Tweetin' for Dollars

By now your probably know that the only reason your business isn't much more successful is because you have not yet properly harnessed the power of social media.  Sensing the urgency to tap this limitless source of… um…  something that leads to making money, you signed up for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, and even all the minor ones that no one pays any attention to.  You've also spent hours trying to get your profile just right on each of these sites, hoping to capture both your professional cred as well as your personal style and charm.  And then you've spent weeks scrolling through endless lists of "people you may know" trying to decide whether ex-boyfriends and girls who were mean to you in junior high school qualify as good potential social media contacts.  You've grown your lists of Friends, Followers, Connections and Circle members, and you've learned how to use hashtags, twitter slang, and bad grammar to express complicated ideas in 140 characters or less.

So where's the money you've been promised?  According to the experts, about $17 million, or one third of Lady Gaga's income can be attributed to her twitter following, so where's your 17 mil?  Or 7 mil?  Or 7 bucks even?  

So far, you've looked at countless photos of people's lunches, children and cats, and read your so-called-friends' witty witticisms, and you still haven't made a dollar.  In fact, you're spending so much time reading and following so many sources on so many sites, that you hardly have time to work.  

But this IS work, you tell yourself!  Social media campaigns are an essential component of business marketing.  Every article on Twitter tells you so!  And you have become very popular around the water cooler because of your thorough knowledge of daily internet memes, and also because you can now throw around the word meme.  I don't know, maybe you just need to buy more followers or pay professional tweeters to tweet things that are more clever than your own thoughts.   

And who's reading your tweets and posts, anyway?  Who are these people who follow you?  Will any of them hire you?  I guess that depends on what it is you do.  If you're a Kardashian, for example, and you are in the business of pure self promotion, then yes, this is an essential part of your platform, because it involves more people in your life (if that were even possible) and makes them more apt to watch your reality show, and buy your products.  But for some other kind of business, like if you're a structural engineer or a an accountant, maybe not.  I mean some people may enjoy reading your input on subjects like the correct way to position support beams under a house, or maybe something amusing about the Alternative Minimum Tax, and one or two people might hire you, or remember to refer someone they know to you because you wrote a clever tweet, but let's be real about the potential return before you overspend either your time or your money in this endeavor. 

Face it, you just really like to snoop around the personal lives of people you tangentially know, or look at videos of cats, so let's not pretend this is business development.  Unless you're a professional cat video researcher.  Or trying to find America's next Favorite Cat.

Mostly, social media gives you a little free advertising, and a great way to waste a lot of time while telling yourself you're working.  The most profitable way to use social media?  Turn it off for a while and just get some work done.  

But only after you've read my blog, of course.  And do you follow me on Twitter yet?  

Making Some Bread

Many wonderful, talented people I know are unemployed right now.  Are you one of those people?  And have you already read my column on what you can do to make a few bucks?  Well, I can't hire all of you myself, but I do have a few thoughts on how a person might reimagine the idea of finding work.

First of all, as you may have noticed, lots of employers aren't hiring, so you're going to have to find other people to hire you.  Also, your skill set may not really match the requirements of too many employers, so you might have to create your own profession.  You may have really strong knitting skills and you might be able to sing the entire second side of Led Zepplin II (with air guitar solos), but you may not feel quite as comfortable with payroll accounting software.  You're going to have to use some creativity to figure out how to take something unique that you can do well and convince people to pay you to do it.   Look, just a few years ago we didn't have "Home Stagers" and "organizers", and now those people get paid to come rearrange your furniture and tell you what you should throw out, so who's to say there aren't people out there who are interested in having you come put together outfits for them (I actually know someone who does that) or put together musical playlists for them ?

First you must inventory your personal skills, including all kinds of life experience and things you may not think qualify to make the list (i.e. "I have exceptionally good penmanship", "I have an uncanny ability to amuse cats", "I can recite every word of the movie Airplane by heart", "I can text very quickly while walking").  Then, look at the list and start composing ideas of services you might be able to offer.  

Ok, now eliminate the ones no one will pay you for.  

You must think outside the box.  How can you apply your skills in an usual way to create something different?  Lots of people paint on canvas, but not that many paint art on cakes, and I'm sure lots of people would enjoy a more interesting cake.  And perhaps you can combine your exceptional penmanship and encyclopedic knowledge of the movie Airplane to write beautiful, but inappropriate Airplane quotes on the walls of flight schools.  And don't let that degree in Performance Art go to waste!  Capitalize on the fears of every dinner party host by offering to provide puppet shows to stave off any awkward mealtime silences.  Or perhaps you are very tactful, and can offer a service for delivering bad news to people.  And maybe you can deliver that news with a keepsake, comforting, hand-knit scarf.  Or some pajamas.  And a bottle of scotch. 

Ok, I'm going to stop giving away all my best ideas, you'll have to hire me for my business-inventing business to get more.

I also know someone with a business-naming business, by the way, and you can hire him to create a catchy name for what you do. 

But you can't just create a cool service and then wait for the phone to ring.  You'll have to do some marketing to make people aware of their need for your unusual service.  How will people know they need a personal, in-home sourdough bread making coach if you don't use your tweeting skills to tell them?  And when they do become aware of your services, these potential clients need to find convincing evidence on the internet, like maybe blogs that your friends have written about how their bread making is now completely transformed because of you, or articles you've written for other blogs on the intricacies of flour choice, in order to establish your professional cred.   

Another advantage of creating your profession is that if you are the only sourdough coach, no one can really dispute the notion that you are the best sourdough coach, see what I mean?  And I can say all this with great confidence because I have unusually strong problem solving skills, which I have used to become one of the world's foremost Business Imaginators.   In fact, I'm thinking of offering a certification program, which you can soon register to take (for a small fee).

Pick Your Poison

I'm watching American Idol (yes I am, don't laugh at me) and I'm thinking how a lot of these kids are really talented.  And there are so many of them!  Hundreds of thousands of them show up each year to try out for this show and lots of them are really good.  How on earth do the judges pick among so many talented contestants?   Choice is a very difficult thing.  How does anyone ever choose anything?  How does a brain sift through the myriad mental inputs and produce a single finding?  I was trying to choose between writing about the Sequestration and the bankruptcy of the Girls Gone Wild production company, and here I am writing about American Idol, of all things.  How did that happen?

In 1984, Robin Williams starred in a movie called Moscow on the Hudson where he plays a Russian (Soviet) circus performer who defects to the United States.  There's a great scene where he goes to the supermarket and tries to buy coffee but he gets completely overwhelmed by the number of coffee choices, has a massive anxiety attack, and passes out.  And really, who can blame him?  He comes to America craving the freedom to choose his own destiny, and ends up discovering that all that freedom to choose is often just a bit much.  Personally, I've been known to become overwhelmed by having to choose among my extensive collection of coffee making devices and techniques, and that's not even getting into the subject of which brand of coffee to use.

So it's totally clear to me why people don't feel like they can make good financial choices, because really, the consequences of choosing the wrong coffee brand pale in comparison to those of choosing the wrong insurance policy or investment.  That's the thing about making choices --- there's always the risk you'll choose badly!  I mean you may be a very intelligent person, who doesn't watch American Idol and knows exactly which are the best coffee beans, but you could really screw yourself up by making a bad investment.  Some very convincing people have probably told you over the years which investments to choose among the millions of things you could put your money into, and how exactly should you choose who to trust?

I believe it was Devo, who said, "Freedom of choice. It's what you got.  Freedom from choice. It's what you want."

I suppose you could just say, "Nope, I'm not choosing."  Forget it.  I pass.

But isn't that also a choice?  Choosing to do nothing?  Going with the default?  And doesn't that choice carry the exact same weight that choosing badly would have?  Because choosing to do nothing can just as easily turn out to have been a really big mistake too.  And what if everyone did that and no one ever chose anything?  There would be chaos!  And we'd never have an American Idol winner.

So you might as well get informed and make the best decisions you can, because otherwise you either choose nothing, and forfeit all sorts of opportunities, or you choose everything, and end up on the show Hoarders.