1. Always believe without question what people are telling you, especially if they are authority figures.
People will always tell you the truth, right? And authority figures never lie, as we were all brought up to believe that lying is bad. Remember to always follow the herd.

2. Do things because you are expected to, not because you want or need to.
After all it’s your duty to do ….. You have a duty to your school, college, parents, grandparents, employers, spouse, children…
(Sometimes we are bound by duty but be careful; often we are kidding ourselves. And doing things out of duty can have a negative effect on our health. How many women give up their dreams for their family and end up with Thyroid problems. The metaphysical question behind Thyroid dysfunctions is “When is it my turn?” Coincidence?)

3. Never travel far from home. If you do, only go to safe places nearby.
It’s a wild world out there, better stay close to home. Perhaps you will be really brave and go on a package tour somewhere really safe and stay with the party at all times.

4. Talk about starting your business, but always find reasons to do it “tomorrow”.
You’ve got this really great idea, it’ll make you millions but you can’t exploit it. It will mean leaving your safe, 40 hour week job with its little pension plan.You have your career to think of – what will happen if you leave and your business fails? Best to stay where you are.

5. Take out the biggest home loan you can and settle into a safe, secure job so you can spend the next 25 years repaying the loan.
“My dad bought the family house when he was 22 and he always said property was his best investment.” So we’ll scrimp and save for now becasue when we’ve paid off the loan, we’ll own the house and all will be great.

6. Keep on doing what you, and others in your company have always done. Never threaten the status quo and never suggest innovation.
Every company in the industry does it this way so we’re not going to change. And we’ve never done it that way so we won’t start now!

7. Follow the herd.
Everyone else is chasing cheap credit, buying lots of shelf-filling dust-catching “stuff”. Everyone knows that job security is crucial, that a new car every 3 years is the mark of a man.  Get married young, rasie a family, be reliable, that’s the best way to be.

8. Do everything to resist change
Change is too scary, too risky, and there’s always the risk of failure

9. When things go wrong, always blame others
“It’s not my fault”, “It wasn’t me”, “It’s the wrong economic climate”, “It’s all their fault!”, “It’s the government’s fault”, “I didn’t have their advantages” etc

10. Never take a risk.
Play it safe, always conform, never take a risk, never step into the unknown.

The sad thing is, so many people live their lives this way! Anything you would add?

Blogussion
Lots of useful articles on all matters related to succeeding online, whatever that means for you. .

Boomerang
First of all, I love the design of the site. So many blogs (although not many on this list)  look the same: straight out of the box wordpress sites. Not so with this which covers a wide range of topics.

Britopian
Michael Brito is an advocate of using social media for customer advocacy as well as social business and is currently writing a book on his experiences called “Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization.” The book promises to be a little different as it focuses on how organisations are (or should be) evolving into social businesses and the blockages to the changes required. I’m looking forward to the book!

Chris Brogan
Author of one of the best books on Social Media, “Trust Agents”, Chris Brogan has been involved in online communities for a long time. It shows in his writing, full of no-nonsense articles.

Final Piece
Devoted to helping businesses to understand how they can use social media to help their business to grow.

Greg Verdino
This blog looks at trends in media and marketing, as these industries grapple with the changes being brought on by disruptive technologies, new business imperatives and the rise of the empowered consumer.

Idea Launch
Idea launch offers a wide range of content marketing services and solutions. They claim that their offerings are unmatched in the industry and the perfect match for any company, any size. Whether this true or not, their blog is well worth reading.

Instigator (Ben Yoskovitz)
He writes at the top of his site “My thoughts & lessons learned on startups, entrepreneurship, marketing and other stuff”. His thoughts and lessons are spot on, in my (not so) humble opinion.

Lis Sowerbutts
If you are at all interested in passive income, Lis is worth reading. She often reviews software and services and is not afraid to say what she thinks.

Louis Gray
Full of insight and not afraid to say it how it is, Louis Gray’s site is one of my favourites. He’s usually among the first writers to cover a breaking story, emerging technology or trend. His writing gives the impression that he’s been around the industry a long time, though his photo seems to show a younger man. Whatever, he’s a must read.

Mashable
Well, it would be rude to leave them out, wouldn’t it!

Mitch Joel
Author of one of my favourite Social Media books, Six Pixels of Separation, Mitch Joel is an insightful writer and, judging by his site, has a great taste in design. If you haven’t read Six Pixels, I urge you to do so.

Penny Power
The better looking half of the couple that own ecademy, Penny writes with compassion and feeling. She concentrates on the people aspect of social media, and is the author of  the book “Know me, like me, follow me.”

Problogger.net
Tips and techniques on how to improve your blogging. Wonderful site, full of resources.

Seth Godin
Love him or loathe him, Seth Godin is always worth reading. Even if you don’t like his message, take the time to examine how he writes: a simple, straightforward style with little fluff. He proves that you don’t have to baffle people with long words or complex sentences.

SEO Moz
If SEO interests you, seomoz provides a daily blog on all SEO issues plus tips tips, tricks and techniques.

Scott Monty
The personal blog of the head of social media for Ford. Scott shares his personal views on social media. Very practical, even if he does wear a turquoise bow tie!

socialmedia.biz
I’ve only just come across this one so can’t comment too much  but I love what I’ve read so far! And don’t miss the sharing center; lots of free pdfs to download.

Social media examiner
It claims to be “Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle” and does a good job of it. Oh, and another site with a distinctive design. Clearly written articles abound, what more do you need?

Steve Rubel
“There are signs that the companies that regularly innovate in social media seem to be more memorable”. That alone should endear him to the social media world!

The Buzz Bin
Musings and analysis on marketing, buzz and communications.

Thomas Power
The other half of the ecademy ownership, Thomas writes a lot about the applications and platforms that make up the wild world of social media.

UnMarketing
Scott Stratten is very good at pointing out some of the absurdities in social media. A refreshing change of angle.

I‘ve enjoyed assembling this list and hope that at least some names will be new to you!

All you bloggers – why do you blog? All you Social and Business Networking site addicts, why are you members?

Bloggers

Why do you blog? Is it altruistic, happily sharing information with anyone who will read what you have written? Did you get seduced by one of the “You can make a fortune out of blogging” scams but are still waiting for the money? Is it to complement your business, keeping clients, colleagues, prospective clients up to date with your activities and offers? Unless it’s the first reason, how are you doing? Is your blogging helping your business to grow?

Analyse your time – how much time do you spend going from one site to another, seeking that “one missing, vital insight”? As Seth Godin wrote last week, reading is not doing! It’s easy to waste days reading expert after expert and what do you end up with? Paralysis by analysis together with a severe case of information overload! I’ve done it and, as my primary school teacher used to say “it’s not clever and it’s not grown up!”

It was a shock for me to realise that I’d owned some of the most important pdfs about setting up and running successful blogs and static sites for quite a while. But I’d got them when I was in a mad goldrush to get as much info as possible so they stayed on my hard drive, unread.

And I had wasted so much time since, trying to find information I already had! If I think of that wasted time, how much different things could be if I’d used it “doing”, rather than “researching”. You can add to the time wasting, the hours I spent tweaking my site’s design, rather than writing or doing things to draw traffic to the site. Part of a step forward in my personal development has been realising that pursuing Social Media for its own sake is a severe case of the emperor’s new clothes, unless you are a social media commentator or consultant.

How many of you (me included) have products and/or services that are not on your site and that could be earning you money? At the very least, they could be drawing people in.

Social and Business Networking

How many sites have you joined? I came across a software site the other day that sold an app that will register you automatically with the top 150 social networking sites… why? What’s the point? I’m in the process of quitting those few sites I have joined as I can’t keep up with the e-mails and messages. And that makes me look bad!  So, I’m going to cut right back for the time being to LinkedIn, ecademy, Twitter and Facebook (and the latter only because it’s the easiest way to keep in touch with my wife’s family and our friends in South Africa.)

Focus

For me, this year is about focus; Chris Brogan introduced me to the concept of having keywords for the year rather than New Year’s resolutions and focus is one of mine. Focus on clients, on quality networking and on using time profitably – that doesn’t mean that every moment has to be monetised, far from it.

But every working moment has to contribute to success as I have defined it for myself. Yes that includes time for networking, for building supportive relationships; it includes time for acts of altruism too as giving without expectation of a return is an important value. In on-line terms, it’s about identifying those people with whom I would like to connect, engage and share with at a deep level. It’s also about making sure that key off-line relationships are nurtured.

Time Management

It’s going to be tough! I’ve already started reducing the number of feeds from blog sites and making a plan for returning to my roots with my own blogging. I’m not an SM expert, yet I’ve spent far too much time recently writing about SM rather than personal and organisational development. Focus and minimalism is the way forward for me, at least in the number of sites of which I am a member.

I’m also going to cut back to three posts a week at each blog during the working week and the review of the SM week here at the weekend, as people seem to enjoy it and I’ve sorted out an efficient workflow.

Although many of the tools may be free, social networking isn’t. There’s always an opportunity cost, if only for the time spent and sooner or later there has to be a return on the time invested.

Anybody interested in joining me in this exercise?

As a starting point, I took the blogs of 8 of the top Social Media Bloggers and looked at their percentage use of “I”, “We”, “You” and “They”. In each case, I collected at least 5,000 words, which for most equates to between 6 and 8 articles.I know it’s not a very large sample of writers or words, but I wanted to see if any patterns emerged. And they did!

Louis Gray blogs more about developments in SM and emerging technologies, so I had thought that perhaps he would have used “me” more often, as he is often giving his opinion. But he still managed to use “you” more often than “I” and “We” combined

Chris Brogan uses the first person singular a lot in the sample tested but there’s a good reason for it – among the posts that I sampled were several explaining how he uses mind mapping, how he doesn’t use LinkedIn as he feels he should etc.. I’m going to go back and examine his more general articles to see the pattern there.

As can be seen from the table, all of the others use “you” almost twice as often as they use “I”, the exceptions being Seth Godin who uses “you” 3.5 times as often as he uses the word “I” and Karen Skidmore who uses it a whopping 8 times as much!. This is entirely consistent with SM articles being about engaging with other people and drawing them in. With the exception of self -disclosure articles of the type Chris Brogan has been writing recently, most of us would soon get bored with, and probably stop reading, writers who used “I” twice as much as they use “you”.

There’s a lot more I’m going to be analyzing, such as percentage of past, present and future orientated words, the percentage of nouns vs verbs etc

The conclusion? These people are some of the top in their field – anyone wanting to be up there with them needs to be looking at their writing style. The small words matter. You will find another article here that examines the subject in more detail, and announces a new service for writers.

“There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven’t ever heard of twitter, blogs or facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke really on us? They do business through personal relationships, by delivering great customer service and it’s working for them. They’re more successful than most of those businesses who spend hours pontificating about how others lose out by missing social media and the latest wave. And yet they’re doing business. Great business. Not writing about it. Doing it.

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before. Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts and facebook updates.”

I believe that too many people on the love it/loathe it side of the social media issue think it’s either or. We need both – face-to-face and ‘virtual’, on-line communication.

Social Media is another communication method, another marketing opportunity, another revenue stream. Some will be highly successful using only on-line or only bricks and mortar; others will take a blended approach. However, I believe that two things are true whatever the business model. You have to:

1. Love what you do

2. Love your cusomers

When the social media dust settles, I believe that people will realise that the technology speeds things up but that the values, communication skills and customer-focus requirements are the same as they are when dealing with people in the physical world. What the internet does do is level the playing field in many industries so that the small business can compete effectively with, and sometimes be better than, their larger counterparts.

And the other thing that many people will have to accept, and sometimes learn the hard way, is that whatever they right, on any forum/blog/website, will be there in black and white forever!