Marjorie Clayman’s Writing Portfolio

Professional writing profile of Marjorie Clayman

Marketing Talk

Do Social Media Conferences Create Divides?

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Awhile back, I wrote a post about the conferences that seem to flow in never-ending succession through my Twitter stream and why I can’t really rationalize going to them. Since doing that post, BlogWorld Expo 2010, along with many other great meetings and conferences, have come and gone. I have been sitting back watching some of the live streaming coverage, watching the excited people tweeting, watching the Retweets and then the retweets of the retweets. I’ve come to notice something else about these conferences.

I think they are a little unfair.

In my previously referenced post, I talked about the fact that as an agency woman, I am here to dedicate my time and expertise to our clients. My time is better used serving our clients here than going to a conference for 2-3 days out of every month. I still wouldn’t back away from that prioritization. I think a lot of people are with me in that boat. While we are all in the world of Social Media for various reasons, we are doing it in addition to our regular jobs. We are trying to carve our niches out between getting out of bed and going to work and then between coming home from work and going to bed. All of this is extra sauce or extra icing, depending on your preference.

Now, let’s look at what that means. That means that for a person like me, who does not work for a strictly Social Media company, it’s hard to go to your boss and say, “Oh, hi…I want to not only be out of the office for 3 days, but I’d also like you to cover my expenses.” It just won’t work, and I don’t think it’s just about company size. If you work for a candy bar manufacturer and you want to go to a peanut show, you could try to argue that it’s related and that it would hone your professional skills, but I think it would be an uphill battle. So then you look at the pricing structure of most conferences in this area of the industry. Without being too specific, I can tell you that in the case of most conferences, it would be a choice between my monthly expenses and attending the show.

So, fine, I can’t go to conferences. No big whoop, right?

Where People Become 3D

There’s one little problem that I’m noticing with the structure of this industry, however. If you can go to conferences and expos and events, you have a chance to meet really real people in person. You get to meet the leaders of the industry. You get to make connections. From those real-life connections, you have an opportunity to build your network and build your community in ways that are not accessible to folks like me. What it seems to boil down to is that these conferences are really targeting people who must be kind of doing okay already. They either work for a company that is in the meeting’s niche and that is big enough to cover expenses, or you are doing okay enough for yourself that you can afford to go out of your own pocketbook.

Is this a case of “the rich get richer?”

I’m not bopping conferences

Understand, I totally get the pricing structure of a lot of these conferences. I’m not saying that I expect huge conferences to be free (and in fact, with streaming video they really are in a lot of ways). I understand that expertise has a value that isn’t really appreciated enough in our industry.

But to make it fair, I’m wondering if maybe we could have events where there’s only 1 really major industry leader. Maybe the locale is not a place like Las Vegas or LA or Boston.  I’m wondering if we could have shorter events where keynotes would happen at night so that people who have regular 8-5 jobs could still watch the streaming video, even if they still couldn’t attend.

I’m asking if there is a way these conferences and the opportunities they offer could be made accessible to folks like, well, me.

What do you think?

How I got 1300 followers in just 6 months

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A lot of times, people in this business, when asked to recount how they got to their current successful place, will tell a story about how they dabbled with this, dabbled with that, tried this, and then…BOOM! Everything made sense.

It could be that people tell stories like that as an homage to humility. Maybe it really did happen that way for all I know. But I think these stories can make people for whom that doesn’t happen feel kind of…not good. For example, when I was still trying to find my way in this world a few months ago, it seemed like every day there was a new post titled, perhaps, “How my first ever blog post got enough hits to knock out my server.” Meanwhile, I was posting 3-4 times a week and couldn’t get a single comment. I felt like a real slow poke.

Factually, I don’t know anyone who has joined Twitter within the last, let’s say…year or so, who has had that kind of “oh look what happened!” experience. Rather, their experiences seem more in line with what I experienced when I was getting started. Periods of frustration, of anger, of disappointment, of unmatched glory followed by feelings of agonizing defeat, and more.

So for those of you who are not finding the Social Media magic potion just yet, let me tell you a little bit about what my experience has been like. Needless to say, my title for this post is rather tongue in cheek!

Who am I? I have undergone three name changes on Twitter. I started as RealLifeMadMan. I decided that people weren’t Retweeting me because my username was too long, so I shortened it to RLMadMan. Nobody really knew what that stood for, but they were pretty nice about it. As some of you know, I recently lengthened my name again – to my actual name.

67…68…60? Around the end of June, I was trying with all of my might to get to 75 followers. I took a trip to Boston and seemed to get more followers without any tweeting than I did when I made a concerted effort. I would check and sometimes be all the way up to 68 followers, then I would plummet back down to 60 or 61. It was really a new kind of torture that I felt had been created just for me. Meanwhile, I was writing posts about how I knew that numbers really didn’t matter – I knew they didn’t matter. I also knew, though, that I had to have more than 5 people to talk to regularly to accomplish what I wanted, and still want, to accomplish.

I’ve made it! Wait, no. When I had hit about 200 followers, I was feeling on top of the world. I was getting a lot of great comments. So I decided I was ready to start a chat. The lovely Linda Machado and Lisa Alexander had my back the whole way. They were the only ones who came, however. I was flabbergasted and more than a little disappointed. I also gave up after just 2 tries.

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? From the time I began to engage in Social Media, I was blogging at least 3-4 times a week. I tried to blog every day. I tried to blog on topics that seemed hot at the time. I tried to build comments I had made on other blogs into blog posts. I tried to be funny. I tried to be controversial. I literally could not get a single comment on my blog posts. You don’t hear a lot of people talking about a lack of comments. It’s painful and disconcerting! But I was there, my friends, for months and months.

Is it me? Even when the number of followers started going up, I was flat out unable to engage in conversations. In fact, I kind of felt like the conversation murderer. I would see an interesting conversation (often amongst big important people, because when you first start that’s who dominates your stream), I’d make a comment, and boom. The conversation would end. I checked my Twitter deodorant. I checked my Twitter toothpaste. I didn’t see what could be so offensive about what I was saying. Again, I was truly confuzzled.

I will say nice things until my fingers bleed. Since I was haphazardly killing conversations left and right, I decided to try to nice folks to distraction. This also often garnered zero responses. In fact, after my third week of “Friday Following” a few key people, I saw one of them post, “Man, it’s another Friday. We all hate #ff.” Surely they were talking directly to me, right?

Just in case you think I am now entirely full of myself, I want to state clearly, for all to see and hear, that I will always consider myself a newbie. I will always consider myself far behind the 8-ball. The reason for this is that I am, in comparison with others. The journey is never done.

Now, things have gotten a lot better for me. I have met a lot of wonderful people with whom I can chat on Twitter. I’ve started getting some lovely comments on my blog. But this is not a Rocky sort of success story. I can’t tell you that I now am a millionaire and am living in Florida, quietly sipping on amaretto sours. I can’t tell you that I have all of the big names on speed dial on my cell phone. I can’t tell you that I have as of yet mastered doing business transactions via Social Media. I can’t even tell you that I always get responses on Twitter. I still get ignored by the big names the majority of the time. And that’s cool. I’m 1 out of 150,000 or more. I have plenty of people to talk to now, so it doesn’t bother me.

What is the point of all of this? The point is that if some folks out there are making you feel like 48 hours should be enough time to get this all figured out, don’t buy it. To do this Social Media thing right, you need to pay the ticket man and hop into the roller coaster. It’s a crazy ride, and it’s a little different for everybody. It never ends. Each hill has interesting things for you to learn about yourself and the community you’re in and/or building. It does get better, eventually, if you hang in there.

I’ll let y’all know when I get that first cool million!

1st Image by Thais Rocha Gualberto. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/tata

2nd Image by Jenny Erickson. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/windchime

Social Media as Mirror

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A few days ago, a friend of mine on Twitter sent me a message. They were seething with anger. The cause? They had just watched this:

To them, it felt like Scott Stratten was kind of taking a hit at Work at home moms. I didn’t really see it that way, but it did make me realize, once again, how easy it is to forget that no matter how connected we feel on Social Media sites, we really are only in 2 dimensions until people meet us in person. We are our picture. We are our profile description. As such, it’s important to take a look at your Social Media existence now and then and view it from the perspective of someone who might not know you from Adam. Here are some things to consider.

Your avatar: I have debated back and forth about the last couple of avatars I’ve used. They are not your typical button-down, pin stripe kind of shot that a lot of marketing pros use in the Social Media space. I’ve wondered if I should go a more professional route. On the other hand, a lot of my Social Media engagement, while revolving around my profession, is about connecting with individuals. Do I want to look like a marketing cliche? Take a look at your avatar. If you are looking generally well-dressed, well-cleansed, and you don’t have too much food hanging out of your mouth, you’re probably good to go. But what kind of image are you sending out there? How would you perceive of yourself?

The first words in your profile: I have conscientiously put my role with our family’s advertising agency front and center. I do not believe that my job defines me (although time wise sometimes it seems to!) but it is why I am here doing these things (in large part). Where do you start in your profile? Do you define yourself as a parent first? Do you define yourself by your religious beliefs first? There is nothing wrong with making those things the most important in your life. However, are those the reasons that you are using Social Media? If you want someone to do business with you, will they engage in that kind of relationship because you are a Buddhist father with 2 cockatiels? Maybe. Maybe not.

These are important things to consider as you move forward with your presence in Social Media. What are you going after? What are you hoping to achieve? Does everything you say get you closer to those goals? If not – you might want to think again about tweaking some of what you have out there.

A quick note about the video

I think that this little interview points to a major underlying issue in our society at large. I think, right now, men who work from home and participate a great deal in the raising of the children are viewed as over the top amazing men. And many times, this is true. On the other hand, if a woman works from home and participates in raising the children, she is a “work at home mom.”

I think women are and have been under phenomenal pressure to define themselves “the right way.” In the business world, women can’t seem to be too attached to their children or, “Gee golly, how will you juggle those priorities?” At home, if a woman seems really dedicated to her work, people may whisper how she can possibly be taking care of the kids.

I think it’s great that we are starting to break out of the very conventional ways our society has been divided up, but I think women are feeling the transition in a very different way from men. If a woman defines herself as a work at home mom, to me, that is her answer for exactly how she does do the superior task of juggling her work and her family. It should not raise questions about her dedication to either sphere. Then again, I am not everyone in the world who would see that.

Naturally, it would be great to say that it doesn’t really matter how other people see you, it just matters how you see yourself. If you are not using Social Media for business reasons, that works just fine. However, if you want people to build a business relationship with you based solely on what they see of you via Social Media, their opinion counts. Their opinion counts a great deal.

Image by Lars Sundstrom. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/sundstrom

The gift of plain speaking

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Have you ever read Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin? It’s really one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read. I happened to read it in 2008, just as the elections were heating up. It was so interesting to contrast what was going on in the 1860s with what was going on in my own time.

Anyway, better reel myself in before I go on a history rant. One of the interesting things that Goodwin points out is that Abraham Lincoln is sometimes not viewed as a genius, even though really he was. One of the reasons for this is that Lincoln was able to take extremely difficult, complex issues and boil them down into bite-sized mouthfuls that his audience would easily be able to grasp. Consider, for example, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Anyone can understand how a structure would not be able to stand if it was divided up, and yet Lincoln used this analogy, about a decade before the American Civil War, to explain what was happening in our country.

Every now and again, I see blog posts about what kind of voice people should use in a blog. I always answer that you should use your own voice. You should be authentic. If you like to use a more intellectual tone, then that’s great!

However, as I think more about Lincoln and what he was able to do through his oratorical skills, I am beginning to wonder if sounding highfalutin is really the best altogether approach for a blog. For one thing, the chances are good that we’re not all using the same frame of reference. Take, for example, the reference I began this post with. Unless you happen to have the same love of history that I do, that book probably means very little to you. If I use words that the c-suite understands as appropriate, that might not mean much to you if you don’t swing in those circles. If I frame things in terms of Facebook and Twitter, you might not really catch the wave if you don’t swing on those sites.

Maybe we need to find ways to write the way Abraham Lincoln talked. We need to try to figure out what common experiences unite us all. I had a teacher in high school who said there are just a few things people can agree on – death, children, and taxes. I don’t know. That might be over-simplifying things a bit. But if we really want anyone to be able to pop by our  blogs and understand what we are trying to say, we need to try to speak in terms that are universal. I try to do this when I talk about community-building in Social Media, for example. I try to relate it to an actual community, like your town or city or apartment complex. That’s something we can meet on, and then we can travel down the path so that you can see what I’m talking about over in the corner.

Abraham Lincoln knew that there were a lot of people who disagreed with his point of view about slavery, the Union, and the growth of the US. Similarly, we have to bear in mind that people might not be immersed in Social Media or marketing or customer service or PR or anything else that we find ourselves totally married to. How can you bring those people into the space of your blog and make them feel at home? What common experiences do you share with your readers? What can you use as a foundation for your relationship?

Is there a way for you to “Lincolnize” your blog?

Let me know what you find out.

20 teachers Twitterers should follow

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It seems like a lot of people are making lists lately. Not wanting to miss a hot trend, I thought I would follow suit. I am going to tell you about 20 people who helped me get to the point where I am today, which is a place of deep contentment. All of these people are teachers of some sort. If you start following these 20 people right away, I can guarantee you your Social Media experience will be enriched and enhanced.

Lisa Alexander (@LisaNAlexander): Lisa taught me in the beginning how to keep plugging away, how to look on the brightest side of people and this crazy Social Media world, and how to not give up. I probably would have quit Twitter if Lisa hadn’t been there cheering me on!

Tristan Bishop (@KnowledgeBishop): Tristan is a master teacher when it comes to how to be a great leader, which includes customer service. Because really, isn’t good customer service about leading people to buy from you or your company?

Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan): You may have heard of this guy. He’s pretty well-known. That being said, I don’t have him on this list just because it’s a given. Chris teaches a lot via his blog, his e-newsletter, and his 27 million (oh, it just became billion) other projects, but most of all, and more than anyone I can think of, Chris teaches by example.

Amber Cleveland (@ambercleveland): Amber is a great teacher when it comes to exuding passion and intelligence via a Twitter account. She is bright, intelligent, and is not afraid to show that she offers those traits, but what she taught me is that you can share your knowledge while keeping your personal core intact. Amber’s personal core is warm, friendly, and supportive.

Cate Colgan (@cateTV): Cate is a teacher of how to network. She is always introducing people to each other. She is always promoting other people, and she doesn’t promote herself nearly enough in my opinion. Cate will bring you the warmth in Social Media that might be eluding you.

Mack Collier (@mackcollier): The king of blogchat, Mack is also a great Social Media teacher. He is kind and patient when it comes to helping people get plugged in at blogchat, which is a great resource for anyone, no matter how long they’ve been in this crazy world!

Marsha Collier (@marshacollier): Marsha is another warm human being. She has taught me a great deal about customer service and the inner workings of corporations that need to provide customer service. She also has a great sense of humor, which makes learning fun.

Mark Dykeman (@markdykeman): Mark seems to be everywhere I go. He’s a fellow Third Tribe person and he really shines as a teacher there. He always has a great advice for people. Even more, Mark is a teacher of mind mapping, which I think is such a great thing to be teaching people right now.

Cristian Gonzales (@galactic): I only met Cristian recently, but he has already taught me a great deal. He has taught me about personal courage, showing your true heart on your blog sleeve, and he has been another great teacher in the ways of networking, promoting, and supporting via Social Media. I am so glad I met him. I wish it had happened sooner. Follow him as soon as you sign up!

Ann Handley (@marketingprofs): Even if you are not a marketer, Ann is a great person to follow on Twitter. Ann shows you how to represent a company (MarketingProfs) while still maintaining a very personable, approachable Twitter persona. She also is a great resource for links to the most up-to-date research on Social Media.

Beth Harte (@bethharte): Beth’s teaching specialty (since she actually really does teach it) is Integrated Marketing & Communications. What I have learned from Beth includes and extends beyond that topic. She has taught me how to be passionate about a subject in Twitter, which is really important. It kind of throws out the idea that Twitter is just about what people had for lunch.

Fred McClimans (@fredcmcclimans): I met Fred when I first started expanding beyond Blogchat to other chats on Twitter. He is a great teacher when it comes to the role of analysts in marketing, customer service, Integrated Marketing, and being personable on Twitter.

MentorMarketing (@mentormarketing): I met the folks at Mentor Marketing through several chats – it seemed we ran into each other everywhere we went. I have watched their Twitter feed and their blog evolve into a massive source of information on all sorts of topics, from Social Media to various “how-to” articles.

Maya Paveza (@MayaREGuru): I met Maya one day when Twitter still wasn’t really clicking for me. She made a reference to Monty Python & the Holy Grail and I thought, “Wait, you can do stuff like that on Twitter?!?” From there, Maya has taught me a great deal about how to be accessible yet informative throughout Social Media. Her catch phrase, if she were a character on a tv show, would be “Own it.” Maya’s specialty is Real Estate, but anything she teaches can be used by anyone.

Michele Price (ProsperityGal): If you want to learn about Social Media etiquette, Michele is the person you want to follow. She hosts a weekly chat called #SMManners, and when she’s not chatting, she’s chatting it up. Michele has a daunting intelligence. She says what she means, but she shows you how to be focused in what you say without being sharp or unbending.

Stanford Smith (@pushingsocial): Well gosh. What can I say about my Blog BFF, my #tweetdiner co-conspirator, and my good friend that hasn’t been said already? Stan is a teacher of blogging, but to leave it there really sells him short. Stan is a teacher, period. If you are new to Twitter or to all of Social Media, talk to Stan and he will help plug you in.

Suzanne Vara (@suzannevara): Suzanne will teach you how to build a community. What she has taught me has been indispensable. Suzanne has taught me what can happen when you promote other people ahead of yourself. She has taught me how to introduce people to each other. She has taught me how use passion as an engine in Social Media.

Tommy Walker (@tommyismyname): I met Tommy at a chat on Twitter. I think we started out kind of disagreeing and maybe even arguing  a bit, but after a few minutes of that it became clear we were going to be buds. Tommy is carving a niche for himself as a Facebook teacher, but following him on Twitter reveals that he is also a teacher of how to network and share on Twitter. He’s a great dude.

Dawn Westerberg (@Dwesterberg): Dawn teaches via her blog with clear, concise posts about many different topics – I’m a big fan of her PR series, for example. Dawn also teaches how one can use Twitter to promote and support other people, how to be friendly yet smart, how to be funny yet not too far over the edge.

Jeff Wilson (@jeffthesensei): I noticed Jeff at some of the chats I was attending and I thought, wow, what a neat and friendly guy. Then Jeff did a post that showed me that the waters ran much deeper. Jeff is truly one of the most brilliant people I’ve had the pleasure to meet, but again, like so many of my teachers, he has taught me how to balance knowledge with heart, the cerebral with the “howdy” part of Social Media.

If you don’t love Social Media, don’t do it

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I was running some errands yesterday with my dad – we were actually out fetching some lunch after doing some yard work. My dad is a radio nut, still, and Saturday mornings are always packed with sports shows, Whadya Know, and many other programs. My dad turned to a radio station and this guy was going on and about how it was “Sweetest Day.” “I have to go to the flower shop and the candy store after this and it’s just not fair. It’s not even a real holiday, but I have to support the sham!”

I wanted to jump into the radio and talk to this guy. I wanted to ask him 2 questions. First, if you feel that the holiday is just a way for greeting card companies to make money, why support it? And second, do you think your wife really appreciates the sentiment behind what you’re doing? “Here, I got you flowers because American Greetings said I had to, but I didn’t really want to.” Oh…wow. Thanks!

Often times, we find ourselves engaged in things that we really don’t believe in, but we feel we have to do them because there’s so much pressure to do it. I think Social Media may fall squarely into this category for some people and companies.

If you’re going to invest this kind of time, it had better be fun

At the College of Wooster, where I earned my undergraduate degree (that’s Wooster, Ohio, not Worcester, Massachusetts…I have the souvenirs to prove it), seniors had to do an Independent Study project. You had to turn it in right after Spring Vacation, and believe me, for most of us it was a labor of love that lasted the whole year. I learned during that year that if you aren’t really interested in something that you are committing a lot of time to, it not only becomes a real albatross around your neck, but it also becomes quite apparent that your heart is not in it.

In Social Media, too, it is very easy to tell when someone isn’t having fun, genuine fun, with what they are doing. Now, understand, when I say “fun,” I don’t mean you have to have videos of yourself juggling in every blog post (that would be bad news for me as I can’t even juggle 2 things at a time). Maybe the better word is passion, but then passion is getting overused lately. Let me put it this way. Every day, after I get home from work, I spend 3-4 hours engaging with my community in my Social Media world. I work on blogs, I go to Third Tribe, where I’m a member, I try to catch loose ends of conversations from Twitter, I comment on blogs, I participate in my chats, and I visit Facebook. To me, even though it’s a lot of effort and a lot of time, it’s fun. I love writing. I love communicating with people who may or may not have thoughts similar to my own. I love learning. I love helping. It’s fun for me.

If you have to spend 3-4 hours on something and you don’t think it’s doing any good, it will not do any good for you. It’s just as simple as that.

The ramifications of engaging in Social Media without enjoyment

If you are on Twitter or on a blog site because you feel like you have to be, but you don’t really believe in any of it and you don’t really enjoy it, there’s a lot that can blow up in your face. For example:

You could lose steam very quickly in updating your blog

Your Facebook account could lie dormant like a hibernating bear

Your Twitter friends will lament that you don’t call, you don’t write

On a personal level, these side effects can be bad. If you are using Social Media for your business, the effects of this seeming lack of dedication could be quite serious. You might be perceived of as being disorganized or not really dedicated. You didn’t have the endurance to stick with it. Maybe your company is no longer around. Maybe you’re not at that company anymore.

If you let people fill in the holes that you leave, they will seldom fill those holes with the best possible scenario.

Back to the pool

A lot of times, people (including me) use the good ole pool analogy when talking Social Media. “You don’t want to jump into the deep end.” “You want to see who else is in the pool first.” “You want to make sure there’s water before you do a swan dive.” I would add one more thing to the pool mix. Michael Phelps didn’t become an Olympic champion by dipping his little toe into the water here and there. He worked his tail off every day, swimming so much his body can’t keep enough weight on his bones. He worked himself raw. And look at the results.

Social Media can earn you the equivalent of gold medals too, whatever that might mean for you. But you have to have the fire. Otherwise, you’ll just sink. The water from the pool will douse you out, and fast.

So before you decide to try Twitter “one more time,” or before you finally cave in on doing Social Media just because someone won’t leave you alone about it, really think about it. It’s a major time investment. It’s dedicating a lot of brain power and hours to a cause you or your company define. Are you ready to do that? If not, talk to lots more people before doing something just to do it. Make sure you can defend the time you are spending. It’s far worse to start and stop then to wait to join. Something to think about.

Image by Diego de Araújo Dutra. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/diegodutr