Say what you will about One Direction, the latest British boy band pop sensation to hit the scene and cause mass teen hysteria around the globe, but much of their success can be attributed to the fact that they use social media better than any musical artist(s) out there. Any intelligent person can recognize their social media accounts are really under the strategic control of their management team; however, each tweet or post is carefully crafted to strike the right note and appeal to their largely teen fan base.

Three of the best Twitter practices used by One Direction and how YOU can apply them to your small business:

1. Live Tweeting!

One Direction has done several live tweeting sessions over the past year, one of which was during their biggest concert ever at Madison Square Garden in New York City in December. Throughout the entire day they tweeted pictures and texts, starting way before the show, as the band prepared for the night. They posted during the show so users at home knew what songs were playing, who the special guests were, and what other surprises were in store. After the show, they posted pictures as the band hugged their parents and thanked fans. Fans who tweeted pictures during the concert were even retweeted on the One Direction account. Even though this one concert was going on in New York City, fans around the world were able to feel connected and up to date with something happening so far away. 

Why and how you should do this: Live tweeting your events keeps those at home informed and somewhat involved in the action. Even if you don’t have an event to live tweet, the posting of an office joke, a new product, or something interesting will make people feel closer to you. Any sort of post to say “This is happening right now” makes followers feel as if they are the first to find out and that you think they are important enough to share it with.

2. Acknowledging Followers/Calling them to Action

One Direction is great with daily tweets asking fans questions such as what their favorite One Direction related memory of 2012 was and retweeting many of the answers. Twitter helps make the band, no matter how popular they get, more accessible than they would have been a decade ago. Even a simple “finish the lyric” tweet garners hundreds of thousands of tweets from followers. One Direction also uses their star power to promote various charity events to get fans out and making a difference in their communities.  

Why and how you should do this: Calling followers to action is the best way to get people talking to you so you are able to talk back to them and create relationships. Asking questions, whether related to your company or not, humanizes your social media efforts. Retweets and replies are an easy way to reach out to customers, but asking them relevant questions is an easy way to get people involved. Small businesses have the advantage in this area because One Direction cannot possibly tweet to all 9 million+ Twitter followers (@mentions roll in to them at an astounding rate!) nor can large corporations with millions of followers. Take advantage of the fact you may not have the most followers on Twitter and connect with as many followers as you can. They’ll appreciate it!

3. Cross promotion:
Since Twitter is the hub of One Direction’s social media efforts, they tend to cross promote a lot of their other content in their tweets. Recently, to promote their new music video and ask fans to help break a YouTube record of 11 million views in 24 hours, they tweeted screenshots from the music video and teaser videos five days before the video’s release. They also cross promote their online merchandise store by revealing codes that will take a percentage off a purchase and drive traffic to their website. 

Why and how you should do this: Content should always be promoted on as many social media channels as possible! If posting something in one place is good, two places are even better. This helps keep customers aware and you are able to direct them to a specific place.

Why not experiment yourself? Follow these three practices for a month and see what happens to YOUR business! 

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Why do most projects and startups fail? I can tell you that it’s not because of lack of money, lack of technology, or lack of manpower. The answer is painfully simple. They fail from lack of leadership.

Leadership is not just a title, it is not just a few moments of standing in front of the crowd. Leadership is the iceberg deep below the water. It can be cold and lonely at times, and it’s often mislabeled, mistaken, and overlooked until after the fact. Great leaders don’t have to carry big titles or have letters after their name. Great leaders have the depth of character and willingness to do what’s necessary before and after everyone is watching. Great leaders know that:

1. What they invest in planning will provide for themselves and their team 10 times over
2. Modeling is more powerful than dictating orders
3. There is a time for sacrifice and there is a time for requiring responsibility from others on the team
4. They don’t have to be experts in everything, but they should lead the way in reading and learning as much as possible at all times
5. They need to be accessible to their team as much as possible and they need to influence their team consistently throughout the days and weeks and years of their project

There are hundreds if not thousands of books on leadership, but when it comes to your business, or your startup, I feel like the 5 points I listed above are a solid start with which to lead your project effectively.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of your personal influence on a team. You might not consider yourself a leader, but the fact is that we all lead in one way or another. We either lead poorly, or effectively. The choice is up to us.

Leadership will always be the difference maker for your idea, for your startup, for your business. So invest time and effort in becoming a more effective and influential leader. I promise you that if you are consistent in your efforts as a leader, you won’t regret it in the long run.

If you are interested in reading more on leadership, I highly recommend the following book by John Maxwell:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

I usually got in trouble for taking apart things that I wasn’t supposed to touch, but I don’t remember getting in trouble for this one. Either my dad didn’t care, or he had planted this hunk of machinery in the garage to keep me occupied. Either way, it had worked. In the garage there were a half dozen old tool boxes, all with a miss mash of wrenches, sockets, and hammers. I used to rummage through the boxes until I found the right size wrench to fix my bike seat, or tighten up something on the tractor. But now I needed a dozen different wrenches to tear down this cold steel engine that used to be the heart of a working piece of machinery.

I think I liked getting my hands greasy as much as I liked actually taking things apart. I always get a mini-rush when I’m straining and then all of a sudden the force and leverage pays off and the bolt jolts free, spinning and spinning, until it drops and bounces on the cold concrete floor with a sharp pinging sound. Engines are like three dimensional puzzles that move and flow and hum when they are running. I loved finding each bolt, every screw, the pins, and the covers that slid away to reveal more of the mechanical magic that lay deep inside the engine.

At 8 years old, I didn’t really have much focus. I don’t think that they had classified A.D.D. and A.D.H.D the way that they have today, but I certainly have an undiagnosed combination of those two. I never spent more than fifteen or twenty minutes tackling the metal monster, but I actually did manage to break it down all the way to the seized piston head over the course of a few weeks. Bolts, housings, and miscellaneous parts were strewn all around the engine block in the middle of the garage floor by the time I finished breaking it down as far as I could. I know I told everyone that I was going to “fix” this engine, but looking back I don’t think I ever had the intention of putting a single piece back together. I was way more interested in discovering what the inside of an engine looked like. That’s the way my mind works. I want to reach inside things, unravel the elements, and discover what makes them tick.

It would take me days to name the number of things I’ve taken apart in my lifetime. It would only take me a few hours to name the things I’ve re-constructed. That makes me chuckle. I look at how my one year old son studies me and I’m a little frightened of the path of strewn parts I may be picking up for a few years. But you know what? That’s ok with me. I think that there should be more encouragement for people who want to discover how things work. Ask more questions, take more risks, don’t be afraid to “break” things in the process of learning.

Today, when a car passes down my road, or drives by me in the parking lot, I can tell you if it needs an oil change, or if the breaks are worn out. I can tell you if the tie rod ends are loose, and I can even tell if the tires are in balance if the car is driving fast enough. Maybe that sounds weird, or arrogant, or stupid to you, but it’s something that has come from the result of my taking apart hundreds of engines. It’s come from me trying to fix things that I had no business fixing. One of my heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, says something that helps me keep trying new things:

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

That quote reminds me, that even if I break it, and I can’t put it back together, I’ll know so much more about how it works. With more knowledge in hand, I can operate more effectively, make better decisions, and offer real life advice to those around me. I am only scared of not acting. Doing nothing will kill any progress, any productivity, any innovation.

No matter what part of your business you are diving into, I would encourage you to be brave and take it apart. You might break something, you might realize that it’s harder than you expected, but you might also learn something. Be persistent and keep trying. I have never seen a persistent person fail. Only those who give up too early fail. Those who persist always win. You may not find what you thought you were looking for, but you will find something of incredible value.

As the summer winds turned to fall breezes, the leaves started to curl and fall off the trees. The warm colors of the maples and beech leaves mixed with the golden brown oak leaves and blew into the garage and started to cover the concrete floor. One September day, I picked up all the parts and put them in a large cardboard box. I pushed the engine block and the box of loose parts into the corner of the garage. That engine never ran again, but I now knew how engines worked. I had discovered what made an engine hum, and that was enough for this season of my life.

Discovering how it worked was enough for me. That knowledge stuck with me for the rest of my life and I never lost the desire to dig in and take things apart. Now I look around every day and try to figure out what I can dismantle so I can put it back together in an even more innovative and exciting way.

Go for it. Dig in. You’ll be surprised at what you learn. You’ll be surprised how much fun you can have.