Continuing my series on social media virtues; my fun way to impart sage advice for learning good social media practices. I started with Temperance, and today for part to I will discuss Patience.

This one is easy and I have talked about it before: Don’t expect overnight success! This takes time!

A slow and steady succession of actions will bring you far more success than any get “1,000 Twitter Fans in 2-days or 10,000 website visitors by doing x” type of schemes. If you have been involved in traditional marketing you will know that patience is usually allowed, with “click here” “buy now!” numbers, numbers, numbers, but this methodology just does not work when it comes to social media, so if that is how you plan to measure success, you might want to rethink things.

There is no substitution for hard work and time. You need time to build credibility. You need time to build influence. You need time to engage and become a part of a community.

So there are no get-rich-quick schemes for success, it is a long-term activity using long-term strategies and lots of patience.

Now that I have completed my series on the 7 Sins of Social Media I thought it might be beneficial to review the 7 Virtues! After all, there are two parts to every story! We have reviewed what to do to prevent bad habits, now let’s look into the positive practices that should be encouraged.

I will start with Temperence. Wikipedia defines it as: constant mindfulness of others and one’s surroundings; practicing self-control, abstention, and moderation. In social media this relates to listening. If you read anything about social media best practices and strategies you will no doubt have seen over and the over that the first action you should take when considering social media activity is actually inaction, or in reality, active listening!

Use Google Alerts and Twitter Search, as well as a dozen of other listening tools to find where your community is and start watching and listening to what they have to say.

Listen to those conversations before getting involved. Understand who the community is, what their interests are, what problems or issues they face and how they engage with each other. And when you think you have listened enough, listen some more!

Once you are really ready to start engaging, keep your first interactions simple, helpful. Do not pitch. This is the practicing self-control part. You need to be accepted as part of the community first. You can read more about this concept of community acceptance in Chapter 3 of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s book Trust Agents – called One of Us.

In summary, seek our your community, listen closely, be mindful of your participation within that community and begin interacting with moderation and forethought.

I have not had time to write my own posts – ack! So I am providing a list of posts in the social media space that I think are good reads:

Trying to figure out the best social media book to read? It is difficult to find good books on the topic, so many people claim to be experts, and it is such a fast moving space, that some books can become outdated by the time the hit the shelves! Janet Fouts, has come up with a way to aid you. It’s a site called the Social Media Bookshelf. It is a great reference library to check out.

I liked this post from the Diva Marketing Blog about the state of blogs now that Twitter, Facebook, etc are taking a lot of mind share. I am partial to blogs. I love to read them, comment on them, write them and I feel that the blog is here to stay (I hope!)

Elance has a great series on improving your blog. The posts are well written in digestible chunks and offer good tips.

Amber of Altitude Branding has a great post about time management and tasks as it pertains to social media. She is a blogger who mainly focuses on the corporate world, but her theories can often apply to small business as well.

And finally social media guru, and all-around good guy, Chris Brogan has a great post on things small business owners should do online. I love Chris Brogan. If you are not reading him, you should be!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Today the final installment in my series on social media sins; this is my fun way to impart sage advice for avoiding some of the pit falls which have a way of sneaking up on you. Thus far we’ve covered Envy, Sloth, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony and Pride. The only thing left is Lust.

Lust is all about inordinate cravings. You may lust after clients, numbers, success.  But the desire for things may make you lose focus on what is truly important: the authentic interaction with your clients…no matter if that is 1 or 100. You may become blind to what your intent actually is – to serve others, to provide value and share knowledge.

Having the numbers is great, but achieve them with hard work and grace.

And that’s it, I hope you found this series helpful!

Today I present part six in a series on social media sins; this is my fun way to impart sage advice for avoiding some of the pit falls which have a way of sneaking up on you. Thus far we’ve covered Envy, Sloth, Wrath, Greed and Gluttony. Today I am going to talk about Pride.

Pride or vanity can take many forms. You may be too proud to ask for help, when more than likely, given the nature of the social media community, there are plenty of people who are all too happy to lend a helping hand.  Normally all you have to do is ask.

However I have also see pride manifest itself in the form of being too vain to help others.  If you do not reach out to help or to add value there will be others who will.  The community is run by karma, what comes around goes around. Expect to give, and to give a lot.  You will be rewarded.  The person, blogger, client, friend, even the unknown email address out in the universe may be the next Chris Brogan, the next Liz Strauss. Your aid today can come back ten-fold.

And you if you are experiencing success, stay humble. Stay helpful. Listen more than you speak.

I had the opportunity to see Chris Brogan and Julien Smith share a little bit of the content of their new book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust at the SOBCon conference I attended in May in Chicago. The presentation was around an hour, but it was enough to convince me that this book was going to be great.

When I returned home I immediately pre-ordered two. I got my copies right before the weekend and last night I dove in!  It is everything that I expected and more!  I am not done, although it won’t take long, the content is so good, but I wanted to tell you to go out and buy this book!

If you are still trying to figure out what social media is all about

, this book will give you insight into how “today’s online influencers are web natives who trade in trust, reputation, and relationships, using social media to accrue the influence that builds up or brings down businesses online.”

If you ever have the opportunity to meet Chris Brogan you will immediately see that he is just as friendly, warm, and inviting in person as he is on his blog or his newsletters.  He is gracious and helpful and there is no question that he is someone you can trust when it comes to his recommendations, his observations and his work. That is because he personifies the characteristics of a friend.

So whether you are getting into social media and want to emulate the actions that have made Chris and Julie successful trust agents, or you want to understand how to work with an online influencer, or just want to read a very good book, Trust Agents is a must read!

Follow Chris Brogan on Twitter

And now, since I did buy 2 copies, I am giving one away!  Just leave a comment about why you want to check out this book and I will select a random winner next Wednesday (8/26/09) to send you my extra copy!

I will be doing a recap of yesterday’s social media boot camp later this week, in the meantime, I present part five in a series on social media sins; this is my fun way to impart sage advice for avoiding some of the pit falls which have a way of sneaking up on you. Thus far we’ve covered Envy, Sloth, Wrath and Greed. Today I am going to talk about Gluttony.

Gluttony can be described as the over-indulgence or misplaced desire of something to the point of waste. When you “glut” your Twitter or Facebook statuses with too many updates, your messages start to be ignored.  You are causing information overload.

Consider also the mixture of contacts that you have on Twitter and Facebook – are you driving your Facebook friends crazy with all your Twitter chatter and retweets? The audiences are different, and what you achieve in efficiency, you may lose in driving interest away.

Don’t try to be all things to all people, by over-compensating and exceeding the necessary or appropriate amount of messages, you may turn off your core (and target) audience.

Part four in a series on social media sins; this is my fun way to impart sage advice for avoiding some of the pit falls which have a way of sneaking up on you. Thus far we’ve covered Envy, Sloth and Wrath. Today I am going to talk about Greed. Greed is the obsessive desire to obtain something. And in relation to social media, that easily translate to the numbers game.

Questions often heard:

• How many Fans do you have?
• How many followers?
• What are your monthly visits to your site/blog?

Running after numbers for numbers sake is bad strategy. Sure you may obtain a 1000 new followers overnight, but how many are going to stick? You can get people to come to your site, but how many are going to come back?

I like what the guru of niceness (and kick-ass blogger), Liz Strauss, has said several times, “Numbers have to have a label before they mean anything.” She has also said things like “Count your value as a human by links, stats, and number of comments” that was from a list of Top 10 Ways to Become a Miserable Blogger from 2006!

Not to talk about numbers, but just to put things in perspective, Liz’s blog has over 80,000 comments, but you know where she had to start? Yes, with comment #1, just like you! As I mentioned in my envy post, most of the super stars of social media started out in the same place you did, the beginning. And with slow and steady determination, good content and a whole bunch of good intent, they made it to where they are today. Social media is a long term strategy that takes a time investment and participation.

If you are looking to constantly “fill the funnel” and make the sale (and add a number) then it will not be sustainable. Success is for you to decide, and although it may include numbers, don’t limit yourself by chasing after them needlessly.

Yesterday’s Twitter outage as a result of a denial of service attack was a keen reminder not to put all your social media eggs in one basket. Just like in financial a balanced portfolio is going to perform better in the long term. And social media is a long term marketing activity.

Now you are thinking, but wait, didn’t she say a few days ago that I shouldn’t try to do everything at once? Why, yes I did! I was referring to once you have planned your online strategy and want to begin executing, you don’t have to do it all at once.  You can begin in one platform until you are comfortable and then keeping adding to your portfolio.

But in reality, you should have an online marketing strategy that includes social media in the mix. Your strategy should not be tied specifically to a platform, i.e. a Twitter strategy, a Facebook strategy, but rather you should have a social media strategy based on goals and objectives you are trying to achieve, and then decide the tools.

There are a lot of tools out there, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, social bookmarking (Digg, Delicious, etc) as well as FriendFeed, and many others. Every person and/or company will have a core set they work with and potentially a secondary set they utilize as well.  That way, if you have an incident like yesterday’s outage, you have options.  It was interesting for me to see how much more activity was on Facebook and LinkedIn yesterday!

And do not forget old fashion email and telephone, in the end it is all about communication and conversation, so from time to time step away from the computer and talk to someone over the phone or heck, meet in person!

Part three in a series on social media sins; this is my fun way to impart sage advice for avoiding some of the pit falls, which have a way of sneaking up on you.  If you missed the first two sins, you can read them here: Wrath and Sloth.

Today we are going to talk about Envy. When you are starting out in social media, just like anything else, slow and steady wins the course. Trying to compete with the “big dogs” right out of the gate may get you a following, but not one that will stick.

Dream big, but start small.  Most of the A-list bloggers or social media mavens started in the same spot as everyone else! With slow and steady application and consistent action, they built a large following. Even if you don’t have a huge following that doesn’t mean you aren’t successful. If you have 10 readers and 5 of them turn into clients that is a pretty successful conversion.

It is all a matter of perspective. Don’t judge yourself against others, you have a unique offering that suits some segment of the population.  Worry about serving them and adding value to their lives rather than chasing the numbers or being envious of those in your niche.