New Here? Why not download a free book. Social Media for First Graders.

Yes, I did it. I was at a lunch meeting and, at the tail end, I gave the other party a business card. A card that looked something like this one:

We sorta instagrammed it, for effect

Now, with the advancement of technology, with mobile phones and iPads and apps and the like, you’d think that the business card would be dead. But it’s not.

In fact, the business card exchange takes very little time – and there isn’t that dance macabre of whether or not you know the person (LinkedIn request?), whether or not you have met the person ever (Facebook request?), or whether or not you’re about to get spammed (the opt-in email address confirmation thing – more on that in a few).

So, since you asked, here are official tips that you can put to use with those most trusty of networking tools: business cards.

1. Don’t Scrimp on Paper

I’m going to assume for a half-second that your business cards are under your control – if you work for a mid-sized company or a big brand, standards are decided on by an Ivory Tower somewhere. Let’s hope those folks aren’t stingy with the paper stock.

Your business card’s paper stock is one of the most important decisions you can make.

Go thick. Go glossy. 14 point is the minimum. Mine are 16.  The extra couple points (or millimeters of thickness) plus the glossy finish make a serious impact.

2. Design is Important as Heck

Hire a professional. Heck, go to fiverr.com and get someone to design one. I don’t care how you get it done; but, unless you are someone with a knack for graphic design, outsource this key function.

The back of the card is important to use, too. Go with one of a couple approaches:

• Logo with links on a color background
• Your logo – but again with color
• OR space to write on.

You can write on the back

3. While You’re at it: No Dumb Titles

Thankfully, the bulk of the business cards sitting on my desk do not use dumb titles.

But there are a couple. “Chief Awesomeness Officer,” “Marketing Guru,” and “Master of Innovation and Vision” are some examples of what you want to avoid.

My card does not have a title on it – which is a great way to avoid having to reprint when you (a) promote yourself, (b) demote yourself or (c) get direct feedback from someone telling you that your title is dumb. (Consider this a warning: I have witnessed people delivering this news to someone. I have more tact than that: I use a blog.)

4. Handing You My Card Does Not Give You Permission to Spam Me

Start with a direct email, please. “Hey, Dave, great meeting you last night. We do a newsletter from time to time, and I’d love to put you on the list. Is that okay?”

You can even ask while you’re getting my card from me; if I give you permission, write that on the back of the card, along with the date.

Hey, it’s a Marketing and Networking Jungle out there. Try these tips with your business card. Trust me, you’ll make a positive impact. OR avoid a negative impact.

We write today with some uber-easy advice for Social Media Marketers.

It’s a dog-eat-dog social media world out there. One company’s desire for a viral video is another company’s IT nightmare. One personal brand’s quest for world domination is another’s boxes upon boxes of books in the remainder bin.

Social Media Strategy Can Be Simple. Just Think It Through.

Ah, THINKING! Critical thinking, or scenario planning, or mindmapping. Something using your head can get you there. Right?

Which brings us to GOP Candidate for President Michele Bachmann.

This isn’t going to be a rebuke of her politics, or a discussion of whether or not we agree with her stand on the issues. Plenty of places can let you do that. Instead, we just want to discuss whether or not Michele Bachmann HAS a Social Media Strategy.

99 Counties

Bachmann launched something over the weekend called “The 99 County Tour.” You can see evidence over there on the right hand side that she’s tweeting about it. Actually, her “Team” is tweeting about it. (On Twitter, her campaign’s account is TeamBachmann.)

Problem? In this reporter’s humble opinion, this was not thought through very well. Ignore poll numbers, ignore issue stance, ignore everything for a second…and focus on the name of this tour.

“I got 99 counties…”

Are there 99 Counties in Iowa? Do you care? Do Iowans care? Does it matter because we just put an earworm in your head?

Here’s a BRANDING PROBLEM waiting to happen. The most important thing that Rep. Bachmann (R-MN) has to do is this:

Build a Personal Brand around Michele Bachmann to increase the chance of winning early states, then winning the GOP nomination, then the Presidency.

People of Earth, you can say this about any candidate for any office anywhere in the USA. Breaking the larger OBJECTIVE down into these three steps gives you three smaller OBJECTIVES, but, in turn, gives you something to actually build towards.

Social Media Strategy for Michele Bachmann Made Simple

Why do we talk about this? Well, take a look at Exhibit 2.

Exhibit Two - MB Main Twitter Account

What you have here, in Twitter lingo, is a “Verified Account.” That’s what the Blue Checkmark Starburst tells us. Built In Audience. 35,000 followers.

(We won’t even get started on the Facebook page for the Representative – a recipe for brand-building disaster, what with its free-flowing commentary on everything and apparent lack of monitoring or engagement.)

Yet, no real Twitter Strategy is apparent. A Tweet here, a video posting there – “Michele’s Path to Victory” is today’s video – an occasional “RT” (Retweet) and maybe a Foursquare Check-in.

The Social Media Strategy is NOT Holistic. You’ve got a couple Twitter accounts competing with each other, and, if you were to sniff around on other sites, you’d be left to your own devices to find out what the Congresswoman stands for.

Advice: Break This Down Into Steps…

…And use the tools and audience at your disposal to start turning those steps into actionable strategies.

Step One: Tweet with the Entire State of Iowa.

Wait, that sounds counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? No, you have the reach with your 35,000+ followers, start actually saying hello to people.

Step Two: Outline Your Plan for Your Presidency as it pertains to Iowans.

You can do this for any industry you’re in. That’s right, you have a plan for the Widgetmaster 3000 and you are launching it to Lawyers in Kentucky. Go! Speak to them and share how they will Benefit from your Widgetmaster.

Step Three: If it Doesn’t Impact Iowans and you Cannot Spend Time on it – Don’t Do It.

This means that there’s no real reason to share all of your daily activities on Facebook if you can’t support that platform and you can’t speak to Iowans there. Don’t waste your time there.

(Again, any industry can benefit from this advice. Why check-in on Foursquare if you’re a B2B concern? Etc., etc. – don’t waste your time with marketing that isn’t Objective-Oriented.)

Notice how we didn’t talk about policy? Didn’t talk about issues? We broke this down into the actionable steps, and the most actionable step RIGHT NOW is the one that increases chances of winning Key Early States. Rest of it? Doesn’t matter.

There’s your strategy. Repeat for your product, your service, your business. And you’re welcome.

Photo Credit: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid

It’s an awesome movie. Alec Baldwin’s performance is amazing. Watch this clip, pulled from YouTube, if you haven’t seen it a million times before. (NSFW – that means “Not Suitable For Work.”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

A wonderful spend of 7 minutes. Baldwin’s character spells out a couple acronyms in his NSFW diatribe, including AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, part of the sales funnel that we think is dead) and the most famous, or infamous, ABC. Always. Be. Closing.

ABC should be replaced, though. As this very 80s clip from a very non-PC workplace will show you…this stuff doesn’t work anymore. Some alternative suggestions:

ABR. “Always Be Recruiting.”

Tech Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist Mark Suster pulled out a can of awesome yesterday in his TechCrunch advice to startups. And that was his point: if you as an A-List Tech Exec are not out searching for more like-minded people at all times, your business will stagnate, you’ll be relegated to the B-List, and you’ll recruit C-List players.

We have seen this time and again – and not just in technology and startups, but in all types of businesses.

The “Turf Warriors” are, IMHO, the worst – their mission is to protect their own empire, and you can see it in the type of people they hire. You may have worked for one before, you may be working for one now. Most of the time, the people they hire are lacking gravitas, or might not have top-notch skills.

Don’t go there with your own business, your own department. If you’re not hiring somebody who is, to borrow Suster’s term, “punching above their weight class,” you need to take another look at your own hiring practices.

Always. Be. Recruiting.

ABL: “Always Be Launching.”

I have been accused of having ADHD – not because I’m all over the map, but because I seem to be working on the next thing all the time.

I don’t have ADHD – I’ve been checked out for that – but I do have an addiction (of sorts) to product launches.

This is borne out of two things. One is necessity – I need to make a living, and having something new to offer clients and prospects helps me do that. Two is constant improvement – I want to see people in my circle (clients, friends, associates, whomever) make more meaningful connections that improve their business.

As a result, I am always launching.

Your next question is “what about failure?”

The beauty of having multiple product lines, service lines, things to offer clients and prospects, is this: some of them will not work. Not all of them are for everyone. But being in constant launch mode leads to more (gasp) innovation – because this thing may not be what they need, but the next thing very well may be.

Always. Be. Launching.

ABY: “Always Be Yourself.”

I have seen some awesome things happen to online friends of late – things that could never happen to me. There’s Erika Napoletano, Redhead Writing, who will be penning for Entrepreneur Magazine. There’s Paige Worthy, whose “Hire Me” page led to a gig with YouSwoop.

These particular things could never happen to me – because, well, I’m not the kind of person who writes in Erika’s style, and my story and Paige’s story are pretty different.

But other things could happen to me. And to you.

You have a voice – read this awesome post from Danny Brown – and your mission is to find that voice. You could be like the woman who digs gaming so much that you do your own web show. (Not the famous one, but a different one. One that’s more, well, you.) You could be the guy whose food truck rocks, or the gal whose jewelry rocks or the rock band that actually does rock.

But you can’t get there if your aspiration is to be somebody else.

We just went through this exercise as part of our launch (natch) of 12 Minute Marketing. We revisited our own mission statement – which keeps evolving, but it’s pretty true to the “voice” that we’ve developed over the past six months of daily blogging, and over the past 4 years of being in business.

To provide training and consulting in new media, digital media and social media that helps business owners and managers to better connect with people and sell more stuff.

Which, I think, is pretty much what we are good at doing over here at HQ.

Always. Be. Yourself.

Always Smiling

Missing my Dad, Tom, lots lately; he left this earth on June 1, 2009. He was – fittingly – born on March First: he had leadership qualities and was one of the guys you wanted on your team.

He never took the time to write a book – but what I learned about business from him would take up more than a few cocktail napkins. Here are a few highlights.

1. Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself.

It was bound to happen: Northern Indiana’s economy was not doing so well, and the factory that had been the family’s lifeblood decides it want to relocate to Georgia. Not being much of a Dawg, not wanting to uproot everyone with three kids in high school, Dad did what everyone should do at least once in their life.

He reinvented himself.

Turns out, as is the case, “Quality Control Director” was not as fitting for him as the new life he invented: “Real Estate Agent.”

You may want to (if that industry you picked in college isn’t what it’s cracked up to be in the real world), you may have to (in walks the boss, pink slip in tow). But, at some time in your life, you NEED to. Reinvent. Yourself.

2. Play to your strengths.

We joked that Dad grew up on 7th Street, got married and moved to 8th Street, then, when the kids were grown up, moved to 13th Street.

This was true: the Belgian-American enclave of the West End of Mishawaka, Indiana was his home and, even when he and Mom moved for the last few years to a street without a number, he was still in the same 2 mile radius for his entire 65 years.

Hey, guess where he sold the bulk of his houses as a real estate agent?

Dad would do one deal a year that was outside of his normal zone, but his business was pretty much The Guy on The West End.

While he reinvented himself rather easily, he sure didn’t reinvent himself as something he wasn’t.

3. Show up.

Wish I had a dollar for every time Dad called me from a boring open house. Of course, he would never say that out loud; it was always something like “well, we’re waiting for the crowd to show up.”

He couldn’t just hang up a shingle and expect the business to start coming to him – he had to actually put in the work. That meant a lot of events – not just open houses but rubber chicken dinners and local sporting events – that were probably not ideal places to spend your time then…

But those events paid dividends down the road.

4. Give.

There’s something that is important to you. A charity. An organization. Your church. A club. A cause.

It doesn’t have to be financial – heck, Dad wasn’t rolling in dough – but he sure did give of his time.

I still remember him getting the frequent donor club card from the Blood Bank. As a kid, I thought it was nuts – I mean, who in their right mind would let you take their blood?

It’s not about “my cause is better than your cause.” He found the causes that were important to him. And he gave.

5. Please have fun.

I am 100% certain that my Dad did not take himself all that seriously.

I’m guessing, if Dad were around today, he’d probably chide all the “Social Media Gurus” for being “Guru” first, “Media” second. And “Social” third.

Dad would talk to anyone, and listen to anyone. And drink a beer with anyone.

His last birthday, March 1, 2009, found him at the casino, having gotten his faculties back and being good to go after his first stroke. He had a nice payday at some exotic sounding game – Mississippi Stud or some such – and was thrilled to tell me all about it.

I’m sure my Dad picked up quite a few lessons in business, and life, from his Dad.

So I always wondered, not totally “getting it,” why my Dad made a big deal out of his own father’s birthday, years after his father had passed away.

I get it now.

Notes: since it was a stroke that marked the beginning of Dad’s last days, consider this an invitation to understand the warning signs of a stroke:

Directly from the American Heart Association’s web page, be on the lookout for these signs:

• Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body
• Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
• Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
• Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, or loss of balance or coordination
• Sudden, severe headache with no known cause

If any of these things are happening, don’t mess around: Call 9-1-1.

Here’s a link to the American Heart Association’s web page. You can learn all sorts of things there and, even though February 28 was the last day of “Heart Month,” well, you can learn tons there. Please do.

thanks, fourhourbody.com

On one side of The Free Line is information that you get for free. On the other side, information you pay for. Pretty simple.

Information marketers such as the uber-successful Eben Pagan like to talk about “Moving The Free Line.” Instead of giving away a nickel’s worth of information, give away hundreds of dollars worth of information. Then, the theory goes, you can sell thousands of dollars worth of information. (Or, if you’re Pagan, tens of millions of dollars of information.)

But there are a couple of rockstar types – actual rockstars in this new digital world, not just guys or gals who say they are rockstars – with, arguably, completely different approaches to The Free Line.

Chris Brogan. Most things he touches turn to gold – he wrote a best seller called Trust Agents, and he’s constantly out there speaking and meeting with people. (Gee, he even has a Small Business Newsletter.) (And he gave us one of the more popular posts from the Area 224 blog last year; an interview you can read here.)

A Brogan Approach to The Free Line – a $9.97 a month blog advisory service. Which is interesting because, as someone who has been out there in the blogosphere since before it was called that (1998, according to his site), there is a TON of information out there from Chris, about blogging, that you can get for free.

Here, The Free Line is moved way into the expensive category, and the “Pay Line” is at under $10 a month. So the value here is not just in the how-to you’ll get from the newsletter, but in the fact that Chris Brogan is aggregating his own information, sharing with you the good stuff in regular intervals, and using the service to help “coach” you along.

Timothy Ferriss. To say Area 224 has a desire for a “bromance” with the author of The 4-Hour Workweek is an understatement. [Here's our affiliate link - I think if you buy the book from this link, we make about 52 cents. But, honestly, there's never been a book that we have recommended more. The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content.]

So, when we learned that Ferriss was coming out with a new book called “The 4-Hour Body,” we pre-ordered it. So, apparently, did about a zillion other people, as the book is now number 4 on the Amazon best-seller list.

A Ferriss Approach to The Free Line – One concept in his newest book is called “The Slow Carb Diet.” Given my own age and newfound need for middle management, I am diving in with both feet and giving this diet a whirl.

Now, Ferriss has always been a proponent of “the companion site” – where anyone with a copy of the book can login and get so much more information than is found in the book. Worksheets, tools, links, those sorts of things. NOTE: “anyone with a copy of the book” meant, in the case of The 4-Hour Workweek, a password would be something like “the fifth word in the third chapter.” If you can’t find that somewhere, you probably don’t deserve all of the “free” content.

What intrigues this cub reporter about The Free Line for The 4-Hour Body is the Slow Carb Cookbook. Cookbooks are a unique animal – and another one that has changed because of the onset of the Internet. This one, available via instant, free, PDF download, is one that could be dressed up in hardcover and sold in stores for $20.

What he’s giving you is less of a cookbook and more of The Manifesto to the Slow Carb Movement.

Your Own Free Line

Where do you draw the line? How much do you give away? How much is free?

Maybe you’ve got a $30 E-Book, but you need to explain to the world that you can deliver on $3000 worth of content first.

Maybe you’re a high-priced consultant and you charge hundreds an hour – but you need to demonstrate that you are indeed worth that much.

In any event, don’t be afraid to draw The Free Line – and figure out when to move it, what to hold back, and how much to charge for your expertise.

[NOTE: Here's another Affiliate Link, this one for The 4-Hour Body. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman]

“Everybody is an armchair marketer.” This was one of the quotes floating around back in my HR Consulting days. (I was part of the Marketing team for an HR Consultancy. It was fun, I learned a ton. More on that later.)

Saul Colt — feel free to follow him on Twitter — first got me thinking about “advice” and “the right way” and “social media” (all three; I’ve thought about each separately before) when he said something to this effect:

There is no right way. Do what works for you.

And there we are.

So, I’m guilty — a little — with this “Be Holistic” and all that. Not my intention — it seems that everybody’s an armchair social media marketer, too.

But the goal is not to point out that You’re Doing It Wrong…but, instead, to point at some folks who are doing it right.

Then, you make the decisions based on what works for You. Your business. Your social time.

Cool?

That some communicators just, well, do it better?

Ever wanted to know the tricks – the ones that make you seem like you’re getting 80 hours of work done in 40? The ones that leave your boss scratching her head, saying “how did he DO that?”

Underground Strategies – Join us for the webinar on 12/9. Here’s the downlow:

Underground Strategies.

Oh, and the really cool thing is that tickets stay at $35 for this Webinar – virtual event, all you need is a phone and a computer – until Monday night (12/6), when they magically go up to $49.

AND – we’re going to randomly select TWO registrants to receive a copy of Holistic Social Media – the complete course – a $90 value.

(We think there are THOUSANDS of dollars of tricks and strategies in the complete course…but that’s a subject for another day.)

Here’s that Underground Strategies link again.

Lightning Strikes

Back some 20 years ago, I was returning from college for Thanksgiving weekend. Took a plane, and we left Syracuse bound for Cleveland, then Northern Indiana. The first half of the flight was fine. It’s that second half that was rocky – something about the weather conditions, flying over Lake Erie, and a choppy, choppy ride.

Then: a bolt of light and a nice, loud, explosion on the right side of the plane.

It wasn’t until maybe 10 minutes later when the pilot came on and said “this plane was hit by static discharge, but all planes can handle static discharge, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

It wasn’t until I landed about an hour later that I was finally able to get the real story:

The plane had been struck by lighting.

Lightning is scary stuff, it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature, and all that…but this has stuck with me for years – a not-so-pleasant experience for us, but the pilot in charge had everything under control. And the system in place – the plane and its engineering marvels – handled the lightning strike as if it was another day at the office.

So, are you prepared?

Is your Marketing Plan capable of withstanding Static Discharge?

We’ve pointed back, again and again, to the value of the SWOT Analysis in any business planning. Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities.

THREATS.

Your business might not get struck by actual lightning tomorrow – but you could run into a bump in the road, positive, negative or just plain goofy.

Are you prepared?

Compete Rocks

We do this semi-religiously – not just for our own site, to augment the Google Analytics stats we get, but for others as well, to see who’s blowing smoke and who is worth looking at.

As of this morning, the stats for October are up. Area 224 has seen a nice spike in traffic – for which we want to thank you.

“Thank you.”

Compete happens to be one of the Underground Tricks we like to share with folks on our webinars (and you can still sign up for BOOM Camp 2010, starting Tuesday, at this link: http://boomcamp.eventbrite.com/?discount=BOOMTIME.) Compete is pretty darn cool, in our opinion.

They work on a Freemium model, so you can get much more than what’s available for free if you sign up for a premium plan.

BTW, if you’d like to see our stats for October, here’s a snapshot.

The Day After. This party did this, that party did that, we’ve moved this direction or that direction. We’ll get more done, we’ll get less done, we’ll be gridlocked. Good stuff, right?

Well, if you’re not in the political arena, you can still borrow some tricks from winners and losers after this Election Day. 4 nuggets of advice:

1. Get all your mistakes out of the way early. Tea Party darling Rand Paul said some “interesting” things about the Civil Rights movement. Taken out of context, they sound racist. Taken in context and, it can be argued, he’s reading the Constitution verbatim.

Oh and all this happened way back when, in the summer, when the Tea Party movement was just gaining momentum.

Contrast this with Sharron Angle, whose “you don’t look Hispanic, you look more Asian” comments were idiotic at the very least. Her mistakes were late in the game – so late that, in a “lesser of two evils” race, she was never able to get momentum back.

Test your silly notions early, not late. Get your slipups out of the way early.

2. Stay on message. Duh, this is campaign 101 stuff. Don’t stray, don’t waver.

Also helps to have a defined message. Where does your campaign stand on Immigration or Health Care Reform?

Remember “Hope and Change?” Pretty clear. Well-defined. However…

3. The alternative can be good. Here in Illinois, the Senator-Elect, Mark Kirk, didn’t really have to run a campaign that centered around anything but three words: “I’m not him.”

It was an ugly campaign – even by Illinois standards. But the “him” he wasn’t like was Alexi Giannoulias. AND Giannoulias ran on a campaign that, to this reporter, played up only one trait: his connection with Barack Obama.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to realize that, in a year where people are looking for alternatives to Hope and Change (see above), being something else is good.

Does your marketing play up how you’re the alternative? If not, can it? Should it?

4. Make Mom Proud. In a really, really, REALLY ugly year for campaigns, maybe we should all take a look at some of the old maxims. Or the old-new maxims. Like “never Tweet anything you wouldn’t want Mom to see on a billboard.” Or “Would you talk to your Mother on Facebook with that mouth?”

Not that easy in marketing – or is it? We have things like the FTC, the Truth-in-Labeling Act, even Federal CAN-SPAM guidelines.

Marketers know better than to ever bad mouth their competitors. So maybe politicians should learn from us?

Happy Post-Election Day. Now, go hit the campaign trail!