You should know by now that, with me, nothing is black and white. So, here’s my answer.

Occasionally, there is some redundancy when you have the same certain people in more than one of your networks, but that is more the exception than the rule - not to mention that those folks are usually die-hard online networkers, and they tend to really ‘get’ what you are doing with your broadcasts. And, if they’re following you in all of those places, they really like you and will just be happy to hear from you.

So, on this question, I lean heavily towards the ‘you need to belong to many social networking sites’ side. Simply because there are a gazillion people online and they choose to belong to different social networks because each network presents a specific personality, attitude and interaction capability - oh, and that’s where there friends play. As a result, when you decide to belong to a variety of networks, you are reaching a more diverse audience. You are reaching the Twitter people, the Facebook people, the LinkedIn people, the Tagged people, the Squidoo people, the de.licio.us people - and you are reaching them where they are.

To participate on multiple networks is to build, activate and inspire multiple audiences and to foster a bevy of solid relationships. My raison d’etre exactly.

Anyone else ever get so busy taking care of clients that you hardly have time to take care of yourself? Case in point, it’s been over a year since I’ve updated my portfolio page. And, it’s finally here. Thanks, as always, to my prized designer, Leslie Tane, you can all now see a selected smattering of what Writing Roads has been doing for the last year. The Bonobo Kids site above is just a taste…

Oy, did I just refer to myself in the 3rd person? Listen people, I have 16 in-laws visiting us for a week…I have a really, really good excuse. Really, really.

Is Web 2.0 a Pyramid Scheme?

I had a very interesting meeting with a talented Vineyard artist this week. And I was explaining life on the web and the concept of broadcasting to your network (Twitter, Facebook, other blogs, your blog) and how your network will tell their networks and on and on - viral, word of mouth, relationship marketing. He looked right at me and said, ‘So it’s kind of like a pyramid scheme.’ I nearly fell off my chair.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since - rather obsessively and a bit defensively. I mean, it isn’t anything like a pyramid scheme. But there are some parallels. Right? For instance, if I imagine myself at the top of a, um, triangle, I reach out to my 5 networks below, then each of them reach out to their 5 networks, then each of them reach out to their 5 networks…it broadens as it goes. I see his point.

But the Web 2.0 marketing I do isn’t sleazy. Oops, did I just say that out loud? Me and my big mouth. But the way some people do it is sleazy - which may, in the end, lend itself to being scene as a pyramid scheme. Interesting, very interesting. Your thoughts?

And, now, after millions, hundreds, quite a few requests, I’m pleased to introduce…

My dog assistant. His name is Silas, he’s an American Field Lab, he’s 5 1/2 years old, he acts like he’s 5 1/2 months old. He believes truly and firmly that he is a lap dog…and that he rules the universe. He is the funniest dog I’ve ever met. And he insisted that I let him wear the Super Silas cape. His nickname is Merpikulis, though his best friend - my 2 year-old daughter, Sophie - calls him Siley and Merpikey.

He thinks he is a guru which explains why he’s on a yoga mat in this picture. I am delighted that he nearly knocks me over in a valiant and selfish way every morning in order to get past me, and then be first to get to the office. I love it when he lays his head on my feet and sleeps while I work.

His paws smell like Fritos and his head smells like an oatmeal cookie. His ears were put on crooked, so one lays back a bit, while the other has a tighter fold. His nose is pink - and my mom thinks that it isn’t sewn down all the way around. He has an over active tongue that earned him yet another nickname - Licky McSmooch.

He has an older canine sister named Baloula who is 1/2 golden, 1/2 lab and has 15 lbs on him. And he will go to any length to knock her out of the way if she is getting attention from any human. He also cleans her ears, eyes and face daily, gently and meticulously.

One of his super powers is that he can tiptoe. I kid you not that if he wants to get somewhere without us knowing (like upstairs when the vet arrives at our house - yes, we have a home visiting vet and it ROCKS), he can tiptoe without letting his nails touch the floor, without making a sound. It is amazing.

He is perfect.

“I get most of this stuff, but I still don’t understand this Twitter thing.” Seriously, if I hear that one more time today. There is also the concern that not much can be accomplished in 140 characters…hah! Here’s how I recommend that you make Twitter work for you and your business:

1. Understand that the point of Twitter is to build a network that you can easily and quickly broadcast your latest news to - whether the point of your tweets is to: drive traffic, sell a product, market a service, establish expert status, share news or gather information, you are trying to get people to follow you (ie. be repeat customers, again and again)
2. Many people have Twitter linked into their phones so they can tweet and be tweeted wherever they are. We are no longer limited to mobile email or being connected only when we’re on our computers.
3. Use the search function to find people connected to your keytopics or keywords…and follow them. If you sell organic baby soap, search for: moms, dads, parents, babies, body care, eco-friendly products, baby gifts and on and on. You will find lists of people under each category that have listed those keywords in their profiles that may have good information for you and you for them.
4. Hopefully, when you follow these people, a good number of them will follow you back. But if they don’t you will have many opportunities to start conversations with them as a result of their tweets. Who knows when one of them will be looking for, say, an eco-product that you or one of your clients has - and they want to include it in a post they’re writing for Martha Stewart. The opportunities are endless.
5. When you follow someone, send them a message introducing yourself and noting something positive about their work, site or tweets. Stand out by reaching out.
6. Respond to anyone who follows you by acknowledging the follow and, again, noting something positive about their work, site or tweets.
7. Retweet when it is deserved (Def’n: Sharing a particularly good tweet of someone you are following by rebroadcasting it to all that are following you).
8. Participate by tweeting on a regular, but not obnoxious basis.
9. Offer good tweets that share interesting information and real value. People tend to discount you if you always tweet things like, “wow I could really go for some Grape Nuts right about now.” They are much more likely to follow tweets that offer, “just found out the extrusion process used to make breakfast cereal renders the grain proteins toxic” (true fact, by the way). See the difference?
10. Give back by answering people’s questions. When @magpie is at her wit’s end about ants in her kitchen, tell her that a little rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle of water dispersed regularly over her counters will work every time. It doesn’t kill them, it just nullifies smells so the scout ants head somewhere else. This is true, but the point is that no one likes to ask a question and then sit around listening to the echo.
11. Follow me on Twitter…I’d love to connect.

Update: My good friend from Flexpaths, Erin, just left me a comment in response to this blog about a great video by Lee Lefeever that explains what Twitter is ‘in plain english’. This isn’t about the marketing side, just a great answer to ‘what the heck is this Twitter thing?’ Perfect for those visual learners…

So, I have this friend…and this is how our conversations usually go:

Me: Hi! How are you?

Him: Great, things are really good. I just got a new client, the kids are growing fast, built a new playset in our backyard.

(pause)

Me: Sounds excellent. What did you do for the holidays?

Him: Oh, it was awesome - we went to the Bahamas. Jill’s parents rented a house for everyone, we stayed for 1o days.

(pause)

Me:  Wow! Fantastic. You said the kids are well? Little Oscar’s going into kindergarten just like my Sophie this year, right? Are you all ready for the big step?

Him: Yeah…we’ve been reading him books about school and walking the route to school, met his teachers. I think he’ll do great!

(Pause)

…and on and on…every single conversation.

Hopefully, you picked up on what’s missing here. These conversations are 100% one-sided. Never does he ask me about me or my life - even when I prod him a bit. And, honestly, I don’t have time for it. Not in my live social life and not online.

If you want to succeed in either arena, I suggest you join the conversation. Participate. Don’t be just a taker, ewww. It doesn’t feel good on the other side. It’s a big devaluing gust that no one wants.

Talk to your followers, friends, connections, other lenses, favorites - however you connect. Just a simple thanks, tell me who you are and what you do is a great way to start a conversation that can end up just about anywhere, but it’s usually somewhere good. You’re building your team, your network, your audience - plug in to them, they won’t forget. At least I never do.

So, I’m guiding one of my clients down the road of Web 2.0 - and she turns to me and says, ‘This feels like dating 101.” And it’s true…but more specifically, I think, like dating 101 for a seasoned & divorced person.

Why? Because we already know how to do the basics - we can read & write, we can do the elevator speech, we can network, we can self-promote, we can buy, sell & trade. But the scenery has changed, so we have to learn how to apply all that we know to this new venue. Think of it this way, she worked it just fine at the drive-in and now I’m taking her to a rave.

So, the important things to remember are these:

• You’ve still got the moves.
• Yes, you have to learn a new language with words like Squidoo, post, Wordpress, comments, Google, Digg, blog and de.licio.us.
• Yes, you have to type it all in.
• No, no one cares what you’re wearing because they can’t see you…though a good picture will help.
• Still, now you have to put all of that fashion sense and primping into your blog & site design.
• Networking is networking (dating is dating), sometimes you have be forward and make the first move, other times you’ll play hard to get - you’ll know which is which and when is when.
• People are frequently attracted to ‘the someone’ that everyone else likes - so highlight your client list, your achievements, your traffic, your subscribers and how many people friended you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter, etc.

Total aside (though tangently related to the post above): Speaking of dating and new technology, I’ve been wanting to bring this up for awhile now: when I was in junior high, we used to call the boys that we had crushes on and hang up after they answered. I’ve got to know, what are girls doing these days? You can’t do that now…everyone has caller ID. My best guess is that they visit their crush’s MySpace page where they have more anonymity…ooh, and pictures. Okay, I guess there may be life after caller-ID…

Blogging is about the conversation, right? That said, there are certain ‘big’ blogs that I read where I can tell the writer is talking to thousands of people - I feel it, I feel like I’m just one of the many. There are other ‘big’ blogs that always leave me feeling like I’m the only one in the room - and that’s the goal - for any kind of marketing writing, perhaps any kind of writing.

Some of my readers have gone out of their way to tell me that they feel like I’m talking directly to them…which I find superb, because I am. I’m most certainly talking to one person - and that intimacy is able to come through. I’ve picked one person to write my blog to, and every time I sit down to write, I imagine this person sitting in front of me. I purpose my message to this individual allowing my conversational style to be authentic.

So, why then, you may ask, do so many of my readers feel like I’m writing to them personally? They, possibly you, feel that connection because it’s a contact high. It’s catharsis at its best. My best example of this phenomenon has to be the movies. Note: I am a writer with a very potent imagination, this might not show up for you in exactly the same way it does for me.

Take any romantic movie, throw George Clooney (still my favorite) in (or whoever does it for you) and let him/her romance the hell out of someone (could be a girl or a boy - have you seen the Ocean’s movies?)…somehow, sitting there, watching that movie, the viewer gets the sensation that George is talking to them, that they are in love and being loved by GC…and they literally feel full of bliss. Catharsis by movie: you get to revel in your emotions by watching someone else’s experience.

Anyway, as I write to my one and only, you pick up on our intimacy, our connection. I hope it makes you feel included, like you’re part of something. Because you are. This is an excellent writing tool that enables you to meet your audience and influence them. It’s the difference between talking to them and shouting at them, really. The difference between inviting them over to try your fabulous new coffee maker and telling them that they BETTER GET ONE BEFORE THEY’RE ALL GONE! Think about it.

The best part is, with the blog platform, you (the audience) get to talk back. You can keep that conversation going - say what you like, reveal what you don’t, ask for what’s missing. A conversation wants two or more - it can’t exist with just one. In effect, I am writing to you. And, I love it when you join me with emails or comments. I promise to always talk back.

For those of you who know me well, you will not be surprised that I got in trouble when I was growing up - a lot. And, one of my favorite places to get in trouble? Camp. I went to an all girls camp in northern Minnesota called Kamaji. These were the best 9 summers of my life - from camper to counselor to head of the swim program. Of course, the best part of camp was my crime ring, possey, group of best friends. A solid group of 7 of us came every summer for 2 months and shared a cabin and our lives.

For every second of hilarity, however, there were at least 2 seconds of trouble. It got to this point: when the my cabin counselors found out they had me as their camper, they sometimes cried. I was outspoken, stubborn, hilarious (according to me) - a real shit disturber, if you will. But, I was just having fun. One time, we were being so loud in the dining hall, that the camp director took our forks away. I never understood that punishment, but at the time it seemed pretty hysterical serious. When we were being loud during ‘rest period’ my counselors wouldn’t even come in to see what was going on, they’d just yell, ‘Fish (my nickname), be QUIET’…

And now, some exorbitant number of years later, Facebook has reconnected me with my camp buddies.

A few days ago, one of the them put up some horribly embarrassing 80’s photos (see exhibit A above) and we started bantering back and forth about the whole thing. We’re now very sophisticated and 30-something and living on both coasts - so it got, let’s just say, a little spicey (never mean or nasty or disrespectful ever, just spicey).

Well, my friend, Lisa, tagged Camp Kamaji in the photos…and, if you know Facebook, then you know that everyone who gets tagged gets alerted to new picture comments. Within moments, Camp wrote and asked Lisa to take some of the remarks down (the spicey ones) - of course, their page is for their business so it is available for all to see.

So, it’s summer, camp is in full swing and I’m still getting in trouble. You betcha’.

But this story teaches a good lesson about how to behave on the internet:

• Be careful who you include, tag, cc, bcc, etc.
• Control the privacy settings on all of your sites.
• Think before you type, publish, send.
• Remember that things live forever in cached pages.

…and hold on to your forks.

$10 for the first person to guess which one is me in the photo up above. (Mom, you can’t play).

Here’s an example of someone, not Paris, succeeding online with video. Etsy just produced this mini-documentary of my friend Susan Gibbs and her revolutionary MV Fiber Farm which is the world’s first natural fiber CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). This past Sunday it was the featured video on YouTube’s hompage - garnering  129,536 views as of this morning. Besides Susan’s amazing story, there is an exciting delivery in this tale…around the 1/2 way point of the vid.

Susan has grown the CSA almost entirely online (save the Martha’s Vineyard local farmer’s markets) - through her blog, website, store and online communities like Etsy. Some highlights from the first year:

• Sold three rounds of shares (2 falls, 1 spring - actually this fall’s shares are going like hotcakes right now if you’re interested!)
• Raised over $10,000 on her blog to help pay for an electric wheelchair for her uncle - in ONE week
• Doubled the size of the flock
• Featured in an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal
• Spotlighted in Women’s World Magazine (which surprisingly has one of highest circulations of any magazine in the country)
• Promoted & supported by the awesome crew at Etsy who, amongst many other things, created the video
• Currently negotiating a book deal
• Built a strong and loyal community of knitters, crafters, weavers, spinners - and lamb and sheep lovers

Not bad, Susan, not bad at all. I wish I could say that I taught her everything she knows, but she is this brilliant and talented all by herself. Visit Susan and become part of the CSA at www.mvfiberfarm.com.

So, when I wrote that post yesterday about presidents (past and future) and Web 2.0, I typed and then deleted a line about the fact that even Paris Hilton and her mom, who denounced McCain’s ad comparing Obama to her daughter - that even they could have their voices heard by the masses because of Web 2.0. And, then Paris goes ahead and does this:

 Not only is it well-done and cheeky as hell, it has also been syndicated and spread across the internet and media world.  And, it didn’t have to be Paris. Anyone could have dressed up as Paris, produced the same video and it would have taken off.

Advice for the day: go video. Some people, I’m not mentioning any names, are..well…lackadaisical and would rather watch than read. If you can add humor, do it. Go for ‘man bites dog’…if you know what I mean.

Sidenote: I just read a wonderful article in the NY Times that supported many of the points I made yesterday…maybe I should turn this into a political blog? Naahhhhhh….

Tomorrow we’ll look at a real person, not Paris, who makes video work for their business…