Admit it: deep down, you’ve always known that the world works differently for The Important People.

You just hate it when the world proves you right.

Take Conan O’Brien, for example.  The guy sends out a single tweet and he changes this girl’s life.  Meanwhile, you desperately retweet your own blog posts 14 times a day in the empty hope that Chris Brogan will accidentally click the retweet button while his cursor is hovering over your name, thereby unintentionally beaming your essay about hashtag etiquette to his thousands of rabid followers.

And sure, you have a few close friends who seem to listen when you talk, but some of these people on the Internet — people who are just like you — are listened to (and trusted by) by tens of thousands!

How much cooler are their lives than yours?

Well, as it turns out… not that much cooler at all.  But possibly more productive.  And that might be the real dividing line between you and Them:

While you’re just trying to get people to notice you, they’re trying to get you to notice other people.

So… How Do the Cool Kids Use Twitter?

In order to learn a bit more about this perceived difference between the social media “influencers” and those of us being influenced by them, I contacted 40 Twitter users with followings over 10,000.  Of those 40, fifteen responded, and thirteen of them had the time to take my six question survey.

[DISCLOSURE: Of the 15 respondents, I've met 6 personally.  Of the 25 non-respondents, I've met 7 personally.  Conclusion: knowing me is irrelevant.]

The respondents (in alphabetical order):

• C. C. Chapman (@cc_chapman) / Podcaster and Campfire Creative Director
• Mack Collier (@MackCollier) / Social media consultant and strategist
• L. P. “NEENZ” Faleafine (@NEENZ) / Chief Evangelist for Alltop
• Jason Falls (@jasonfalls) / Social Media Explorer
• Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield) / The godfather of videoblogging
• Beth Harte (@BethHarte) / Serengeti Communications
• Doug Haslam (@DougH) / Social media gadabout
• Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel) / Six Pixels of Separation
• Beth Kanter (@kanter) / Social media advisor specializing in non-profits
• Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudios) / Mayhem Studios
• Jim Long (@newmediajim) / Web content creator & NBC news cameraman
• Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) / Blogger & Dir. of Community @ Radian6
• and one marketer who preferred to remain anonymous

What follows are the most pertinent responses to my 6 questions, along with my own summaries based on their composite experiences.

Q1: “Did you make a conscious effort to grow your Twitter account?”

Since so many people do invest time in growing their Twitter following, whether organically or by nefarious means, I was curious about the degree to which my respondents had “worked” for their authority.  The results ranged from the conscious…

I joined Twitter in July 2007 with the goal of marketing and networking.  Initially, it was important for me to grow my following, especially since there were very few people from my home state of Hawaii and zero from my existing network on Twitter at the time.  I watched the conversations on Twitter, and I followed those [whom] I was following on their blogs, in forums, webinars, livestreams, etc.  I engaged in conversations as often as I could, outside of Twitter.

A few months after joining, I had my first tweetup (before they were called tweetups) with Guy Kawasaki. It was very brief, but it led to a lifetime opportunity to work with him on Truemors, and I continue to do so on Alltop.
@NEENZ

… to the incidental…

God no. I’ve always had the same approach to Twitter: I say whatever comes to mind, share links that I find interesting and RT anything that catches my eye that I think others will like.

I’ve never paid attention to the numbers, and when they started going up, it was very strange.  A couple of times, I asked why people followed me and I always got a variety of answers.  Most of them come from listening, reading or watching a piece of content I produced somewhere else, and they want to stay up to date on what I’m doing.
@cc_chapman

… to the accidental.

No.  I had 30,000 followers built one relationship at a time and [through] word of mouth.  In Oct 2009, I got on Twitter’s SUL [Suggested User List] and grew.
@kanter

Conclusion?  There’s no “guaranteed” way to grow a massive following, but most respondents do share two common traits: providing information that others consider valuable, and being authentically interested in meeting new people.

In other words, they caught their flies with honey, not with endless claims about how wonderful their own work is.  On Twitter, finding the right mix of humility and hubris is key.

Q2: “How has your experience as a Twitter user changed due to the growth of your followers?”

If you’ve never had 10,000 people on speed dial, you might have a romantic idea of what that experience would be like.

Alas, my respondents claim you’d be disappointed…

It is MUCH harder to have conversations and track what is going on in the marketing, communications and PR communities. I miss a lot of news, updates, blog posts, etc.
@BethHarte

… and aggravated:

I’ve also had to accept that I just can’t respond to everything, and deal with the sometimes snarky fallout that ensues, like folks claiming I’m a “twitter snob” or “not engaging”.
@AmberCadabra

… or even nostalgic:

I’ve lost track of my original crew, but I’ve met very interesting, cool people along the way. That, coupled with working harder than ever at my job, means [I have] much less time for longer discussions on Twitter.
@newmediajim

… except for those times when it’s freaking wonderful.

b/c I have so many followers and [so much] influence, I get invited to events, freebies, projects, etc. It’s a lot of fun being treated like a celeb, but also weird.
@MayhemStudios

As expected, the volume of incoming information makes meaningful conversations harder to come by.  But there are solutions.

It’s made me focus on the people that actually interact with me. They stand out from the crowd, and I try to follow anyone that interacts with me.
@MackCollier

Conclusion?  Sean Combs was right: mo’ money (or mo’ followers) creates mo’ problems… but also mo’ opportunities.

Q3: “Do you receive more meaningful feedback as a result of having your tweets circulated to more people?“

All but two of the respondents said “yes” to this question, including:

I am very grateful for my Twittersphere.  They’ve often been able to provide me with solutions during times when I’m traveling [or] different tools to use to improve my business.  One time someone from MN sent me the number to a locksmith in Hawaii when I locked myself out of my home!
@NEENZ

… and:

For sure. I’ve had a lot of doors open for conference, clients and opportunities from more people retweeting or sharing my tweets with other people.
@cc_chapman

… although not everyone is convinced that increased reach is a good thing.

I get a lot more criticism now than I ever did when I say something off-color.  Is that meaningful feedback?  Maybe.  I do see a lot of re-tweets of my posts and shares these days, but that’s just a matter of scale, I think.  It’s nice, but I pay as much attention to flowery compliments as I do the haters.
@JasonFalls

I suspected this answer might be self-evident, and I was (mostly) correct.  Therefore, I owe myself a Coke.

Q4: “How has a larger Twitter following changed other people’s perception of you?“

Refreshingly, nearly everyone reported a healthy dose of skepticism associated with their own public perception:

I’m not sure. Perhaps some people think I’m some sort of social media “whatever” because of a larger following, but it took over three years to get here.
@DougH

People think I’m more important than I am.  I’m still just a dumb guy with a blog.  Sort of.
@JasonFalls

I have no idea if it has, and it really shouldn’t since anyone can have a larger Twitter following; just follow more people!
@MackCollier

Some were even skeptical of the “influence” metrics themselves:

To the plus (and not necessarily accurate), I’m looked at as some kind of a “model” for what to do, and how to use Twitter well — and therefore one of those dreaded social media experts…  I also think it tends to falsely inflate my “influence”, with things like Twitter lists, rankings, and the like.
@AmberCadabra

Jim Long may have summed up our misplaced Twitter valuations best:

It’s funny.  More and more people that I meet, whether online or in real life, will say things like: “Oh, newmediajim, you’re great!”  I find myself pretty unremarkable.   [But] I think what I do for a living allows me to share pretty remarkable experiences.
@newmediajim

… unless you happen to be in the business of managing other people’s perceptions, like our anonymous respondent, who may have offered the shrewdest response:

My clients see it as a selling point. The more followers I have, the more important I am to them. Why? Because they don’t know any better, yet.
[Anonymous]

Q5: “What are you able to accomplish today that you could not have accomplished with a significantly smaller Twitter following?“

And here’s where the answers get really interesting.  (NOTE: I’ve emphasized the elements of their responses that I find most compelling.)

Hmmmm…..informal research is the only thing that comes to mind specifically for Twitter.

What I mean is that because of my large number of followers, I can throw out a question for a client, for curiosity, or any other reason and be sure that I’m going to get back a handful of really solid answers.  That isn’t possible without such a big pool to fish in.
@cc_chapman

… or:

Driving a fair amount of traffic to other people’s great content. I had a spirits blogger email me one day in a stupor because he’d gotten the single largest traffic day in his blog’s history, all because I shared his post on Twitter and Facebook.
@JasonFalls

… or:

Today I can ask for the answer to a question, or a contact at a company, and have several answers within seconds. That obviously didn’t happen when I had a much smaller network.
@MackCollier

… or:

It gives you much more influence. Makes it easier to help with charities, getting work, people / companies listening & reach out to you. I’ve even done some design work for Guy Kawasaki b/c of Twitter.
@MayhemStudios (and yes, if you’re counting, that’s 2 respondents who’ve obtained work with best-selling author Guy Kawasaki because of Twitter)

… and:

I have a larger base of intelligence and insight upon which to draw. I can get faster and broader exposure for an idea, [whether it's] mine or other people’s. I can help truly have an impact on other people’s work, and point more eyeballs to people doing significant things. And I can solicit broader and deeper input and feedback from broader audiences across many industries and disciplines that I couldn’t before.
@AmberCadabra

See a pattern?

The people with large audiences are most interested in using their audiences to aid and empower other people.  Twitter analysts like Dan Zarrella have noted that talking about yourself is a less-successful Twitter strategy than talking about others; now you see this truism remains ingrained in users’ behavior (and personalities) even after their popularity has been confirmed.

Conclusion?  You can buy followers, but you can’t buy humanity.

Also, there can even be hidden benefits to having such a large following, like…

Support when I get attacked by a detractor. I’ve had folks defend me without me even asking them to, or knowing that they had. That can’t be bought or gamed…it needs to be earned.

I also think having a large follower count allows me to NOT be on Twitter as much as I was a year or two ago.
@BethHarte

On the other hand, there were also respondents who reported no significant changes whatsoever, like:

I’m not sure that there is anything that I’ve been able to accomplish today that you could not have accomplished with a significantly smaller Twitter following.
@newmediajim

… and Beth Kanter, who — despite being followed by over 300,000 people as I type this — simply answered: “Nothing. Except been offered some review copies of books.”  (Admittedly, in Beth’s case, it’s entirely possible that her exposure via the Twitter Suggested Users List bloated her network with people who don’t demonstrably add value to her efforts in the non-profit world.)

Which brings us to the unasked question: is quantity more important than quality?  Mitch Joel, for one, doubts it.

I’m not sure size/amount has anything to do with anything.  It’s about “who” I’m connected to.
@mitchjoel

Ah, but who would Mitch Joel be connected to if he weren’t Mitch Joel?  Chicken, meet egg…

Q6: “Any observations, insights or opinions about Twitter that weren’t appropriate for the questions above?”

Several respondents added some food for thought, including:

My only thoughts around Twitter are, what other plans do people or organizations have for the day when Twitter ceases to exist (if that day ever comes)? Meaning, I see a lot of eggs in one basket and Twitter being used as an end-all channel.
@BethHarte

After the first 300-700 followers, it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that increases is the potential “touches” – which is great, but you get decent breadth for most uses from that number.
@DougH

I just wish people would stop trying to set the “rules” for Twitter. It’s like trying to set the rules for the city park. People can use it however they like. If you don’t like the way they do, don’t follow them.
@JasonFalls

The way I use Twitter continues to evolve and change. It’s always been a state of constant flux, what works for me today could be completely wrong next week. So it’s a state of constant learning. Damn, so much for being a Twitter expert.
@MackCollier

And, echoing his disbelief at his own popularity, Jim Long ends on a philosophical note:

Despite having as many followers as I do, I sometimes feel like I’m by myself out there.
@newmediajim

And there you have it, folks — authoritative proof that at the end of the day, no matter how many people you have hanging on your every tweet, we all take our pants off one leg at a time.

Unless your legions of Twitter groupies have stalked your every move on FourSquare and are tearing them off for you.  But that’s a popularity problem I can’t possibly help you solve.

And I doubt you’d want me to.

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Last Thursday, I attended the fifth installment of Ignite Baltimore, an event designed to get people excited about creating positive change in Baltimore.

And yet, somehow, the experience had the exact opposite effect on me… and this got me thinking about HOW we talk about the things we most care about, and why we might want to change our approach.

How an Allegedly Inspirational Event Turned Me Into a Loathsome Beast

Ignite is billed as a rapid-fire salon of ideas, in which a dozen speakers talk for 5 minutes (and 20 Power Point slides) about a subject they’re passionate about.  For the most part, the presentations on this night were somewhat insightful, occasionally incoherent, but mostly harmless.

And then something happened that I’m still trying to process, because it altered my perception of reality.

15-year old environmental activist Hannah Freedman took the stage and delivered an eloquent, well-rehearsed, mildly convincing argument for the importance of youth activism.  I was impressed by her chutzpah, and I was clapping at all the times when I was supposed to be clapping.

And then I noticed the body language of the couple in front of me.

Slumped.  Stoic.  Slightly pained.  They looked as though they wanted to be anywhere but here, and they projected a stark resentment of everything Hannah — and, by extension, Ignite itself — stood for.

This momentarily irritated me, and I thought about reveling in my ethical superiority for being able to appreciate something as fundamentally galvanizing as youth activism.

But then I tried something different: I adopted (what I presumed was) this couple’s point of view.

I sat there, slumped and indifferent, to see how it would feel to resent a teenager for having the temerity to care about her own future.

I found it alarmingly easy to do.

In fact, the only more alarming part was how hard it was to shake that point of view.

When Hannah concluded her speech with something like, “Because we are the future, and you can either complain about it or you can help us,” I almost shouted something at the stage, Joe Wilson style.  That’s when my girlfriend realized she’d have to psychologically restrain me for the rest of the event.

All night long, I found myself unable to resume my traditional worldview.  Anytime someone took the stage, I implicitly rejected their claims as false because they didn’t jibe with my newly-adopted values of capitalism and protectionism.

I started to hate the arts, the government and people in general.

I refused to smile or applaud.  My girlfriend Ann and our friend Maya, seated on either side of me, went from being annoyed at my behavior to being angry at my obviously negative judgment of the event, concerned that I might ruin it for someone else.

Even Dave Troy, who’s well-known as a tireless cheerleader for Baltimore’s future (and who was sitting directly in front of me) moved a few seats away.  Granted, that could have been due to any reason, but I can’t help but feel that my aural negativity drove him to seek shelter.

My Newfound Hatred, in a Nutshell

My visceral reaction to the night can be summed up by a recap of the presentations.

Of the 13 talks delivered:

• 4 of them either directly or indirectly urged attendees to fund the arts
• 2 of them urged adults to take children seriously
• 1 of them urged attendees to donate to Haiti
• 1 of them urged attendees to donate used cell phones to Africa
• 1 of them urged the creation of a federal Department of Peace
• and 1 of them explained how Wolverine embodies the American ideal

As a social liberal and fiscal conservative, I would normally have appreciated the pluck of the presentations, even if I would have doubted their ability to make a damn bit of difference.

But on this particular night, thanks to my newly aggravated and seat-slumped soul mates, I left the auditorium irate at the audacity of the speakers.  Namely:

• If the arts are so important, why can’t they MAKE MONEY without begging me for it?
• If MORE government is the solution to anything, I’ll eat my hat.
• If dying Haitians and Africans need help, why don’t they just GET JOBS?
• If kids are our future, why can’t they prove their merit without COMPLAINING?

In short: stop telling me why I should care about your problems; SHOW ME WHY IT’S RELEVANT TO ME.

BE RESPONSIBLE.

PROVE THAT YOU’RE DOING YOUR BEST, and maybe I’ll feel like your cause is worth my time / effort / resources.  (But, honestly, probably not, because I work hard for my money and I’ll never warm to the idea of you begging me for a handout.)

Nonetheless, MEAN SOMETHING to me, and maybe I’ll care.

(And for fuck’s sake, Wolverine is Canadian.)

So… About Last Night…

Needless to say, I woke up feeling “normal” again on Friday, but it still took me a few more days to wrap my head around why I was so upset on Thursday.  And I think it boils down to the following:

• I cannot believe how easily I adopted a POV I normally reject as inhumanely self-centered.
• That kind of ingrained resistance to change is addictive.
• Hating everything didn’t make me feel better about myself, but the alternative didn’t make any sense either.  Thus, I was trapped in an illogical whirlpool of loathing.

All of which made me realize that liberals will never be able to convince the conservatives of the world that liberal ideas are valid because conservatives and liberals don’t even see the same reality.

If two sides can’t agree on the facts, their shared needs and the benefits of the most likely outcomes, there’s no hope for “bipartisanship,” much less a civil discussion of what we as a country (or a city) need in order to prosper (or even survive).

So, as a way to make up for the karma I likely burned during my Thursday night shitstorm, here’s my morning-after pitch on how we (usual) liberals can better bridge the gap between what we think matters and what everyone else thinks is important.

3 Ways to Keep the Haters From Dismissing Your Worthless Ideas

1.  Stop treating the arts like a helpless, valueless charity. The arts have been around for as long as we’ve been civilized.  But to hear modern arts professionals explain it, the arts will shrivel and die unless bleeding heart patrons (and our own tax dollars) can keep them on life support.

If the arts aren’t at least partially self-sufficient, no amount of hand-wringing will convince the people holding the purse strings that they’re worth supporting.

Here’s a secret: no one wants to invest in something that doesn’t believe it can survive under its own power.  People are funny; once a charity or an artist proves it can keep itself alive no matter what, we’re more inclined to support it with our own donations because it respects itself.

Begging?  Never sexy.  And if you believe that opera, theatre, live music and visual arts are sexy and life-affirming, you need to start by affirming your own will to live.

2.  Kids: Stop Talking Down to Your Parents.

Listen, I know we live in a fucked-up culture where the opinions of 14 year-olds are more highly-prized than the opinions of 65 year-olds because those 14 year-olds have access to more disposable income than the Medicare generation does.  But just because we who market products to children tell kids that we value their opinions, that doesn’t mean we really do.  At least, not beyond the ways in which their opinions can be exploited to make us rich.

If you’re under the age of 22 and you want to change the world, be my guest.  The world could use a good sprucing-up.  But you won’t get there by admonishing the adults for ignoring you, because the fact is, adults ignore everything, including their own consciences and common sense.

Revel in your youth.  Then do something.  We like to say “actions speak louder than words” because, like most cliches, this one is always true.

3.  Lead by example.

One of the best presentations of the night, even despite my hate-induced stupor, was delivered by Ellen Worthing.  It was about “bushwacking,” the art of (literally) going off the beaten path to discover something all your own.  In Worthing’s case, she detailed her frequent excursions into the bowels of Maryland, aided by her GPS unit and a suspicion that something more interesting was “out there.”  And she was usually right.

Ellen’s presentation filled the audience with admiration for her rugged individualism.  She tacked on an obligatory “follow your own path” generalism in her last slide, as a way of making her presentation about “us” instead of just her, but it was unnecessary; by showing us what she was capable of, she ignited more inspiration in her 500 listeners than anyone else did all night.

And, best of all, she didn’t ask anyone for money.

In Conclusion…

I’m sure Ignite Baltimore got a lot of people talking, which is the whole point.  (Technically, the whole point should be getting people to take action, but that’s a little too optimistic for a $5 event with a cash bar.)

And maybe the ideas people absorbed that night will get them moving.  Maybe some old cell phones will get donated to medical workers in Africa.  Maybe a few more people will pay for a night at the opera, or will venture out to an art event they might otherwise have ignored.

But if we really want to ignite Baltimore and get people moving in a positive direction, what we need are more people who lead by example and fewer people trying to guilt the public into a handout.

Because the only thing more addictive than doubting the relevance of everything is being inspired by seeing someone else exceed our own pessimistic expectations.

* If you’ve ever seen an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, you know what I’m talking about: anytime Will Smith’s friend (and real-life DJ) Jazzy Jeff says or does something inappropriate, Uncle Phil bum-rushes him out of the house, limbs flailing.

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10 years ago this month, I landed my first post-college job that didn’t involve retail.

In March of 2000, a Pittsburgh company called Multimedia Training Systems (which is still in business as I type this) was looking to hire someone who had experience with video production and animation.  As the lone graduate from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s Computer Animation & Multimedia program who also happened to take numerous video electives, I might have been the only semi-qualified applicant for the job within a 30 mile radius.

I was hired.

Although I would leave MTS five years later to forge my own way as a freelancer, the lessons I learned during that half-decade, both good and bad, have stuck with me.  Now, as our global economy has prompted everyone to reconsider what’s really important at work, some of those lessons are worth revisiting.

1.  Time management is the most important skill they never teach you in college.

Every project you ever work on will be made more complex by the byzantine communication and time management skills of everyone involved.  And since humans express themselves poorly as a rule, you’ll always need more time to fix those miscommunicated errors than you’d ever expect.

2.  Double the deadline.

If you can get something done in a week, tell the client (or your boss) it’ll be done in two.  Then strive to meet your original deadline.  That way, when something else comes up — and it always does — you’ll still be able to meet your declared deadline without feeling like you’ve been overstretched.

3. Next to cash flow, employee morale is king.

When employees enjoy their work, bond with their colleagues and feel comfortable in their workspace, they’re capable of producing amazing (or at least competent) work.  If not, distractions and resentments can make a seemingly innocuous work environment feel oppressive.

Find ways to make sure your employees are happy, healthy and engaged; everything else (besides payroll) is a byproduct of a positive workplace culture.

4.  Bonuses don’t make up for general misery (but they do help).

When business is swift, communication is clear and morale is high, bonuses are the icing on the cake of goodwill.

When business is hectic, communication is fractured and morale is unspeakably bad, bonuses are a last-ditch measure to keep the crew from jumping ship.

Either way, bonuses are appreciated — but, paradoxically, they’re appreciated more when they mean less.

5.  Organize every project as though someone else will have to finish it.

Because when someone else does have to take over one of your projects, they don’t want to spend the first half of their day decoding your labyrinthine organizational structure.

At MTS, we had a general procedure to follow for most video projects, with preferred conventions for naming files and organizing them within folders and sub-folders.  That way, even if various employees had to access the same files from different computers, there’d be no confusion as to which files belonged to which projects.

6.  Your sales and marketing team shouldn’t be doing anything else.

MTS is a small company.  I was hired as their fifth employee; they’ve never chosen to grow beyond ten full-time employees and a handful of part-time contractors.

As such, everybody works on more than just what their job description entails.  Our office manager wound up doing (and still does) everything from accounts receivable and booking employee travel to shipping packages and designing the labels for the DVDs.

But sales and marketing is the lifeblood of any company, and when our marketing VP was spending the bulk of his time filming video, that meant no one else was focusing on selling and marketing the very products we were producing.  Was it necessary at the time?  Sure.  But in hindsight, if there was one office I wouldn’t want to distract from its core duties, it would be the people responsible for making sure someone wanted to pay us.

7.  Backup clearly and constantly.

When an MTS project was completed, we’d back off all related files — finished video, audio, graphics, documents, etc. — on DVD.  We’d also keep a tape backup of each finished video, in case the DVDs got scratched (or in case someone needed a tape-to-tape transfer ASAP).

But while we were producing videos, we’d save our projects relentlessly.  Our office was in a borough that was notorious for power outages due to thunderstorms, and it only took a new employee one fried project to learn the lesson of paranoid auto-saving.  (Bonus points if you saved multiple versions of a file at once, just in case one of them became corrupted.)

8.  Meetings only matter if someone’s listening.

Every once in awhile, upper management at MTS would have an executive meeting, and the outcome would almost always be the same: someone would want to change the way we did something, and someone else would explain why we couldn’t.

Maybe it was money, or time, or equipment, logic or politics.  Whatever the case, change happened at a glacial pace at MTS, in part because the people responsible for making and implementing the changes were the very same people who were already stretched too thin by maintaining the status quo.  There was rarely any room to implement new procedures on a trial basis because, honestly, who had time for trial and error when the next deadline was a heartbeat away?

The solution?  If anybody did want to make the case for a new way of doing things, they had to implement that change on their own, privately, and then present their own results as proof that their idea could be adopted successfully.  Either that, or proposals would have to be made that no one else could reject — and that approach always leaves somebody feeling marginalized.

9.  Upgrading equipment isn’t always the wisest expenditure.

Nerds will always geek out over new toys, and bosses will always ask the age-old question:

“Do we need this?”

Bosses aren’t necessarily hoping you’ll say “no,” because bosses are usually more worried about what something’s capable of than what it costs.  But they’re not interested in tech specs; they’re interested in how this $4,000 investment can net them $20,000 in business.

If you made every decision about new expenditures the same way a small, hungry company has to consider those same decisions, you’d buy only the new toys that your clients need you to have in order to fulfill their desires.  And you’d keep a lot of vintage equipment alive much longer than it has any reason to exist, simply because you can.

10.  Your clients are always people first and revenue streams second.

MTS had a habit of bending over backwards for its clients — sometimes admirably, and sometimes unnecessarily.  But because the field we specialized in — safety training for the steel industry — was such a close-knit niche, it was in MTS’s best interests to monopolize the medium because losing our foothold could have resulted in a domino effect of dropped accounts.

Instead, MTS developed a reputation for going above and beyond the call of duty.  And while that might have cost us money (and sanity) in the short run, it also created business relationships that remained fruitful even when the steel industry was reeling from consolidation and global downsizing.

I doubt that would have happened if we were simply seen as a line item on someone’s budget — or if everybody else was just a line item on ours.

Seeing the World Through Blue-Collared Glasses

Like anyone at any job, I had my ups and downs at MTS.  But I also had the opportunity to see things, go places and meet people that I never would have thought to notice otherwise: real, hard-working, down-to-earth and kind-hearted people, whose fortunes were tied to a once-vital industry that everybody believes is now past its prime.

And as a native Pennsylvanian in a globalized world, that kind of underdog, blue-collar mentality is an asset I’d never trade.

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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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… because if I talk about social media for five days a week, I’ll have to start drinking.

Hark, a Meme

As much as I advocate creating content that matters, I also appreciate the genuinely absurd and escapist.

And the Internet is nothing if not absurd and escapist.

Especially Tumblr.

Perhaps the perfect example of the way the Internet works can be summed up with one Tumblr blog in particular:

Selleck Waterfall Sandwich.

It is what it says: a series of images in which actor Tom Selleck, a waterfall and a sandwich are Photoshopped together.

Why?  Who cares; it just is.

And, like anything worth talking about on the web, it became immediately polarizing: some people (like these commenters) think it’s a horrifying waste of time and effort.  Others find it vaguely amusing, whimsically postmodern or generally harmless.  And some people just can’t enjoy a good meme without overanalyzing what the whole thing means.

Me, I love it for two reasons: its stark lack of context is refreshingly liberating, and its formulaic simplicity seems like it was purposely designed to engender crowdsourced knock-offs.

Like Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza.

Honestly, I have no idea whether BAMP is an homage to SWS or if BAMP and SWS were created by the same person.  Its provenance is almost beside the point; either way, the existence of a derivative validates Selleck Waterfall Sandwich as a meme-worthy concept:

Celebrity.  Location.  Food.

Which prompted me, almost entirely by accident, to co-create Tony Danza Space Pretzel.

See, two of my “real-life” friends — Tom (AKA Locobone) and Maya — knew about Selleck Waterfall Sandwich before I did.  So when I stumbled across Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza, I emailed them a link because I knew they’d appreciate it.

I also included a rhetorical question: “Is TonyDanzaSpacePizza taken?”

A few hours later, I return to my email to discover that each of them had, independently and without provocation, created a Tony Danza Space Pretzel image as a joke and mailed them back to me.

Taking this as a sign, I launched our Tumblr blog and the rest is (extremely recent) history.  (Like, yesterday.)

Does it matter?  Of course not.

And boy, is that a welcome change of pace.

If you’d like to create your own Tony Danza Space Pretzel image, feel free.  Spread the word.  Email your images to us and, if we like them, maybe we’ll add them to the blog.

No guarantees, no pressure.  Just a creative outlet, borne from someone else’s unintentional (?) stroke of minimalist postmodern genius.

Thank you, Internet.

There was a small tsunami on Twitter yesterday that had nothing to do with Chilean earthquakes and everything to do with Chris Brogan’s wallet.  In a nutshell, Brogan stated (somewhat quietly) that he charges $22,000 for a day of his time, and THE INTERNET EXPLODED IN A BALL OF SPITE.

Responses from the Twitterverse ranged from awe to derision.

Some people were mystified that one man could charge so much for what they consider to be so little work.  Others immediately began scheming to calculate how they could escalate their own rates into the $20K per day range, because if there’s one thing social media loves, it’s imitation.

Personally, I see the public’s collective recoil as proof that no one truly believes anybody can make money online without first selling their soul to an affiliate program.  Any evidence to the contrary simply blows our synapses.

But lost in this mix of sticker shock and vitriol were some key truths, which Chris touched on in a follow-up blog post, including:

• Chris doesn’t always work for a full day, so he doesn’t always bill for a full day.
• Chris gives away huge amounts of his own knowledge for free on a daily basis.
• Chris purposely prices himself in a range that discourages half-assed clients.

In short, Chris doesn’t always expect to make $22,000 a day, but he certainly doesn’t turn it down either.

And why should he?

Chris knows a thing or two about the Internet.  He speaks and writes in a manner that people enjoy.  And he brings a unique mix of personality, experience and analysis to the table, which enables him to price his services as a luxury rather than a commodity.

If a company were to pay Chris $22K, and then they turned around and invested his insights to the tune of $22M in profit, we’d all agree that the company had made a shrewd investment.

So why are we so aghast at the fact that these numbers exist?

Because none of us thought they were plausible — at least, not for us.

Fear and Loathing in Social Media

Let’s face it: you have no idea what you actually know about social media, and you certainly don’t know if you know more than the next girl.  The only thing you’re sure of is that you know something, and you never really know what that something is actually worth.

Then Chris Brogan comes along and tells you what he believes he’s worth, and you panic because you never would have assigned that kind of value to yourself.

Why not?

Probably because you don’t believe your insights are worth $22,000 to anybody, much less for a single day of your time.  Hell, you barely have any practical social media (or marketing, or business) experience to begin with.  You have 400 Twitter followers and you wet yourself every time you get retweeted; $22,000 is like space money in your world.

So here’s a tip: stop hating Chris, stop hating yourself, and stop hating the newly-distinguished class separation between you.  It is what it is, and resenting the successes of others sure as hell doesn’t vindicate your own lack thereof.

Yes, when it comes to the group hug that is social media, we’re “all in this together.”   But some of us are waaaaaaaaaay more “in this” than others.  Some of us really are worth a few hundred dollars a day, or a few thousand, or a day rate that far exceeds whatever you spent on your five years (and counting) of community college.  So relax.

But this doesn’t mean that you’re worth nothing, either.

So how do you find the happy medium?

Here are 6 tips to help you stomach the reality of determining your own self-worth.

1.  Admit what you do and don’t actually know.

This is the hardest part because human beings are horrible at honest self-evaluations.  But, what the hell: try.

Sure, you don’t know everything about social media (or whatever field you’re in), but you do know something.  Identify your areas of expertise.  Are you strong on the social side but weak on the tech?  Can you manage an existing strategy but not implement one from scratch?  Are you a LinkedIn wizard and a Facebook rube?

Summarize your strengths and weaknesses.  That way, when someone asks, “So, what do you have to offer?” you’ll have an answer that doesn’t involve lies, borrowed anecdotes and desperate obfuscations.

2.  How much experience do you have… and with whom?

If you just started tweeting yesterday, your insights are not worth $22, much less $22,000.  We’re all in competition with each other, and since our competing knowledge is always The Great Unknown, our work experience becomes a concrete qualifier that separates the know-hows from the guess-hows.

Who have you worked with?  What did you do for them?  How successful were you?  What did you learn in the process?

What proof of your ability to make someone else’s business more profitable and efficient can you provide?

(Hint: If you’re stretching the truth to answer this question, cut your rates in half and remove the word “thought leader” from your Twitter bio.)

3.  How hard are you willing to work?

You may not have astounding insights or jaw-dropping work experience, but there’s one intangible that can’t be ignored: you’ll work your ass off in order to get the job done.  Any job.  Multiple jobs, if necessary.  You’re dedicated to success and you’ll work day and night to achieve the desired results.

When you put it like that, I can see why your rates may be higher than your contemporaries: because your clients know they can rely on you.  Or take advantage of you.  Or both.  But however it shakes out, you’ll know you did your best — and you’ll charge for it.

4.  How hard do you want to work?

We could all be busting our asses for 60 hours a week and changing the world left and right, but life is short and we’re tired, selfish, American Idol-addicted individuals.  We’re fragile; we need breaks.

So we price ourselves higher than we need to because we want to work less than we have to.

Chris Brogan doesn’t want to work 60 hour weeks.  At his rates, he doesn’t need to; he just needs 2 or 3 clients a month to meet him halfway and he’d be living quite comfortably.

5.  Price yourself into the ballpark of the clientele you can best serve.

Chris Brogan’s rates mean his clients are self-selecting.  He doesn’t want to spin his wheels with companies who aren’t capable of asking $22,000 questions, because he can’t provide those companies with the kinds of answers that will send his CV into the stratosphere.

But there’s a catch: at those rates, people expect results.  They’re hiring a miracle worker, or renting time with an exotic shaman.  If you can’t provide the kinds of insights that make your client’s competitors envious of your relationship, you have no business pricing yourself in that range.

All the same, if you price yourself too low, no one will hire you.  People pay for the illusion of success, and if your rates say “will work for food,” you’ll starve to death.  It’s fine to work for charity, but don’t price yourself like one or you’ll need their help to feed your family.

6.  Everything you do is worth something; charge accordingly.

Stepping away from Chris Brogan for a moment, there’s another social media guru you can compare your rates to: Mack Collier.

Here’s a guy who unabashedly lists his price range for a wide array of services, from original content creation to audits of your existing social media strategy.  Notice that his prices truly are a range, in both his actual rates and in the type of work he does.  No matter what kinds of client Mack attracts, he offers “something for everyone” — which means he’s also likely to remain consistently employed.

What types of services can you offer?  Can those services be bundled?  Is there a sliding scale based on time constraints and degree of difficulty?

Even the priciest retailers have a bargain bin, because they don’t want anyone to leave without buying something.

A Final Word on Not Crying Yourself to Sleep in the Corner

No, you’re not Chris Brogan.  Nor are you a person who earns even more than Chris Brogan does.  (Yes, they’re out there, and if you knew what they charged, your bladder would never recover.)

Valuing yourself according to other people’s self-estimations is the easiest way to drive yourself crazy.  But valuing yourself according to your own self-estimation is the easiest way to go hungry, because you never truly understand what your assets are actually worth to the people who don’t know what you know.

You wouldn’t pay somebody $5 to change your oil because you know how to do it yourself; I don’t, so I’m willing to pay $30 if it gets done fast and well.

Is your knowledge worth $30 to someone who doesn’t know what you know?

Is it worth $300?  $3,000?  $30,000?

The sky’s the limit, as long as you bring your own plane.

But if someone ends up paying you $30,000 to do nothing, they’re going to have to pay Chris Brogan a hell of a lot more than $30,000 to fix it — and then we’ll really start feeling some sticker shock.

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Last year, I mentioned five “mistakes” I was making in my use of social media.  Astute readers noticed I was being somewhat sarcastic, since I normally adhere to the adage that there’s no such thing as “doing it wrong” (unless you’re doing this sort of thing).

But there is such a thing as “doing it well,” and if certain tools or tasks don’t immediately make my life easier or improve the quality of my workflow, I’m reluctant to adopt them.  This confuses the people who believe you need to be everywhere in order to be “taken seriously.”

As someone who’s only taken seriously by accident, I rarely have that problem.

But I do have other problems.  And sometimes, I really do make mistakes in social media.  So, with a bit less sarcasm than you might otherwise expect, here are…

5 Recent Mistakes I’ve Made in Social Media (and How I Fixed Them)

1.  Reach Out and Touch Me… Somewhere.

Despite operating this site regularly since July 2009, it wasn’t until last week when a confused Twitter acquaintance asked me how she could email me directly that I realized I had never included my contact info on my homepage. (Yes, sure, it was on my Contact page, where I presumed most people would look.  But as aggravated as I get when I can’t easily find someone’s email on their homepage, it never dawned on me that I’d committed the same sin.)

Whoops.

Now, if you’re reading this post on my homepage, you’ll notice a quartet of “Contact Me” icons atop the righthand sidebar.  Let’s not repeat that confusion again, shall we?…

2.  Confusing Conversation with Growth

I love to talk.  Those who’ve seen me (or who’ve witnessed the verbosity of my tweets) know I’m a hard man to quiet once my neurons start firing.

But conversing for the sake of conversing isn’t necessarily growing.  Expanding my awareness requires exposure to new stimuli.  Expanding other people’s awareness of my brand / abilities / reliably sardonic wit requires an increase in the quantity and quality of the places where I can be found.

By limiting my Twitter interactions to a smaller sampling group than many of my peers, I may have maintained a useful (to me) level of conversation, but I’m still missing out on a wide array of insights and opportunities.

To fix that, I’ve started…

3.  Making Use of Twitter Lists for Something More Than Blog Post Fodder

When I was “only” following 700-ish Twitter users, I was able to keep a handle on what I considered to be “important” or “relevant” information.  I knew I was still missing large chunks, but I doubted I could keep up with many more input streams, and I’ve never enjoyed the functionality of “better” Twitter management tools like TweetDeck.  (I still use Twitter’s web interface; how’s that for retro?)

But as I’ve begun to expand the number of people I’m following, I’m doing so with a safety valve in place: if I ever feel like I’m missing too many “important” updates again, I can just subdivide my sources into various lists.  That way, I can keep up with the people I want to stay in touch with, while giving the new (to me) conversants the benefit of the doubt.

And if the whole thing turns out to be a headache?  I’ll just shrink my following back to a more manageable number.  Like our own attention spans, Twitter is indiscriminately fluid.

4.  Who… Am I?

Have you ever signed up to test-drive a service using your personal email account as the login, only to realize you should have done so using your business email?  I have.  Repeatedly.  And while some services allow you to change the email account associated with that profile, others don’t — which means I’m locked into several instances of overlapping accounts and muddy workflows.

I have yet to find a simple solution for this, so if anyone has any suggestions, be my guest.

5.  Your Nubile Temptations No Longer Excite Me

I do a lot of the same tasks, in the same exact way, day after day after day.  If a system works, I stick with it because doing so saves me time and hassle.  Test-driving new tools and techniques is at the bottom of my to-do list, and if you’ve seen my to-do list, you know the bottom of it is subterranean.

It’s not that I don’t have options.  Mashable spotlights more seemingly-useful services in one day than I could reasonably evaluate in a month.  Instead of cherry-picking the ones I might actually benefit from employing, I tend to ignore them all until other, more eager dabblers have sussed out the winners from the also-rans.

And yet… how can I stay ahead of the curve if I don’t even keep the curve in sight?

So I’m tweaking my workflow.  Not in terms of adding new services to test, because I still don’t have time for that.  Rather, in terms of finding more time in my day.  And once I get that squared away, I’ll be happy to squeeze the occasional beta test into my otherwise breathless 24 hours.

But I still probably won’t use Facebook.

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If you work in social media, you probably spend most of your time talking about theory, strategy and process.  That’s because it’s easy to talk about social media; it’s a lot harder to take action, and it’s even more difficult to take successful actions.

Why?

Because social media is a field rife with minor victories and few long-term successes.

Don’t Confuse Victory with Success

Let’s say you’re a videoblogger who’s posted dozens of webisodes to YouTube.  On average, your videos garner a few hundred views.  Then, one day, one of your videos skyrockets to 50,000 views.

Does that make you a web video expert?

No.  It means you got lucky.

In fact, you probably have no idea why that video became so popular.  It could have been…

• The title
• The description
• The thumbnail image
• A keyword within the title or description
• A suddenly-relevant tag
• Getting mentioned by a powerful influencer
• Cross-posting to a highly-trafficked blog
• A complete and total accident

If you don’t know why it happened, all you can do is guess.  And if your next video is back to a few hundred views, you guessed wrong.  You may have one victory under your belt, but you don’t yet have a winning system.

Victory means something worked.  Success means your system works.

6 Tips for Building a Winning System

Set a goal. I repeat this often because I firmly believe it.  Actions without reasons can’t possibly be measured accurately, mistakes made without context can’t be learned from, and any progress you make is arbitrary because you never know which direction you’re supposed to be pointed in.

Yes, exploration and experimentation are important, but they still need a course to deviate from.

Hold yourself accountable. No matter what goes wrong, it’s your fault.  You could always have planned better, or done better research, or explained yourself more clearly.  You could have hired the right people, managed them properly, trusted your gut or taken that risk.  This isn’t about second-guessing; it’s about realizing that you’ll never succeed if you expect somebody else to carry you.

Measure everything (then analyze). Know what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, how and with whom.  Know what the results are.  Know how those results change when your variables change.  The more you understand about the actions being taken and the impact they’re having, the better prepared you’ll be to maximize, troubleshoot and innovate.

Study the competition. Who are your competitors?  What’s your shared measure of success?  What percentage of that success does each competitor “own”?  What are they doing differently, and how are those actions benefiting or backfiring against their bottom line?  You can’t lose sleep over your competition, but you can’t ignore them (or the lessons their actions can provide) either.

Make incremental changes. The system you’re using now isn’t perfect, and it never will be.  But that’s okay.  Don’t throw it out; tinker with it.  Tweak the elements that need tweaking.  Add new tools when necessary, and retire old methods when they’re no longer effective.

Times change, people change, competition changes.  Your system needs to change, too… just not all at once.

(Interested in seeing how some social media successes define their systems?  Check out what John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing does on a daily basis, or how Chris Brogan assigns differing values to the five kinds of media he produces.)

A Word About Failure

If you think momentary victories are frustrating, try failing gracefully after a string of successes.

Success is always temporary.  As soon as you think you have the system figured out, something changes — your personnel, your competition, your resources, your priorities.  One day you wake up and you just don’t give a damn.  Or, worse, you do still give a damn… but you just can’t execute.

Entropy happens.  Dynasties crumble.  The best teams still lose games, the best armies still lose wars and the best companies still get outfoxed by younger, hungrier competitors.

This is a good thing.

Old methods and ideas deserve to be challenged and surpassed by newer, better alternatives.  If these things didn’t happen, we’d be trapped by the worst success of all: the unimprovable kind.  And knowing there’s an infallible system is even more depressing than never winning once.

Winning forever isn’t a realistic goal.  But winning more often than once?

That, you can do.

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Let’s say it’s snowing, and you want to clear a path from your door to the street.  You have a few options.  If it’s just a dusting, you might sweep it all away with a broom.  If it’s a heavier snow, you might need a shovel.  And if it’s a blizzard, you may need to borrow your neighbor’s snowblower.

What you wouldn’t do is use every tool in your garage, plus whatever you can find in your neighbor’s house, plus the services of a professional snow removal agency.  That’s overkill, and it’s a waste of your time, money and effort.

So why do so many people do the same thing with social media?

Because they don’t have a goal.

Hammering in the Dark: Social Media Without the Strategy

Twitter is a tool.  Facebook is a tool.  YouTube, Flickr, Gatsby, Buzz… the list gets longer every day.

Like any tools, these social media services only make sense when they’re used to accomplish a specific goal.  So before you start building profiles on a dozen different social media sites, ask yourself:

Why am I doing this?

Why are you about to expend your own time, effort and resources (much less someone else’s) mastering the use of a handful of web services?

This isn’t a trick question; it’s a necessity.  And everyone’s answer will be different.

For example, your goal might be…

• Selling your work
• Marketing your services
• Finding a full-time job
• Networking with your peers
• Researching new initiatives
• Raising awareness of your brand
• Asserting your individual personality
• Learning how the tools themselves work

Like the tools in any toolbox, social media tools only become relevant when they’re applied to the tasks that help us achieve our goals.  Until then, you’re just hammering in the dark.

Great, I Have a Goal… Now What?

Once you articulate your goal, you can decide what steps are necessary to accomplish it.  And once you know the steps, you can choose the right tools for each job.

Your choice of tools will depend on your circumstances.  For example:

• How would your use of Twitter change if your goal was sales, not brand-building?
• Would a strict focus on networking change the kinds of photos you upload to Flickr?
• If you’re actively seeking freelance work, is your time better spent on YouTube or Facebook?

Again, there’s no “right” answer, just better and worse answers.  Your time is precious, and the less time you spend spinning your wheels aimlessly, the more time you can invest in actions that matter.

You can always make a smoothie with a hammer, but it’s going to take awhile.

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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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