Musings

I’m going to be taking a couple of days away from the grid (barring any shakes or shivers from withdrawal), but I didn’t want to leave you, my very special readers, without any reading material! So, this should keep you quite busy. I’ll be quizzing you next week 🙂 For those of you who celebrate, I hope you have a wonderful, restful, peaceful Thanksgiving. And for those of you who don’t, well…I’ll be thinking of you 🙂

The #30Thursday Posts!

Post number 1

Post number 2

Post number 3

Post number 4

Post number 5

Post number 6

Post number 7

Post number 8

Post number 9

Post number 10

and of course, number 11 from 11/11

And some posts from me that date back to before a lot of you knew me. I think some of these are still okay 🙂

Is it possible to be a human artist on Twitter?

A quick note about ambition and time

Is it me?

Any job can be your dream job

Chapter 5 (of Trust Agents) and why all agencies should read it

Normally, my own posts are going to happen on Fridays, but I’m planning on taking this Friday off for the holiday (already getting the shakes at the idea of going off the grid!), so I thought I would write something here and now. Besides, there’s something I want to talk to you about.

A lot of people in the realm of Social Media are striving to be Batman or Superman or some other super hero of their choosing. And for awhile, I thought that maybe I should try to be, I don’t know, Wonder Woman or She-Ra. But you know what? Not everyone is meant to be the hero of the story. For every hero, there is a solid sidekick, a resourceful, reliable person (or animal, or a usually inanimate object). For every He-Man, there’s a Battle Cat. For every Frodo, there’s a Sam. For every Batman, there’s a Robin.

I have seen what you need to do to be a Social Media superhero, and it just doesn’t mesh with my overall goals professionally or personally. That is not at all to say it’s a bad thing or that I would judge anyone going for broke. But me? I’d rather be Robin. I’d rather give you the resources you need so that you can go fight Social Media crime. I’d like to be the person who connects you with the person who can make your world grow. I’d like to shine the spotlight on you while you groove.

I think there’s a lot of room in Social Media for Robins. I don’t think it’s a symbol of not trying your best. I don’t think it’s holding up a white flag. It really just means that I’m not worried about whether there’s ever a show or a franchise called Margie Clayman. I want to help make the YOU show.

Let me know how I can help.

I’ve begun to notice that carving out a comfortable niche in Social Media is a lot like playing Tetris. The first piece comes down and you think, “Oh, okay, I’ll rest that one on its side.” Then the next piece comes down, and its one of those darned “L” shaped pieces. “Well, I’ll put that over in the corner,” you say. Then more and more pieces start falling down. You meet a new person. You join a new chat. You go to a new event. You learn about a new technology.

I’ve always been terrible at Tetris. However, some pieces have fallen in such that I think I have a row put together.

The core of my Social Media existence really revolves around the chats that I participate in. I have met most of my friends via chats, and then via friends of friends. I started attending chats because they had to do with various facets of my own professional life. The sort of weird thing about being an agency woman in this Social Media world  is that everything applies to you, from news about new graphics technology to news about virtual tradeshows to Social Media itself. Trying to write a cohesive blog about, well, everything, has been a bit challenging for me, and I really haven’t been able to focus on just one thing that would sum it all up.

So, I was thinking about the #30Thursday thing. I was thinking about what people liked about those posts, what I enjoyed about doing those posts. I was thinking about how I still want to be a librarian, even though I love my current profession to pieces. And those are the Tetris pieces that came together.

So, starting tomorrow, my blog is going to become a library of morsels built around my chat schedule. As the librarian, I will gather materials to share with you, and I’ll say my bit about why I think they are useful. Submissions will most gratefully be accepted, and if you wish to start writing blogs specifically for that purpose, you can look at my new editorial schedule so that you can plan things out.

My mission is to learn as much as I can so I can offer the best service to our clients, and my mission is to provide help and resources to my Social Media community. I think that the opening of my library will accomplish both – it will motivate me to read as much as I can about different facets of the marketing world, and it will also provide me with ample material to share with you all.

Welcome to Margie’s Library of Marketing Musings and Morsels!

Image by Pawel Bialas. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Whiter78

A few days ago, I saw a video floating around on Facebook and Twitter – it was a speech by Scott Stratten, otherwise known as @unmarketing. Often, when you see speeches or videos flying around, you almost want to avoid clicking because you know it just can’t be as good as everyone is saying. However, I decided to give this one a chance. Here it is:

Before watching this speech, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what Scott Stratten was about. Sure he had done some really amazing and cool things for charity, and I had heard that he was a really nice guy. But I had also seen some of his speeches, seen some of his Tweets, and I’m in the process of reading Unmarketing, Scott’s book. I thought, “Ok, this is one of those guys who really is nice but who likes to give the impression that they are kind of jerky and intimidating.”

Can you still feel that way after watching his speech?

I admit that I had drawn conclusions about Scott based on what I had seen on Twitter and in his book. I was wrong. I only had skimmed the surface.

What’s happening away from that computer?

All of us who use Social Media have a small fence drawn around us and our computers when we sit there. To different extents, we like to create personas for ourselves online. We determine what people will learn about us through our online activities. And yet, it always seems surprising to us that people draw conclusions about us based on what they see through our Facebook updates or our tweets.

Factually, you can’t really know the whole story of a person just based on what they do in the world of Social Media. It’s easy to think that you do because, after all you see this person “talking” to you perhaps on a daily basis. But there is that whole world extending beyond that little fence that ties you to your computer. We don’t get to see what goes on there most of the time.

I have learned an important lesson beyond what Scott presents in his speech. You don’t really have a true fix on people based on their Social Media presence. You aren’t really seeing their entire life story. You don’t really know everything that is going on around them.

Will this affect how you interact with people? Will this affect how you yourself act on Social Media sites? For me, it is something to ponder.

This extraordinary post is by my friend Tommy Walker. Tommy is an Online Marketing Strategist and has been doing various forms of internet marketing since 2005. His final calling came from being fired over a pair of
pants.

He spends an obscene amount of time online; if when away from the computer you’ll most likely find him singing karaoke or networking at a local Tweet-up. You’ll find more rousing snarkiness on twitter:
@TommyismyName

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported…

“Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the
social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying
information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some
cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking
companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.”

…Putting Facebook in the spotlight yet again for “Privacy
issues.”

This post is a rant.

Are Facebook apps really selling you out? Or does “Facebook in Privacy Breach” sound like a headline designed to grab attention?

I vote for the latter.

If you read the article, you would get the impression that Facebook was previously unaware of a very large security hole.

“The information being transmitted is one of Facebook’s basic building blocks: the unique “Facebook ID” number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person’s name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with “everyone,” including age, residence, occupation and photos.”

But look again at the image above. “Request for Permission… Access my basic information… name, picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information I’ve shared with everyone.”

Alright, maybe I’m taking the wrong approach. I understand if you’re concerned about Facebook sharing your public information with app developers, and the developers then share your information with marketing firms. When it’s not made abundantly clear that is what is happening, it can seem shady, but in the end what harm does it do?

As a marketer, I am constantly looking for new ways to engage my target market. As a consumer, I hate advertisements that have nothing to do with me. If the data that I’m inputting into my profile helps other marketers of products that I might like, or find useful, so be it. In the end, I’m not being blasted with crap and the marketing firm isn’t wasting their money. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a win-win situation.

In fact, I wish that all marketing agencies had access to my profile information. I wish that advertisements were tailored to my interests. I wish I could stop getting irrelevant direct mail, and that I could get “special offers” for products that my existing interests pre-qualified me for.

God what a wonderful world that would be! I wouldn’t have to search for things I like, because marketers wouldn’t be wasting their budgets on unqualified people. They would be targeting me, and I would want what they have.

Here’s another way to look at it- You know Pandora ? You know how they help you discover new music based on music you already specify that you like? Imagine that’s how all marketing worked. You only see ads for products you might like based on your other interests. How much informed do you think your purchases would be? If the marketer knows that you’re going to want to do more research, if they’re smart, they’ll have the research available to you. Furthermore, they’ll use what they know about you and other’s like you to know how to present that research, so not only will you have what you’re looking for to make an informed decision, you’ll have it in a format that appeals to you.

What do you think? Is personalized advertising the way of the future? Or should the marketing community continue to doing the same thing it’s been doing?

This guest post is by my friend Mark Dykeman. Mark Dykeman is the founder and main brain of Thoughtwrestling, a blog devoted to better ideas, better achievements and better life. For more great ideas, follow Mark on Twitter

Margie honored me by including me in her group of teachers to follow on Twitter.  The thing is, I’m not a teacher.  But I am… sort of…

I’m surrounded by teachers in my family tree.  Everywhere I look there’s chalkdust and exercise scribblers strewn about the branches of my genealogical cedar.  (I like the smell of cedar, plus it’s an evergreen.  Evergreen is good.)  Both of my parents spent a lot of years in classrooms, trying to insert knowledge into audiences of varying receptiveness.

Teacher used to be a dirty word

I never wanted to be a teacher and I’ve never had that word in my job title.  I never wanted it to be my job, never wanted to deal with children on a daily basis and I never thought that the summers off was really that much of a carrot.  Students have a love/hate relationship with teachers.  Teachers sometimes have to take a lot of crap from their students.  Classroom teaching doesn’t equate to fun for a lot of people (which is an unfortunate thing).

However, we’re faced with many opportunities to teach, whether it’s on the job, as an informal mentor, a friend, or a parent.  With rare exceptions, we always have some bit of information that someone out there doesn’t have.  Actually, I’m not sure that I have anything to teach Bill Gates or Steve Jobs:  it depends how many comic books they’ve read in the past two decades.  But I digress.

Who teaches the experts?

You know how someone watches the stuff you do and sees something completely different?  That’s how I feel about Margie’s comment.  This isn’t a criticism, just a surprised reaction on my part.  When Margie referred to me as a “teacher” within Third Tribe (3T), an online community that we both belong to, I was really surprised.  I mean, that place is full of entrepreneurs.  Pretty much all of them are more successful than 90% of the people who “work for themselves” for a living.

What in heck can I teach those guys?  It’s like a leaf telling a tree how to get big and strong.  I am not an entrepreneur, at least not in the self-employed sense.

There are three thoughts that have allowed me to get my head around her kudo.  So, let me teach (!) them to you, dear reader.

Keep on learning

Good teachers don’t stand still.  They continue to learn.  They read about their subject matter, their skills and techniques.  They practice and refine their delivery.  They try different things.  Many of them go back to school themselves on a regular basis!  I’m a lifelong learner, no question about it.  So yes, this fits.

Share what you know
Despite my lack of entrepreneurial experience, I do try to share things from my own experience.  I’ve been doing that on my blogs for years.  I’ve done it in a work context many times and outside of work as well.  I’ve shared parts of my online (social media) knowledge in a number of places.  So, yes, I’ve probably earned the Share badge in social media scouting.

Here’s the way I look at it.  You might not be a genius or a master, but there’s always someone somewhere who might benefit from your experiences.  If nothing else, cautionary tales are valuable!

Answer questions

Like I mentioned above, you always know something that someone else doesn’t know.  If you’ve been an active member of a community for awhile then you’ve absorbed knowledge.  If you see someone asking questions, especially beginner questions, you’ve just found an excellent opportunity to be helpful.  Just think of the kid who’s lost on their way to their homeroom at school… you could be a hero to them by giving them five seconds of help.

Learning and teaching is a continual cycle

Maybe I am a teacher, even if that’s not my official title.  That’s OK.  In fact, it’s pretty cool.  Any occasion to make a positive difference in someone’s life is an important opportunity.  The thing is, you don’t always know when your knowledge can be the thing that turns a frustrating situation into a happy ending.  It pays to keep your eyes open just in case.

Bonus:  if you keep learning and growing, you will find many more opportunities to help people, which is really what teaching is.
So, Margie, you were right:  I am a teacher.  But so is Margie.  And you can be, too.

Being a teacher is not a dirty word.  It’s just a part of being human.

[Editor’s Note from Margie…I told you so 🙂 ]

Image by Piotr Lewandowski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ywel