(Video Duration 2.28 mins – Transcript Below)

I saw a video today about telling everyone to be authentic with their business.

There’s a lot of this about now and I think the word authentic has been around,
since Google Plus was, everyone’s saying how important it is to be yourself.

I want to go a bit further than that and actually say, be nice. Be nice to people.
Think about the words you are going to use on social media, about do they help?

Will they make somebody smile? They’re not going to make anyone feel worse,
or upset somebody or make them feel insecure about anything?

That to me, is the baseline of what you should be doing on social media.
As Metallica would say ‘Nothing else really matters’.

I think one of the problems I see with anything to do with marketing,
is all these lead generation stuff, and if you do this, people will buy your stuff,
and if you do this, people will enter your sales funnel or something.

They’re all things that you yourself probably wouldn’t do,
because you’d think “Oh, I’m not going to do that.” The people you’re doing that to are you.
They’re just like you. So if you wouldn’t fall for it, why do you think someone else will?

I think the whole point of social media or online marketing really is not just being authentic,
you’ve just got to be yourself, so you’re going to be authentic anyway.

I think if you’re looking for someone else to tell you how to be authentic,
I think you’re a bit lost. And no one else can teach you this,
because they’re trying to teach you how to be you. You are already that person.

Be nice, and I know people think the word nice doesn’t sound strong enough, it is.
Empathy, connecting with people is Social Media.
Social media’s going to go through some massive changes soon,
and a lot of people are going to start to probably question how much time they spend here,
so it’s about connections, it’s about taking care of the people you connect with,
and listening to them

Thinking how you can help people, how you can learn from people,
how you can create things that help others.

That is social media and that is running a business online.

Thank you

Phil