Last week, Ian M. Rountree and I started Read It All Week, a challenge to read everything we were subscribed to — especially all the blogs we so easily subscribe to, but never actually absorb.  We did this for two reasons:

• To reconsider why we subscribe to certain kinds of media, and
• To learn how long it would take to actually read everything we’re committed to.

What I Started With

My goal was to read every post published to the 63 blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but my guess was around 15 hours.

So, What Happened… and How Long DID It Take?

Here’s how it worked out for me:

• Total # of items read (or, when uninteresting, skimmed) in Google Reader: 560
• Total # of those 560 items that had been shared by others: 235
• Total # of those 560 items I then felt compelled to share: 32
• Total time invested reading items in Google Reader: 496 minutes (or 8+ hours)

In other words, I spent more than one entire workday reading.

About 2/5 of that reading load were items suggested to me by others.

And yet, in that time, I only felt compelled to share 1/18th of what I found.

Sounds like my incoming signal-to-noise ratio is a bit excessive…

What Else Did I Learn?

Well, in no particular order, I came to the following conclusions:

1. I read more deeply when I break my reading time up into smaller sessions.

On days when I made time to check Reader two or three times, I felt more able to really read each post.

On days when I only checked Reader once, I felt more compelled to just get through it.  This led to much more skimming and much less sharing, since I’d invested less time emotionally in what I was reading.

On the days when I felt pressed for time, I also found myself resenting longer posts and highly prolific publishers, which seemed like obstacles between me and “done,” rather than the valuable sources of information I recognized them as during my more leisurely reads.

2.  Most of the information people share is useless to me.

But it’s not the information you (or I) might suspect.

Initially, I presumed that the social media-specific posts shared by the people I follow on Reader would be enriching.  Since I was subscribed to only a dozen social media blogs, I knew I had to be missing something interesting.

Not really.

It turns out most people in the social media field read the same major news sources and share the same information, or variations thereof.  Plus, anything relevant or popular from these channels is usually retweeted endlessly throughout the week.  (For example, I learned about Flipboard from a shared item in Reader, but I would have also learned about it from any of the 2 dozen tweets I noticed about that same article.)

The other thing I realized?  Most social media-related articles are crap.  Some are rehashes of things I already know (which, obviously, is not what you already know, and I get that).  Others are so niche-specific that I’d never make use of the information.  And still others are such common sense sub-101 blather that reading them wastes my time.

So… what information did matter to me?

3.  I need to subscribe to more interesting blogs.

Again, “interesting” in this sense means “interesting to me.”

In my case, I’m drawn to posts about art, literature, culture, science and history.  These are the areas I want to learn more about, as opposed to social media, a field in which I regularly feel overwhelmed by sameness.

Which means I need to adjust my subscriptions.

4.  Consistency is key.

Writing one good blog post is easy; writing good blog posts regularly is rare.

Often, I’ll read one or two good posts by an author and then subscribe to his / her blog.  And then, over the ensuing weeks, I’ll realize one or two good posts may be all they have to offer.

If so, I can’t wait around forever for their next great idea.  My time is precious, and I’d rather not step through a minefield of oysters in order to find your few buried pearls.

(This also explains why some of the blogs I consider most indispensable — like The Rumpus — are group blogs curated magazine-style from the contributions of many.)

Although writing good blog posts is hard, finding good blog posts to share shouldn’t be.

And yet…

5.  I’m confused by people’s motivations when sharing items.

I follow some potentially interesting people on Reader, because I presume they’ll find (and share) articles I won’t.  But again, the social media field is crushed by redundancy.  For example, I follow Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, C.C. Chapman and Steve Garfield (among others) which means I often see the same information shared several times.

In addition, some people seem to share everything they read, which makes me wonder if they’re confusing the act of sharing with the act of glorifying.  It’s as though they can’t separate what they personally consider “useful” or “interesting” from what they feel obliged to help promote because of their relatively impressive reach and influence.

However…

6.  You can learn a lot about people from what they share.

Chris Brogan is a social media maven, but what he shares in Google Reader reminds me he’s also deeply interested in theology and spirituality.  Mike Sorg is a veteran podcaster, but his shared items are a snapshot of comic books & general geekery.  And Mary Hartney is a journalist by trade, but her shared items lean heavily toward art, culture and food.

As such…

7.  I learned to share information more consciously.

On one hand, I want to share information I’m personally interested in.  And because my aforementioned interests exceed the limits of *just* social media, that means people who follow me on Reader are likely to see a lot of shared information about books, racism, economics and underwater sculpture.

On the other hand, Read It All Week made me highly conscious of the way each shared item encroaches on a reader’s available time.  It made me more reluctant to share items, because I didn’t want to sabotage the time & attention of the people who follow me.

Ultimately, I still did share items (because I would have whether it was Read It All Week or not), but fewer than I would have if I hadn’t been thinking about my time and yours.

8.  Believe it or not, I actually learned things.

My Reader, like yours, is full of information both great and pointless.  The trick, I learned, is to skim past the duds and invest in the quality — and, very often, that quality tends to bottleneck in a few sources.

For example, Atlantic Monthly columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates was on vacation during Read It All Week, so he asked three of his most trusted commenters (Brendan I. Koerner, Hua Hsu and Cynic) to fill in for him.  The result was the most compulsively readable blog of the week, covering ground from Shirley Sherrod to LeBron James, what happens when “fringe” cultures are assimilated into America’s mainstream and whether Jack London’s racism should mar his literary genius.

Had I ignored Reader (as I so often do), I would have missed these and dozens of other enlightening and captivating essays (like Kathleen Alcott’s masterpiece from The Rumpus), all because I was “too busy” doing… whatever it is I usually do.

Speaking of which…

9.  I did not go broke while reading.

On the contrary, last week was quite fruitful, business-wise.  I pitched a potential client, spoke at a live event and conducted a social media workshop, knocked out a guest post for Jim Kukral (peppered with knowledge I gleaned from blogs I rediscovered in Reader), and locked down two more business meetings for next week, all while executing the tasks I’m already contracted to do for my existing clients (and having a real life).

So if I can do all that while spending 8 hours reading blogs — which is only half the time I’d originally expected to invest — what am I usually doing that prevents me from staying up to date on the media I’ve subscribed to?

Probably tweeting.  In fact…

10.  What did I miss on Twitter?

During those 8 hours I was reading blogs, I kept a Twitter window open so I could chart how many tweets whizzed past me.  Turns out I missed over 2200 tweets.

That’s more than 2200 conversations I could have weighed in on, but didn’t.

Would engaging in some of those conversations have left me any better informed, connected or enriched than my time spent reading?  Possibly.  But I’ll never know.

And I’m okay with that.

What Happens Now?

Now I clean up my feeds.  (As opposed to Amber Naslund, who prefers to blow hers apart.)

I’ve already dropped from 63 blog subscriptions to 44 — that’s a 30% reduction.  However, most of those were blogs that hadn’t been recently updated.  (Imagine if they had…)

I’ll also reconsider how I follow people on Reader.  Since 2/5 of my time was expended on their recommendations, I need to ensure that their expertise is worth my time and attention.  But the quality and relevance of the items people choose to share is wildly unpredictable, so I can’t judge too quickly.

And, like Bryan Person, I may ultimately subdivide my subscriptions into two camps: what I should read, and what I could read (time permitting).

Because not everything I subscribe to is worth reading, but there are always pearls among the oysters.

The trick is to find them without losing my time… or my mind.

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On Sunday nights, Mack Collier runs a Twitter-based group chat called #blogchat, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about blogging while hobnobbing with their peers.

But, based on the defensive reaction to some of my comments from several of the #blogchat participants, I’ve realized that #blogchat is strictly a place for sunshine and puppies, and I rarely come armed with either.  So I thought I’d take the time to do some much-needed bubble-bursting here, rather than continuing to ruin the #blogchat vibe.

NOTE: If you cry at the sight of anything other than unicorns, hugs and kittens, please close this window now.  You’ll only depress yourself, and you’ll spend the next hour telling me why I’m wrong, when I don’t really care.

Still here?  Great.  Because…

1. There’s no rule that says you have to be nice in social media.

I know, all the important people are.  But I’m not important, so I don’t have to be.  And even if I was important, I’d probably still be an asshole.

(In fact, most people become assholes after they’re important, so the fact that I’m an asshole before becoming important means my assholishness is actually authentic.  And isn’t authenticity one of the social media cornerstones?)

2. All social media is not created equal.

Yes, the tools are “democratic,” inasmuch as anyone with an Internet connection can use Twitter.  But you are not Chris Brogan, nor are you Sara Schaefer.  You are you.  And you matter exactly as much as you matter, to whomever is counting.

To say that there’s “no social media hierarchy” or “no social media pecking order” is ludicrous.  Just because there isn’t an officially accredited list of A, B, C and Z-list bloggers doesn’t mean we don’t all know who they are, give or take a rung.

(And yes, you can be a Z-list blogger and still produce A-list work, and vice versa.  Quality and reach are two separate factors.  In the end, we’re judged according to other people’s criteria, not our own.)

3. I am not required to help you for free.

Granted, some people do it really badly, but yes, social media is a business.  Not for everyone, but for some people.  And no, they don’t have to help you, or give you free advice, or even be nice to you (see above).  Some of the nicest ones do; others don’t.  (Hell, I charge $200 for a lunch.)

Being nice is wonderful, but to anyone for whom social media is a business, what matters to them is paying the bills.  If they have time to be nice, or if being nice is part of their brand — and, therefore, their business — they’ll do it.  And, in general, social media people tend to be overly nice, almost to a fault (usually because they want you to talk about them).

But if you’re waiting for Seth Godin to write a guest post on your Blogger blog that has 2 subscribers because “helping people is the right thing to do,” don’t hold your breath.

Your two readers will be heartbroken if you asphyxiate.

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A few weeks ago, Ian M. Rountree and I had a Twitter conversation about blogs.  Or, more specifically, about how many blogs we subscribe to but how few we actually bother to read.

Somehow, the guilt surrounding our tower of “unread items” in Google Reader seemed both asinine and counter-productive.

Why do we keep subscribing to blogs (and magazines) that we don’t read?

And, if we aren’t reading what we’ve subscribed to, what are we doing with our time?

So we’ve decided to investigate our own habits, and you’re invited to join us.

The “Read It All” Week Challenge

The premise of the challenge is simple: from Monday, July 19th through Sunday, July 25th, you have to read everything you subscribe to.

That’s every blog post, every magazine article, every newspaper column, etc.

The obvious goal is to end the week with no items left unread.  (Think of it like achieving “inbox zero” for Google Reader.)

The underlying goal is to reconsider what you’re subscribing to, and why.  How much value do you actually derive from what you choose to read?  What would you rather be reading (or doing)?  And are you giving yourself enough time to read everything you actually care about?

Here are the “Read It All” Challenge guidelines:

Preparation:

• To start, “Mark All As Read” the night before the challenge begins. This isn’t a week for catching up.  It’s a week for staying on task, or for getting ahead.  Ignore the 1000+ items you haven’t read yet, and focus only on what comes your way during challenge week.
• Set aside some time every day to read. Maybe it’s an hour before work; maybe during lunch; maybe just before bed. Maybe all of these.  Part of the process is figuring out how much time you’d actually need to spend in order to read everything you’ve so blindly and effortlessly subscribed to.
• Assess which physical media you’ll be including in this experiment. Magazines, newspapers, news television – whatever you include normally, be sure to add that to your planned list.
• Catalogue your current content commitments. Even if its just a number, write out the amount of media you’re planning to attempt to keep up with. For example, “my week will consist of [x] blogs in Google Reader, [x] hours of news television/radio, [x] podcasts and [x] print media.”
• Mark the time, if you like, by reposting these guidelines to your blog if you have one. Letting people in on the process is a big part of any experiment, because it’s your way of holding yourself publicly accountable to an otherwise private goal.

During The Week:

• Actually read everything. Getting to “Reader Zero” is a noble task, but it requires that you actually read everything to assess its value.
• Just for this week, resist the urge to subscribe to new blogs. Feel free to bookmark new finds for later review, but adding 10 new blogs to your list mid-week is going to create even more posts to read than you initially planned for.
• If it helps, take notes. Which blogs hold up under week-long scrutiny?  Which magazines aren’t actually worth renewing your subscription to?  If you’d like, keep a running log of the experiment.  Ian and I will be using the hashtag #ReadItAll on Twitter to add our own observations.

Wrap-Up (Post-Experiment):

Once you’re done, analyze your findings.

Which sources turned out to be most useful or enjoyable? Consider sharing their content.

Which ones offer mixed or uneven results? Unsubscribe to them, but bookmark them for later review.  Then, in a week or a month, peek in and see if they’ve gotten better.  If so, feel free to resubscribe.

Which ones turned out to be generally useless?  Unsubscribe immediately.  You have better things to spend your time on.

Also, summarize the numbers from your experiment.  How many blogs did you start with, and how many have you kept?  How many bookmarks did you make for newfound streams that require further review?  And what has this experiment revealed about your reading – and sharing – habits?

Mark your experiences with a follow-up post during the week of July 26th.

The real goal of “Read It All” Week is twofold:

• To understand how much information you can (reasonably) consume in a week, and
• To ensure that you’re consuming media that you want and need, rather than what you feel you ought to be reading.

Are you in?  If so, let me and Ian know, and then join us for #ReadItAll Week.

(And if you should decide during the course of your analysis that mine is one blog you can live without, then allow me to wish you well on your quest for more relevant ways to spend your time.  Life is short, so there’s no hard feelings.)

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I’ve been thinking.

Most “serious” bloggers blog daily, because a daily blog is a heartbeat.  It lets the people who follow you know that you’re still alive, still thinking, still contributing to the greater good.

But what, exactly, are you contributing?

If I Don’t Blog, I Don’t Exist

Most daily blogs I come across are heavy on…

• Personal wisdom
• Analysis of current events
• Tech / product reviews
• Context-free statistical reports
• Lists

The connective thread?

They’re all easily written in a short amount of time.

If you’re blogging daily, your emphasis is almost always on a quota.  Yes, ideally, you want to be good.  But you also want to be there.  And sometimes “there” trumps good.

You also want to be noticed / found / loved, and if you blog daily, those odds increase.

But…

What If You Did More and Talked Less?

Instead of blogging daily, why not blog weekly, but spend that week crafting something really good?

Advice, reviews and event analysis is a dime a dozen on blogs.  What’s useful but rare?

• Experiments (and results)
• Long-term case studies (and timelines of strategy adjustment)
• Process analysis
• Interviews that alter the way we think
• Content that truly entertains, educates or illuminates

If we daily bloggers wrote less, did more, and delivered insightful, impactful, vital content (instead of daily blips), wouldn’t we be providing a more useful service?

Wouldn’t we be creating less white noise, and less clutter that needed to be cut through?

This isn’t just about blogs, either.  If Twitter’s volume were reduced by 80%, wouldn’t it be easier to find messages that mattered?

Let’s Stop Mass-Producing Our Own Irrelevance

It’s easier to stand out when you’re not simultaneously creating content that distracts people from you.

To that end, I’m trying an experiment: through July, I’ll be blogging once a week instead of once a day.*  My goal is to provide you with better content less often, rather than the most relevant content I could think of at that moment.

And if the end result is noticeably less valuable to me and / or my audience, I’ll adjust my course as necessary.

But first, let’s see where this goes.

* NOTE: Life may occasionally prompt multiple posts in a week.  Let’s not be totalitarians.

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Do you know Bryon Sheffield?

Probably not.  He has a blog, but it doesn’t exist yet.

But you can help.

See, Bryon’s a smart guy.  He knows the web is full of white noise, and he doesn’t want to add to it.

But he does want to blog.  He has interests, and he has expertise, but he’s not yet sure where his voice fits into the big picture.

So he’s looking for a reason.

And if you have ideas, he’s encouraging you to leave him a comment on his site.

In a way, this is the equivalent of walking into a magazine while the staff is still being hired and having a say in the direction of the publication.  Anything could happen.  Your suggestions might be ignored, or they might trigger the idea that creates something never seen before.

Bryon Sheffield.  A blank slate, with ideas.  Help him put one foot in front of the other and who knows where he might end up?

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Yesterday, I learned something valuable: nobody really reads blog posts anymore.

Yes, life is short, we’re always in a hurry, and we rarely have time to read closely.

And yet, funny enough, people do still have time to comment… even when their comments are irrelevant to the actual conversation.

But I think we can fix this.

Here’s How It All Happened…

When I read Jeff Pulver‘s blog post about how Twitter might eventually be replaced by Foursquare and Gowalla, I thought it was interesting.  I used Jeff’s initial observation as a jumping-off point for my own broader post about the nature of web tools, and how their relevance (and audience) is forever shifting.

But apparently the only part of my post anybody read was the title.

That’s because I received a number of tweets and comments that either agreed or disagreed with my predictions of Twitter’s eventual demise…

… which is interesting, because I’m not the one who made those predictions.  Jeff Pulver did.  I simply used his assertion as the basis for a broader discussion.  But that departure never registered with the readers of my post.

However, instead of lamenting people’s inability to read or process information, I see this as an opportunity to examine some of the ways a good blog post can go bad.

Namely…

1.  A Good Title Is a Double-Edged Sword.

“Is Twitter Less Relevant Today?” was a great title for two reasons:

• It spoke directly to Pulver’s original post (“SXSW 2010: The Days Twitter Became Less Relevant”), and
• It included the word “Twitter,” which is guaranteed linkbait (especially on Twitter).

But it was also a bad title for two reasons:

• The post itself was about more than just the limiting titular question, and
• Asking a simple question in the title gives hurried people an excuse to not read the post

And yet, as we’ve seen, just because people don’t read the post, that doesn’t mean they won’t comment.

2.  Outline Your Entire Post in the First Paragraph

People are usually in a rush.  Sometimes they only read enough of a post to decide if they agree with you.

Other times, they read just enough to find an excuse to leave a comment.  They appreciate the work you put into your post, but they don’t have time to process it fully — who does?  There’s more Internet to explore! — and so they leave a comment that lets you know they at least read part of your post.

And sometimes, the only part they read is the title.  (See above.)

Is this good or bad?  That depends on your purpose for blogging in the first place.

3.  Pirates Attract Parrots

When Doug Haslam and Chris Brogan tweeted links to my post, their followers did the same — while also weighing in on whether or not they agreed with me.  Suddenly, because two well-connected tweeters pointed at something, it became necessary for their acolytes to voice their opinion about a debate they thought was happening.

Believe me, I understand the value of being considered interesting by the tastemakers.  If I wasn’t, you’d probably never have heard of me in the first place.

But I’m also used to the floods of people who wash up on my shores whenever someone’s bright spotlight falls on my beach.  And those people are usually only here for a moment before they’re washed back out to sea.

I enjoy momentary piques of interest, but I value long-term relationships far more.

That said…

4.  Don’t Look a Gift Debate in the Mouth.

I didn’t intend to perpetuate the “Is Twitter Dying?” debate because I’m more interested in talking about the nature of web tools as a whole.

But the readers my post attracted were interested in the debate (which, as far as I know, didn’t even exist two days ago).

Thus, although I didn’t spark the conversation I was hoping we’d have, I did get a lot of feedback on how people feel about Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla.  I even learned the answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask.

Therefore,  I can’t help but view the conversation that did erupt as being valuable in some way.  That’s because unexpected data is just wisdom that no one else is asking for… yet.

5.  Summarize Your Blog Posts at the End, to Satisfy the Skimmers

Yesterday, I thought my blog post would inspire a certain kind of conversation.

I was wrong.

Today, I’m evaluating what did happen and learning valuable lessons about how to better communicate my ideas.

And if better conversations are just a matter of smarter titles, clearer motivations and a clever call to action, haven’t we all learned something valuable from this surprisingly scattered process?

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Let’s face it: the more content you create, the harder it is for your audience to find your most relevant work.

So why not help them zero in on the blog posts, tweets, photos and videos that you (or others) consider to be your most valuable?

When your various channels are united, you increase your chances of…

• meeting interesting people
• discovering useful information
• streamlining your personal brand
• saving yourself time

And the best part is, you don’t have to do anything more than what you’re already doing; you just have to do it smarter.

5 Ways to Boost Your Own Relevance (by Repurposing Your Own Content)

1. Offer Your Own “Best Of” List of Top Posts.

Some of your blog posts are better than others. Those are the ones you want new readers to find most easily.

So group them together.

Amber Naslund recently summarized her own best work on Altitude Branding, so her visitors won’t have to hunt through volumes of information to find her posts about marketing, blogging and beyond.

In that same manner, I’ve selected an array of my own leading posts about everything from social media and philosophy to freelance and pop culture. I’ve grouped them all together on one page, which gives readers a shortcut to my strengths and an overview of the subject matter I routinely discuss. (If you’re reading this post on my website, that snazzy new orange word balloon in my sidebar leads to the same place.)

2.  Keep Your Channels Where I Can See Them.

How many profiles do you think you’ve created across your various social media channels?

10?  20?  50?

Are people aware that all of your profiles exist?

If not, what might happen if they did?

No matter how I stumble across you, I should easily be able to find all of your other active and relevant content channels.

Thus, if I like your photos on Flickr, I should be one or two clicks away from your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts at all times.

And your blog.  And your Etsy store.  And anything else about you that I might find interesting.

(Hint: Don’t worry about what I might find interesting.  Simply provide as many ways to find you as you feel comfortable divulging, and then let me decide how much of you I want to remember.)

3.  Find Ways to Make One Type of Content Interesting for Various Audiences.

Video is not audio is not photo is not blog.

But it can be.

For example, when you’re shooting a video for YouTube, have someone else take photographs documenting the making-of.  Then post those photos to Flickr, and link to the finished video from the text description of each photograph.  And then do the same in reverse.

This way, regardless of which direction your audience enters the story from, they’ll have a means to see it through.  And by seeing slightly different facets of the same subject matter, they’ll have a richer understanding of the whole.

(Tip: If you use Viddler*, you can embed contextual links to photos, blog posts, etc., within the video itself.)

4.  Reference Yourself When Applicable.

Odds are, you’ve written or spoken about your topic of the day numerous times before — and the odds are equally good that whoever’s reading today’s post or watching today’s video has no idea what you said last time.

Link to your own previous work within your newer blog posts.  If you revisit themes, point to the blog posts that led to them.  Include plugins (like the one I use below) to direct readers to “possibly relevant posts” within your own archives.

Likewise, link to your own previous videos within your newer work.  Include onscreen titles (or embedded links) directing the audience to your other clips, and mention those clips via text links in your video’s description.  No matter what spoke your audience first finds on that topical wheel, they should be able to reach all of the others from any starting point.

And So On And So Forth…

Yes, finding creative ways to cross-promote your channels can be time consuming.  But once it becomes a habit, you’ll spend less time finding ways to be individually interesting across multiple platforms and more time being contextually relevant in perpetuity.

And the more aware people are of the vast entirety of who you are and what you do, the more opportunities they have to care.

* CORRECTION: I’d originally cited Vimeo as the video platform with contextual embedding; I meant Viddler.  Sometimes, I get my “v”-christened video platforms confused.  (Hi, Veoh.)  While were at it, Blip is wonderful too, but they don’t start with a v.

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I blog a lot about the importance of audience.  Now I’d like to understand my own audience a bit better.

NOTE: This is a long and winding post, and you may be in a hurry.  If so, let me ask you for a quick favor: my whole reason for writing this post is to better understand you.  Here’s how you can help me do that:

• Short version:  In the comments, please list 3 things YOU would like to see discussed more often on my blog.
• Slightly longer, yet ultimately more useful version:  Take this short survey to help me better understand your experience level, what topics you’re interested in and why, so I can better provide you with discussions you’ll care about.

And now, back to the post at hand.

Writing in the Dark

As a writer, I like to be read.  I also like knowing that what I’ve written is beneficial to the people who read it.  And I like to converse and debate with my audience in ways that advance our collective understanding of the topics we’re passionate about.

Lately, many of us who blog about social media have been urging its practitioners to improve.  We’re tired of the mediocrity and we’re demanding more from this rich medium that’s practically overflowing with potential.

The problem is, that potential never seems to be reached because we all spend too much time rehashing the same topics and polishing our own reputations, rather than collectively pushing the medium forward.

But for those of us who would like to discuss these issues at a more “advanced” level, there’s a catch:

Because our audiences come to us for advice and insights, we spend the bulk of our time educating others and far too little time pursuing the lessons we need to improve ourselves.

What we need is to do both at once.  But how?

NOT by Biting the Hand That Feeds You

As our commenters have pointed out across these “improvement” manifestos, the vast majority of the people who read our blogs are the people who need to be educated by us.  Forsaking them would be bad business and bad karma, because it’s unwise (and unprofitable) to turn our backs on those very people who have validated us as being “knowledgeable” in the first place.

Instead of lamenting what we perceive as a lack of quality in social media, we’re better off leading by example.  This includes:

• Producing the best media that we can create ourselves
• Providing examples of work that we believe is exemplary
• Explaining HOW to create work that matters, with examples
• Interviewing the very practitioners that we would like to learn from
• Conducting experiments to gather, analyze and summarize our own data
• Focusing less on the quantity of our own output and more on the quality
• Refraining from “doing it wrong” when we recognize our own bad habits
• Innovating within existing tools and formats to show what’s possible

By doing so, we can continue to provide the insights we’ve become known for, while streamlining our own processes and minimizing the amount of white noise that we, ourselves, generate.

But there’s still one missing link:  we need to know who we’re talking to in the first place.

Preaching to the Void

This week, I taught a two-hour “social media crash course” at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance.  The attendees varied widely in their experience levels and their intentions for social media.  Some wanted to sell their work, some wanted to network with peers, and some had almost no online experience whatsoever.

But they all had one thing in common: I could see them.

Online, we never really know who we’re interfacing with.  We’re never sure how much attention they’re giving us, or when they lose interest, or why.  All we know is that X number of visitors read what we write, and a subset of them share our media with others.  Even the best analytic tools can’t provide the same context as a personal relationship.

So let’s try asking for one.

As I mentioned above, I’d like to know more about you.  This is not so I can market to you, or place demographically-appropriate ads on my blog.  As you may have noticed, this blog is ad-free and I don’t expect to change that anytime soon.  What I am interested in is better serving you.

Because you want to learn, and so do I.  And the more I know about you, the better equipped I’ll be to provide you with the information you care about, in a format that will encourage debate and discussion.  When both sides feel they’re directly connected, that’s the first step toward improving social media (and our overall experiences), day by day.

Have a second?  Leave a comment and let me know 3 things you’d like to see discussed more often on this blog.

Have a minute?  Take this short survey, so I can wrap my head around the slightly bigger picture of me, you and “us.”

And thanks for sharing.

(Also, thanks to Jordan Cooper, Christopher Penn, Lindsay Baish, Steve Klabnik and verso, whose tweets helped me shape the direction of this post.  See?  Audiences do make a difference…)

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Lately, I’ve been ranting (again) about social media’s need to improve.  This usually happens every 6 months or so, and then I get distracted by paying work and holidays, only to return and find that nothing much has changed.

So this time, instead of shaking my fists at the sun, I thought I’d explain 5 ways YOU can get better at social media.  Keep in mind that my idea of “better” may not match yours, because I may have different social media goals and expectations than you do.  In fact, that’s almost a guarantee — so why don’t we start there?

1.  For God’s Sake, Have a Purpose.

Years ago, everyone was telling you to “dive in” to the social media fishbowl and “join the conversation.”

“But why?” you’d reply.  “I have nothing to say.”

“You don’t have anything to say… yet,” they’d respond cryptically.

Looking back, this is entirely logical: the early adopters of social media were altruistic, but they were also keenly interested in driving traffic to their own blogs and podcasts in order to validate this burgeoning medium.  If you bought into it, they’d look like geniuses who were years ahead of the curve.

We’re a little past that point now.

Today, the white noise is excruciating.  The tools we could be using to revolutionize communication are instead being used to complain about bad hair and shoddy customer service.  People blog, podcast, tweet and Flickr because they feel obliged to, or because they’re aching to be noticed and validated by others, desperate for a rewteet to prove they’re still alive.

Find a purpose.  Set a goal.  Decide what “social media success” would mean to you, personally.  Then make choices that support your pursuit of that goal.

And if you don’t have something to say, it’s okay.  No one’s making you talk anymore.  The conversation has been joined to death.

2.  Stop Confusing Media with Marketing.

Media is something you make.  Marketing is something you do.

Media is communication.  Marketing is sales.

You can create media, and you can market the media you create.  You can even create media in order to market the products and services featured in that media.

But believing that this guy and this guy are both “doing social media” is like believing that Damien Hirst and your five-year-old are both “revolutionizing art.”  The tools may be the same, but their intentions are completely different.  Lumping them together does a disservice to both sides.

3.  Let Someone Else Be the Expert.

You probably have some amazing insights to share with your audience, right?  Or maybe you have a solution to a problem that no one’s ever thought of before.  And now you can’t wait to post about it and then immediately buff the pixelated star on your digital door that reads “expert.”

Do us all a favor: don’t.

In social media, everybody’s an expert, and they’ve been writing for years about the exact same thing you’re writing about now.  There’s absolutely no reason to write the same post your peers have already written a hundred times, except for the pleasure of hearing yourself say it.

If every author in the history of mankind had decided that they were going to publish their own book of fairy tales, simply because they wanted to be known as Fairy Tale Experts, we might not have needed The Brothers Grimm.  But we sure as hell wouldn’t have needed 33 million volumes of fairy tales either.

4.  Comment Selflessly.

Remember when I told you to stop talking if you had nothing important to say?  I still mean it.  But if you resent being shushed, here’s your loophole: say something that matters.

Blog comments have long been the wasteland of linkbait from attention whores and meaningless accolades from people who can’t otherwise improve the dialogue.

So improve the dialogue.

Mark Blevis has a great policy: he strives to leave five meaningful comments a week on the blogs he reads.  Five meaningful comments doesn’t sound like a lot until you consider the time it takes to actually read the posts he’s commenting on, evaluate the information, develop a response and type it up in a thoughtful manner.  It might take a grand total of an hour, but that’s an hour Mark spent helping his peers improve, rather than insisting they read the blog post he just wrote about that exact same thing last week.

Comments are intended to be about something.  Try making your comments about something other than your own inbound traffic.

5.  Kill One of Your Channels.

Thanks to social media’s continued convergence, you can now tweet from Facebook, watch YouTube on your blog and Flickr your way through Google Buzz.  As a result, all channels have become one large funnel, and it’s impossible to decide which of a person’s channels you should follow because they’re all essentially the same.

Tim Maly suggests unlinking your channels, so that each one has merit unto itself.  But that creates another problem: no one is interesting enough to pretend to be interesting differently across multiple platforms.

So kill one.

Maybe it’s the one you rarely use, or the one where you get the least amount of feedback, or the one that takes the most time to maintain.  Google makes you omnipresent to begin with, so how many additional ways do you need to be found?

Will the world really miss your Flickr stream?  Will your unwatched YouTube channel be mourned?  Will orphans wail in the street if they can’t find you on LinkedIn?

If you’re not using something, or you’re not benefiting from the use of something, kill it.  The time and effort you save can be put to better use being legitimately interesting elsewhere.

And that’s the kind of “better” I’d like to think we can all agree on.

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Social media is a bizarre medium.

In most forms of art and communication, the practitioners strive to excel.  They understand what constitutes success, and they work together — whether as collaborators, friendly rivals or fierce competitors — to reach ever-greater heights of creative, technological and financial achievement.

Yet, in social media, we’re mostly content to simply co-exist in an ever-widening fishbowl.  We all aspire to “something greater,” but few of us can honestly articulate what that something might actually be.

And so we swim in circles, trying to decide if the same peers we see every day are doing better or worse than we are, and no one’s ever willing to point out the obvious:

None of us are doing as well as we should be, because none of us are willing to insist on doing better.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Talk About Yourself

As a haven for narcissists, the only thing most “experts” are truly passionate about is themselves.  This makes it nearly impossible to offer anyone constructive criticism, because their chief export is almost always their own personal brand.

In addition, “we’re all in this together,” which also means we’re all in competition.  In terms of consulting, content creation and “personal branding,” this means your friend is your rival; helping them improve only hurts you in the end.

Doesn’t it?

Not exactly.

A Useful Thing I Learned in Art School

When I was a student at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, my roommates and I shared a serendipitous bond: we were all incredibly driven to succeed.  As a result, we were continually competing with each other, not because there were a finite number of As or Bs to be earned but because each of us was capable of achieving those As and none of us wanted to be the one who didn’t.

We also had an agreement: if one of us noticed that another was slacking off, we promised to call him on it.  Sure, we might all be competing for the same jobs on graduation day, but we also realized that maintaining our collective momentum was the best way to ensure that each of us would keep pushing the envelope individually.

The way we saw it, if one of us succeeded, all of us succeeded.

Sounds like a winning formula, right?

So why hasn’t the social media fishbowl adopted a similar approach?

Everyone’s (Already) a Winner!

As always, I can’t speak for everyone in the fishbowl, but I do have a few guesses…

• We all have fragile egos.
• We’re afraid to rock the boat.
• We don’t want others to criticize us.
• Social media is overwhelmingly opinion-driven, which renders debate meaningless.
• None of us are ever sure if anything is really “better” or “worse” than anything else.
• “It’s just a hobby,” AKA, “If I have to think about it, it’s not fun.”

We’re part of a medium where bloggers continually offer generic advice on how others can get better at blogging, yet they rarely take the time to personally critique their peers and offer specific suggestions that could help someone improve directly.

Ditto for podcasters, marketers, SEO experts and other social media “gurus,” who are always more interested in befriending the influencers and burnishing their own reputations than in raising the bar of the industry as a whole.  With rare exception, the entire fishbowl can be boiled down to sycophants and the easily-impressed, and it makes me wonder…

Why?

Why on Earth would so many of us engage in a daily habit that consumes so much of our time, has so much potential for growth, introduces us to so many people, and yet never take the initiative to demand more from our peers?

How are we supposed to learn if we don’t teach?

How are we supposed to improve if we don’t admit we need to?

And there’s your answer.

More than anything else, I truly believe that our reluctance to engage in constructive criticism stems from the fact that, for most of us who practice social media, this is the first time we’ve been accepted so easily into a (nebulous) social grouping.  Once you’re “in,” it feels like we’re all one big happy family.

If so, why risk deflating the egos of your peers and being ostracized from the tribe?

Because a mediocre tribe is going to be defenseless against a predator with teeth.

Why We Can’t All Just Get Along

“Social media” isn’t new anymore.  It’s media.  It’s everywhere.  You’re on Twitter?  So is half of Hollywood.  Differentiate or die.

Six years ago, only the hipsters were on MySpace.  (Yes, MySpace).  Today, every brand you’ve ever heard of is on Facebook.  These tools you once thought were exclusive to self-important communicators like yourself are now being deployed by multinational corporations.

We’ve swirled around inside our social media fishbowl for nearly a decade now, ceaselessly debating ways to monetize, ways to compete, ways to collaborate, ways to hook the mainstream.  And in that time, despite TIME Magazine telling you that YOU were the most important person on the planet, you still haven’t cashed in.  You haven’t succeeded.  You haven’t escaped the fishbowl, and gone on to Do Things That Matter with these democratic tools that were supposed to level the playing field and give college kids the same means to change the world as corporations.

We had authenticity on our side.  We had individuality.  We had originality.  But we squandered it by not insisting that everyone do better.

With no gatekeepers, we had no one to impress.  We sought niches, which are really just hiding places for when the mainstream swims by.  We refused to adhere to a hierarchy, and those who assumed the mantles of mentors were reluctant to puncture the dreams of the people whose adulation made them tiny stars in a nascent universe.

So no one got better, because there was no one to dictate the terms of “better” and “best.”  No one improved, because there was no reason to.  And the mainstream never swept us away and turned us into household names because we’d burrowed too deep in our niches to be dislodged.

We’ve reached the point where both “old” and “new” media are insisting that we drop the “social” modifier and just call it what it is: media.

Now we all make media.

And that means you’re in direct competition with Viacom, Clear Channel and Disney.

The tide may finally have risen, and all boats may have been carried with it.  But, unfortunately, we never insisted on building larger, stronger, faster boats that could compete outside the fishbowl.  And now we’re swimming in a very different ocean.

The sharks have taken the bait, and the bait was you.

Is it too late to start demanding more?

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