2009 October | Justin Levy

Dealing with Social Media Rejection

October 31, 2009 By Justin Levy 22 Comments

Every social network has some type of “follow” or “friend” feature that allows you to build communities on those networks. While there has been much debate over whether the number of friends or followers you have mean anything, there has been less discussion over the rejection that one may feel because of a friend or follower request being turned down or of someone unfollowing or defriending that person. Digital rejection is becoming an increasing issue. This becomes an increasingly more serious issue when there is a developed relationship either as a friend, colleague, ex-lover, or family member.

A recent CNN article explored social media rejection and found that rejection on social networks can actually hurt worse the rejection is more impersonal. Defriending, unfollowing or other forms of rejections occur with a simple click. In person people are usually more polite.

Furthermore, in person we have the capabilities to read body language, facial expressions, analyze speech and other techniques that alerts us to an issue with our friends, colleagues or other acquaintances. Social networks don’t allow for this. Even if the person you’re sending the friend request to, say on Facebook for instance, doesn’t accept the request and sends you a message with reasoning, it is still written word. Most of us don’t write in the same manner we speak. Also, it is harder near impossible to decipher emotions and nonverbal cues online. Couple this with the fact that many people, including me, accept the majority of requests received, it can make those that opt to assess their requests more carefully seem like bad guys.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this article and I’m curious how YOU deal with social media rejection. Do you take it personally? Do you feel rejected when you’re defriended or a request is turned down? How do you handle it?

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Photo by: Bludgeoner86

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: defriending, rejection, Social Media

7th Son Descent “Special Edition”

October 27, 2009 By Justin Levy 1 Comment

As you know, I regularly review books around here. Since there are always so many great books that I want to read, I usually have to decide which ones capture my attention right now. To help make that decision, Amazon allows you to read information about the book, about the author, reader reviews and a growing number of books include sample pages. The ability to read what the book is about and then read a few pages is awesome. It usually helps to hook me. But, now, what if you could read the first 10 chapters of a book to see if you wanted to read the rest? Would you read it?

That is exactly what J.C. Hutchins is doing. J.C. Hutchins is the author of 7th Son: Descent (Amazon link) and has decided to release the first 10 chapters of the book, available as a PDF, today. His hope? Well, it’s two part. First, as an increasing number of books are released each year, authors are having to come up with different and creative ways to promote. J.C. definitely accomplishes that with this promotion. Secondly, he hopes that he hooks you so much after reading the first 10 chapters that you’ll cough up the few dollars to buy the book and read the rest of it.

Want to know what the books is about? Check out this description taken from J.C.’s site:

As America reels from the bizarre presidential assassination committed by a child, seven men are abducted from their normal lives and delivered to a secret government facility. Each man has his own career, his own specialty. All are identical in appearance. The seven strangers were not born, but grown — unwitting human clones — as part of a project called 7th Son.

The government now wants something from these “John Michael Smiths.” They share the flesh as well as the implanted memories of the psychopath responsible for the president’s murder. The killer has bigger plans, and only these seven have the unique qualifications to track and stop him. But when their progenitor makes the battle personal, it becomes clear John Alpha may know the seven better than they know themselves…

Once I read that, I was hooked. I love government thrillers so I started getting excited as I read the above description. I’m in the middle of reading the PDF now and I already know that I’ll be buying a copy of the book. The book is definitely getting some rave reviews. How about you? Want to check out the first handful of chapters for free and decide for yourself?

To download the first 10 chapters for J.C. Hutchins new book 7th Son: Descent, you can find download the PDF.

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Marketing Tagged With: Book Reviews, Marketing, promotion

Ignore Everybody Video Book Review

October 25, 2009 By Justin Levy 9 Comments

Are you looking for a book that, according to Guy Kawasaki, will “kick your ass and push you out of your zone of mediocrity and stagnation”? What about a book that is described by Pamela Slim as bringing “the topic of creativity out of the lofty halls of academia…into a place where the average person can apply it: to improve work and create a life that really matters”? Well, if you’re shaking your head up and down and feel as if you’ve been searching for just that book, I have a little news for you: stop reading this blog post and overnight 5 copies (1 for you and 4 for holiday gifts) of Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity (Amazon link) by Hugh MacLeod (otherwise known as @gapingvoid).

As you’ll be able to tell from my video book review, I really enjoyed this book. It’s easy to consume, fun to read and you can extract all sorts of tidbits of information as well as a ton of great quotes to help keep those creative juices flowing. This will definitely be a book that I re-read on a regular schedule. Oh, and if the text of the book wasn’t enough, Hugh fills the book with tons of business card-sized drawings to help illustrate his points.

I really hope that you enjoy this book as much as I did. I’m already planning on sending a few copies around to some people I know in my life that could use this boost.

If you can’t view the video below, you can also find it over on my YouTube channel.

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Reviews, Videos Tagged With: Book Reviews, Reviews, Videos

It’s Not the Tools, It’s What You Do With Them

October 14, 2009 By Justin Levy 21 Comments

One of the most inspiring and captivating presentations of the Inbound Marketing Summit was the keynote that Chris Brogan delivered. Yes, I work with him at New Marketing Labs. No, that is not why I feel the need to pimp the hell out of this presentation. I have the distinct opportunity to hear Chris speak often where I see him develop concepts that he then takes on to other cities. He usually shares his thoughts on where these tools are taking us and how it’s changing the way we work, think and interact. Usually a few concepts spark conversations and get retweeted and shared around. But, at the Inbound Marketing Summit, on that day, Chris was in a different zone.

I highly encourage you to take the 20 minutes to watch/listen to the entire presentation.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

I’m curious to know your thoughts. What did you think of this presentation? Did it get you thinking of how you could do your business a little differently? How are you using these tools that we call social media?

Note: This a post as part of the series of presentations from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009. You can check out all videos on the Inbound Marketing Summit Blip.tv channel. Content from all over the interwebs are being aggregated over on Delicious. All posts on this blog will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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Filed Under: Business, Business strategy, Communications, Inbound Marketing, Motivation, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Videos Tagged With: Business, Business strategy, chrisbrogan, Communications, ims09, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Videos

Determining Social Media ROI

October 12, 2009 By Justin Levy 20 Comments

A few weeks before the Inbound Marketing Summit took place, Chris Penn and I were discussing what he should speak about. Of that discussion came the decision to do the presentation on how to determine the ROI of social media. Figuring out social media ROI continues to be a very hot topic not only for the social media geeks but also for big brands that want to determine success measurements of their investment into the space.

Outside of this conversation I had been bugging Chris to analyze my restaurant, Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse, for some time now. Other case studies have focused on what we’ve done but not tearing apart the metrics. Chris is a genuis at analysis and analytics. So, I really wanted him to expand my knowledge and ability Google Analytics and other tools to properly analyze our efforts at the steakhouse and determine our ROI. For those that don’t know, approximately 1.5 years ago we cut out 80% of our traditional marketing budget and turned our focus to our website, SEO, social media and other digital initiatives as a way to drive sales. Surprise, surprise, it worked. Since then we have seen a minimum of 20% increase in sales when comparing the same month the previous year. But, one thing we never did was break out and track those individual efforts between the website, social media, and other areas we were spending our time online.

As part of his presentation Chris asked if he could use the restaurant as an example and do an analysis of our ROI. What Chris found, in terms of hard dollars, surprised me and I think it will surprise you too.

You can check out Chris’ presentation, both slides and videos below:

Video

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

Slides

As I said, I was surprised at the actual dollar values but I wasn’t surprised at the result that Chris found. For us, our entire focus has been on SEO. We have used social media as a tool to augment that but not as a primary vehicle to drive revenue for the restaurant. For instance, we have made a conscious decision to not set up a Twitter account where offer discounts. It is something we’re considering doing in the future, but right now we aren’t utilizing social media in that way.

While this presentation gives you some information about my brick and mortar and the decisions that we face and have to make, have you taken these steps to determine the ROI of your efforts on your website, blog, or social media profiles? If you have done this exercise, did you change anything about the way you spend your time post-analysis?

Note: This is the first post of many highlighting videos from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009. All posts will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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