On December 3rd I tweeted this:

Amazed by those who shoot themselves (and their biz) in the foot, over and over again. Relationships and reputation come first, people.

Today I wanted to expand upon this thought, as it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot in 2009. I’ve seen this happen countless times, regardless of the individual’s age, experience level and profession.

Reputation and relationships are the building blocks of any business, and if you can’t remember these fundamentals, you are absolutely doomed.

Here’s a not-so-hypothetical situation we came across earlier in the month. Hillary and I were in a meeting with a prospective client, and they specifically mentioned a few disparaging Twitter posts that a local businessperson had made about them months earlier. The company remembered every detail, down to the specifics of this person’s Twitter avatar, and one of their team members stated “doesn’t this person realize they might be in a position to do business with us some day?”

Translation: Every person you meet and every relationship you forge is a potential business opportunity, or at the very least, a connection that can benefit you down the road. Today, with self-publishing tools like Twitter and blogs, our voices have amplifiers with unlimited reach. So, if you’re in business for yourself or publicly representing someone else’s business, use these tools wisely. Everyone you haven’t met yet is now potentially your audience. And, oh yeah, Google remembers everything.

Just to be clear, I think it’s awesome that social technology platforms have given consumers a louder voice and direct contact with companies, bypassing the old gatekeepers. You have every right to expect good service, and you have every right to gripe online if you got ripped off or treated poorly. But this post isn’t about the tools, nor is it aimed at the Pizza Hut customer who just got a cold pizza. This is about being a grown-up, professional businessperson and acting like one.

Your reputation is with you for the long haul. Consider that the next time you feel the urge to call someone out or ignite a flame war online. Today’s social tools give us immediacy, but also they tend to disrupt our self control. Think about the tone of your post — would you say it the same way if you were face-to-face with that person or company in real life? What’s the end result you’re expecting by making the post? Can it be achieved by picking up the phone or firing off an email and respectfully asking “Hey, what’s going on with this? I have some concerns.”

Again, you have the tools and freedoms to create whatever digital assets you want. These assets form the foundation (positive or negative) of your online presence, which will inevitably be seen by potential employers and clients. How will you be perceived? The answer is firmly within your control.

I’ve spent most of this post talking about digital relationships, but of course your IRL ones matter, too. If you’re rude, obnoxious, disrespectful and generally unlikeable in person, other human beings won’t want to do business or even interact with you. Plain and simple. Your competitors will pick up on this immediately and eat your lunch.

Look, I’m not saying you need to censor yourself or neuter your personality. I’m talking about using common sense when dealing with other people, online and off. We’ve all made these mistakes. I’ve made them. Be helpful, decent, and keep those doors open instead of closed.

Image credit: Despair.com

Last Friday I discovered that Twitter’s new retweet feature had been activated in my account. Much like Lists, they are slowly rolling this out to all users, so be patient and you’ll discover it soon. For those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a quick video description and howto on the new feature.

What are your thoughts on the new retweet functionality? What interesting things could you build with this being integrated into the Twitter API?

On August 18th, I tweeted this:

Today, in a move that established me as a modern-day Nostradamus, Facebook activated this exact feature. But in all seriousness, this is something Facebook has been contemplating / working on for months, and many users have been clamoring for it. Basically, the popular social network has turned on the ability for you to “tag” your friends in your status updates, simply by typing the “@” symbol and then choosing from an auto-fill drop-down menu. (Pages, events and groups can also be tagged.)

Seems like a simple add-on, right? So what are the long-term implications of this?

First of all, this feature is very Twitter-like. When Twitter came on the scene a few years back, mentioning friends via @replies and effortlessly creating links to them was one of the more appealing features. Over time, some lazy people (myself included) have set up our Twitter feed to update our Facebook status, negating the need to update in both places. This small change may now encourage many of us to update our status natively in the Facebook platform. It might also be appealing to those who “dabbled” in Twitter but never found any real value there.

Translation: Facebook wants you to think Facebook first, other networks second.

Status tagging is just one of many recent tweaks the social network has made to incrementally erode away Twitter’s core user base, including Facebook Lite (a stripped-down, bare-bones, Twitter-like version of the interface) and the ability to publish Page updates to a Twitter feed. (With links back to your content on Facebook, of course.) See the trend here? Facebook first.

Now, a logical person could make the case that no matter how many features Facebook adds, it can’t duplicate the Twitter experience because there are clear differences in the groups of friends you keep on each network. In other words, the quality of connections make the network.

I 100% agree with this, but I’m writing this post from the perspective of Facebook, which is a business, and that business is dedicated to going Scorched Earth on Twitter until there’s nothing left. Make no mistake about it, these social networks are fierce competitors. Remember that Facebook attempted to acquire Twitter back in 2008, believing that status updates were vital to the future of information sharing. Twitter spurned that offer, and since then Facebook bought Friendfeed, another (lesser-known) micro-sharing service, which was definitely a shot across Twitter’s bow.

Facebook and Twitter are at war over your social graph. Where do you stand? Will these recent changes change your social networking activity in the near future, one way or the other? What stand do you think Twitter can make to combat this? Please leave your thoughts below, I’m excited to hear all of your perspectives.

We hear a lot of conversations about how businesses use social media, but what about organizations like faith communities and churches? Today we caught up with Paul Stewart, Lead Pastor at a new faith community in downtown Des Moines called The Gateway Church. Here’s what Paul had to say about how The Gateway Church has leveraged social media to help spread the word and connect with the community.

Today on our way back from lunch through Downtown Des Moines via Locust Street, we decided to let the Flipcam roll and see how many businesses on Twitter we could identify. What, you think we were running out of ideas for our weekly video? How dare you! We were merely trying to illustrate how ubiquitous Twitter usage has become among local businesses.

Who did we miss? Add your comments in the video annotations above! Have a great Labor Day weekend, everyone.

The Des Moines Register reported yesterday that billionaire “Red” McCombs recently invested a significant amount money into SmartyPig.com, the social savings network founded here in Des Moines. (People in the Midwest may remember Red from his days as owner of the Minnesota Vikings.)

Three things:

1.) This is awesome for Des Moines and Iowa. The future of Des Moines’ tech and innovation community gets a huge rocket boost with news like this — SmartyPig proves that you can have a good idea here, find the talent and resources to build it here, and be successful on a global scale.

2.) Personally, I love this line from the Register article:

(SmartyPig’s) growth has come with very little paid advertising… SmartyPig has used social networking sites, including Twitter, Facebook and others, to encourage its customers to connect … and spread the word about its unique savings accounts.

Building off my comments about the social media time investment, the SmartyPig team spent two years connecting with customers in digital mediums and busting their asses with online PR, not lazily paying overpriced ad firms to design wasteful billboards and print ads that nobody would notice.

3.) Back in February, Marc Andreessen appeared on Charlie Rose and noted the need for creating new banks instead of bailing out old, broken ones. SmartyPig is absolutely the kind of thing Marc was asking for. I’ve posted the video below.

Big congratulations to the entire SmartyPig team! Onward and upward!

Disclosure: We weren’t asked or paid by SmartyPig to write this post. We have done project work for them in the past but this article comes 100% from our excitement for them and the Des Moines tech community.

The next Des Moines Tweetup will take place at el Bait Shop on Thursday, June 4th at 6:00 pm. Here are five reasons why you should not attend:

Follow the #dmtweetup hashtag on Twitter to stay on top of who’s attending! See you out there!