What does your bank ask for when you call them with a question?  You guessed it.  Your mother’s maiden name.  So if you are in your 20’s or 30’s and your mother just got on Facebook and included her maiden name, you could have a problem!  You mom could potentially be helping thieves steal your identity!   An identity thief can easily see who your relatives are on facebook with the new “relatives” tag.   Something needs to be done with this system fast!

Comment below on your thoughts and possible solutions to this problem.

If you ask anyone how to open a door, the response will likely be, “turn the knob and push.”  That’s true in most cases, but I’ll argue that most of the time we’re trying to open the wrong door.  Let me explain.  If it’s so easy to open the door, most times the thing that we’re after behind the door isn’t that great.  We are always hoping for another door and another door and another door.  You get the point.  The REAL good stuff remains behind “locked” doors.  Think about it, people only lock doors that have something valuable behind it.  So if you go to turn the knob and push on that door, it won’t open.  That’s the door you want to open, it has the good stuff!

So how do you open a locked door?  I think you’ll agree that if the door has a lock, you need a key!  Ok, so now we must take a different approach.  Where do we find a key?  The proverbial key in this situation is knowledge.  We must gain the appropriate knowledge to be able to unlock the greatness and potential behind the locked door.  When a person sets their mind to constant never ending learning and improvement, they -in essence – give themselves the keys to unlock unlimited potential.

Here are some great tips that I’ve learned over the years.  Not all of them are original, actually I’m pretty sure that someone has probably written about them at some point.  The reality behind these tips is the fact that I want to help local business owners survive and thrive with this ever changing market.

Most business owners go into social media to get more business.  That’s a great strategy, but it’s a long term one.  If you simply go on Facebook and Twitter to tell everyone about your business or opportunity, no one will listen.  One of the best speakers on the topic that I have seen live is Perry Belcher.  He talks about Social Media like it’s a party.  Think about this. If you’re going to a networking event, you would never want to be the person that goes straight up to someone and throws your card in their face and tells them to buy from you now!  What would you do if someone did that to you?  I’m pretty sure you would either ignore them, tell them to leave, or stop being acquaintances with them.  OR ALL OF THE ABOVE.

You see people go on Facebook and Twitter because it’s a way to connect with other people…not businesses.

Social Media Etiquette Mistake #1 – Creating a personal Facebook Profile for your business

People don’t become “friends” with businesses!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been requested by a local club, restaurant, heck even lawn mowing company to become their friend.  I am not friends with your company.  Deal with it.  I may be friends with the owner, but not the company.  That’s a big fat invitation that says, be my friend so I can market to you.  Not cool

Instead, set up a Fan page for your business in Facebook.  It only takes a couple of minutes to set up and there is no limit to the number of fans that you can have.  With a personal profile, your limit is 5,000.

Social Media Etiquette Mistake #2 – Fake or bad profile picture

More important than even your bio, your profile picture in Social Media is how others judge if they want to follow you or be your friend.  I wish it wasn’t this way, but in social media, people completely judge a book by its cover.  I’ve seen many people put up pictures of celebrities, pictures of their business logo, or just a terrible picture of themselves.  This can cause you to lose many connections that you could have had.

Put in a good picture of your smiling or at least doing something really cool.  You want people to feel welcomed when they look at your profile picture.

Social Media Etiquette Mistake #3 – Requesting to be everyone’s friend or follow as many people as possible

If you’re using social media in hopes that you will increase your business from usage, you need to have a good plan about who you want in your social circle.  This is the perfect opportunity to speak to your target market.  I’ve seen some people in Twitter go on and follow 2,001 people in their first couple days.  This is the maximum allowance from Twitter.  This looks really bad on the user, because people know that you went out and just followed as many people as possible in hopes that some would follow you back.  You should go out, however, and follow people with similar interests, especially those who live in your geographical area.  You can go to http://www.twellow.com to search in your local area.

It’s also a good idea to follow people who have a significant amount of followers to see how they interact with their followers.  Obviously, they are doing something right to have that many followers.  The more captivated followers you have, the great your influence in the social media world.

Let me know with your comments some of the biggest social media mistakes that you have seen in your experiences.

Contact me directly brad@braddohack.com if you’re interested in the possibility of being accepted for free to test/use the product.

Every day our brain gets inundated with information…LOTS of information.  This video is probably the most mind-blowing video I have watched this year.

How about that for perspective on the amount of information we receive?  The reality is, we don’t always have control over the information that enters our noggins.  If you’re driving down the road, you will come across millions of stimulants and hundreds of businesses vying to grab your attention and puke information all over you.

It’s easy to see how people can become crazy and need a psychiatrist this day an age.  While you don’t have control over every piece of information that enters your brain, you do have control over A LOT.  Everyday, each one of us makes thousands of decisions.  We choose to watch the news in the morning or not.  We choose to listen to the radio in the car or not.  We choose to meditate…or not.   Each one of these activities either makes the mind crazier or more calm.  When you go throughout your day, make sure that you start becoming aware of what you ALLOW to enter you brain.  If you feel like you have no control over your mind, and you’re a lost cause…you’re not.  We have control over very little of the outside world, but we can c0ntrol 1 thing on this planet: our mind.

As with changing any behavior, changing your mind can be difficult.  Start with just 1 day, 1 day of noticing what you allow to enter your mind, and know that you will only allow the positive calm information to gain access to your precious mush between your ears…

The other day, I was headed to a speaking engagement on Geographical targeting using Google Adwords.  The gas guage in my car glared “E,” so I pulled into the nearest gas station.  I usually make these types of ‘waiting’ situations productive for myself, so I was talking on the phone and washing my windows at the same time.  A few seconds later, I noticed a gentleman come over to my pump and stare at it.  He certainly did not appear to be the gas station attendant.  As I mentioned I was speaking on the phone, so I did not have a chance to ask the man what he was doing.  I saw him fumbling around with something, but I didn’t get it too much thought.  After the gas had finished pumping, I meandered over to the pump and noticed what he had been doing.  He put 3 business cards in the slits of the gas pump contraption.  He was promoting his affordable health insurance plans.  

In digesting what all just happened, I was actually proud of the guy for thinking outside the box and finding a ‘free’ way to promote himself.  Now, I didn’t purchase anything from him, but those cards might just fall on the lap of a qualified prospect.

So, what are you doing these days to cut marketing expenses, but improve marketing techniques.  Just because you have to cut back on expenses in some instances, does not mean you should do less marketing.  It just means that you have to get smarter about how you market yourself.  Bang for the buck, internet marketing is undoubtedly the best out there.  If you specifically advertise on Google, you can write the worst ad in the world, and if no one clicks it, it’s free.  On the other hand, if you write a terrible yellow page ad, you pay for it and have to live with it for a long time.  

Where are your marketing dollars going?

In my mind there is no real battle between Facebook and MySpace.  I have accounts at both, but put my focus on Facebook.  Most people are on it at this point, so there’s no real need to go into much depth about how great of a tool it is.  I use it more for keeping up with friends than for business purposes.  I have attempted to use it to spread word about some of my projects like Remote Restore and Magic Flash Drive, but I’ve never had too much luck there.  I actually got kicked off Facebook one time for soliciting someone to help me spread the word!  Talk about an all time low!  It was a terrible feeling to know that I lost all of my friends.  Thank God it was only temporary.

The 2nd Web2.0 site I keep up-to-date is LinkedIn.  LinkedIn has much higher rate of professionalism.  You can find CEO’s of companies on the site frequently.  This can be a great tool for a sales person to get a way in the door.  

Finally, Twitter is the newest tool in my arsenal.  It’s basically just status updates, but you get to build lots of value for people…if you choose to.  Many people will write that they are just “going to the grocery store” or something of the sort.  This information is all fine and well, but people like to be intrigued.  If you watch a good movie, read a good book, or just have great advice that you would like to share, Twitter can be a huge resource for you.  Within 2 weeks, I’ve had people asking me about more details about what I’m promoting and so forth.  It’s an extremely powerful tool.

Finally to keep all of this going at once, I recommend using a tool such as http://www.hellotxt.com.  You can update all of your statuses for all the sites with one click.  Pretty nifty if you ask me.