You KNOW when you're doing it right while cornering at high speeds around hairpin turns. When you master the corner, suddenly the car stops fighting you and you cruise almost effortlessly at incredible speed, without a huge loss of rubber and sweat. Brake hard, take the corner as wide as possible, light on the gas until you hit the apex then hammer it. When you get it right, you know it.

So what has this to do with social media, tweeting, blogging, and poking?

When you get it right you know it. The klaxon squawking of bad salesmen is like tearing up good rubber around a tight corner. It may get you around the corner but something isn't right. Instead of losing rubber, and brake linings you lose your reputation. Do it badly enough and you have a blowout. We see these people all the time. I block them.

I keep reading about things like the ROI of friendship and other notions which seems to me so off base. Yes, there is very much a cause and effect in place in the online social space but it's not like working a cash register. Finding something and paying for it may work at WalMart but not here. You can't buy a reputation here.

It is more like playing chess, racing cars or having sex, you get better the more you do it. And you do it by being YOU. Everyone differs, there is no golden role of how you can succeed in the online space. You succeed by doing things successfully (duh).

You have to open up a bit, and it is a bit Shakespearean in the sense that all the world truly is a stage. You perform yourself for the online world to see. We all have a part to play, but there is no script, and you get to act yourself.

Stand up, and do it well.

If you're an asshole I'm sorry, using social media is not going to help you. But if you have something of value, anything of value, and you share it because you want it, it will work for you, not overnight. Sure luck happens but don't expect it.

In marketing & branding differentiation is the key, and there is no greater way of showing the difference between you and the world than being you. Tom Peters aptly wrote about personal branding  in "The Brand Called You". There is only one of you. Take it online; with a bit of integrity please.

Be good at whatever you are good at, whether it it hacking software, taking photos, writing poems, or lending an ear to others, Be you.

And when you want to take a really sweet corner - drive straight into it hit the brakes hard turn the wheel just before you run out of real estate apply a touch of throttle, point to the apex (the point where you can fully see around a corner) then hammer the throttle when you hit it. And smile even if no one can see you.

And if you end up in the grass you fucked up, try again.

Cheers