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• A. A. Milne

  "The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking."

So I have heard the term mentor thrown around quite a few times lately and it had me thinking about the bigger picture. About how everyone is affected by the people around them.

Ultimately, our parents (if we’re lucky enough to have them) are our initial mentors. They raise us, teach us what is wrong and right (if we’re lucky enough for them to know) and they share their wisdom with us (if they know how to communicate it).

Eventually, we grow past their ability to mentor us. Our relationship changes and we need more stimulation, more encouragement from different sources. this is where a career aligned or a life direction mutual mentor can be of paramount assistance to an individual’s development.

I have not sought out enough mentors in my life. I am lucky enough to have my brother and partner, wise and experienced enough in their ways to provide valuable opinions and different trains of thought. What I really need is a thought leader in my industry, someone dedicated to showing me a better path.

I am slowly realising how crucial every day is in my learning. How little I valued the time I spent studying or playing video games. Every day passes and I either grow or stagnate.

It is my ultimate mission to grow everyday and one day be far better than the average person. I want my children to feed off my experience, learning and life outlook. I want those around me to better their lives and to be successful.

I want this life to count.

In my time of following and unfollowing people on Twitter, I have come to the realisation that a lot of people use Twitter very differently. I use it sporadically, as a personal branding practice and a way to distribute my thoughts into the public metasphere. Google+ seems to be a better avenue for this given the functionality of its local system – When posting publicly, the people that are most likely to see it that aren’t always going to be the ones that follow you, but the people in surrounding geo-locations (so long as you post with YOUR location). Twitter on the other hand is more aimless for me as a result of the immediacy of it all.

I once read something along the lines of “tweeting without a hashtag is like you’re surrounded by billions of people and you’re shouting your message. Who can hear you? the first 20 people around you.”

Despite all this, there is no denying that Twitter has a strong part to play in business and personal branding and that it’s important to be visible where people are talking about you. One of the first things I look at when I see a profile is The Description, The Location & The Followers.

All part of your branding. I also read somewhere that sometimes, it doesn’t always matter who is following you or if they’re listening because they’re adding to your “brand number” – The perception that you are being listened to and have influence (I’m currently on a bus and finding these links is an impossible task right now).

As a result, I like to mix my follows up evenly, with 50 – 70 percent people who will definitely follow me back and 30 percent local or targeted that may be interested in what I have to say (not a lot right now). I would then follow 200 total (or so) people per session, using lists. This way you’re guaranteed to get around 70 – 120 people following you back, if not more (especially if you have a good description, relevant location and something interesting to say). It’s also easy to click away down the list, follow after follow. Make sure to avoid following the dregs (spam bots and the like) on Twitter. They won’t get you anywhere and will spam and help your brand to lose credibility. Follow real people if you can.

EASY STEPS! Exciting:

1. Make your profile relevant: Strong description, relevant location to your targets (more important for local business) & build your followers weekly.

2. Follow 100 – 140 people that will follow you back weekly or every few days if you like. Here is a good list to get you started.

• Once you’re finished with that list, seek out relevant user’s follower lists and follow them. Or you can follow my followers as a large percentage will follow back.

3. Follow 60 people that are your target audience (business professionals, social media gurus *most of these people won’t follow back*, ordinary people local to your area, etc.).

4. Cleanse your twitter every week or so depending on the frequency of your following.

Some social media gurus talk about having a “good ratio” between followers and following for branding purposes, to show that more people follow you than you follow them. At the end of the day, I’m a nobody right now, so having a few hundred extra followers on my Twitter than following may lose a bit of credibility with the social gurus, but they aren’t really my target audience so It doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Also, thanks for reminding me to follow more people. I could probably get to 3000 by the end of January but it would take a bit of effort. I had better get to work on that…

There are various following tools out there that I don’t have access to so I use this method and has worked might fine across many accounts.

Thoughts? Other techniques?

One thing that I’m coming to learn is that when your own expectations exceed the reality of what you can achieve, it tends to blow things out of proportion for both you and the person you are making promises to.

I am the kind of person that wants to do the best job, get as much done as possible and make everyone happy/satisfied with the result. The problem with this is that sometimes, I don’t see past the results that can be achieved. I tell myself that unrealistic results can be achieved and sometimes I’m wrong. It’s always good to be optimistic and take everyone on a fun ride of success, but when that ride fails, everybody crashes and burns with you.

I have begun to realise that it is ok to be ambitious and aim high, but sometimes you need to let yourself know that there is potential for failure or less than perfect results. Once you can do that, you can better lead those behind you and be better prepared for when those results aren’t met.

I have also realised that pretending to know something usually backfires, even if you aren’t consciously thinking “I don’t know this”, telling yourself “I know the answer to this”. Results can usually be measured through objective opinion and research when it comes to managing expectations, so I do this a lot more now and it is paying off.

When you have managed your own expectations, you can manage the expectations of others. That is my current learning.

Businesses have a lot to achieve using social media. They might feel like social media is their enemy and that it is a waste of money.

The first point there is absolutely true if the business is inward focused and has terrible customer service issues. The second point is completely wrong, and generally comes from inward focused management, lack of resources and the provision of terrible customer service.

This is because:

• If they are providing terrible customer service, the online medium is shaping up to be quite the forum for discussion about bad customer experiences.
• If you are not proactively a part of that discussion and willing to learn, it is going to hurt your business.

Most businesses are afraid of social media and negative reviews and are either too busy or have no idea how to combat these things. Ultimately, it comes down to the business’s attitude. Are they there to make money or to provide a product or service for their customers that provides satisfying and expected results.

The answer is both, but too often the satisfying product and service gets left behind by poor business organisation and culture, lack of customer service and just being too busy.

Another important question to ask is if the business is going to listen, accept and change or deny, accuse and remain the same? The answer is simple but the solution is not. all the same, it is worth looking into and at least attempting as best as you can.

Organisational change to address such issues is easier said than done. I for one look forward to the day when I get to change a broken organisation for the better (a long way to go for me yet).

If a business can successfully use social media to become a part of the discussion, listen to what is being said and make necessary changes, there is infinite potential for growth and success. Using social media may also be a way of keeping your business ahead of changing trends in service. Something worth looking into…

Promise!

I’m going in a bit of a different direction with this post but it’s important stuff nonetheless. I’ve been studying leadership lately, but I’ve also been interested in how the brain works and where my emotions are taking me.

You may have heard of the term “mirror neurons” or “neural pathways”. Both completely different things in brains that are intrinsically linked.

Mirror neurons were discovered by a french scientist decades ago when he watched two different monkeys share the same brain stimulation, despite only one monkey doing the action being experienced. One of the monkeys was given a banana and the other monkey was in another room, seperated by glass. As the monkey without the banana watched his friend eat the banana, parts of his brain registered the feeling and experience that the other monkey was experiencing.

It’s the same thing with humans and emotions. We can detect and emulate even the simplest emotional reactions on peoples faces. We have a higher and a lower road that picks up on these things. The low road does things split second, much faster than the high road. You might even call it instinct. The high road thinks about things logically. For example, when you see an attractive face, that’s the low road registering the attraction. The high road begins to think about how to approach the person, or what to do.

Mirror neurons send their messages through the neural pathways that deliver messages being sent around our brain. Neural pathways can be mended and broken (studies have shown that music has a positive affect on rebuilding neural pathways or even developing them in children as their brains grow).

Another thing that stems from this is the fact that emotions are contagious. We can catch a bad temper or negative emotions like an emotional cold that can have a hangover that lasts for days. Ever wonder why you feel awful after fighting with your parents or loved ones? They’re passing their upset onto you and you’re catching it (and vice versa). Your body is instinctively experiencing the emotions of the other person in order to understand them or better communicate with them. If you resist these emotions, tension will build and creative discomfort and a breakdown of communication and understanding.

Ever wonder why you feel so damn good after a particularly delightful experience with someone you love or why you feel great after sharing music and beers with a friend? You’re sharing positive feelings and emotions.

These emotions also affect your biology and immune system, so if you’re in a particularly depressing relationship, it will affect your body. If you’re in a wonderful relationship you will be healthier, body and mind.

It’s this sort of thing that we need to be aware of. How are we affecting the people around us? Can a simple smile help someone who is feeling down? How about a hug full of positivity?

Our relationships, face to face define who we are and how we grow. They develop our personalities and outlook on life, so choose your relationships carefully and be aware of the affect that your emotions are having on others. A hard thing to pinpoint, but something to work on. Also good to know when approaching people. Radiate positivity and they will enjoy it.

I stumbled across this article yesterday and finally decided to trim my internet presence. I’ve got profiles on the web from old music social network accounts, public profiles listing my occupation and also my blogging pages. Deleted about 3 accounts that I no longer use with old information publicly available. I’ve also got links to my name across several industry related blogging sites that I commented on. Kind of annoying, but nothing worth stressing over.

There are a whole bunch of sites listed in the link that allow you to type in people’s names and get dossiers of their information. Most of them are US based though. 123people.com even looks at criminal records and there is some kind of dodgy application for tracking mobile numbers for a monthly subscription fee. Creepy.

Give the article a read and see how you’re standing in the field of online reputation. I’m looking pretty good right now and I intend to keep it that way.

I recently stumbled across this link to Guy Kawasaki’s explanation of how he launched his book “enchantment” using social media. I’m yet to read the book, but I’m going to try and get my hands on a copy.

The post at mashable is really useful with estimated costings and detailed descriptions of various strategies. Most of them are pretty standard but they have been done by experienced professionals making them highly effective.

I’ll definitely be referring to this list for inspiration when it comes to campaigning in the future.

Doing some PR work for a charity over the next few months or so to make my CV even shinier than it already is.

On an unrelated note, I’m rereading an old science fiction novel from my dad’s shelf called “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson. If you’re into science fiction/computer programming/action then it’s worth a read.

Should have an eventful month of PR related shenanigans to post here soon…

Over the past week or so I’ve had a several thousand dollars go through my debit card as a result of car repairs, ice hockey registration  and gear purchases (the insurance and training costs are ridiculous). Needless to say, I’ve also had a flood of bills to drain my account.

It reached the point where I was struggling to pay for my mobile bill on the week’s budget and as a result of my busy lifestyle, I forgot to extend the payment date. But here is where the point of this post comes in.

My service was supposed to be cut off this morning by Optus, but it wasn’t…

I called in to try and get everything sorted and they allowed me to extend my payment date until the 28th, on the day that my service was supposed to be cancelled. I was overjoyed.

Now, I’ve been reading Guy Kawasaki’s The Macintosh Way (free download) over the past day or two and I stumbled across an interesting section regarding “underpromising and overdelivering” when it comes to customer service. He gives us his friend’s example of disney land where:

- If you get there a little before they officially open, they’ll let you in.
- Policy says that children over three years old need to pay admission, but they never ask how old your children are.
- When you wait in line for the rides, they overestimate the waiting time so it never feels like you’re waiting that long.
- They also say that there are no rainchecks for bad weather but give them when asked.

Now the book was published in 1988 (so Disney Land may have changed since then) and I don’t usually read anything more than two years old when it comes to products, marketing, PR, all that stuff, because the world is changing so rapidly that it often becomes outdated. But the book covers really interesting developments surrounding the creation of the Macintosh computers and the developer’s, as well as the notorious Steve Job’s roles in their creation.

In this case, Optus underpromised and overdelivered. I wish other companies would follow their example, like Telstra and Hockey Monkey (Who have recently been running me in circles).

***UPDATE*** – They cut my service off mid afternoon and the operator couldn’t accept the payment extension so I had to make a payment anyway. Turns out this was a bad example of underpromising and overdelivering, but I’m sure you get the idea anyway.

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