Margie Clayman

A little after I started tweeting, when I still had about 75 followers and was convinced that Twitter was a complete puzzle of fluff that I’d never understand, I happened upon Mack Collier’s #blogchat. If you are not aware of #blogchat, it is one of the biggest chats in the world of Twitter. Twitter chats are great because with the simple use of a hashtag, you can talk to people in a group about one single topic. Blogchat, of course, focuses on all things blogging.

When I first started participating in the chat, I was entranced by how helpful and welcoming everyone was. I was shocked that so many ideas could float back and forth from peoples’ fingertips. If you are new to either Twitter or blogging, I still highly recommend that you give Blogchat a try.

All of that being said, I’ve become a bit disenchanted with #blogchat of late because of a back-and-forth that has become all too familiar. It goes something like this.

Person A: I love getting comments on my blog. It helps me build community, it helps me engage, and it helps me hone my content to what my growing community wants to read.

Person B: Comments are stupid. You can’t build a business based on comments. Get out of your fluffy unicorn-filled world.

Factually, as is the case in so many social media conversations, both people have a point. The difference is in objectives.

When you’re not blogging for business

A lot of people who are blogging are not blogging in order to make money, technically. For example, while I work for Clayman Advertising, I make no pretense that my blogging will put more money in the company’s pockets. I blog because I really enjoy conversing with people online, and if my blog is a way to make people aware of our company, that’s great. I hope that is happening, but this is not something that will lead directly to a sale, in most cases.

If you are blogging to raise awareness of yourself and your thoughts, or if you’re blogging for fun, or if you’re blogging because you want to have a place to vent your most heartfelt frustrations, creating awesome content that inspires people to comment is a great goal to have. There are numerous blog posts that can teach you how to get your audience revved up, how to create actionable content, how to help new bloggers, and more. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with this approach. It’s admirable, in fact, to want to create consistently great content that your growing community responds to (whether positively or negatively).

Blogging for your business

Here’s where the problems lie. If you are blogging because you want to increase sales, those anti-comment people are on to something.

We’ll come back to this again and again throughout this series, but here is a core nugget of truth. In the world of social media, numbers, those things that everyone lusts after and expresses envy over, really don’t mean much. Why? Well, let’s say I make a tiny tool that is used for precision machining. If most of my readers are either in the same exact business as me, or if a lot of my readers are people I met in a chat about my favorite soap opera, the chance of any of my comments leading to a sale is pretty slim, right? The same goes for the number of subscribers, the number of retweets I get, the number of Google +1s I get, etc. The amount of exposure becomes irrelevant for a business blog if the audience you’re getting exposed to is not going to ever buy from you.

As Marcus Sheridan wrote on his excellent site, “Community is NOT the holy grail of blogging and online success.” Why did Marcus say that? Because if you focus solely on engaging and comments and social media stuff, your blog simply will not pull in any additional sales. In fact, one might argue that if you are spending a lot of time trying to get more comments, your company might actually lose any sales it was gaining before you started your blogging efforts.

Awesome is also not the holy grail

Piggy-backing on what Marcus wrote, “being awesome” is also not a business plan. First of all, “awesome” is relative. For some people, “awesome” may mean content that is beautiful and poetic. For others, “awesome” may be something that kicks them in the butt and gets them moving. For others, “awesome” may be content that solves a problem. For a business blog, this latter category is most often going to equate to success. How can you solve your readers’ problems?

If you have the right audience, your content probably does not need to be the most eloquent ever. It does not need to use swear words, nor does it need to use 10-cent words. It just needs to make the case for your product or service. It needs to inform your target audience. For the world of social media as a whole, your content might appear to be about as boring and pointless as anything anyone has ever seen. You might not get a ton of comments or dozens of retweets. But if your content convinces a reader that they need to buy from you, you’ll get what a lot of other bloggers don’t get – money in your company’s bank account.

If you don’t mind me saying, to me, that sounds pretty awesome. What do you think?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/headlouse/1484615917/ via Creative Commons

I’ve been watching a story float around for the last few days about how Twitter is censoring people. There was apparently a black-out for some folks yesterday to protest this Twensorship. If you read or scan the headlines, it looks like Twitter is censoring people on a country by country basis. The Huffington Post ran a headline that said, “Twitter Boycott Palnned To Protest Twitter’s Censorship Plan.” CBSNews.com ran a story titled ” Twitter’s Censorship Plan Rouses Global Furor.” With these types of headlines and stories in mind, I broached the topic on Twitter and ended up in quite an interesting conversation with Sandy Hubbard (@sandyhubbard) and Cynthia Schames (@CynthiaSchames).

As it turns out, Twitter may be getting attention for things it is not doing. In an article for Reuters titled, “Twitter’s censorship is a gray box of shame, but not for Twitter,” Paul Smalera notes that it is not Twitter that is actively blocking tweets. Rather, certain governments are asking that Twitter block content. Smalera writes,

Further, for a country to censor content, it has to make a “valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity” to Twitter, which will then decide what to do with the request. Twitter will also make an effort to notify users whose content is censored about what happened and why, and even give them a method to challenge the request. According to Twitter’s post, a record of the action will also be filed to the Chilling Effects website. The end result of a successful request is that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored…

In essence, some could argue that Twitter is actually helping to highlight countries that do not allow free speech.

Internet versus the world

The overriding question to me is whether Twitter should pay credence to these governmental requests. The capitalistic argument is that in order to operate in a country, you have to work within that country’s framework. Google has world of experience in fighting governmental restrictions in China. It was noted in our conversation that countries are asking that content deemed “criminal” should be blocked. All well and good, but sometimes “criminal” can have a pretty wide berth. As a small example, I found this interesting Wikipedia page that delineates freedom of speech by country. Did you know it is illegal to blaspheme against religion in many countries? Did you know it’s illegal in France to create content that promotes race hatred? Do people in every country know 100% what the restrictions on their freedom of expression are? Will these little gray boxes come as a complete and total surprise? Can we revolt against things we aren’t aware are there?

The slippery slope of freedom

Defining the freedom of expression in a way that makes everyone happy is extremely difficult. I abhor racism. However, if I argue that yes, race hatred should be banned in the online world so far as content goes, am I really for freedom of expression? There are a lot of points of view that I find offensive. If I say that they should be censored because they bother me, isn’t that an awfully slippery slope?

Adding more complexity to the problem is that Twitter has a rather hands-off approach when it comes to issues of cyber-bullying. They will not block a person you accuse of bullying. Their company line is that you should call the authorities if you feel you are in danger. If we say that potentially harmful content is ok to censor, should we not have  a plan in place to ban content that actually IS harming people in real time?

These are all complicated questions. I’d love to hear your thoughts about them!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/isaacmao/9753846/ via Creative Commons

As I have been working on my marketing myths series at ye olde blog, I have become more sensitive to other, how can I say, confusions that exist in the online world. Lines are perpetually blurred. Terminology is consistently used in situations that really don’t warrant those terms. You get the idea.

Two areas in particular keep coming on to my radar. First, there is an oft-overlooked  difference between truth-tellers and jerks. Second, there is a mighty big difference between creating link bait (or comment bait) and actually complimenting a person. Let us explore these areas together, shall we?

Jerks versus Truth-tellers

When I was a kid, like, in eighth grade or so, I thought it was my job to be a mirror of the soul. Well, to my friends, not to myself, of course. I would call my little friends up after school and say, “You know, what you did during choir today made you look really bad, I think.” Then I would proceed to analyze their behavior, describe to them why they were doing what they were doing, and then, being a kind soul (mostly), I’d offer advice on how to eradicate the complex problems I was sure they were experiencing. To me, it seemed like I was just being a truth-teller. Based on how my friends responded to these missions of soul-seeking, I’m thinking they felt rather much like I was a jerk.

In the online world, we run into the exact same kind of scenario, except that there seems to be more pressure to be that truth-teller, right? You want to be the person who tells that so-called a-lister that they are dead wrong about something because in your head, it feels like you are doing lots of people a favor. You are saving them from a world of bad experiences. And in fact, this may be true. But have you ever noticed the vitriol that surrounds these online truth parties? The person who is having truth fed to them often refers to the truth-tellers as haters. And so the conversation devolves into name-calling, mob-fighting, and other things that have come to signify all of the least attractive aspects of the online world.

How can we differentiate between when we are being truth-tellers and when we are being jerks? In my own case, it turned out to be all about a sense of self-righteousness. In other cases it may be about motive. Are you trying to get attention or do you really believe what you are saying? Are you really trying to tell the truth or are you trying to get some spotlight for your own thoughts and feelings?

More to the point perhaps is how you deliver the truth (or what you perceive to be the truth). If you reply with a patronizing or condescending tone, the likelihood is that people will not accept what you are saying as helpful. If you approach the topic from a point of truly wanting to help, what you send out will be more in line with what you (hopefully) wish to receive.

Too often I see people revert to what can only be described as a jerky way to attack bloggers in particular. Saying that a post is stupid or that an idea is stupid is not shining a light on the truth. It is only belittling the person you are talking to. What is the line between truth-teller and jerk? Are you treading it carefully?

Link Bait versus compliments

The other thing I’m seeing a lot of is link bait or comment bait masquerading as complimentary posts. How can you tell which is which?

Let me give you an example.

I came upon a post not too long ago that was titled something like, “Blogs to watch in 2012.” I was excited because I thought, OK, maybe this is another list of “up and comer” bloggers that I can get to know. Towards the top of the list were the following blogs – Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan, Copyblogger, and Jeremiah Owyang. Now, these are all great blogs, no question. But do we need to be informed that we should “watch” these bloggers? Even people who may not know a whole lot about social media tend to have a passing familiarity with these folks. None of the blogs (or bloggers) were really described in detail – in fact, only the first few lines of the “about” page was copied in most cases. Blogger names were not given, just the name of the site. In this kind of scenario, one can only assume that the motive here was link bait (or comment bait…or both).

Now contrast that with the list that Danny Brown produced at the beginning of 2012. In this list, which was also called “bloggers you should watch in 2012,” Danny led with the blogger’s name. He detailed what he liked about each person’s blog, which also indicated that he reads each blogger’s work regularly. The names were names not everyone might be familiar with (I was not aware of all of them) so there was an opportunity to build up the following for legitimately awesome but perhaps underrated bloggers.

See the difference?

Lately, Forbes in particular has been dotted with the same sorts of “top of social media” lists, and it is giving the concept of blog post curation or curation of any kind a bad name. Throwing up blog sites that have hundreds of thousands of subscribers is not doing anyone any favors, especially if it isn’t even clear whether you’ve ever read a single blog post from those sites. Those folks don’t really need help with exposure or publicity – they’re doing quite well. The problem is that often times people who genuinely deserve some kudos and appreciation may get overlooked in the midst of a post that otherwise looks like nothing but a scam.

I love making lists to shine the light on people who I think are great. It’s one of my most favorite things to do in the online world, because to me, that’s what the online world *should* be all about. Heck, that’s what the world world should be all about. But even I have been accused of writing these posts just to get comments or trackbacks, and it’s gotten to the point where the joy in writing such posts has mostly departed. I do not want to take the time to curate great posts only to have it fall into the same disdained group of scam posts. I’m sure many other people feel the same way.

To me, paying a compliment is something easily identifiable. If you show that you really believe what you are saying, people will (most of the time) take it for what it is. If it’s clear that you were just barfing up top names or sites with no real sentiment attached, that is not something that will be viewed as complimentary. Rather, it will be viewed as nothing short of a sham, a scam, and/or crap.

Two Poles of Problems

To me, these two issues represent two of the most omnipresent problems in the online world. People who are masquerading as truth-tellers but are really just jerks are giving a bad name to anyone who really believes something or really has an important point to make. They make everyone feel defensive and skeptical.

Similarly, the penchant for writing posts specifically to get traffic or comments or links is despicable, but spreading swiftly. These kinds of posts give a bad name to anyone who truly wishes to promote others, thus feeding the never-ending cycle of self-promotion (because the alternative will only make you worry, right?).

What can we do to more clearly define these differences? What can we do to make the online world less polarizing?

I’ve said my piece. Now I’m ready for yours.

First image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/malurisho/2924173228/ via Creative Commons

Second image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clover_1/2259985318/ via Creative Commons

Third image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christinehawks/2788148212/ via Creative Commons

Fourth image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arsalank2/3746601623/ via creative commons