Archives for September 2011

Maybe the real problem in social media is being human

Jay Baer wrote a pretty fantastic post this last week. I think it threw a bit of icy cold water on the online world. Or maybe it was more like a Don Quixote moment of, “Oh wait, that’s really how it is.” Have you read his post? It’s about the use of the word “friend” and whether we can truly get to know each other in this online space.

I’ve been thinking about this post a lot lately. I thought about this post as I watched people duke it out verbally in a comments section that should have been somber and respectful. I thought about it even more as I saw a tweet whizz by yesterday – “The hardest entrepreneurial lessons 9/11 teaches us” or something of that sort. I thought about it when someone whom I had opted not to follow back on Twitter tweeted me to say, “Sorry, we only follow people who follow us.”

Although everything Jay says about the online world is true, I now am leaning towards a slightly different supplementary perspective. It’s not just hard to get to know people online. It seems to be getting harder for people to be human online. And by human, I mean a well-rounded person with feelings, compassion, manners, courtesy, and other pretty basic characteristics that distinguish us from say…earwigs.

Holy Cow! Brands are people!

I remember when social media really first started taking off. I first started really reading about it in 2006 I’d say. The thing that got people really excited was the idea that I, representing xyz company or brand, could get to know my customers, my prospects, and you – representing xyz brand or company. All of us would be putting human faces to the names and numbers, right? You remember those days. It was the flower child days of the online world, when customer service, marketing, communication, and pretty much everything else would become serenely beautiful because we’d all be people talking to people.

Much like a comic book, however, we ended up creating a sort of mutant hybrid that is part human, part digital image. Instead of worrying about relationships or sales, we started focusing on numbers of followers, blog traffic, and Facebook fans/likes/thumbs up/whatever it will be called next. We stopped communicating as humans. We also stopped communicating as brands or businesses. We started to become this weird online version of ourselves that is not really who we are and not really who our companies are.

Why don’t you ask how that person is doing?

It’s not a secret that my blog here does not get the most amazing traffic ever. In fact, I will tell you that most of the time, I get 150 visits or so a day. Now, the me of last year would have drooled over that. Everything is relative. But compared to the thousands of hits other sites get every day, I am not just small potatoes, I’m like a small eye of a potato. However, one thing I can say is that a large percentage of the people who visit here do something with my posts. A lot of you comment, which is my favorite thing. Many people tweet out posts or share them via other social media platforms.

More to the point, in terms of my community in general, which extends from here to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and a bit to LinkedIn, I can say that I speak on a regular basis to people I genuinely care about, and I think they might genuinely care about me as well. Sure we may not know contextual things like spouse names or how many kids, but I know that if I am having a problem, I can go to them and say, “Dude!” And they know they can approach me the same way.

We are humans, interacting with each other as humans would in a very crowded party. Sometimes we leave the party to talk one-on-one and then we go back in. But we care about each other. If something is up, we ask how the other person is doing. We send our condolences when there is loss. We send offers to help, and we do. As Jeannette Baer said so eloquently in a comment on my last post, why shouldn’t people just ask other people how they’re doing? Amen.

WWARHD? (What would a real human do?)

I wonder what you would find if you skim your online reality for signs of humanity. I find a lot of true humans in the circles I engage in. People like Chase Adams, Danny Garcia, the aforementioned Jeannette Baer, Joe Ruiz, and many many others. But I also see people using 9/11 as a how-to blog topic. I see people using a person’s death as a means to get a blog traffic spike. Automation seems to be taking over the world.

If we cannot be humans, is it any wonder we can’t formulate real relationships? You can’t prioritize the numbers and also create real relationships. You can’t view people as experimental lab rats and also expect undying loyalty. It has to be, it seems to me, one or the other.

Maybe that’s the real problem in the online world. We’re not people who need people. We’re automated X-Men who need more numbers wherever we go.

What do you think? Am I on to something here or am I crazy?

Image by Bruno De Lorenzo. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/deloan

Go Ahead And Call Me A Coward

by Margie Clayman

I keep thinking about some of the posts I’ve seen over the last few days. Posts about bouts of depression. Posts about personal struggles – and personal triumphs. Posts calling people out. Posts mourning people who have been lost.

So often, people who comment on these posts say that the bloggers are brave. I have been thinking about that, too. Because, you see, I probably will never write a post like that here on my site. I have had my share of thises and thatses, but I will likely not share those things with you. Not here.

Does that make me a coward? Maybe.

Creating Community By Curating Content

by Margie Clayman

A lot of people are talking about content curating these days. People are saying that it’s really important, it’s great, it’s awesome, it’s a growing part of the online world, et cetera ad infinitum. And hey, I’m really happy about that (cough, Blog Library, cough). But apart from the fact that it’s just plain enjoyable, not a lot of people really emphasize why it’s beneficial to curate content. The fact is, for me, working as an online content curator has helped me grow my online community.

How does that work? I’m so glad you asked!

Don’t Take Shortcuts

by Margie Clayman

Sean McGinnis is VP Sales and Marketing at Dot CO Law Marketing. Additionally, Sean is a co-founder of 12 Most and blogs about SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Leadership and a variety of other topics at his blog 312 Digital. Sean is based in Chicago and has been involved in Internet Marketing since 1999.

I’m a huge movie buff. In fact, the first web site I ever created was a DVD movie review site (http://dvdverdict.com) that it is still going strong over 12 years later with over 22,000 original movie reviews. One of the byproducts of this fascination with film is I tend to have strong recall of movie dialogue and scenes and I often find myself thinking in movie terms.

Just ask my friend Sam Fiorella. Just this week, Sam and I were chatting via skype and he sparked an immediate movie recall in my mind and I shot him a couple movie clips. We both laughed. I did the same thing to my friends Gini Dietrich and Marcus Sheridan this past week, when I dropped a quick YouTube clip into the Spin Sucks comment stream. I do it because it’s funny and because it adds spice to the discussion.

And here’s the problem….

Every time I do that, I’m taking a shortcut.

I assume everyone knows what I know – that they think like I think – that everyone “gets it” – that they’re in on the joke because they too have seen the movie and understand what I’m trying to convey by dropping in a movie line out of nowhere.

But that’s rarely ever true!

Communication shortcuts can be useful when you have a shared community and you’re certain everyone “gets it,” but they can be death to your marketing efforts. In fact, a sense of community can be strengthened by using just these types of shortcuts. Again, I would cite Gini’s community over at Spin Sucks as an example. Every few weeks or so, I or someone else will call Gini Gumby or Gertrude. It’s funny to me. And it’s funny to Gini. But not every member of her community knows the backstory (click both the links above to get brought into the loop) and those that don’t, get very much left out of the shared experience of being part of that community during those short exchanges. BUT, those in the know have their bonds and allegiances to that community strengthened via this type of shorthand communication. Everyone that knows the Gumby story has a good laugh when it comes back out.

Here’s the rub… There’s a temptation to apply this type of thinking to your marketing effort as well. But, your market very rarely understands your product (or maybe even their need) as well as you do. And by creating shorthand things like branded product names or concepts and continually referring to them in your marketing materials without first explaining them to your prospects can lead to a lot of things – almost none of them good. Your prospects will walk away from your marketing efforts feeling confused and alienated.

Here’s the thing. It’s fairly easy to avoid this type of behavior. All you need to do is put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. It sounds pretty easy in theory, but it’s quite difficult to apply in the real world. Because we can’t unlearn what we already know. We are often blinded by our own self-interests – which is why sales people are often so incredibly bad – because they are focused on their own self-interests and not genuinely focused on the interests of their customers.

Nearly every time you try to take a shortcut you run the risk of alienating your market. Don’t talk down to them. Don’t talk over their heads. Don’t even talk TO them. Instead, talk WITH them. Discover the genuine questions they have about your product or service and answer those questions as completely and naturally as possible. Display a little empathy. It will go a long way in helping you put your market first.

So my advice is this. Beware the shortcut. It can be a VERY effective tactic, but it also has a tendency to limit your market – by creating those that are in the inner circle and those that are forever relegated to being on the outside looking in. Both are viable tactics. Just know which one makes the most sense for your business and when to use it.

The Beautiful Lesson That You’re Not Grasping

by Margie Clayman

One of my favorite movies is Love Actually, a Christmasy type movie that is also a beautiful reflection on the post 9/11 world. The movie points out, via a Hugh Grant voice-over, that on 9/11, the last messages were of love. “I want you to know I love you so much.” Those were peoples’ last words. Those were the words people picked up their phones to say when time was running out for them.

Over the last couple of days, I have watched as the sudden and tragic death of Trey Pennington has begun to dissolve into nothing but another polarizing issue in the online world. Amongst all of the questions that his family and friends are asking, amongst all of the grief that his loved ones are experiencing and will experience, the online world is missing the last and most important lesson Trey left. His last tweet, which I’m sure many have seen, was not of anger or anguish or hate or discontent. His last words in this online world – his last tweet – was of love.

As people deride each other for various reasons this week, I can only feel like I’m watching people slam their heads into brick walls. This week, more than any other week, is a time for patience, understanding, gentleness, kindness, and love. And yet, over the course of 12 hours, 2 exchanges I’ve seen have involved the word “hate” and a condemnation that one person is a waste of life.

I know there are people out there who are trying to gain social capital because of Trey Penningtons death, and that is so disheartening. I know there are people out there who you just find disgusting. That’s human nature. But this week, right at this particular time, that’s not the lesson. The lesson is that the message you’re sending out could be your last one to that person. It could be your last, period. And what are you leaving? Petty retorts, the cause of which no one will know or remember? Messages about how much you hate a person? Messages about how some people are so insensitive they deserve to die? Really?

Where are your hearts, my friends? Where are your heads? What must happen before you realize that you are what you say, and you only get one shot to leave a legacy to be proud of?

Can we not recoil our venomous tongues for the next five days at least? Can we not reach out with hands instead of claws? Just for a few days? What you say matters. It carries weight. It flies away from you and lands you know not where. Make it a risk-free journey. Just for the next few days.

Please.

Image by Adrian van Leen. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/TALUDA

What Will You Leave Behind?

by Margie Clayman

Nancy Davis is a freelance writer. She is also a content editor and social media blogger for Melen LLC. Follow her on Twitter. Thanks for the wonderful post, Nancy!

My Godfather is going into hospice. He has battled with alcoholism most of his life. Gangrene claimed his right leg above his knee back in 2005, and now it wants his left leg. I spoke to him and told him that I loved him. The conversation was extremely painful. Not because he is dying, because death is part of life. It was sad because of what he has become.

It makes me sad to think of the man he once was. The tragedy is that he is a shell of his former self. My Godfather marched to the beat of his own drum. He never did what anyone ever expected him to do. He was the youngest of three brothers, he grew up in the Bronx where fighting in the streets was how you got respect. He blew off the first three fingers on his right hand shooting off fireworks on the 4th of July as a teen. He was left with stumps.

It didn’t stop him from becoming one of the best auto body men around. He could restore any car. He was highly mechanical, and understood what it took to make something work.

I will never forget riding on the back of his motorcycle in my Easter dress. I was maybe 8 years old and I thought he was the coolest guy on Earth. He was a daredevil. There was absolutely nothing he would not try at least once. He had a fast temper, and we used to just write off his erratic behavior as “passionate” He married several times. He was not someone who would do what you wanted. He did what he wanted when he wanted to. I don’t want you to get the impression that he was a bad guy, he was not. In many ways he was deeply misunderstood. I could not have lived with his gifts. They would have driven me insane.

He was deeply psychic. He read tarot cards and did natal astrological charts. He accurately predicted my father’s open heart surgery on my 12th birthday in 1980. His gifts were heavy to him. He was deeply connected to me, and when I wound up in the hospital with a severe gallbladder attack a year and a half ago, he called. He felt something was wrong with me. Had I been in an accident? He said he felt that I was in a hospital. I was in the hospital. He knew things without me telling him. He always seemed to pick the exact right time to call me.

I prefer to remember him this way. Not what he has become. I prefer to think of him working on a car, a Pall Mall cigarette between his lips, with his eagle tattoo showing. I want to remember him talking about spirituality. I want to remember the good times, and forget the bad.

Memory is a funny thing – sometimes if we are very lucky, we can summon those moments about a loved one that make us smile rather than cry, I sit at my computer, tears shining in my eyes, and one single tear is sliding down my face.

No one knows when we will speak to someone for the last time, so I wanted to call him today to tell him I love him, just in case.

Image by Alicia Jo McMahan. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ajmac

Archives for September 2011

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