Margie Clayman

Today is Sunday, which also means that today is Blogchat day over on Twitter. It’s not just any ordinary chat either. The one, the only Chris Brogan is going to be hosting. Naturally, one of the five parties I go to in a year is occurring tonight, so I might miss the whole thing.

Inspired by my grief, and also, in a completely different way, inspired by John Jantsch’s The Referral Engine, where I am reading about his views on blogging, I decided to take a little time today to talk about where my blog is, how I am doing what I am doing, and why I am doing those things.

What I’m doing now

When I first started blogging professionally, I realized something terrifying. People won’t read your blog if they don’t know it’s there. Simultaneously, I learned that people won’t follow you on Twitter if all you do is retweet other posts and alternate that with links to “interesting” articles. I decided to try to tweet links to my new blog posts. It showed that I was capable of generating my own thoughts, and it addressed both traffic problems at the same time. I would say I am rather pleased with my levels of success in doing things this way. The nice thing about promoting through Twitter is not just that you are potentially reaching huge amounts of people, but you can also let people know you are blogging about them or something they might be interested in. Harder to do that on other social networking sites.

Although I preach and appreciate the value of a blog “editorial calendar,” I do not have one for this blog (as uh, you might have noticed). I am very fortunate in that it doesn’t take much to get me thinking about writing something. Since I follow so many great people on Twitter (which has also directed me to their blogs), there is always a wealth of ideas to borrow from. Sometimes I’ll just make a comment, but other times I’ll respond with a post of my own. I might talk about something that comes up during one of the chats I’m involved in, or I might write about a current event.

I also do not have a schedule of when I blog. Again, I am very fortunate in that I seldom get brain cramped for too long. I generally like to blog once a day (I feel more than one is too much), but I don’t freak out if I miss a day or two. If I miss three, I start to get itchy.

I am not getting as many comments as other blogs that I visit, but that really doesn’t bother me, as I’ve discussed before. The comments I do get are thought-provoking and sometimes inspire another blog post through their brilliance. Besides, I would probably be the kind of “last person on Earth” people who would still write even though there was no one to read it. I like the sound of my typing that much.

Why do I blog?

The part of The Referral Engine I am reading now lists reasons why you *should* blog. I think a lot of folks are familiar with those reasons by now. SEO, networking, content, etc. But in addition to the shoulds, why do I blog?

Every blogger has an ego: This is hard to admit. I think that if I was a dessert I’d be humble pie with maybe a touch of ice cream. But if you are writing content in a very public place, there has to be some part of you that thinks you have worthwhile things to say. Ego is ego, a rose is a rose.

Hopefully Helpful: I have certainly not attained expert status yet, and I may never get there by various peoples’ perspectives. Even so, I think that on occasion I have ideas that could help someone in some way, whether it’s solving a problem or thinking of a sticky issue in a new way. Maybe I’m a showcase for what you don’t want to do in your blog. Hey, that’s cool too!

Captain’s Log, Stardate…If you’re a Trekkie, that line will sound very familiar. But did you ever notice that despite all of that very careful logging, there was seldom a time when Captain Kirk went back to reference what he had said on stardate whatever? I like blogging in part because it’s easy to mark progress. I make a point of looking back on older posts, even though I haven’t been blogging for all that long. Sometimes I think, “Yeah, I’m still happy with that.” Other times, well…every space ship has a hatch out to space, and sometimes you want to use it.

Gathering my thoughts: Sometimes there is an issue that is rolling around in my head and I can’t seem to get my arms around it. Blogging helps me with those situations. In trying to write about the topic, I get my brain to take each part of the buggy issue separately. Hopefully, I don’t confuse too many readers in the process.

A timeless time capsule: Remember burying or unburying time capsules when you were a kid? To me, a blog is kind of like a time capsule, only you never bury it, and hopefully you never stop adding to it. I enjoy taking moments here and there to write about what the times are like right now. There is a lot going on that has never gone on before. People are worried about the future, worried about how they are relating to people, hopeful about what technologies might come next, and more. Why not try to capture some of that for later?

It’s really fun: The most important reason why I blog is that it’s enjoyable. I love writing. I have always loved writing, from the time I wrote a ten-page book of poetry when I was about 10 (very naturalistic poems on clouds and trees, btw). What makes this kind of writing even more fun is the sharing of ideas. At any given moment, I can be in the same virtual room as thought leaders I respect, people whom I enjoy talking to, and people I don’t know. Like a pinball, ideas bounce off all of those people, and blogs are the flippers that keep them going.

What is your state of the blog? Why are you blogging right now? I’d love to hear about it!

There have been two conversations occurring all week simultaneously. The first is a conversation about “influence” in the world of social media. What are fans and followers really about? What is the tipping point where you actually have too many people in your network? What happens then?

The other conversation is a very different kind of lamentation. I’ve heard people talking about when art used to be presented on a series of layered boards, a process that seemed like magic. I had a conversation yesterday about how hard it is these days to present a complicated folding piece because now, more often than not, projects are presented via PDF, long distance.

What do these two conversations mean?

The Great Relationship Crash of the 21st Century

Chris Brogan posted earlier this week, as I did, to Julien’s post about influence. Chris asked if we were coming to a social media crash. My greater concern is that we are heading for a relationship crash. With 24/7 access to friends and family and acquaintances, in-person get-togethers are getting, paradoxically, harder to put together. Have you noticed lately that if a friend is in town but you can’t make it to see him or her, you figure, “Well, that’s okay, I can still catch them on Facebook later.” Have you noticed that when you do meet up with a friend with whom you are connected on Facebook, it’s kind of hard to know what to talk about? We already know not only the big things, but things we would not have even thought to talk about 5-6 years ago. We know how our friend’s dog is doing. We know, on the day of our meeting, that our friend is going to be cranky because kid #2 is teething. We know that our friend’s mom is going in for a colonoscopy. I mean, really. Once you get to THAT point, what is there to talk about?

Is this a real relationship? People are very excited about Skype, and a lot of people get teary-eyed at the new iPhone commercials touting the video capabilities. But to me, these ads signify that we no longer understand what real connectivity is. Even if I had an iPhone with video connections, I wouldn’t tell my husband I was pregnant via that impersonal medium. I wouldn’t want to tell a hunk of plastic in my hands. I’d want to be there, to see the real facial expression, the real reaction. Is a grandfather seeing his grandchild via phone the same as seeing the grandchild in real life? I can’t believe that the answer is yes, but it seems like society is pushing us that way. I don’t like it.

The Personal Touch

I find all of this very difficult to interweave with my job in marketing. There is an increasing emphasis on “getting to know your customer.” “Be human,” the experts say. I have actually heard a story of a person refusing to do an in-person meeting because most of their clientele is spread out across the country, and they didn’t want to show favoritism to a local by meeting in “real life.” Huh?

Now, I know, I know. You can learn about your customers through studies of demographics. You can learn about them by looking at your Google Analytics report. But it seems to me like old fashioned things like hand shakes still could mean a lot. Learning the intonation of someone’s voice to tell when they are being sarcastic would be key. How many times have you misread an e-mail or a tweet? Can you do all of this via programs like Skype or GoToMeeting? Sure, I suppose. But there’s something about working with a real life person — in person — that adds depth to the experience. We are losing that today. And that’s just in the world of marketing and business. What about friends and family?

The Ramifications

We don’t know what the ramifications would be of a social media crash. Maybe you just quit using Twitter. It wears itself out. Maybe you create a half-dozen accounts to siphon your followers. But what happens if we hit a relationship crash? Do you think that increasing numbers of children are being told they are socially awkward by accident? Do you think that social anxiety is becoming more prominent as a condition just by chance? Do you think that great grey mass called “customers” is suspicious of companies and politicians for no apparent reason?

We’re all becoming shadows to each other, flickering names, an avatar swinging by in the never ending twitter stream. We think we are being fed, socially, because we are in contact with people all of the time. But it is not the nurturing kind of contact that people need. We are digesting our friends and family in bite-sized bits of wonder. We are missing chances to relate in the offline world. What will the final ramifications of that kind of world be? I have no idea, but it worries me.

How about you?

1st image by Michal Zacharzewski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha
2nd image by Mateusz Stachowski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Mattox

When I was a junior in high school, I got a job as a cashier. After the training period, which seemed to go on forever, I finally got my real name tag. Under my name, it said “Sales Associate.” I was euphoric. “I’m not a cashier, I’m a sales associate!!” I said it to myself, I said it to my parents. I had never been an “associate.” It sounded so grand, so important! As I dug more into the job, as I went to work during Summer months for the first time, as I dealt with people who were rude and sometimes even cruel, I realized that really I was a cashier. My grand title did not really describe the reality of what I was paid to do.

So what do I do now?

If you’re in marketing, maybe you’ve experienced this exchange before. You meet up with a long-time friend. They ask what you do and you say something like, “I’m in marketing,” or “I work at a marketing firm,” or “I work in Public Relations.” Your friend gives you a kind of blank look. “So, you advertise or promote things?” Your gut instinct is to laugh and say, “No darling, it’s SO much more than that.” But if you’re like me, you stop short. Is it more than that? It seems so, but I have no real way of describing exactly what my job entails.

This is a problem I did not expect. In one of my favorite movies, City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays a guy who buys radio ad space. That’s his job. “I buy air,” as he says. In Mad Men, the characters are ini “advertising.” Their job is to use ads to create sales for their clients. These things are pretty clear cut. But I can’t really define myself as being in “advertising.” This blog is not really advertising in the traditional word. Is it PR? Not really. Consultation definitely isn’t advertising. Or is it? Is that more marketing?

I’m downright confused.

What exactly are we integrating when we integrate marketing?

This has been on my mind ever since I started participating in two chats on Twitter, one called #custserv (you can guess what that focuses on) and one called IMCChat, which focuses on Integrated Marketing and Communications. Repeatedly, while participating in both chats, I am faced with questions that make no sense to me based on my understanding of various terms. Sometimes advertising is differentiated from marketing. Sometimes PR is differentiated from advertising and marketing. Sales is differentiated from all of the above and customer service. And social media? Well, sometimes conversations have erupted just regarding who “owns” a company’s social media presence.

I believe in integrated marketing with all my heart. If you show me a diagram with arrows going around in a circle showing how everything is interrelated, I’ll probably accept it with a little drool from excitement. I could preach integration until the cows AND the horses come home. There’s just one little problem. I don’t think we know what we’re integrating anymore. We take words of the profession like “Public Relations” or “advertising” for granted, but have you thought lately about what these words actually mean?

Well, over the next few weeks, every Thursday, I’m going to take a different phrase and explore different ways we could define it. What I think we may find is that the words we have always used may simply be too outdated now. People were talking about PR before email. People were talking about advertising before mobile. Even marketing may be a dying word. Is there a market to market to, or is just a bunch of individuals with whom we connect?

How do you define your job? How do you explain what you do? Let me know in the comments below.

I’ve been trying to get better lately about commenting on other peoples’ blogs. It’s a bit of a challenge for me, not because I’m an egotistical maniac (hi there peanut gallery) but because most of the posts I read are so thought-provoking that I feel like I need to write a book afterwards. Books tend not to be appreciated in comment sections. I don’t know if they’re appreciated in blogs either, but at least this is my space to soil as I might!

I mention this because yesterday I read a post by Julien Smith (co-author of Trust Agents and an amazing mind in general) about follower hyper-inflation. I was inspired not just to write a book. I was ready to write a series.

I can’t really do any justice to Julien’s post by trying to review it. What I can do is tell you what his post made me think about. So, here we go.

I just passed you on the sidewalk. Are we friends?

I have been pretty suspicious of the “fan/follower/friend” thing for a couple of years now, and I can tell you exactly why. When I first joined Facebook, it was really fun. I got to catch up with old friends, including some folks I went to nursery school with (!!). But then I started noticing some things. For example, people who had never given me the time of day in high school were asking to “connect” with me. Adding to my suspicion was the fact that none of these “friend requests” came with any message. You know, like, “I know I didn’t talk to you much during the ten years we were in school together, but I realize now that you were the missing piece in my puzzle, the balm to my soul’s wounds, and all I can ask is that you accept this request so that I may gaze upon your visage.”

No, nothing like that. Just a friend request. I gave people the benefit of the doubt. I would comment on some of their stuff, but they’d never comment back. THEN, all of my doubts were validated. People who had been in completely different social circles were now “friends”on Facebook. Now, I know it’s rude to assume that people don’t grow up, but to think that everyone suddenly had adopted John and Yoko’s Bagism philosophy was a little too much. I realized that a lot of these folks were just collecting people. I cut a ton of these mysterious people from my past (some of them allegedly from my past). I realized that the online definition of “friend” was kind of misleading.

Twitter is something different altogether. You’re not making friends, you’re collecting followers (talk about ego). As Julien points out, in order to be relevant in the world of Social Media, you need to be “popular.” Otherwise you just kind of fade into the ether. This drives competition, pressure, and guess what else? It drives authenticity away.

The power of Kevin Bacon

I’ve noticed something kind of interesting on Twitter (I seem to learn something new every week). Getting your first 100 followers can take forever if you try to do it the “high road” way, aka follow only people you’re really interested in and try to build connections/relationships. Once you get to a certain point though, your followers keep increasing at increasing rates of speed. I am now averaging about 100 new followers a week. Yippee, right?

Well…

If I had all the time in the world (thank goodness I don’t) I would examine my “follow” versus my “follower” list to see how many people I follow are following me back. I would further dissect my follower list to see how many of my devoted fans are offering me “free iPads,” “great blog posts,” “1,000s of followers,” and more. The numbers that you see for my followers category are, I can assure you, inflated.

The problem with this is two-fold. First, as you get more followers, some cool and interesting people feel more secure in following you. You might look more legit. This increases the number of people you wish to interact with. Have you ever tried to have 27 meaningful conversations at once? It doesn’t work. As many Social Media “influencers” have discovered, you end up with a better chance of ticking people off because there simply isn’t time to respond to everyone.

The other problem is that you become a target for more malicious spam bots. I had a message a couple of days ago that said, “For really good blog posts, just RT these people.” My Twitter handle was included. “That’s really sweet!” I thought. “I wonder if it’s real.”

Ah, cynicism. Saves me every time.

Turns out the link that was also included was malicious, meaning my name is now associated with a link that could cause people problems. This makes me very, very unhappy. There’s also nothing I can do about it.

Numbers are meaningless. Friends are priceless.

The general jist of Julien’s post is that the people you want to really nurture and connect with are your real-life friends. Sadly, we are now in an ecosystem where meaningless big numbers create an environment where you can’t actually do what you want. I hope to goodness that I don’t end up having to sacrifice the nice chats and asides that I enjoy with several people right now. But if influence = numbers, that’s the path that we are all on. Kind of depressing, isn’t it?

I just passed you on the sidewalk. Can we be friends? Well, sure. You’re lucky number 1,572.

First image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001

A few years ago, if someone, sorry, when someone made a disparaging remark about Akron, Ohio, my hometown, I could say, “Oh yeah, well, this is the hometown of LeBron James! The Black Keys! Take that!” It was nice to be able to say something nice about my hometown. When I was a kid, I had a shirt that said “Rubber Capital of the World.” That’s not true anymore. The PBA Championships were at a bowling alley ten minutes from my house. Even the bowlers left us. It was easy to  joke about Akron, but it was really enjoyable to have a comeback. Now, a few years have passed, and I don’t really have a good response for when someone jokes about my hometown. You see, all of the people that had the potential to lift this town up have left.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Hey, where are you going?

I think what’s happening in Akron and in Northeast Ohio in general is symptomatic of a serious problem in our society. When things get tough or frustrating or depressing or painful, people immediately look for brighter pastures rather than trying to figure out what went wrong or how to fix it. One of the members of the Black Keys apparently left, in part, because the nearest Whole Foods is a 45-minute drive from Akron. Well, why not try to bring Whole Foods TO Akron? Boost the local economy. Help people live better. But that kind of thinking seems to be on the endangered species list.

With the economy the way it has been, I wonder how many people apply this kind of thinking to their job search or their company’s well-being. How many people are settling for jobs because waiting for the right one is just too painful? How many people are languishing in depression because their company or their job isn’t going the way they want?

I’m not saying that if you try really hard, everything will turn out okay in the end. Sometimes you will get defeated, and that stinks. That’s also life.  But why just lay down and die?

You don’t see case studies about successful companies who just keep getting more successful, or at least not very often. You see case studies about companies that turn it around. Companies that start from ground zero and reach the stars. There’s a challenge there. Something to really chew on. When you’re starting low, any improvement is exciting and wonderful. Hard times are where innovations come from. Hard times are where great ideas come from.

“This is our time. This is our time down here.”

Remember the 80s movie The Goonies? A bunch of silly kids face the impossible mission of saving their homes. They go on a treasure hunt and despite numerous obstacles, they end up winning the day. For all of us non-millionaire types, this is our time. It’s a time to find success and then pay it forward. It’s a time to take a little ball of clay and make a designer bowl. It’s time to take a struggling hometown and try to lift it up.

If I were ever to get famous…if I were ever to find the fame and fortune of a LeBron James or The Black Keys, I would not move an inch from my hometown. I would say, “Hey, I’m from Akron, and now that I have this success, what can we do to liven this place up?”

What would you do?

When I got my very first Social Media account, which happened when Social Media was just web 2.0, I was really excited about the opportunity to exchange all types of ideas with my friends. My account was a Livejournal blog, and I figured, “Hey, I’ll post about things I’m interested in and like discussing, people will discuss with me, and all of my far-flung friends will be sitting in the same room.”

Two topics that I find endlessly intriguing are religion and politics. This might be a bit of a shock as I have discussed neither here and have only hinted at them via my various other public accounts. When I first started posting to Livejournal, I had no restraints, so I posted all kinds of opinions, questions, frustrations, etc. And my friends didn’t participate much. I was shocked. I was frustrated. What was going on?

Some people said that they didn’t like voicing their opinions because they felt people thought their opinions were dumb. Others said that discussing such things always leads to nasty fights or “LJ Drama” as we called it back then.

Since most of my Social Media activity now is for business, I have taken that hesitation of my friends to heart. As I see some folks pumping out their political opinions, I can see the wisdom in refraining from delving into these areas. Sometimes people say things that rub me the wrong way, but I don’t feel comfortable debating the issue.

My question for you is: Is this a healthy environment? People are making a big deal out of how networked our world is. We can do business with people across and around the globe now. Don’t different religious or political backgrounds come with that as a packaged deal? Don’t we have an opportunity here to share and learn and educate in ways we never could before? The word “yes” echoes in my head, and yet the sad truth echoes as well. If you don’t like my political leanings, you might be completely turned off to the concept of doing business with me. If you don’t like my thoughts on religion, the same result could occur. All we have as introduction are words on a flashing screen. Words are powerful. Words verbalizing religious or political views are like nuclear weapons.

What are your thoughts on this issue? I know that the ladies at Outspoken Media would say that this is the exact kind of cowardice they are preaching against. Do you censor yourself? Why or why not? I’d love to hear your opinions.

Image by Aaron Murphy. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/a51media