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Lesson Number Nine: Slumps Happen
In the classic baseball movie “Major League,” one of the players has taken to sacrificing chickens and rubbing mysterious voodoo tchotchkes on his bat in order to get a hit. Some of the other players belittle his efforts – until it appears to work. Superstitions aren’t just the stuff of Hollywood; Hall-of-Famer Kiki Cuyler refused to move to a different spot in the batting order; Dolf Camilli used to rub the batboy’s head before entering the batter’s box; and possibly one of the most famous that players of all levels have adopted: Tapping your bat on home plate before each at-bat.
The problem with superstitions like these is that they work… until they don’t. Eventually the slump happens, no matter how many chickens sacrificed or batboys rubbed. Sometimes, baseball slumps just happen. You’re on fire the entire season until one day you wake up, do everything you did the day before, and suddenly you can’t get a hit to save your life. You’re in a slump, and it hangs around until it breaks – or you do.
Businesspeople experience their share of seemingly inexplicable slumps, too. And just as in baseball, you have a choice: Through or out.
Top-notch marketing blogger and best-selling author Seth Godin based his book, “The Dip,” on this very principle. He says that dips – “slumps,” in baseball speak – will happen; it’s not a question of if, but when. And when it does happen, you have a choice to make. Are you going to give up, or are you going to barrel through?
If your reasons are strong enough, you will continue to get in that batter’s box, says Godin. You’ll put out products, talk with customers, market your wares. And you’ll also work behind the scenes to improve your chances of getting a hit. You’ll review your statistics (Lesson #8), you’ll work with a coach (Lesson #6) and you’ll keep refining your process. And then you’ll keep on swinging (Lesson #3). And eventually, the slump will end and you’ll get that hit.
Of course, giving up is always an option. More than one baseball player has let the slump get the best of them and quit without ever managing to make it back on base. The choice is yours. In the meantime, your competitors will be facing the same challenges at one time or another. The spoils will go to the one who can stick it out – and put their voodoo to work.
Lesson Number Seven: It Hurts Worse When You’re Losing
Watch any sporting contest for long enough, and you’re sure to see at least one injury or near-injury. The runner stealing home collides with a catcher blocking the plate; the pitcher gets mowed down by a line drive; the center fielder runs into the wall. It happens.
What is interesting to me is that the same tumble that might earn one player a few days on the DL (disabled list), is nothing more than a shake of the head from another player. What causes the difference?
What I’ve noticed is that if a player gets hurt sliding into home for the winning run, he’s more likely to leap to his feet and celebrate with his teammates, rather than having to be carried off the field on a stretcher. The simple fact: It hurts worse when you’re losing.
The same is true for business. If you pull an all-nighter to get your first product ready to launch and it’s a rousing success, earning you five figures in a matter of hours, you’re less likely to complain of sleep deprivation. The adrenaline of a great play carries you through the discomfort. But if that same person pulls an all-nighter for a product that flops, you’ll feel a lot more tired.
Here’s what to do when you experience your own jaw-clenching mess-up:
1. Remind yourself that a setback is just that: A temporary obstacle, not a death sentence. Tomorrow is another day, another game, another chance to improve.
2. Look for the lesson. Dig deep into a missed play or loss to find the nugget of wisdom you can use to improve your next go-round. Did you find a great new widget for your blog? Did you increase your traffic? Did you make any new contacts? These are all achievements that will outlive the pain of a bad tumble.
3. Watch the instant replay. Replay that awful crash not to beat yourself up, but in order to avoid a similar pile-up in the future. Were there warning signs you missed? Did you know the outcome was inevitable? What can you do differently the next time around?
Losses hurt. But they don’t have to send you to the infirmary for the rest of the season. Remind yourself that there is a win hidden in defeat, and commit to finding and extracting the lessons. It’s all just part of the game. The only true failure is to fail to learn from your own mistakes.
HootSuite - Social Media Dashboard
Did you know that you can use one site to update all your social media? You can sign up for a free HootSuite account and easily update all your networks in one fell swoop. You can do it “in the cloud” using a PC and a browser or you can do it from your mobile device. You can update to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more social networks.
Another program that lets you update all your social media networks at once is called yoono. This is a program that can be added to your Firefox browser as an add-on tool. You can automatically view and update your social networks with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo and others. It does not have as many networks available as Social Oomph and ping.fm but it looks promising as they plan to add more social media networks eventually.
Gizapage is another promising aggregator. It says it’s an integrated social hub bringing together your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and more so that you can share with all networks at the same time, and you can pick and choose which networks too. It also lets you view your full profile from one spot. The problem with it is that you have to ask for a quote. It looks really great but that automatically makes me think it will be expensive. I put in for a quote but haven’t heard anything yet.
Social aggregators aren’t new, they’ve been around as long as social media has been around. If you do a Google search on social media aggregators you’re likely to find a lot of them both working and defunct. You’ll find free aggregators, and premium fee based services. They come and go so choose a popular one that is widely used so that you don’t have to start over. Part of using an aggregator is to save time. Setting one up takes some time and work but is worth it in the end so no matter which one you choose definitely make sure you do choose one in order to stop wasting time duplicating tasks.
With over 500 million active users who spend more than 700 billion minutes per month online, Facebook is a natural first stop for marketers looking to reach an online audience. The biggest benefits of Facebook include:
- Reach (Nearly everyone is there!)
- Ease of use (If my dad can figure it out, anyone can)
- Ability to add numerous media, including audio, images, and video to your page
- Ability to email entire groups of fans at a time
If you decide to go the Facebook route, your first step is to create a “Like” page for your business. This is basically a profile for your business. Until recently, these pages used to be called “Fan” pages. Personal profiles limit the number of people you can be friends with, while “Like” pages do not. Also, “Like” pages enable you to create an RSS feed and build custom applications. There are a number of tutorials online with step-by-step instructions for creating a “Like” page.
However, if it’s overwhelming, I recommend you outsource this. You should be able to find someone affordable who can set this up for you. There are lots of people jumping on the Facebook bandwagon who want to make a name for themselves as social media experts.
Once you have created your Facebook “Like” page, your daily 15-minute to-do list includes the following:
- Update your status. Be sure to make it relevant to your audience. Skip the “breakfast” posts unless you’re a chef! (1 minute)
- Add new blog posts, videos, photos, etc. to your wall. Many other social media sites like Twitter as well as your blog can be set up to add these updates automatically to your wall. (2 minutes)
- Review comments on your wall and respond to them. (4 minutes)
- Review your news feed and spend a few minutes commenting on posts and updates from your contacts. (4 minutes)
- Respond to invitations and messages in your inbox. (2 minutes)
- Locate new people to invite to your “Like” page by checking out the friends of current page fans (2 minutes)
This timeframe may seem ambitious, and it is! You may also need a very fast internet connection to pull it off. Depending on how many messages and posts you actually get, and how quickly you want to add new friends, you might choose to be a bit more flexible.
Still, the idea is to focus on the most important activities and stop when you’re done. Sure, you could easily spend the whole day puttering around on Facebook, but your goal is to set a time limit and use it to the max. If you have extra time, you can go back and play Farmville or challenge a friend to a game of Text Twist. Or you could decide to add more friends or get more involved in a conversation. In the meantime, though, get in, get out, and get customers!
I belong to a few forums that are both specialized and general. Recently there has been an explosion of “Social Media (you fill in the blank)s” appearing around the scenes. I am hearing a lot of statements like: “I want a big following”, “I want to follow everyone so they will follow me back”, “I want to beg all my friends to put my Fan Page in their streams so that all their friends will Like my Page”. When I hear statements like these, they drive me insane. I want to yell and scream for them to STOP!
Social Media is the best kind of advertising you can do and you can cover a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time. So, I understand their wants, believe me I do. I was there once, I followed and “fanned” (back then it was called “Fanning a Page” instead of “Liking a Page”). I was talking to everyone (I guess I had my twitter list up to over 2,000 people really quick due to just following anyone) and didn’t know or care what they were saying or who they were saying it to. I took some classes and did a whole lot of listening to what others were saying about Social Media because I was not seeing the value.
I soon learned that Social Media is not entirely all about the number of people you follow, who follow you or “Like” your page. It is about connecting with like-minded people who are either in your same market or who you want to become your customers. It is about adding value to someones experience and to your experience. It is about conversing with those who get what you are about or want to learn what you are about. I started looking at my Twitter lists and “unfollowing” everyone that I thought either could not add value to me or I could not add value to and my lists shrunk tremendously. Then I went to Facebook and looked through all the pages that I had “fanned” and did the same. If I was not getting anything from their Pages, I unfollowed them. It is not because they weren’t good, but I didn’t see the value in it for me or someone else that I thought I could pass it along to.
I really starting thinking about my target market and the like-minded people I wanted to follow or have follow me. And I set some criteria to think about when deciding to follow someone. The first thing I would do is ask myself “What is in it for me?”, and what is the value I am going to get from reading their stuff? Will I get a heightened sense of my industry (are they colleagues that I could relate to or gain insights from)? Next I ask, “What value will they get from me?” Will I be able to give them something that they don’t already get or better than they already get?” Will I be able to help them with something if a question came up or would I not even be interested in it? I also looked at their updates and tweets. Were they a mixture of different things? Did they have knowledge, wisdom, links, thoughts about articles or was it all the same tired, boring stuff from EVERY tweet? If they went to the bathroom 5 times and that was the MOST exciting thing they did, I cut them loose. If I pass through their stuff without reading SOME of it, I have to cut them loose. It is not personal, it is business. I feel like I am doing us both a favor. I am freeing up a spot on their list for someone who wants to follow them.
Social Media is not about building some list to see who has the bigger lists or followers or fans. It is about getting to know others you follow or follow you to some degree, and it is about giving those who follow, fan or you follow, some knowledge and wisdom. It is about conversing with people, getting to know, like and trust them and sharing common information. If you are not contributing to the conversation that your people are having, why are you following them? I am not saying that everyday you have to. But you should be reading and sharing in some way.
How are you contributing to your value or the value of your following?
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