Archives for July 2010

One of the awesome yet frightening things about my professional social network right now is that I am following people who are far more brilliant, far more successful, and far more experienced than me. The blog posts that these folks make are always deep, always causing me to think and roll their ideas around in my head. Having recently begun to follow my 300th person on Twitter, you might imagine that my brain has a full-time job just trying to digest what all of these folks are saying.

It is with that preamble that I mention Chris Brogan’s recent post called The Painter and his Window. Now, on one level, I can’t really relate to this post at all. Sadly, and for reasons that I certainly don’t understand, I don’t have a ton of admirers who wait to talk to me and get my insights (I know, I know, I’m working on it!!). On the other hand, however, the post gets at an issue that I’m sure tons of people experience even beyond the realm of marketing and business. That issue is that passion doesn’t pay the bills.

The fine line between helping and sacrificing

When I was in college and graduate school, my great passion was learning. I wanted to learn everything in the universe. I wanted to be challenged. One of the great first experiences I had my freshman year in college was walking down the street and hearing a couple of guys jousting about existentialism. I thought, “Wow! This is amazing!” All through my academic career, I read every page of every book about 95% of the time. I took notes on every book. This seemed odd to a lot my peers. You can get a jist of an argument by reading the first and last sentence of every paragraph, so the legend goes. But I didn’t care about getting things done quickly. I was soaking up that knowledge because I loved it.

Part of the academic environment is peers helping each other, just like part of today’s marketing environment is peers sharing knowledge. I wasn’t the valedictorian or anything, but I was smart enough that people would sometimes ask me for advice on their papers, or I’d be asked about a book we were reading. Little things. I always obliged. I’m a nice person, plus it gave me a chance to talk about things I liked. Win-win proposition, right?

Of course, the problem with these scenarios is that they can get out of control. Sometimes people will say, “Hey can you help me?” when really they mean, “Can you do this for me?” The other problem that can arise is that you can end up getting behind on your own work because you are spending so much time helping other people. “Oh, I can whip up my paper in no time,” I used to say to myself. And most of the time it would work out, but sometimes it became a pinch.

When I translate this to a professional situation rather than an academic one, I see the problems inherent in being passionate about your job in this newly networked world in which we live. It’s not just folks like Brogan that have people looking in the window. If you have a friend who’s a doctor or nurse, it’s hard to avoid talking to them when someone in your family is sick. You want just one little piece of advice, and you’re friends, so they shouldn’t mind. We expect our teachers to stay after school or to work at all hours because our kids need to learn, and after all, teachers love what they do. A lot of people have good hearts and they want to help as many people as they can in whatever way they can. But when you have to start choosing between self-preservation and helping people, it can put you in a real pickle.

Passion is Priceless. Knowledge is Free.

We’re at a really interesting crossroads in our society, and I think Chris’s post illustrates this in a unique way. Everybody is all about passion right now, right? Lots of people love Ty Pennington because he is so passionate about helping people on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. People love “foodies” like Emeril because they so love their work. People love Jillian Michaels because of her passion for helping people.

Admiration, though, is starting to have a “chaser.” If you admire someone these days, the next step is to find out how they do what they do. If you admire Emeril, you want to learn how you can cook like him. If you admire Jillian, you want to learn how to motivate and look like her. If you admire folks in business or marketing, you feel like you should be able to learn how your role models did what they did.

The really interesting twist is that most of these folks today are sharing exactly that information. Advice, tips, step-by-step guides, videos, television shows, are all full of ways that we can become the people we admire. What worries me is that there is a growing sense that if someone is successful, they are OBLIGATED to bring other people up with them. And that’s just not the way it works.

My window

Brogan ends his post by asking people what their window looks like.

Well, my window looks into a classroom. I’ve got a pad of paper in front of me, hundreds of professors talking to me, and I’m surrounded by people who are trying to learn the same stuff. Sometimes I’ll ask questions, not just for me but so all of those other students can learn too. Sometimes a student will ask me questions, and I try to answer. But I am not making my living answering those questions right now, whereas my “professors” are.

I am in a mode of learning, building, and trying to apply what I learn. I do this so that I can be the best possible representative for and of my company’s clients. Ultimately, my success will only be measured against how successful our clients are. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

These “professors” are helping me achieve that success by teaching me things they have discovered or learned through experience. They offer an awful lot of this information for free. An incredible amount. So if they have a book out, I’m likely to buy it, not just because I know it’ll be great but because I know that that’s how they make their living in the world, at least in part. And I am willing to support that. If my fellow students find success, I will support them.

I think some people, though, stand outside that “painter’s window” and fully expect the painter to talk to them whenever they demand it. Not only that, but if they want to know how to do that brush stroke, or how that shading effect works, they feel that the painter should pass along that information.

To the experts out there, whatever your field may be, I say, only give that from which you are okay to part. And to all you crowds outside the experts’ windows, remember that if we are all experts, than no one is.

Image by Fred Kuipers. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/fredjk

I ventured out into 94 degree heat today to hit a store because I needed to look for some little baskets (I’m trying to organize my possessions). This store is the kind where you can leave having spent $100 on items that don’t cost more than $2, or you can leave having spent $100 on something that you know is ridiculously overpriced but “it’s just so darned cute.” As it happened, I found exactly what I was dreaming about, so I grabbed 6 $3 square, colorful baskets off the shelf and then  I commenced with my excursion. Suddenly, an employee of the store, who was walking by, asked me if I wanted a basket to carry my, well, baskets. And then she helped me put the baskets into the store basket.

Now, I would have been okay carrying my baskets around. It was a bit of an awkward load but I wasn’t walking around like a sad puppy dog. And contrary to all signals that may point otherwise, I would have been quite capable of placing my baskets into the store basket. Despite these hopefully assumed truths, the store employee was helpful and even nice. For no real reason. It was clear I was going to buy things. She had nothing to gain from the encounter.

We are the Social Media Users. Resistance is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated.

Lately I’ve had these vivid images of humanity actually becoming the Borg, especially us business type folk. Isn’t the Open Graph kind of like the Borg Collective? You share all of your thoughts, you receive everyone else’s…you are wired 24/7 so that their thoughts are always your thoughts? I mean, it’s kind of creepy. So often, we concentrate on sharing online and we forget that being nice in real life actually can have longer legs and make a bigger impression because…it’s so darned rare!

This is not to say that being nice online is worth a grain of salt. Even that kind of humanity seems hard to come by sometimes. The online assistance we may get is something we can link to, something that’s easy to promote, and let’s face it…help is often helpful. Help in real life, however, is so much more tangible. It can literally take a load off your shoulders. It can help you feel connected. It can help you carry an awkward load of items. And while you might not be able to retweet it, you still can tell your friends, family, and your Social Network all about it.

Bring a little mushy to your work

Think about your clients or your customers. When was the last time you did something totally kind, totally unnecessary, and totally without expectation or motivation to increase business? If someone is pregnant, have you asked how they’re feeling? Have you picked up a tab, sent a reference for someone’s kid? I’m not saying that you should spend a week wining and dining. But as opportunities arise, make sure you are being a human, not just a business person and not just a Borg. A little humanity — a little kindness — can carry much more weight, much more differentiation, and much more loyalty than any other thing you might do.

Just look at how happy that one little gesture made me!

Yesterday I read a really fantabulous post by Stanford Smith (aka @pushingsocial on Twitter). Go ahead and read his post about why smart people like dumb bloggers. Then come back!

See, I told you it was an extremely thought-provoking article. That’s why I’m a little surprised that a day later, what came to my mind in response to this amazing post was…Milli Vanilli.

I Need A Bridge

Okay, so let me explain how I got there. A lot of Stanford’s post is about the fact that smart people tend to be a little…didactic. Maybe sardonic. In short, smart people have the capacity, nay the tendency, to do kind of stuffy posts. And everyone, smart people and dumb people (so called), find those posts to be pretty boring. My question is this, though. Given the wacky world of Social Media, how do we really know that the person we are reading is really that way? How do we even know if the person we are reading really wrote that post? How do we know who our readers really are?

We don’t.

And that brings me to Milli Vanilli. For longer than 15 minutes, a lot of people thought Milli Vanilli was the best thing next to maybe MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. You know that if you were able, you danced a little to “Blame it on the rain.” It was amazing that non-native English speakers could speak English so well. It was amazing that 2 guys could look that good and also sound that good. It was almost too good to be true. And then it turned out it WAS too good to be true. Nobody remembers the name Frank Farian today, but he was the actual mastermind behind those pretty faces.

A similar thing happened with that dance-a-licious C&C Music Factory video, “Gonna Make You Sweat” (Everybody Dance Now). Zelma Davis, a gorgeous, thin woman, appeared instead of the actual singer, Martha Wash. Blues Traveler ended up parodying this in their video for “Run Around.”


Who is singing for me, Argentina?

So I was thinking about Stanford’s comments about smart bloggers and then the mysterious regions beyond our computer screen where all of these contacts of ours live out their day-to-day lives, something we probably have no idea about. And I realized that ultimately, we really have no way of knowing if blogs are emanating from a person’s regular way of talking or if people slave over these things for months at a time, plucking words and phrases from various sources. We have no way of knowing if blog posts are being plagiarized, in fact. We have no way of knowing if we are looking at the writings of a Frank Farian or a Fab Morvan.

As you read this, you really don’t know much about who I am as a person. You know the things I have posted to this blog. Maybe you follow me on Twitter, so you might know that I have at least a couple of interests that expand beyond the world of marketing. You have no way of knowing if I am really smart or not. Maybe someone else takes a pool of thoughts I verbalize and they make it sound good. Or maybe I am a ghost writer for someone else. And who are you, my readers? The only way I know is if you leave comments, and even then, that is just a snippet of who you really are.

If all you can judge a person by is his or her writing on blogs and other social networking sites, you are also at a great disadvantage. Some of the brightest people I have met in my life are terrible spellers. Some of the best ideas I have seen have come from people who, despite their best efforts, mix up there, their, and they’re. Some of the seemingly least intelligent people I know actually are rivers that flow deep. They might not be able to string two words together in person, but in writing they reveal a brain full of knowledge that is beyond most people.

I agree, but everyone has a big but

In short, I agree with the crux of Stanford’s post, as I’m sure most people would. If you are smart, it’s easy to get preachy or “high and mighty.” If you choose not to write with a particularly intellectual bent, it’s easy to get disregarded by some and adored by others for your accessibility. But I just want to throw a word of caution out there.

It’s possible that some of your “smart” readers are also “dumb” bloggers. It’s possible that some of those “dumb’ or easily accessible bloggers are some of the most critical and well-read commenters out there. All we have at our disposal, for the purposes of judging, is some written words on a flashing screen, written in a particular style, with particular choices of words that may or may not reveal the real person behind them. We can’t even depend on definite identification since may people have many different usernames at their disposal. Social Media is a thick curtain, and all of us could be Wizards of Oz. On the other hand, we could all just be Toto too. Don’t be too eager to assign people to one category or the other. It’s not a smart thing to do.

Granted, Social Media is something that in the end each individual must own his or herself. A Twitter account, a Facebook account, or anything else can be or do whatever the person wants, and it is really not appropriate to tell someone how they should or should not do something.

However, there are some things that people do that drive me personally batty. Rather than leaving a snarky message or just complaining about these things, I thought I would give a brief word about why some of these practices might be detrimental to the health of your account – especially if you are tweeting for business. These are just my opinions, and I’d be happy to hear arguments to the contrary!

1. Post the same 2-3 links 2-3 times a day every day: There are a lot of people just in my little corner of Twitter who engage in this practice. Usually it’s 2-3 blog posts or Facebook notes. The links are described with the same teaser every single time. This goes on for weeks and weeks at a time. There are two major problems with this. First, it ends up becoming white noise. You stop looking for that person to post anything new. Second, this practice, at least to me, makes the person look like they don’t have any new ideas. That makes them seem less engaging and less interesting. Especially if you are tweeting for business, that’s a chunk of bad news.

2. Flashing, pulsating avatars: It’s possible that you are the most brilliant business person ever. Unfortunately for me, if you use a flashing avatar, I am going to assume you are spam. They get my attention, but in a bad way.

3. Nothin’ but Retweets: This is pretty similar to #1. I think a lot of people take to heart the idea that you should promote others 10x more than you promote yourself. However, retweeting is not the only way this can be done. Making responses to people is also a way to get a person’s name in front of your followers, and it makes you seem more “human” and accessible. It also shows that you aren’t just regurgitating other peoples’ ideas. Express yourself!

4. Nothin’ but Complaints: Everybody has that moment when they use Social Media as a cry for help. However, even in cases where the person might be our best friend in the world, this can get tiresome. If you are tweeting for business, a surge of negativity can make you like a sourpuss, and people generally don’t want to start new relationships with downer types. Up up up is the way to go. A complaint now and again is okay (that human thing again), but make sure you pepper in some humor or wit or happy thoughts!

5. Trying to be a jerk on purpose: I’ve encountered a few people who I can tell are really bright, but they adopt this persona of being mean on purpose. At times, I’ve seen it work for people. A snarky comment will sometimes get a lot of “ha ha” responses and retweets. But again, if you are tweeting for business, I think this is a dangerous road to hoe. You can be snarky at times, but if you are nothing but snarky, what kind of message does that send to potential customers?

6. Talking at, not with: This really holds true for any Social Media site. There are some people who do a lot of posting, but it’s not really intended to be conversational. These folks might send out 5 quotations a day, or statements that have that “I’m really deep” aura about them. Again, these things are fine, but if that is all you do on Twitter, you run the risk of becoming white noise again. People like to converse, generally. It’s Social Media, after all. If you like posting quotes, try to find a way to ask a question afterwards. “Do you know any quotes of a similar jist?”

7. Foursquare: I know that I have an inherent bias against Foursquare because I see possible dangerous ramifications for our youth, so maybe this isn’t fair. However, ever since foursquare became integrated with Twitter, my Twitter stream has become filled with check-in notifications. On a personal level, I just find these similar to clutter. However, if you are tweeting for business, these can also be dangerous. Did you call in sick but you’re now checking in to a spa? Were you late for a meeting because you had “checked in” to a restaurant? Project pending but you’re checking in to your fitness center? These things can send a very bad message to potential and existing customers, not to mention employers.

8. Promoting the same person(s) over and over: It’s always nice to promote individuals, especially if they are friends are co-workers. Much like tweeting the same link over and over, however, this methodology gets very old. I have seen some situations where co-workers will tweet praise of each other and then retweet each others’ posts. My gut response to this kind of activity is “get a room.” Not what you want to get across when tweeting for business. Probably.

9. Sending someone a direct message whom you don’t follow: I have been on the wrong end of this several times. Someone would send me a direct message, and I, being the obliging type, would go to respond. Only I wouldn’t be able to respond because said person was not following me. Speaking for myself, I found this kind of irritating, plus it certainly put a decisive end to any conversation or interaction.

10. Today is Friday. Are you retweeting your #ff mentions?: Every Friday on Twitter there is a trending topic called “follow Friday.” It’s a nice sort of idea at heart. You recommend to your followers people whom you think are worth following. A lot of people mishandle this idea. They’ll #ff well nigh all of their followers, for example. Some people don’t even give any commentary. Just #ff name name name name. That is not my worst pet peeve, however. My big Friday pet peeve is retweeting mentions for #ff. I have only done this once, and I did it because someone handled their mentions in blog form, so I figured I could drive traffic to their blog. But there are many people on twitter who just automatically retweet any mention of them tied to follow Friday. Again, little commentary added, if any. Why is this annoying? Well first of all, if I follow the person who did the original post, then I get to see that follow Friday post 2-3 times instead of just once. But also, it just does not accomplish anything meaningful, at least from my perspective. My preferred method is to say thank you to the person and maybe add the #ff tag to tell them what I am thanking them for. It’s human, it’s not automated, and it’s genuine. Their name still gets in front of my followers, too.

So there you have it. Do you disagree with any of my pet peeves? Are there major advantages to these methods that I am just plain missing? I’m happy to hear about it!

Image by Iker. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ilco

Justin Kownacki, a fellow blogchatter, posted a really interesting blog post today about Social Media Myths. Justin said something in a comment response to me that really got me thinking:

There’s a whiff of entitlement and a delusion of equality in some
social media conversations that I find detrimental to a more coherent
(and, ultimately, more beneficial) understanding of how social media
(or any other system) works. If a person can’t honestly evaluate his
or her own contributions, or tell the good (or relevant) apart from
the bad (or irrelevant), how can s/he expect to identify what needs to
be improved? 

See? Thought provoking. Here’s where my thinking took me. 

On Libraries and 9/11

When I was pursuing my Masters in Library Science 10 years ago, the news seemed pretty darned bright. To listen to Library and Information Science professors was to hear that people would virtually beg for you to work for them once you got an MLS degree. Librarianship was generally speaking an aging profession. Tons of people were going to be retiring. There were going to be so many job openings it was actually going to become a serious problem.

Folks in the post 9/11 world met a very different reality. The money libraries used to get was now going to Homeland Security. People were still retiring, but those jobs were being merged with other existing jobs. Nobody was hiring new and inexperienced MLS grads. A lot of people who graduated around the same time I did felt deceived and betrayed. Some even accused their professors of lying.

A lot of the talk in the world of Social Media reminds me of my heady days in Library School (there’s a phrase you might not have heard before). Everywhere you look, including here in this blog, there are posts, articles, tweets, status updates, and more telling you how to gain 5,000 followers, 2 million “friends,” and a blog that will make sites like Mashable drool. All you have to do is 5 steps, or 3 steps, or 8 steps, or 2 steps. This information is out there because for somebody, those steps worked. Really well. But they won’t and can’t work for everyone. And that might cause some people to feel a little left out. Maybe even a little deceived.

Not everyone can be a superstar

One interesting thing about Justin’s post is that he pointed out a sad truth that you don’t hear a lot these days. Not everyone can attain the status of a Chris Brogan, a Seth Godin, a David Meerman Scott, a Mari Smith, a Denise Wakeman, or other marketing geniuses. This, indeed, might be difficult for some people to tolerate, and there are two reasons for it.

1) Marketing superstars like the aforementioned are accessible and willing to help, making one think that you might just be at that person’s level, or that that level is easily attainable

2) You might be doing all of the same things. You’re twittering, Blogging, answering questions on LinkedIn, promoting yourself but not too much. As Bill Murray says in What About Bob, “I’m doing the steps! I’m Baby Stepping!” In walking the same path as these superstars, it’s natural and easy to think that you will end up at the same superstar destination.

If you consider the millions of people who use Twitter, for example, and then count the number of superstars that come to mind who use Twitter, you will see that statistically, your chances of attaining the same status are rather small.

Being a superstar does not mean you’re a jerk

A lot of people have been kind of snipping at these leaders of the marketing world because they don’t follow many people, they don’t always comment back, or they seem to only reply to a select few. “They say they want to help but I can’t get nary a one to guest post on my blog.”

Ok, now it’s entirely possible that some people who have become successful actually are jerks, or pretend to be nice when really they are quite mean at heart. However, in my own personal experience, this is not the case. When I see Social Media or marketing superstars, I see the following:

1) They are being demanded not only in the places we see (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs) but also in places and in ways that we don’t see, like telephone calls, their full time jobs outside of connecting with everyone, speaking engagements, preparing for speaking engagements, etc.

2) They didn’t attain their status because they were easy to like. They all worked their butts off. We know them and of them because they are trying to teach everyone else how they did what they did. That, in and of itself, seems to tip the scale away from “mean,” but I could be wrong.

3) With such limited time, for every comment or reply that is made, there are likely dozens if not hundreds of others that get passed by. I worry about problems like that and my follower list on Twitter is like a pebble compared to Jupiter.

4) Superstars are, generally speaking, human beings. If you come at them with criticisms (or tons of buttkissing that is inauthentic) you will probably not succeed in communicating. All humans, no matter how successful, need a little give and take.

5) Sometimes superstars want to banter with friends and family online, and they might do that instead of bantering with someone they don’t know. Maybe that makes them a jerk. I generally think not.

What do you want to get out of Social Media?

If you’re engaged in Social Media because you are shooting to be the next superstar, you’re probably going to have a bad experience. If you’re looking to get famous or position yourself to write a New York Times best seller, you’re probably going to find yourself dumbfounded at your lack of success.

I am engaged in Social Media for 3 reasons. I want to learn. I want to share knowledge as I get it. I want to help people market their products, and I believe that I, with the company I work for, can help make that happen. I am not shooting for a specific number of followers or fans. I don’t need 27 comments per blog post. I don’t need to be a superstar, but I know I don’t want to be a jerk.

My realistic expectations, I hope, are that I can help someone work a problem, tell someone something they didn’t know that might help them out, and learn the same way from other people. To that end, based on my goals, I’m already quite content with where I am. And I have to say that I have never had a moment where I thought these geniuses we all talk about were jerky. In fact, I have found their kindness to be authentic, their knowledge to be rock solid, and their friendliness to be genuine.

I know that I will not be the next superstar, and I am quite fine with that. Are your expectations on a level with where you are in life? Are you shooting too high? Are you expecting too much? It’s difficult to become a superstar. It’s easy to become a jerk. We should all make sure we stay far away from the latter.