek to which @VicTriviaQueen replied “Twitter totally needs a poke equivalent. Maybe a Flap or Flyby to tie it in with the bird theme?” @GDGeek had some ideas: “Maybe a “buzz” (low-flying bird) or a “squawk”"

I thought about this… twoke wouldn’t work. Twickle? Twouch? Twab? Twush?

My reply?

“I kinda fancy the term “goose” ;)”

After some social proof of approval for the term, I hereby announce that we can all start goosing our twitter friends.

“We” just had a discussion on Twitter about school bullying and I thought I’d expand on what I said here because of Twitter’s limitations. We have given our boys a few tools to deal with bullies should it ever happen to them at school.

What I said – Tweet 1:

What we have told our sons to do: Happens 1ce, tell kid what needs to stop. Happens 2x tell teacher. Happens 3x go to principal

Tweet 2:

the 4th… raise a stink, a HUGE one that make the playground monitors have to come over. Flail, scream go nuts – make it so YOU

Tweet 3:

need to be called in… you can bet that they won’t want the trouble again after that

Essentially – The first time the bullying happens, the child doing the bullying might not know what they are doing is bullying, or at the least annoying. Your child needs to be able to tell his/her classmate what it is – specifically – they would like to have stop and what they would rather happen. Was it the words used? Was it the tone of voice? The name called? Any type of touch/hitting? This is not that easy to do, and it takes practice because most children do not automatically have the skills to articulate – they don’t know what they’re feeling. They need to learn to actually recognize the moment they begin to feel “this isn’t OK” “I am bothered by this.” This is where we, as parents, become curious. Ask questions, guide their focus/awareness to pay attention to how they feel bullied – (ie. is it feeling ill, stomach pain, shortness of breath, “stress”… etc…) what is “that bullying feeling”? For 2 reasons: 1) it tells them when they need to do something and 2) it tells them what they need to do something about. Practice, roll-play and read. This also helps your child to not become a whiney tattle-tale every time something little happens. It will take some trial-and-error… sometimes your child will feel like handling it themselves a couple of times as they become more confident in their verbal skills.

The second time, we told our boys to tell the teacher – again, it is important to say what, specifically, they would like to stop and it’s helpful to say what they would like to happen instead. Tell the teacher you have already told the bully exactly what they were doing that made you feel bad/scare/hurt. This is where you need to help your child come up with 3 or 4 GROWN UP sentances he/she can use with the teacher. The goal is to help the teacher understand and take this seriously.  This is where it *should* stop… but… that isn’t always the case.

The third time – go to ME (the parent) and we will go straight to the principal. It is important that our child is present at this meeting so that an example of how to deal with the situation as an adult. This will be important for them later on in life.

If it happens again, you have our permission to freak out. Get mad. Scream. Make a scene. Defend yourself. Get nasty. Swear. Make a fuss…. The point is to get noticed by the adults in charge to get taken to the office at the *exact* moment it’s happening. This is important. Once at the office repeat “Call my Mom” or “Call my Dad” over and over until they do; nothing esle. We will come.

Then it’s OUR turn. Heaven help the people who, when my child and I asked for help, didn’t.

If you’d like any further information on any of this, talk to this guy:

Daniel Scott

http://SoaringSuccess.ca – and

http://VerbalDefenseTactics.com

We are looking to put together a 1/2-day workshop to teach parents how to teach their children to do all this. $30 – minimum 6 people. Contact me or Daniel to let us know if you’re interested.

On Monday, September 14th, 2009 I was honoured to be asked to come be a part of a panel at an eWomenNetwork dinner. Besides me, there are two other, wonderfully knowledgeable women presenting: Christina Merkely and Catherine Novak. Below are the notes I took with me and any links I spoke about. I created my outline from questions Kerry Brown -the eWomenNetwork Executive Managing Director for Victoria -sent ahead of time to make sure members’ interests were covered.

Below is only the guideline I used – since panels and networking are fluid beings, no doubt there were many more things discussed, added and even omitted. If that is the case, I will update this post. If you heard something you want to make sure I add, please make a comment so that I make sure your questions are answered ;).

On to the questions:

When you’re running an online business – or any business, it is important to diversify your streams of income. We have all heard the adage “Do one thing and do it well.” This can work great for a while, but what if there is a fundamental shift where all of a sudden your product isn’t desirable any more (think restaurant ashtray suppliers…). A good stool needs at least three legs to stand on, so if you have four, losing one isn’t as detrimental. Either adding affiliate marketing to your strategy, or working with several different affiliate angles/streams as your entire business, can give some extra income and a potential cushion in the natural ebb and flow of business.

1. Jodie: please give me your description of affiliate marketing.

What affiliate marketing boils down to is commission sales through drop-shipping, but the word “commission” has such a negative connotation to it… so that term isn’t really used any more. However, that’s what it is: commission sales. Online it means that a product or service developer wants to make more sales so they start an “Affiliate Program.” People who want to make money find the products and services they wish to sell and market on the developer’s behalf. Any sales the marketer makes, they get to keep a percentage. The beauty is that you can be either a developer or a marketer and make money – you can even be both!

2. Jodie: how does one make money with affiliate marketing?

You make money the old-fashioned way; by making sales. If you’re a developer of a product or service, this means selling your affiliate program to potential affiliates. If you’re an affiliate marketer, this means selling the product or service to customers (this can be website traffic, newsletter subscribers…). It’s not a sit-back-and-wait-for-the-commissions-to-come solution, unless you happen to have a TON of traffic already… even then, it still takes work to figure out wording, placement, timing…

If you’re a developer, you get the benefit of many hand making light work, and getting an “instant” sales force without having to worry about a payroll.

If you’re a marketer, you get the benefit of having  ready-made material without the effort of creating it, or having to pre-purchase stock.

3. Jodie: What type of business would affiliates be a valuable marketing strategy for?

Really, just about any business can benefit from an affiliate program. When you think of it, many business already have that policy in place, but know it by another name: referral rewards. How many times have you heard a Realtor or consultant say “If you refer a friend, you get $100!” or something similar? This is the same idea, but in a much more online – and trackable – way.

4. Jodie: What suggestions do you have for the attendees if they wanted to get started with affiliate marketing?

Try things out before you sell them if at all possible. How would you feel if you started selling and recommending a product only to find out that the business was fly-by-night, that the product wasn’t as advertised or broke the moment the box was opened? You should really take the time to learn about what you are selling. That’s what my best affiliate did; he purchased the book first, then with a now educated view of the product, he was able to write about it intelligently and ended up making himself an extra $300 in 24 hours.

Resources

e-Junkie

Commission Junction

Affiliate Summit

Victoria Affiliate Marketers Meetup

Neverblue

Hostgator

Sorry if you missed it! Don’t worry, there is more coming…

Please subscribe to the Newsletter to be updated in the next 2 days!

I did not write this: we used this with wonderful success a few months ago, went looking for it again and couldn’t find it easily. In the event it never does come back online, I’d like to mirror it here for future reference. When the time comes for me to try it again, I will go through it and update if necessary. As it stands, I cannot vouch for its efficacy, only that it really did work wonderfully when we did it a while ago.

March 4th, 2007 by Cormac Moylan