DISQUS

Awesome song.

How is it that the SL gets as busy or busier than the first life? Insanity rules. If I had a spare extra spare hour, I would loan it to you. I even have an alt to get time in with Raven, (or his alt) but we don't even seem to get time to log in as our alts.. Don't even ask me about rl.... it is insane. That seems to be a recurring theme of my comment, maybe I should look into that. :)

Busy or no, it is still fun, but holy heck!

Again, Chris, fantastic information. Your newsletter and blog are sterling examples of the value gained by both sides of the social media share.

I have a new assistant on a Social Media development project I am working on, and she is starting from scratch gathering information and personal knowledge related to everything social media. Your blogs and fantastic lists are her starting blocks, and today's just adds to the heap that you have provided so far. Thanks.

Again with the comments providing as much value as the post :)

Good advice all around.
The bottom line is that confidence is sexy, and people are drawn to it. Basic psychology, confidence radiates power. My advice: if you don't feel it, fake it. Just chill. No one will know -because some of them are fakers too...(Unless you go overboard) and the acceptance will perpetuate the myth of your confidence, and lead you to believe that you are, therefore feeling confindent in actuality.

We don't realize how self conscious most people are yet mask it to project their successful aura.

Best way to make successful connections is to ask a lead-in question, and Listen. Draw the person out, and be interested. Too often, one can see impatience in a listener, as they wait for the talker to finish, so they can jump in and get to their agenda. Fail. People need to be heard, and to feel that their words have value.

The same goes with eye contact. Look into someone's eyes when they talk, not just when *you* talk. Eye contact is totally under rated as a confidence powertool also.

On the Bad Breath note: total agreement. No matter how interesting, influential or terrific someone is, if I get a whiff of stink, they immediately drop value. Instant judgement. Bad.

On ending a droning monologue that is past its usefulness, -I will look beyond the person quickly, raise my eyebrows, nod and hold up a finger to the imaginary person, and tell the droner ...oops, sorry, being paged...nice talking to you, bye.

Disclaimer: this does not work well if there is no one behind the person. Best done in crowded rooms.

There are few things as valuable as time, and donating this precious commodity is admirable. Kudos to you all.

Now to business. I have a non-profit budget of possibly $102 CAD, could everyone please leave me Aaron Strout for $100? I'd throw in a free PEI vacation, and all the cold beer and fresh lobster you all can consume as a side bribe for compliance.

Thanks :)

Not spam. I had previously requested subscription, so I got the comfirmation email, which was quite personable and amusing. Nicely done, looking forward to more.

I consider spamming to be purely self serving (as opposed to a healthy contribution of useful info) Advertising the availablity of a service such as your newsletter is more of a query directed at those with like interests.

I am very sensitive to spam, having been through onough of it in the last 12 years, and your offerings are far from it.

Cheers!

Very timely post, based on my current 'almost late to the table for an important presentation' situation -I have to get to the 'typing alot' part. I do the thinking/formulating constantly, also with the long commute...my shortcoming is putting fingers to keyboard and actually getting it down. I don't watch tv either, but I find that I spend so much time reading and researching that I don't make the time to note the conclusions and ideas that form from the learning.

After a certain period, the ideas and potentially excellent thoughts drift away or get buried under phonecalls and interruptions.

Thinking and planning is part of it, but the solidifying and thought process path created by writing it down is where the the rubber meets the road.

Write alot. Read it. Close my office door. Write more. Got it. Thanks.
@isle

Very good post. Your mom sounds like a wonderful person, and she evidently passed on her independance and wisdom to her daughter. This was a great read for Mother's Day.

Nicely done. I particularly like the tweet-to-following ratio. Someone following me with an extremely unbalanced follower/following does give me pause. Some people may tweet alot also...but if it is too much, and not interesting, I will unfollow just to clear up my stream. I *do* like reading a lot of the minor daily happenings of people, as long as it is balanced with interest or humour. (or I wouldn't be on Twitter, obviously) -Quality and value must be interspersed or it is just more noise.
@replies are important also, to see who they tweet, and what they have to say.
I'll be bookmarking this for newb friends.

Good plan. I have been breaking out of the lurking habit lately, as a budding blogger myself, I realize that bloggers obviously want to be read, and what evidence of such would be left, if not for comments.

This is akin to the practice in daily life of commenting to people those random thoughts and observations that most of us keep to ourselves... ie: "I really enjoyed your presentation, thanks" or "I like what you have done with____" or just engaging in conversation, however brief about something that relates directly to the person.

Everyone has comments, too rarely they air them, online or otherwise.

It will be interesting to see the reports back on how this influences conversation.

Got the scary Spokeo "someone looked up all your shit and is currently stalking you" email recently, checked out Spokeo. Very alarming, but not surprising, social media aggregator, just a matter of time. I did a few tests and found out that adding my email lists for checking did not generate scary emails to all in my list... I would assume that the "someone is stalking you" emails would likely be generated by deliberate personally entered email addy searches, and not imported contact list searches.

I agree that it is more of an enlightening tool than a scary thing..online, one reaps what you sow, to an extent...and this can help check what you have forgotten you sowed... With several email addys linked together, I was able to check on all my evil deeds and kill some expired accounts.

Strange how many people have not heard of Spokeo yet.