Wake up!! Most people live asleep.

And there’s nobody like Gary Vaynerchuck to wake them up and shake some sense into you.

In his keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City, Gary talks about the two P’s and building your personal brand within the social media landscape.

Caution - he uses some colorful language.

Some highlights:

“Stop doing sh*t you hate.”

“Hustling is the most important word.”

“If you pump out good sh*t people will follow.”

“Brand equity is yourself.”

“If for one second you, half a second, you don’t believe in what you’re doing…you need to get out now!”

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Just for fun. Try saying the title five times really fast.

Really though, a few weeks ago I decided to give Qwitter a try based on my friend Alejandro Reyes’s blog post : Qwitter - Catching Twiter Quitters.

Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter with a message like this:

I figured maybe I could spot a pattern if there was a mass un-following after certain types of posts. There wasn’t. The un-followings were completely random.

What would be really helpful would be to have an area where people could submit a comment when they unfollow you. Then I could see some use. But, as it stands I quit Qwitter after 19 days.

I started resenting the messages in my inbox everytime I got a twitter rejection.

I’d rather see positive things or “You’ve got a payment” messages. Call me crazy, but that’s just me.

I’m torn. Should you follow back everyone on Twitter that follows you?

I got on twitter on August 2007. None of my friends were on twitter yet and very few in my niche. So I started following anyone who had anything remotely to say that I was interested in. Plus I also followed the few “smores (social media whores)” or people with large numbers of followers.

Smores? I know, funny. That’s what Guy Kawasaki calls them.

Anyway, I had no clue what I was doing, so I just started following as many people as I could.

As my own twitter followers began to grow, and my status grew to “smorrette (Not quite a smore yet)”, it was just impossible to keep up with my twitter feed (a timeline of the tweets of those you are following).

Plus, I could no longer take the time to go to every followers page and decide whether I wanted to follow back or not.

So I started unfollowing a bunch of people that never tweeted, didn’t follow me back, had a picture I didn’t like, etc. Yes, a picture IS worth a thousand words.

Then, in came automation. I subscribed to Tweetlater which is a service that allows you to future post tweets or schedule tweets in the future, like when you’ll be on a plane or jumping out of one.

It also had two features I began to use. It sent an auto reply message to everyone that followed me and also followed them back automatically.

So, the number of people I was following grew to hundreds. And I was back to square one. Which was a completely useless and crowded twitter feed.

So I did the next logical thing which was completely ignore my public feed and focus instead on posting my own tweets of interesting links, sometimes completely useless mundane tweets, and replying to @replies and direct messages (DM).

This presented a problem though. There were twitterers and topics I was very interested in following.

But in order to do that I had to use twitter’s search function, which took time (not to mention was a huge distraction.)

Solution = I began to use Tweetdeck.

Tweedeck is an application for twitter that not only lets you tweet but also create groups of people to follow, set-up custom searches of keywords and topics, plus see all of your replies and direct messages all in one place.

So I’ve been able to segment the people I want to follow into different lists. For example, I have a list with internet marketers and another one for friends or people I know personally among other lists I’ve created. This lets me see only the tweets I want to see without having to weed them out of my public timeline.

Which brings me back to my question: Should you follow everyone back that follows you?

It seems that there are three things you could do, with popular social media “smores” split between the first two.

1. Follow everyone back.

There seems to be an unwritten rule of twitter etiquette, at least that’s what supporters of this tactic believe, that doing so is not only courteous but it also encourages goodwill between your followers and you and therefore people will respond to you more and everyone who follows them will see this, which leads to more exposure for you. Big twitterers like @guykawasaki and @scobleizer follow this method.

2. Only follow a select few.

Others believe you should only follow those you have a real interest in following. This keeps your feed manageable and although people can’t direct message you if you’re not following them, you can still see the replies sent to you.

It also gives your profile some exclusivity since you only follow certain people. Most of the well known internet marketers like @ed_dale or @masscontrolkern follow this method.

3. Follow as many people as you can as fast as possible.

This is one I definetely don’t recommend. It’s called Follow spam and it could possibly get your account suspended by Twitter. Follow Spam is when you follow a mass number of people, not because you are interested in their tweets but because you want to gain attention by generating views to your profile and clicks to your website. It’s the shotgun approach to twittering.

You’ll be seen as a spammer and possibly have your account suspended by Twitter. Some people have even created programs to automate the following which lets them follow thousands of people at the blink of an eye.

So there you have it. What do you think, to follow ALL or only a few?

Well, how ’bout for now just following one more.

You can follow me here: http://www.twitter.com/yisel

Last month I was sitting at Eben Pagan’s GuruMastermind Event and during one of the opportunities to ask questions a lady walks up to the mic and says she’s a realtor and has an investor client who wanted to sell these luxury end condos but didn’t want to use proven classified ads because they didn’t align with their highty tighty image.

(I just made up “highty tighty”, but you get the point, right?)

So instead of placing a newspaper ad that would pull interested prospects ready to buy (good ‘ole direct response marketing), they wanted to use an ad with a pretty picture of the condos and a nice logo.

Sure image and name recognition branding certainly have a place - if you have millions of dollars to burn through and don’t care to measure any direct return on your advertising dollars.

But for solopreneurs or small business owners, where is the line between “looking” pretty and having a certain image and making money?

Do you need both?

Well, it depends on the outcome you’re seeking. And I assume if you have an online business then that outcome is to make a profit. Otherwise, you’re out of business. And it goes without saying that the profit should come as a result of giving outstanding value and over-delivering in your products and/or services. That should be a given.

(By the way, even if you’re a non-profit, you’re still selling something. And that something is what you want people to do, which is probably donate.)

But do you need to look pretty to make that profit?

Must you give up beauty for braun? Do you need to sacrifice image to elicit an action and get a response?

Not necessarily. You can have both. And if you only had to pick one, it would have to be braun. Which in this case is getting people to take an action because you’re giving them what they are looking for. Wether it’s clicking a link, or downloading a report, subscribing to your newsletter, buying something, or making an appointment to see those great luxury condos.

But one thing is for sure. You can’t just have beauty.

Otherwise you’re like a great looking guy or gal who you’re dying to meet only to find out when you do, that they can’t hold an intelligent conversation.

So how do you do both? How do you create a story with your image that also gets people to respond favorably.

Well, when you’re building a house you first have to lay the foundation and have the house built, before you can paint and decorate.

So this is what you need to understand before you work on looks:

You need to know what the purpose of your site is. Start with the end in mind. What is it that you want the visitor to do?

In his ebook Flipping the Funnel, Seth Godin says that a website must do these two things.

• Turn a stranger into a friend, and a friend into a customer.
• Talk in a tone of voice that persuades people to believe the story you’re telling.

Seth goes on to say that a website can only cause four things to happen to your visitor:

• She clicks and goes somewhere else you want her to go.
• She clicks and gives you permission to follow up by email or phone.
• She clicks and buys something.
• She tells a friend. These days in addition to word of mouth this is so easy to do with social media sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, or Del.ic.cious

So as long as any of these four outcomes happen, the way that you do it doesn’t matter. It could be a classic direct response sales letter, or a site that combines pleasing colors and great copywriting with video and animated characters. It doesn’t matter which way you do it, because as technology changes, the means to persuade will change too.

My highest converting website thus far is a simple landing page with no images or video. Who would have thought? Of course, that might change and that’s why constant measuring and tracking is important.

But as long as the foundation is well laid and you keep the above principles in mind (which won’t change), you won’t make the mistake the real estate investor made and think it’s just all about looking pretty.

Recently I moved my old blog at www.yiselLIVE.com to this new domain.

But just like moving to a new house, you have to pack all your stuff (blog posts) so you can find them, or more importantly, so your visitors clicking on an old link can find them.

After much searching and hair pulling this is the best resource I found to do that.

How To Move A Wordpress Blog or Website

Has this ever happened to you?

You work hard at marketing your business and after weeks or months of effort you still come up empty handed. Or worse yet, after having a taste of success, all of a sudden, what was working doesn’t work anymore. What do you do then?

Well, I’ve convinced my friend Diane Hochman to share her secrets this Thursday night at 7pm MT (6pm PT/9pm ET) on a FREE live webinar to help you rework you plans and get your cash flow going right away.

To register click here.

If you can’t make it, make sure you still sign up so you get the recording.

Your personal brand. What is it saying about you?

The other day I was sitting at dinner with my family and the phone rang.
I normally don’t answer calls when the Caller ID is hidden, but this time I did.

On the other line was a guy who says,
“I’m not selling anything, I just want to ask you a few questions for a survey
on your telecommunications preferences.”

I said, “Only if it takes less than five minutes.”

He said it would.

Of course he lied, it took twenty.

At about minute five and 3 seconds and start to get annoyed
and was toying with the idea of just hanging up.

But suddenly I realized, “Hmmm, these communications companies
spend millions of dollars on market research.  There must be something
to these questions.”

And there was.  The gold was the last few questions. Of course. Read the rest of this entry

Hey folks.

I just moved to a new domain from htpp://www.yiselLIVE.com.

This site will better fit my long-term goals and most

importantly better serve YOU.

So while I “unpack” all the boxes and get it looking just right…

I hope you don’t mind a little mess.

See ya soon,

Yisel

Last night my family and I watched the movie “Penelope”. It’s about a girl who believes she is ugly because she was cursed from birth with a pig’s nose.

It’s not until she loves herself like she is, that the curse is lifted.

And when it comes to marketing and business, the way you see yourself first, determines how others will see you and your services.

See, we’ve all heard the phrase “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”.

But a lot of times we still do.

And what’s worse, we sometimes judge ourselves unfairly.

I remember my mom used to tell us growing up, “Remember, someone is ALWAYS watching you.”

And it rings more true in this new social media world, where we are exposed more than ever.

So take a minute to think about the image you’re presenting to the world.

That image is judged by others on Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, your sites and blogs, your articles, your pictures, a google search on your name, etc.

Do you feel confident, certain and sure of that image?

Do you believe in your abilities to lead someone else?

Do you believe in what you sell and what it can do for others?

Are you being authentic?

Because if you don’t or aren’t, people will sense it from miles away.

And they will stay away or be drawn to you.

So, start being confident. Walk a little taller, look at people in the eyes and smile, pick up the phone and say hello with enthusiasm.

It’s what I DID first, that allowed me to receive and HAVE later.

This is a neat snippet of Tony Ribbons

talking to a super achieving audience about why

we do the things we do.