Joe Hackman

Joe Hackman

Digital Transformation, Industry 4.0, Tesla, maker, and more...

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4 Reasons why Amplify is my Third Tribe

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From my tribe I take nothing, I am the maker of my own fortune. – Tecumseh

Earlier this year I joined Third Tribe out of interest generated by Chris Brogan. He was passionate about it and I was convinced that I needed to be a part of it. So I joined and listened to some podcasts and posted on the forums and ultimately did not feel connected to this new Tribe. A few months later I was letting my subscription expire and I emailed Chris. He was very cordial and cool, he did not try to convince me that I should stick around. He explained to me that he felt the value was really in the forums specifically people getting business questions answered. So essentially I went on about my business for a while and I pinged Chris back recently and something occurred to me. Perhaps the reason that I didn’t see the value of Third Tribe, I already had one – Amplify.com.

4 Reasons Amplify is my third tribe:

  1. I am directly connected with the founders/developers.
  2. I get business questions answered.
  3. I receive direct business benefits from being on the site.
  4. I am networking with quality people that I learn from.

Direct connection with the Founders/Developers

Eric Goldstein was one of the first people to respond to my post on Amplify.com and he is co-founder and CEO. I’ve since gotten to know Eric, Dave Grossman, Chris Parandin and exchanged some comments with Derek and Eric W. from time to time. I can say with honesty I truly enjoy communicating and supporting the Amplify guys, I consider myself a self-assigned community advocate for their site.  I’ve never received any financial support for my contributions and I don’t expect any.

Getting Business Questions Answered

Admittedly my best resource for business questions is offline – my network of friends, members of business groups, mentors, etc. There are two places I get answers to business questions “online”. One of them is LinkedIn Q & A and the other is Amplify.com. The most receptive and helpful responses come from the Amplify community. Many LinkedIn answers are self-serving, whereas the Amplify community tends to be much more “real” and honest.

Direct Business Benefits

I am a consumer in this regard; I have found more vendors and partners and fostered those relationships via Amplify. I love being the “buyer” and not the seller, because I hate selling. What I do enjoy is building relationships and helping people.  Building social capital is great fun and it suites me well. I would rather have my customers see what I am doing and come to me and ask for it. I know some people are reading this and shaking their heads. Don’t worry, when I see need that I can help with I sell, because I know I can help.

Networking with Quality People

I’ve met more quality people on Amplify than any other place in social media. I learn every day from my Amplify sources. These people have added so much value to my day to day learning I cannot thank them enough. What I have done is written about it and tried to recognize and share those people via my blog and Amplog. One meaningful example is my weekly recommendation of the week that I post on my Amplog. Another example is the article I wrote “Why Sources are more valuable than Followers” that shares some of my favorite amplify users with others.

Tim Southernwood Shonali Burke Ramon B. Nuez Jr. Paul Simbeck-Hampson Flavio Pic
Diane Rayfield Dave Yankowiak Dave Grossman Chris Parandian Ben Jackson Shevonne Polastre

Closing thoughts

So is Amplify my Third Tribe? I think it is. It may not have all the features that Third Tribe does but for practical purposes Amplify works in this capacity for me. It provides the value that Third Tribe offers, while also rewarding me by making my content public and contributing in a positive way to my social media footprint. One final thought about Chris Brogan, he is a classy guy. I will check out everything he does, I really enjoy his insights and this is meant by no means to minimize the great things that are happening on Third Tribe for many people.

Interview Diane Rayfield Harp Social (Podcast)

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Tonight I interviewed Diane Rayfield of Harp Social on Blogtalkradio. I invited Diane because I wanted to integrate more social media related guests into my podcast. Diane is the founder and CEO of Harp Social where she leads a team of social media, SEO and online marketing professionals to strategize, manage and evolve integrated online marketing for businesses. I met Diane at Amplify.com a social networking site that I have blogged about frequently. I always enjoy talking social media with people like Diane because I learn from them and the energy is upbeat and inspiring. Diane and I really covered a lot of ground during the interview, but her area of expertise is Strategy, Metrics and Inbound Marketing – “Getting Found”. Here are some highlight areas you can expect to learn more about if you listen to the entire episode:

  1. Location Based Marketing (Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla)
  2. Monitoring/Metrics (Radian6, Google Alerts, Social Mention and Hootsuite)
  3. Amplify.com
  4. Facebook Pages
  5. Video Marketing (Including Youtube)
  6. Social Media Policies
  7. LinkedIn (Including Answers, Groups)
  8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  9. Turning Point Autism Foundation

Listen

[audio:http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joehackman/2010/08/05/diane-rayfield-of-harp-social.mp3?localembed=download]

You can follow Diane on Twitter @dianerayfield or visit harpsocial.com to learn more about her company.

Browser or RSS Reader doesn’t support flash? Download/Listen to this episode 

You can also signup to be notified when I have new Podcasts scheduled by clicking the “follow” button for my show on Blog Talk Radio.

Lessons on Brand Monitoring and Article Titles Ivan Misner BNI

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As most of you know that follow my blog, I am fairly active on Amplify.com. Periodically throughout my day I use Amplify to clip interesting news and articles that I come across, the tools are so effective I can maintain a presence and keep conversations going without investing a lot of time doing it. Yesterday I happened across a post entitled:

“Stop Wasting Time on Social Media” | Surely this does not apply to those who amplify? 

The headline pulled me in. The quote was attributed to Dr. Ivan Misner the Founder and Chairman of Business Networking International (BNI) and New York Times best-selling author.

In the “clip” of the businessweek article it included this:

Karen E. Klein: Most entrepreneurs know they should be using social media, but beyond establishing a Facebook page and a Twitter account, they’re kind of lost. What are they doing wrong?

Ivan Misner: There are three problems. They’re spending too much time on it, they don’t understand how to leverage their time, and they anticipate immediate results, which they’re not going to get.

I am familiar with BNI but not intimately so. I came to the conclusion between the article title (which was intended to pull me in, of course) and Dr. Misner’s position at the head of BNI that his stance was related to the threat that Social Media represents to this type of organization:

 

Joe Hackman   I see his point but I don’t think it’s good advice for the long haul. The truth is BNI will have to reconcile their approach with those who are agile “virtually” networking online via Social Media, etc. I think he probably sees Social Media as the biggest threat to the growth/future of their organization.

 

During my Blogtalk Program last night I noticed a message notice in my Outlook popup that Ivan Misner had posted a comment on the post at Amplify.com. I was pleased to see that he had found his way to the site and looked forward to reading his response. After my program had concluded I went to see what Dr. Misner had said:

Ivan Misner  Re: http://amplify.com/u/6t4l @ALTALOMAN Interesting Comments.

Joe, I do not see social media as a threat. I highly recommend social media. This article was about things to keep in mind to make the most of your social media efforts. To me, social media vs. face-to-face networking is not an “either/or” situation, it is a “both/and” scenario. Both types of activities can help businesses. The face to face networking organization I founded, BNI, has grown from 500 groups to over 5,700 groups since the inception of social media. It has not taken away from our efforts. <truncated>

I was pleased to see this posting for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost because I knew that Dr. Misner was truly monitoring his brand in Social Media. A lesson that anyone can learn from. There were also some side thoughts and benefits. I was glad that the conversation had brought him to Amplify.com a site that I consider to be extremely under-hyped. I was also reminded of the importance of article titles to draw people into a conversation. These are fundamentals in the world of Social Media and Blogging. So I responded back to Dr. Misner:

Joe Hackman   Ivan – I agree with your position of both/and completely. You also obviously monitor your brand very carefully which you should be commended for. I feel a blog post coming on this one. Thanks for joining the conversation and providing clarification.

 

I wanted to blog about this example because there are several great take aways from this experience. I have a story to share when I talk to any members of BNI and I know a bunch of them. These are also some great real world examples of both brand monitoring and using effective article titles.

Dr. Misner – I know there is a good chance you are reading this because of your incredible brand awareness, thanks for the interesting experience. I think BNI provides a valuable resource to many small businesses and entrepreneurs. I would suggest that you have if not the most recession proof businesses it is among the top five. Has your organization grown faster the last few years than it has in the past?

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Amplify to allow Blogging

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I received a notice from Amplify.com today that I am extremely excited about. I’ve been advocating amplify as a simple way for anyone to engage and improve their social media experience since I joined earlier this year. These latest changes make it more practical and provide for a richer experience. Here is a copy of the Email notice I receive today:

Introducing blogging, background images & privacy options
Hi Joe Hackman,

1. Blogging on Amplify:

Our mission has always been to give people a place to talk about news, ideas, thoughts or anything else that’s on their mind.  Currently on the web, there are different services that offer specific ways to talk about things.  On Twitter you can say anything, as long as it’s under 140 characters.  On blogs, you can write long form posts that take greater time and consideration.  Using services like ShareThis, AddThis and many others you can share links to news or other interesting things you find on the web.  We chose to support blogging on Amplify to roll up all these capabilities into one service – so now everything you want to talk about on the web can flow through one coherent stream.

2. Background images:

You can now upload your own background image or change the background color of your Amplog (visit Settings >> Design).  To make sure our header works well with background images, we also removed the dark blue header that used to stretch across the top of all pages.

3. Privacy:

If you would like to control who can follow you on Amplify, you can now visit Settings >> Privacy to enable that option.  Once that’s enabled, you can approve anyone who requests to follow you.  You may also notice a “block” link in every user’s profile (shown on the right side of user pages and displayed on mouse-over of profile pictures).  This gives you the option to block a user from following you or commenting on your posts.

To try blogging and to set your privacy controls, visit amplify.com.  We hope you enjoy these new features and appreciate your feedback and support.
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