Give a salute to the Emoticon Style Guide O7

: ) -- Acceptable in all contexts to connote upbeat feelings and friendliness. While :-) and :) are acceptable, the international preference in all cases is : ), because a hyphen nose and lips right under your eyes are a little weird.

; ) -- Acceptable when the meaning truly is a wink and a smile. Do not use in mean statements to slightly lighten the impact: Too bad! I just grabbed the laaaast muffin! ; ) or, Your partner and I only had a little affair. ; )

: ( -- Underused, perhaps due to our culture's fixation on being (or seeming) happy. Not acceptable to use in a guilt trip: Where are you? : ( or Your Hummer is ruining my planet. : (

; ( -- Many men are unable to use except in a movie.

: p -- Use to mean tongue sticking out. No one really likes this one. So, if you use it : P

O--===--====ll -- The emoticon for planking was very popular, but is now SO mid-June.

\ , , / -- Rock on, bro.

@}-;-'--- -- The rose emoticon was probably developed by someone who collects souvenir plates.

O7 -- Salute is cool to use when someone has done something stellar: Sweet job humming during the conference call. You're my hero. O7

:3 -- No one knows what this means, so it's acceptable in all uses: Hey, you! :3

:-O :O :u -- Use the last one to connote surprise or shock. The others are less effective because the o as the little mouth is not as fun as the u as the little mouth.

: | -- Straight-faced emoticon is highly underused and underrated. Because, ultimately, who are we to judge? Is not our greatest service to simply witness to one another's struggle? As in, You spent, like, a half-hour compiling a style guide for emoticons? : |

What to do when someone adds you to a Facebook group you don't like

Have you received Facebook messages from a group and said, "Wait, I didn't join that group. Why am I getting these messages?" One of the worst, most invasive functionalities on all of Facebook right now is the Groups app that allows any friend to add you to a group and begin firing emails and invitations from the group right at you. There is no way to prevent this at this time. Let's not even get into the many ways this is dumb, and get right to you can do.

HOW TO LEAVE GROUPS

1. Click Home
2. Go over to the left navigation bar and click Groups
3. You will see a list of all the groups you're in (and have been unwittingly added to)
   
4. Hover your cursor to the right of the names of these groups and click the little X that appears
5. Click to leave the groups you don't want to be in

HOW TO TURN OFF EMAILS FROM GROUPS

1. Click Account, top right of the Home page
2. Click Notifications
3. Click Groups
4. Click Change Email Notifications For Individual Groups
   
5. Check and uncheck as you like

10 Ways To Improve Your Online Life Now

1. Collect Gourmet TV. There has never been a better time to watch TV. You can watch watch you want, where you want, how you want, and when you want. So figure out what you want to watch, round it up, put it on your devices, and enjoy. My favorite show currently, Ray Romano's "Men Of A Certain Age" on TNT.
2. Consider Upgrading Your LinkedIn. LinkedIn is changing faster than Twitter and Facebook, giving you more functionality, and becoming more meaningful. Use InMails to reach out to people in your field. And don't give me that "But I'm not looking for a job" B.S. It's not about that. Here are reasons why you should upgrade, from the blog Social Media Examiner.
3. Do The Right Screen. Many of us now have internet connection on several sizes of screens: Desktop, tablet, and phone. Figure out what you like to do on each, and use them accordingly. Don't try to build a slide show on a tablet, read a magazine story on your phone or upload photos on your desktop -- unless that's how you like to do it. We have different screens for a reason.
   
4. Widen Your Network. It's easy to friend a friend, connect with a connection, and follow a follower. But the value is not going around and around the circle of a network, but shooting inward or outward on a spoke and reaching a new circle. So friend a friend of a friend, connect with a connection of a connection, and follow the followerer of a followerer.
5. Go IRL. Go to In Real Life events you learn about on social media. Do it again. Don't worry if you don't know anyone else who's going. You will afterward.
   
6. Bit.ly Your Link Life. Use a link shortener in tweets, emails, texts. Explore how bit.ly and other sites give you analytics on the links you share. Understanding web traffic is a huge skill.
7. Crop Photos On Your Phone. The easiest way to upload photos is right after you take them on your phone. You can share from where you are. There are sophisticated photo editing apps, but one necessary functionality is cropping. Do you want that guy you don't know with half his head in that great new picture of you and your sweetie pie? Get a simple app, learn to use it, and take control of your online photo life.
8. Stop Fearing Mistakes. Unless you post angry, post profane, post tasteless, or post intoxicated, don't post paranoid. The Game of Gotcha on social media, of condemning people for posting the same stuff they say in real life, is over. People in authority are finally realizing that social media does not create regrettable communications, it reveals them.
9. Make Two Facebook Friends Lists. At Least. Make a list of the friends you're closest to, and one of the friends you don't really know. (Here's how.) Now you can post three ways: To all your friends, to all but your distant friends, and to only your close friends. Yes, you want to be able to do that. (Think pics of kids, or posts when you're away on vacation.)
   
10. Get A Variety Of Face-First Profile Pics. Please don't think you're cool by making your profile pic a photo of a rock, or a squiggly line. If we don't know you, we want to SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE. (I know, tough concept for some.) Get a variety (some more professional, some more casual) of face-first profile pics you like, put them on different devices, and in a folder on your desktop.
    

How I grew followers to my @jeffelder Twitter account 1000% in three months

On March 25, I had 4,267 followers on Twitter, where my handle is @jeffelder. Today, June 24, I have 43,968 followers. This post will tell you exactly what I did to grow my follower base so dramatically. First, a disclaimer:

I do not believe in the popularity-contest view of social media: That the little number beside your face on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn defines your desirability or value as a connection. But I am a realist. As a social media professional, I like what my follower base says about my effectiveness: Many of my clients want me to grow their fan bases. (When I ran social media for a Fortune Fifty company, I grew its Facebook fan base 700% in one year, to 500,000 fans.) I want the largest audience of potential clients, colleagues, collaborators, and friends that I can get. So on this issue, I choose to take the bait. I respect those who don't, and are content with a patient, organic growth that is not encouraged by the tactics listed here. And I concede that these are tactics to boost your follower base. But I also give myself some credit for being entirely transparent in how I've grown my account. On to specifics:

1. I joined Twitter Counter, Klout, and Twiends -- sites that measure and encourage community building. I bought ads or placement that highlighted my profile so other users could see what I do on Twitter and decide if they want to follow me. I did not "buy followers." I simply promoted my account to show potential real followers what I do on Twitter. That highlighted my content, and let it speak for itself.
2. I held a promotion on my Twitter account in which I gave $20 to the favorite causes of some followers. This was extremely popular, and has been emulated by others, who have credited me for the idea. It highlighted worthwhile causes and gave them positive buzz. It also gained me lots of engagement, followers and positive sentiment. (Should I do this again? I'm asking.)
3. I tweeted strong content with helpful links, and left space at the end of my tweets so others could share them with their thoughts. This is very important. I cut back on my @replies that were purely conversational, and concentrated on contributing good information that any Twitter user might want to see -- and share. The retweets of my information -- both automatic and old school (RT) -- soared.
4. I got my Twitter handle, @jeffelder, "out there," by mentioning it in media. (See what I just did?)
5. I followed back real Twitter users who followed me. Want me to follow you? @reply me, and I will.

That's it. If you found this helpful, keep the party going and follow me on Twitter.

Twitter and the rush to judgment

Yesterday the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by 1.5 million employees, who are women, who claimed sexual discrimination in the way a company, Walmart, carried out promotions. The court cited a companywide policy opposing discrimination, and the fact that promotions were carried out at store level, by 3,400 individual managers. For this reason, the court found, the group, which amounted to 75% of the company workforce, could not sue as one.

“In a company of Walmart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

The New York Times, in its front-page story this morning, said the major impact will be to discourage lawyers from filing huge class-action suits. While The Times did note the ruling was pro-business, it in no way signaled the ruling was pro-Walmart. While The Times did note the ruling made large discrimination suits more difficult, it in no way signaled the ruling was anti-women.

Yet when the news broke yesterday and flashed across Twitter, the immediate rush to communicate the news was limited it to, essentially: "The Supreme Court just ruled for Walmart and against women, which is awful." That's not really the story. The court did not even consider the merits of the case, whether Walmart disciminates against women, just its size.

The story might be difficult to limit to 140 characters. Breaking news is often communicated in a dumbed-down (and sometimes just dumb) way. But this morning, when reasoned analysis of the ruling is being published, Twitter has moved on. Few tweets are saying the ruling hurts large class-action suits, or the reasoning behind the ruling. The timeline pictured here shows tweets about the case, and the spike yesterday as the news broke.



I am no fan of Walmart, and I was raised by a single, working mom who faced sexism in the workplace. This post has nothing to do with my politics.

And I love that Twitter is such an effective headline service. It gets news out quickly, informs people faster, alerts the public to important events. But the short attention span of the American public has been limited even more by Twitter. And it troubles me that so few circle back to get beyond the initial headline, which often misses the point.

Death of an online friend

We never met in person.

But in a dozen emails in January, you called me "my new friend," and we talked about me driving to your city, to have lunch. I sent you this picture of a painting by Franz Marc, because I thought you would like it, and you loved it, and that was fun.

Yesterday I went to your Facebook page. I'd been thinking about you, and wanted to see what you were up to, and to say hello. At first all I saw was that you hadn't posted in a while, but then I saw how many of your friends had. And how rueful and loving and full of memories their posts were. I read on and on, and saw that you'd left us.

You weren't sick, that I knew of. You were younger than me, and healthy. A dancer, a yogi, a hiker. It was so puzzling. I sent a message to one of your real friends on Facebook, and she said I would need to ask your family. I don't feel I can do that. I don't feel I could step into that inner circle and explain.

So sitting here in this same spot where I sat when we corresponded, I just wanted to say goodbye. I posted this picture on your Facebook wall, even though I felt a bit our of place. None of your real friends know me. And online friends aren't like real friends. Are they? So why is the pain and sadness and confusion I feel about your death so real?

I'm not a stalker, or a scammer, or a guy on a laptop in Russia trying to steal privacy information. I'm not a troll who will say awful things.

But how could they know that? They never saw the friendship in our emails.

They never saw that on a winter day, from cities hundreds of miles away, we smiled as we shared a painting of a little blue horse.

When partisan politics turns to hate on social media

I was news editor of The European Stars & Stripes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. During my year and a half in that role, a general on one side of the wars personally presided over the genocide of thousands of people because of their religion. He was finally captured this spring, and I tweeted that I was glad about that. The tweet below quickly was sent back to me.


(I have censored the tweet to hide the sender's identity and affiliation.)

The atrocities were a grisly and terrible thing to cover as a journalist. You do not have to be for one side or the other to oppose genocide. That someone would wish me dead for mentioning their hero's arrest on Twitter was stunning and sickening to me. (I do not align myself with any religion or group in the Balkan wars.)

As a former mainstream journalist and current social media professional, this incident touches upon something that has troubled me for some time: The increasingly partisan and divisive political discourse online. Moderates who are not as fervent or united as the extremes often get shouted down. Those with extremist views are more able to reassure themselves of the veracity of their beliefs.

The New York Times reported today that people argue just to win, a new wave of scholarly research suggests. Arriving at the truth is not the goal. So our discourse can distance us more rather than pull us together and closer to the truth. This might be human nature: Being right is a basic motivation. But it is troubling, and compounds the problems created by the ability today to surround oneself in a partisan echo chamber of one's own beliefs.

Objectivity may have been an impossible goal of mainstream, traditional media, but at least it was valued. The splintering of media into myriad subjective channels allows the Fox News junkies to surround themselves with their views and the MSNBC junkies on the other side to do the same. This leaves those of us who are more moderate in the crossfire.

On blogs, the largest topic of news stories linked to were about U.S. government or politics "often accompanied by emphatic personal analysis or evaluations," the Pew Research Center reported in a 2010 study. Pew also reported that most people use social media to get a candidate elected or espouse a cause, not to attempt to solve a problem. The more partisan a group, the more it may use social media: The Tea Party faithful embrace their causes on social media far more than do more moderate groups. Some say social media was the most important tool in galvanizing that movement.

The more extreme the views, the more propaganda necessary to defend it, and the more free and available social media may be employed. White supremacists have relied on social media to gather, and to immediately purge anyone who doesn't share their views.

Arguing just to be right is dangerous, but is perhaps human nature. Stoking the furnaces of hate is when it goes too far. When that happens on social media, the need for moderation is clear.

How To: Post On Facebook To Get Great Visibility And Interaction

An expensive white paper came out today explaining Facebook's News Feed algorithm, which dictates what you see on the Facebook home page. What posts rise to the top, gather still more interaction, and stay there? This is gold to social marketers -- and mom and pop businesses. There are some tricks to optimization. Maybe I can save you a little money on that white paper.

First, the headline:

You see atop your News Feed the most popular posts from the accounts you follow -- what your friends have been liking and commenting on recently.

As TechCrunch pointed out in a post from April, several factors go into this ranking:

1. How regularly you interact with the original poster. If you connect with the poster often, their posts will rank higher.
2. How many comments are already on the post from your friends. (Likes count for a bit less.)
3. How old the post is.

What does that mean for you, in trying to get engagement on a Facebook post? Here's what I discovered when I was running social media for a Fortune Fifty company:



1. We needed to time our posts well. The clock is ticking, and if you post in a slow time, your post might never get traction. Don't post early in the morning. I found the best time to post was prime time -- from 8-10 p.m. -- or in mid-afternoon. This post from Mashable plots out good posting times. As the graph shows, you really shouldn't post from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. That might seem obvious, but many businesses post early in the morning, then leave their Facebook work at the office, missing key evening opportunities.
UPDATE: Facebook posts receive 50% of their Likes in the first 80 minutes, a study from social marketing company Visibli shows. So post at the wrong time, and you'll miss a lot of engagement.
2. We needed to aim for either a lot of likes or a lot of comments. We would regular post something akin to: Give is a "like" if you're ready for some football! Or we would post: What is your favorite football team? The two posts are quite different in the reactions they seek.
3. We needed our engagement posts to be succinct. The examples above are "grabbers" that immediately tell the reader what to do. If the call to action is in the third sentence, you won't get much interaction.
4. An engagement post needs to be about the Facebook fan, not your company. Imagine asking someone: How do I look? The answer is often: Great! Now imagine asking them: What have you been up to today? The answer is much longer. We got great engagement when we asked things like: What kind of grill do you have, and how do you like it?

A traditional marketer might ask, Why use strategy to get a lot of impressions and comments on a conversational post about our customers? You're not selling anything. Precisely. You're taking part in your customers' lives. You're giving them a chance to like something or comment on something. When Facebook fans log on and see your business is one of the most popular things in their News Feed, they think of you in a different way: Relevant.

Bored? Scared? Don't see the point? Answers to 10 common questions about LinkedIn

1. Why should I work on my LinkedIn profile? I'm not looking for a job.
Your LinkedIn profile is a highly searchable summary of your professional life. If people want to get a glimpse of you as a new colleague, connection or collaborator, that's where they look. Besides, what if you do need to look for a job? Do you want to start from scratch?
2. I don't know where to begin. What do I do?
Upload a photo of yourself. Nothing looks worse than a profile with no photo. For LinkedIn, you want a picture of yourself facing the camera and smiling, in professional clothes. I like one taken outside on a nice day. The lighting is often excellent. And you look likable and upbeat. (There's a reason politicians do this.) It's a good idea to have a few professional head shots in a folder on your computer and on your phone.
3. Isn't it boring entering your resume information on your profile?
Yes. LinkedIn auto-populates some of that for you. But filling in your LinkedIn profile isn't as fun as pinging with friends on Twitter or looking at photos on Facebook. But it can get you jobs. It's your public, living resume, and is worth the time.
4. Does LinkedIn have a tutorial to help me get started?
Of course. Click here, and the short video below gives you a broad overview, as well.



5. Won't I look lame with only a few connections? Don't some people have thousands?
Sigh. There's that numbers-game, popularity contest again. It just doesn't go away. It's good for one's ego to see a big, fat number by your connections, but it's really not the point. You want to have a presence, and to put your best foot forward there.
6. I already have a profile, somewhere. I abandoned it, and I don't want to go deal with it. What do I do?
Here are some directions on how to delete an old account.
7. Should I connect with all my colleagues at work?
Probably. But those "close ties" are not really the ones that are most valuable, studies show. Your immediate circle doesn't really help you expand into new markets and opportunities. That's why LinkedIn is good for expanding your network.
8. Should I be careful who I connect with on LinkedIn?
Not really. LinkedIn information is not personal in the sense that some Facebook information is: No one can see pictures of your kids, or pictures of the inside of your home, for instance. I'm very open with who I connect with. But you could limit your connections to those within your network, i.e., connected to you via someone else.
9. Is LinkedIn adding new functionality?
Yes. You can even upload a video of yourself to greet viewers of your profile. Here are five tips for the getting the most out of LinkedIn, from Fast Company magazine.
10. Is it true you quadrupled your LinkedIn network in three months using an iPhone trick?
Yes. If an iPhone user would like to know how I did it, contact me via the blog, or on LinkedIn, here. I'll add you as a connection!

The secret sauce of sustainability

Brian Sterricker, Heidi Sterricker, and Dave Perry, my hosts in Milwaukee and members of the United Adworkers.

What makes one project sustainable, while another, comparable idea quickly runs out of gas?

Why does an ad catch on, get talked about, bring results? Why does a social media campaign catch fire and spread quickly? Why does a group pull together, build relationships, hold great events, and function as a network?

I wish I knew. If there were one secret sauce, one key ingredient, everyone would use it every time they launched anything. Instead, we all hope to kindle that spark of inspiration.

A great group, one with that curious spark of success, recently hosted me in Milwaukee as I spoke at Marquette University. The United Adworkers is actually a group of competitors, ringed by the sincere collegiality of the Midwest, more interested in playing Show And Tell than King Of The Hill. My stay included lodging at the chic Iron Horse Hotel and a trip to Miller Park for a Brewers game, coordinated by my hostess, Heidi Sterricker, a leader of the group. It also included many conversations, and many questions before during and after my talk on What I Learned Leading Social Media For A Fortune 50.

Here's what struck me about this dialogue: It was not about "Look at me!" It was about "Check this out!" Or especially, "That's so cool." Recognizing quality -- whoever has done the work -- can be a difficult thing for one's ego. "When is my turn to shine?" I ask myself inside. "What if I never get a turn to shine?" My ego can persist.

That territoriality, that unhealthy competition, that frightened ego is what drains good ideas of their umph as much as anything else, I suspect. When that baggage is thrown off, the mpg is much better, and an idea can truck on down the road. I think that's what my hosts have in the United Adworkers -- a genuine appreciation for good work, whoever has done it. It was a beautiful thing to be around.

I also experienced this phenomenon at the Fortune 50 where I led social media. During a viral promotion, we crashed a server in front of a huge audience, perhaps more than 100,000 people. No one panicked or pointed a finger at me, the instigator of the viral madness. Instead we pulled together, an inspired email workaround was devised, and a team of two dozen of us ran -- as a team -- the most successful social promotion of the 2010 holidays, at least that I know of.

What makes something sustainable? Not saying: "Look at me!" when things go well. Or "It's his fault!" when things go badly. That's a very good start.

To read Teddy Lyngaas' blog post about my talk to the Adworkers, click here. Special thanks to Heidi and Brian Sterricker. Contrary to his tweet, Dave Perry did not dominate me in baseball helmet cheese fries at the Brewers game.