Marjorie Clayman’s Writing Portfolio

Professional writing profile of Marjorie Clayman

Margie Clayman

Don’t be a social media Michelangelo

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Even if you do your best to avoid art and history, it’s hard to avoid the legacy of Michelangelo. Heck, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made sure of that. You’ve probably seen Michelangelo’s Statue of David, maybe his Pietá, and maybe his Sistine Chapel. As a side note, when I was in high school one of my peers asked our teacher where the other 15 chapels were. They had always thought it was the Sixteenth Chapel. But I digress.

Given all of his accomplishments, you might think I have a typo in my title. Why shouldn’t you be like Michelangelo? He did great work. He left a powerful legacy. Truthfully, though, Michelangelo made two mistakes over and over again, and his mistakes are not too dissimilar from paths I see people on in the online world.

Work first, everything else second

The kind of work that Michelangelo did was not easy. He was not an artist sitting in a comfortable studio, air conditioning blowing, brush flitting across the canvas. Michelangelo worked with marble and well, heck, he painted a huge ceiling. It is said that Michelangelo would work so persistently on his sculptures that his hands would begin to bleed. He wouldn’t eat much or sleep much. He didn’t like company. He’d stay in the same shoes or boots for so long that he would pull skin off his feet when he finally removed said footwear. By many historical accounts, while his work was beautiful, he was not a happy or pleasant man.

Is that really a great legacy to leave?

In the online world, you see a lot of people tweeting at seemingly all hours. People tweet about how they aren’t sleeping. I see tweets all of the time about how people worked right on through lunch, or people who worked so hard they forgot to eat for two days. You’ve probably seen things like that too.

Even if you are a great blogger…even if you are a highly successful speaker…is this the best approach to your work? Do you really need to upload photos of your anniversary dinner to Facebook? Do you really need to miss your kid’s baseball game while lamenting how much work you have to do on Twitter? I’m not convinced you do, but there seems to be this one-track mind sort of thinking about work that seems prevalent in the online world. You’re not really working hard unless your hands are bleeding, you have no real friends, and your feet are stuck to your boots.

I don’t really buy that line of thinking. I don’t really recommend it, either.

The ebb and flow of the leadership

It would have been hard for Michelangelo to live in more turbulent times. Every city state in Italy not only battled other city states, but they also had battles within. Florence was forever being caught in a tug of war between the Medicis and their rivals, and Michelangelo was one of many, many people who got caught in the cross-fire. Brought into the Medici household as a promising young artist, Michelangelo, for most of his life, went from works commissioned by the Medicis to works commissioned by their rivals. He committed to grand ideas by the Medicis that he really didn’t want to do only to discover that they couldn’t pay him. He’d work hard on a project for their rivals only to see Florence swing back towards the Medicis again.

In a lot of ways, Michelangelo was like a piece of driftwood in the sea of the times in which he lived.

I see a lot of people similarly caught up in the ebb and flow of social media leadership. A person will present herself as a staunch supporter of someone, but then when another influential person points out a problem with said someone, our friend will say, “You’re right, I agree with YOU. That person is dumb.” If the tide changes, the person’s loyalty will change again and they will go back to their original guru.

I’m not sure how much maneuverability Michelangelo had in his world. It was the great leaders who could commission his grand works. He was competing with Raphael, for heaven’s sakes. That was no easy task. But people nowadays, we have a lot of choices. We don’t have to drift from leader to leader. We don’t have to drift from clique to clique in the online world. And yet that seems to be what happens to many people. Their loyalties, their beliefs, their tonality, their views, change as the wind blows. Where on one hand they will encourage people to “call someone out,” on the other hand they will tell said person how great they are.

Is this a great legacy to leave?

Michelangelo today is remembered as a great master, but he is not usually remembered as a great man. How do you want your work to be remembered years and centuries from now? How do you want people to think of you? Being remembered like Michelangelo isn’t all bad. I have to believe there’s more to strive for, though.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/captainchaos/382029326/ via Creative Commons

You need to blog like Joan of Arc

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Joan of Arc, much like Hildegard whom we talked about earlier in this series, was a woman of immense talent during a time when such things were rather hard for guys to wrap their heads around. She was born a poor peasant girl, uneducated, headed for a rather non-extraordinary life. If you know your history, that is exactly the opposite of how she turned out. She turned out to be a brilliant strategist, a religious hero, a great debater, and a staunch defender of her king and country.

There are a few things you could pull from Joan’s story as you sit down to blog. Consider:

Don’t be persuaded that you’re wrong: At 17, Joan of Arc started trying to visit the dauphin of France. She wanted to tell him that she had had a vision that she was to help him become king of war-torn France. Upon her first attempt to visit the royal court, Joan was laughed out of the room. How would you react if a teenage girl from a poor family came up to you and said that voices had told her to do stuff?  However, Joan was not discouraged by this reception. She relentlessly came back, wanting to let her dauphin know what her visions had revealed.

As a blogger, it’s extremely easy to be “laughed out of the room.” Especially if you are new, it can be hard to stand by what you say and think. Don’t let people push you to give up, no matter how influential they are in the online world. Hold true to what you believe and to what you are saying.

Create a new prototype: The Medieval world really didn’t know what to do with Joan of Arc. She was a woman and never pretended to be otherwise, but she dressed in men’s clothing and cut her hair short. This went against everything women were “supposed” to do. Certainly women couldn’t be great soldiers and retain the qualities of a pure woman at the same time. And yet somehow Joan managed to combine all of these traits. Not only that, but she became a great hero. There had been no one like her in any kind of memorable history, yet she did not let standards and guidelines suppress her.

As a blogger, it can be easy to look for a pigeonhole to stuff yourself into. You can try to blog like xyz blogger. You can talk about the same stuff as this group of bloggers. You can try to adapt a voice that’s like some other blogger you know. But there is nothing wrong with chucking all of the stuff that’s been done. Start with something new and uniquely you. Why not? You have a lot less to lose in doing so than Joan of Arc did in the 15th century, right?

Choose your allies wisely: In an extremely short period of time, Joan of Arc succeeded in liberating Orleans. Her dauphin, Charles, was crowned king (Charles VII). Despite all she had done for Charles, however, he quickly abandoned her once he ascended to the throne. He found her, perhaps, to be too militant while he wanted to make peace. Whatever his reasoning, Charles did not grant Joan more troops. She went off to attack Paris on her own, without his support. When she was captured, he did not try to rescue her.

Choosing allies as a blogger can be similarly risky. You may find that after helping someone find success, they quickly abandon you and pretend that their success is only due to their own efforts. While a “mission” and helping others is extremely important, self-preservation should also be in the mix somewhere. This is a lesson Joan had to unfortunately learn the hard way.

Don’t let other peoples’ smarts intimidate you: At the end of her life, Joan of Arc was put on trial before French clerics and scholars. They wanted to try to prove that she was not worthy of her heroic reputation. It would have been easier on them all if it had been proven that she was just crazy or otherwise unreliable as a heroine. Facing a panel of scholars might have convinced Joan from the start that she had met her match, but records show that she held her own, out-debating these men who had had so much more formal training than she. According to all accounts, she did not approach her trial as a meek underdog. She approached it as an equal.

As a blogger, there will be times that you will disagree with a person who perhaps seems smarter than you, who has more experience than you, who might have a bigger following than you. It can be easy, in these situations, to simply give in and abandon what you believe. After all, they know best. Don’t let other peoples’ smarts or experience intimidate you. Don’t let other people inspire you to believe that you are surely the one in the wrong.

Joan of Arc comes down to us as a one-of-a-kind woman who turned the tide of the 100 years war and reinvented how women could work in society. As a blogger, everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, has the opportunity to change blogging forever. You can make any kind of impact you want. You can leave a footprint as big as the one Joan of Arc left on France, if you want. Stand your ground. Believe in yourself and what you are doing. And don’t let anyone think they can defeat you.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anthea/281700306/ via Creative Commons

Grab some Coffee. We’ll Tawk.

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Recently, I have had the great pleasure of talking to two great people, and both conversations were recorded. The first conversation was with Jayme Soulati and it was actually recorded live at Social Slam. Jayme is awesome and I was so excited to meet her. Little did I know I would be interviewed! We ended up talking about my “prolific” Facebook posting and how I balance that with business stuff. If you’re interested, you can check that out here.

I also had the pleasure of chatting with Tim McDonald via Spreecast. Our talk was about marketing (and a little bit about people I adore online). This was a lot of fun, but hopefully you can also learn a little bit about some of our agency’s approaches to that whole marketing thing. You can check that out (if you want) here.

I hope you enjoy! Thanks very much to Jayme and Tim for being awesome hosts and great people!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2953428679/ via Creative Commons

When someone saves your life

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I often like to think of life as divided into four units. You spend four years in high school. Four years in college (at least). I spent four years in grad school. Four seems to be a good benchmark for me.

Almost exactly 8 years ago, I left the Ivory Tower. That’s two units of four, for those of you who are counting. I was not a happy camper back in 2004. In fact, I was nearly an entirely different person from who I am now. I had two Masters degrees but having spent 6 months applying to jobs with dedication and passion, I had not even been called for an interview. I was way overweight. I had been rather battered and bruised by my graduate school experience (that’s a story for another time). I was moving back home, which I felt wretched about. And on top of all of that, I couldn’t drive.

See, when I was 16 I wanted to learn how to drive just like every teenager does, but I knew that I would need special accommodations, assuming that seeing over the windshield was important. I called a driving school and asked if they’d be able to help someone like me and I got the curt response, “Well, we have some phonebooks.” Being 16, I took this as a ravaging insult that cut deep into my poor coal black heart, so I gave up for awhile. Then I came to the conclusion that I’d need to buy a car to have it adjusted, and lord knows I didn’t have enough money for either of those things. I was 25 and still had not cracked this nut. And now I was unemployed, unhealthy, living at home, and my college loans were coming due. It was not a happy time.

And then came Wally.

My mom scoured the phonebook (yeah…those things) looking for driving instructors that catered to the “not exactly normal” driver. I decided to call Wally. He came by to pick me up at my parents’ house. He had a red Pontiac and had all sorts of stuff in the trunk of the car – pedal extenders, pillows, books – anything a special needs driver could use. I told him I was not really comfortable with anything except parking lot driving, so he said, “Ok, we’ll go to a parking lot.” After a few laps of me driving in circles, he said, “OK, now I want you to drive home.”

Boy was I scared out of my mind. But somehow, Wally was like a fear sponge. He never EVER lost his calm, even when I came close to plowing into cars. And he perpetually picked on me, as I got better. “Oh, you sure you don’t want to just go back to the parking lot?”

After about 4 months of endless driving around orange cones, driving down streets, not understanding how to do left-hand turns, and all kinds of other torturous stuff, I passed both parts of my driving test and got my license. I could drive. I could leave one place and go to another, and I could do that whenever I wanted. Well, within reason. I had my freedom. I felt like an adult. I felt more normal. It was the beginning of a new beginning.

In a lot of ways, even though not driving is not technically life threatening, Wally saved my life. He gave me a bright shining light of possibility when there wasn’t a whole lot of that going around. Every time I drive, even now, I think about that man and what he did for me. And I think about the fact that I was just one of his many, many students. I wonder how many other people feel the same way about him that I do.

Wally taught me that there are lots of ways to save a person’s life. It’s not always sudden and super dramatic. Sometimes it’s four months driving around cones in the parking lot of an abandoned ghetto grocery store in an un-air-conditioned car in the middle of the summer. Maybe it’s something entirely different but equally unexpected.

Wally taught me to drive, but he also taught me that there are ways around every obstacle. I never thought I’d be able to drive.

What do you think you can never do? Whatever it is, you’re wrong – it can be done. It might stink working towards it. You might wanna quit a lot of times, and you might even have to pay a lot of money for it. But it can be done. And that person or those people who help you – they’ll look like lifesavers to you, even if the situation didn’t seem life threatening at the time.

And you’ll wonder, as I am wondering these days, how you could ever be so lucky and how you could ever show the depth of your gratitude.

Everyone needs a Wally. I hope you find yours.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tir_na_nog/3603202134/ via Creative Commons

The problem with armor

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Back in the early Middle Ages (kind of like the eastern part of the Midwest, right?) guys figured out that if they riveted tons and tons of tiny steel rings together, they could make something called chainmail. Some of my friends in college took up the hobby of making their own chainmail, and I must say, even as an avid knitter/crocheter, it did not look like fun work. Chainmail was heavy, so heavy that it had to be made specifically so that it wouldn’t leave huge gaps and openings due to its own weight. After all, huge gaps or holes wouldn’t do a super duper job of staving off swords, lances, and other such.

Eventually, guys figured out that all of those tiny little rings were sort of a pain in the butt (and really heavy), so they created something called plate armor. This is probably what you think of when you think about knights. All shiny and metallic and protected. Chainmail was still used for those little Lever 2000 type parts *cough* but plate armor was the thing. Everything was great. The combination of chainmail and the plate armor and the swords and the spears and the lances and the horses – it was all just magnifient.

Until it wasn’t. Because, you see, gunpowder was invented. Plate armor didn’t do so hot against gunpowder. Also, dudes started realizing that running around and doing things whilst wearing a steel factory was kind of tough and tiring. Armor, as pretty and as protective as it was, was moved on down to ceremonial status.

Ouch.

Your social media armor

It’s easy to come into the online world with your own armor on. Maybe you have a sort of chainmail that you link together – a finely tuned combination of approaches, “voices,” and personas that you rivet together around your real self. Maybe you are more a plate armor kind of person. You put on something really shiny and really strong, but what you have surrounded yourself with is so thick and awkward that people can’t really figure out who you are under there.

Now, wearing a little protective armor is probably a good idea, especially for those soft and squishy parts (I was thinking “heart.” I don’t know why you’re snickering). Wearing your heart on your Twitter handle can be dangerous business. But wearing 17 layers of armor may not be such a great idea either. That can get really heavy. It can still get blown up. And it can make it super easy for people to look at you weird. Why aren’t you being more open? Why are you full of bravado all of the time? Why do you seem so angry or so indifferent all of the time?

These things put people off in the online world. They’re not going to work hard to figure you out. There are too many unarmored people to choose from.

You have to choose your priority

As is the case with so many things in life, both online and offline, you have a choice to make. You can opt to emphasize protection. You can cover up your real identity. Heck, you don’t even have to show your face in your avatars if you don’t want to. You can fool Facebook and make it think your real name is Hamburger Burglar.

The other choice on the table is to remove some of that armor and risk the possibility that someone might hurt you somehow. But in the meantime, you are more open to people. You are more willing to reach out, to learn things, to chat, to share. And let’s face it, these things all do kind of make social media a bit more enjoyable, right? I think so, anyway. You might be able to move around a bit easier. You might look a bit less shiny, but then again, there’s plenty of personality bling that can make up for that.

What it really comes down to is how you want your online presence to go.

So, is it time to put your plate armor on display? Is it time to put your chainmail under the bed? Or are you still going to suit up in the online world? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlestilford/3091858085/ via Creative Commons

 

Do we pay too much homage online, or too little?

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The Middle Ages are quite an interesting era in human history. Probably what comes to your mind is knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, and Monty Python. Well, that last one is probably just me. At any rate, the knights and damsels are only a very small part of the story. Society was rather complex back in these times. Serfdom existed, nobles existed, the clergy was out there making everyone pay tithes. One thing that has always caught my interest is the old idea of paying homage. Here is a description for you:

“Homage is the most honorable service, and most humble service of reverence, that a franktenant1 may do to his lord. For when the tenant shall make homage to his lord, he shall be ungirt, and his head uncovered, and his lord shall sit, and the tenant shall kneel before him on both his knees, and hold his hands jointly together between the hands of his lord, and shall say thus: ‘I become your man from this day forward [of life and limb, and of earthly worship,] and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear to you faith for the tenements that I claim to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe to our sovereign lord the king’; and then the lord, so sitting, shall kiss him.” from http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng330/ceremonies_of_homage_and_fealty.htm

Pretty heavy duty stuff, right? When you paid homage to someone, you were literally saying, “I’m yours, man. Whatever you want me to do, you’ve got it. Just give me a nice bit of land and we’re good to go.”

I think in some ways this concept has trickled its way into the online world, but I am pondering whether we pay too much homage or too little.

What does online homage look like?

I think it’s easy to create a relationship online that looks like the 21st century version of homage. For example, if you are fairly new to the online world and a person with a big following reaches out their hand and helps you out, you are going to feel darned indebted to them. I know this from personal experience. For whatever reason, a lot of people who were well-established in the online world helped me out when I was still an online newborn, and two years down the road, I still haven’t seen my gratitude for that subside. So, when someone does you a big favor, if you are, say, nice, you want to repay that favor. In the online world this means talking that person up, commenting on their posts, sharing their posts…you know the drill.

But there can come a point where paying this kind of homage can get carried away, right? For example, if a person starts sending out information that isn’t 100% accurate and they are called out for that (even nicely), you might get carried away and say that nobody should criticize your pal. You might be mean to other people because you perceive they are being mean to your friend. You might even close your mind to other opinions that vary from this person’s. You paid your homage to this person and that’s that. End of discussion.

Then again, maybe we don’t pay enough homage

There are certainly people out there who get caught in the idolizing trap. But I think it’s also fair to say there are people who wouldn’t know a ceremony of respect if it came up and whacked them in the face. These folks always present themselves as “self-made.” Their blog has comments because they started writing such awesome stuff. They have a lot of Twitter followers because all they did was tweet for 17 days straight, right? Regardless of how many people helped them out, promoted their work, taught them things, answered questions, or cheered them on, these folks climbed the mountain based purely on their own skills, wile, and charm. Homage? Hardly.

Is there a healthy amount of homage to pay?

The approach that has worked best for me is something I like to call reciprocation. It’s a revolutionary concept, and something that certainly would have been alien to our Medieval ancestors. I can map it out for you in a pretty easy formula. Hang on, let me get my blackboard out. OK.

You do something for me + I do something in return for you = Reciprocation

Phew. Alright, so, that’s basically the trick there. Now, you don’t have to be OCD about this. It’s more sort of a gut feel. I try REALLY hard, for example, to make sure I respond to comments that I get here on ye olde blog. You took the time to read and comment, I try to reciprocate that by responding in kind. I don’t necessarily need to build you a shrine, but quid pro quo. If you promote a post of mine, I try to share something that you do. Maybe not *that minute* but I try to make sure I let you know I appreciate what you do. Sometimes I fail at this, and that makes me feel bad. So I try to work on it. I don’t tend to mindlessly worship anybody, nor do I tend to ignore when folks take time out of their busy lives to give me a boost.

Reciprocation seems like an okay compromise, at least for me.

But maybe I’m weird.

*cough*

So what do you think? Do we pay too much homage online or not enough? Where do you fall in this crazy medieval spectrum? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/1228875390/ via Creative Commons