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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There’s a gentleman’s agreement in social media that needs to be debunked.

We’re always supposed to judge ourselves by the quality of the conversations we have, rather than the sheer volume of our reach.

Even Gary Vee, who has more Twitter followers than anyone else who’s not “mainstream famous,” preached quality over quantity at #140conf last month.  He believes the number of Direct Messages a person sends on Twitter — thereby implying a true 1-to-1 connection — is a more accurate arbiter of a person’s influence and power than how many generic followers that person blasts with her impersonal messaging.

What Gary wants to know is, how many people are you making time for?

But it’s easy for Gary Vee to say that numbers don’t matter; he already has them.

You don’t.  (Not like Gary does.)

But you want them.

And that’s okay.

Here’s why.

In Our Minds, We’re All Lady Gaga with a Slightly Smaller Wardrobe

First, let’s establish one truth: everybody wants to be heard.*

If we didn’t want to be heard, we’d never open our mouths.  The act of engaging in social media — whether you’re a pro, an amateur or someone who simply tweets to your five actual flesh-and-blood friends — is the act of declaring that what you have to say is worth being heard by someone.

From there, the only place to go is up.

And while it’s true that numbers alone are meaningless, numbers are never alone.  Numbers are indicators.  And in terms of audience, numbers are indicators of your potential.

Dan Zarrella created a graph he calls Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness, which says that in order for a message to be successful, it must be:

1. Noticed
2. Considered interesting, and
3. Acted upon

Obviously, far more messages are noticed than acted upon.  To improve your chances of success, you want to maximize each contact point on Zarrella’s graph — and that starts with maximizing the number of people exposed to your message.

Take iJustine.  She’s followed by over 1 million people on Twitter.  That doesn’t mean everything she tweets is noticed by all 1 million people, but it does mean that what she tweets is, by definition, noticed by more people than what you tweet.

Does that mean iJustine is more important than you are?  No.  It just means she has the potential to be more influential than you do.

But that has more to do with who’s following her, or following you — and why.

It’s Not How Big Your Audience Is, It’s How You Use… er, Inspire It

Let’s say you have a message you believe is worth sharing.  So you broadcast it.

If no one notices your message, you lose.

On the other hand, if everyone notices your message but no one cares… you still lose.

The question is: how likely are people to be interested in what you’re saying and act on it?

That likelihood depends on numerous variables, including:

• What are you saying?
• How are you saying it?
• How reputable are you?
• How difficult is the action you’ve requested?
• What’s the payoff for the person taking the action?
• What’s the payoff for you?

The world would be far more profoundly impacted by three scientists listening to your advice and solving a disease than it would be by all one million of iJustine’s followers donating a dollar to the cause of her choice.

But you probably don’t know three scientists, nor are you likely to provide them with actionable data and convince them to make use of it.

On the other hand, iJustine can direct her thousands of followers to take any number of mundane actions.  And if the composite effect of those mundane actions amounts to something noteworthy, it simultaneously elevates her own public perception as an influencer — which, in turn, extends her reach via expanded awareness.

Thus, although the volume of your reach actually is less important than the quality of your reach, the quality of your reach is dependent on the nature of circumstances.  Yes, your three scientist friends may be able to cure cancer, but they might not be able to help you land a job.  Your million connections, on the other hand, just might.

In which case… why are we all so quick to denounce our desire to amass a large audience?

Everybody’s Jealous of a Size Queen

The bigger a person’s audience becomes, the more likely they are to become demonized.  Not because of what they actually say (or don’t say), but simply because they get noticed.

Getting noticed is the first step toward getting what you want.  And when someone else is getting noticed, it usually means you’re not.

The truth is, you don’t actually envy Chris Brogan, Gary Vee or iJustine because they’re popular; you envy them because the size of the audience they’ve amassed provides them with better odds of achieving their goals than yours does.

And while I’m sure Gary would be every bit as helpful, engaging and invested if he “only” had 10,000 (or even 100) passionate fans of his work, I’m also quite sure that if he “only” had 100 fans, he would want more.

Badly.

Because it’s who we are.

We talk because we want to be talked about.

But why?

That’s your own question to answer.

Maybe you want to make a living doing what you love.

Maybe you want to help others.

Maybe you want to meet interesting people, or go interesting places.

Maybe you just want to know that someone thinks you’re interesting.

With larger audiences comes more potential for interaction.  By default, Chris Brogan knows more interesting people than you do, simply because he knows more people than you do.

Ultimately, the size of your audience is important, but it doesn’t matter; what matters is what you want to do.

And the more people you have paying attention to you, the greater your chances of accomplishing your goal.

So: you want to be successful?  Meet more people.

(And then spend at least some of your time listening to them; you might learn something.)

*NOTE:  Maybe “heard” is the wrong word for you.  Maybe it’s “listened to.”  Maybe it’s “influential.”  Maybe it’s “admired,” “respected” or “appreciated.”  Regardless of your specific motive, any action that can be taken by the masses is an action most of us would like to evoke in as many people as possible, until we grow tired of the response.

And if having too much exposure is a problem… let’s cross that bridge when you get there.

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A few years back, I read a story that’s stuck with with me ever since.

It was in one of the many “how to write better” resources (possibly The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, although that one’s still worth recommending regardless).  In it, the author reminisced about something one of her university professors asked the class, which was:

“Are you waiting until your grandparents die before you write what you really want to say?”

It’s the kernel of truth in that statement that’s stayed with me — mainly because I can identify with it.

If you’re like me, your grandparents (and other family) have always taken a keen but passing interest in what you do for a living.  And as much as you enjoy their support, you’d also be mortified if they knew what you really thought about anything.

So you auto-censor yourself.

Not just in terms of language or sentiment, but even your choices of topics and your stated beliefs.

You’d rather be interesting than honest.

The thought of your dear sweet grandmother suddenly discovering that you’re really a left-wing atheist who digs bondage (or whatever your personality may actually happen to be) is so debilitating, you’d prefer to table your truest beliefs and most darkly-held secrets until everyone who could possibly be embarrassed about your choices is safely dead.

Social media is a lot like that.  Except here, everybody’s your grandmother, and you only feel comfortable offending them when you’re popular.

“If I were Seth Godin, I could say that…”

“If I were Chris Brogan, I could get away with that…”

“If I were iJustine, I could act like that…”

But you’ll never be any of them, because you’re you.

Bummer.

And so you type out your life of quiet desperation, waiting for all of your grandmothers to die — or to suddenly become exceedingly popular and, therefore, insulated from the arrows of ridicule and disagreement.

But here’s the funny part: Seth, Chris, Justine, etc., are still who they’ve always been.

What they know may have changed over time.  Who they have access to has obviously expanded.  And what they believe about the world may have evolved in conjunction with their own experiences.

But Seth didn’t become a marketing genius after he was popular; he’s always known what he’s talking about (unless you disagree with him, in which case, he’s always been a liar).

Chris didn’t become a nice guy who enjoys connecting people after he met a bunch of people; he met a bunch of people because he likes connecting them.

And Justine was a quirky exhibitionist long before the whole Internet was watching.*

The problem is not that you don’t yet have the clout to say what you really mean, or that you’re afraid of offending those who think better of you.

It’s that you have no idea what you really believe, or what you have to say.

Because if you did, you’d be speaking, acting and living the same way the idealized version of you would be doing.

So what’s stopping you?

At the risk of sounding self help-ish, here’s a fact: popularity — and grandmothers — come and go, but there’s only one you.  Matter to someone, and you’ll end up mattering to everyone.

* Disclosure: I’ve known Chris and Justine since before they became who you think they are now, so I can vouch for their public evolution.  I have yet to meet Seth in person, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.  However, if I’m wrong and he really did get smart after he became more popular, I owe somebody a Coke.

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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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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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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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Ever since Comcast “changed the game” of online customer service, companies have been scouring Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the web, eager to ferret out bad customer experiences and turn those consumerist frowns upside down.

But why?

Not that good customer service shouldn’t be the cornerstone of every company’s philosophy.  (Try building your business without it and see how far you go.)  But why does a pithy rant on Twitter send CSR reps scrambling, while a well-reasoned complaint from a phone-in customer barely causes a ripple?

One word: perception.

If a Minimum Wage Employee Ignores You in the Middle of an Outlet Mall, Does Your Blog Make a Sound?

When Chris Brogan had a miserable time buying a pair of shoes, he made his experience public.  I’m sure part of his goal was to draw attention to just how lousy most retail customer service is, and to foster a dialogue intended to weed out some of those problems.  But, like any human being, he was also pissed about having his time wasted by uncaring salesclerks and poor management, and he simply wanted to vent.

And when people like Brogan (or Jeff Jarvis) have a lousy time at the market, the market notices.  Why?  Because a complaint from Brogan or Jarvis is the equivalent of a complaint from TV Guide or Entertainment Weekly.  Different medium, same (relative) circulation, and same capacity to (theoretically) create a PR headache for whoever those companies actually do pay to care.

The problem?  Companies who don’t understand the Internet also don’t understand that you aren’t Chris Brogan.  When you complain about a company’s endless hold time on Twitter, that tweet looks the same to their PR intern as when Michael Arrington complains about the exact same thing.  And while each of your concerns may be equally meritorious, in the real world, Arrington’s would be taken seriously because he’s Newsweek while yours would be ignored because you’re Vintage Doilies Quarterly.  But online, you all look the same, and that means everything is worth panicking over.

Which leads to the next problem: fear.

Online, Everyone’s an Axe Murderer

In April, I went to Seattle and Portland on vacation.  While I was there, I met a friend I’d known on Twitter but whom I’d never actually met in person.  When I mentioned this to my parents during my recap of the trip, they were aghast.  My dad actually said: “And you’re not worried that this person’s an axe murderer?”

Nope.  But that’s because I’m either incredibly naive or incredibly capable of understanding how the Internet works.  I pride myself on being able to tell the humans from the bots, the heroes from the douchebags and the axe murderers from the people I can trust enough to meet over brunch.

Part of corporate culture’s overreaction to web complaints stem from the related myth that everything online has the capacity to destroy you.  Just like the Baby Boomer generation has an illogical (in the eyes of their kids) fear of oversharing online, the businesses built by these mindsets are suddenly alarmed by the idea that one word from an online bogeyman can detonate their life’s work, so they take the pre-emptive step of treating every public complaint like it’s being delivered by a horde of barbarians, eager to rape and pillage.

Wrong.

People have had negative customer experiences for centuries, and they’ve been talking about those experiences with anybody who’s willing to listen.  If the frustrations experienced by my own friends and family haven’t caused me to completely write off the possibility of doing business with those same retailers or service providers, why would a rant from a complete stranger have more of an impact on my decision-making process?

Sure, we can see more customer complaints online.  But those are the same complaints people were already having in the first place.  That companies (and fellow consumers) can now tabulate them in no way makes them more (or less) valid than they were when we couldn’t.  It’s the merit of the complaint that matters, not the medium used to express it.

But from the way we whinge all over the tubes, you’d never know it.

140 Characters of Hate Does Not Entitle You to a Pony

Consumers of the world, listen up: complaining on Twitter is not an invitation for the company to hear you, much less care about your plight.  Everyone with a keyboard has the capacity to flail for attention, and most of us do.  And while your aggravations may be real, typing them “out here, where everyone can see just how badly I was treated” doesn’t make you a martyr.  It makes you whining attention whore.  (Especially when you type about those petty transgressions IN ALL CAPS.)

If you stood outside Nokia’s corporate headquarters screaming “the interface on my new phone sucks!” they wouldn’t take that as an invitation to walk outside and teach you how to use your new phone; they’d see it as a reason to call security.  So why should you bitching about them on Twitter be seen any differently?

There’s a difference between constructive criticism and self-centered complaining.  It’s easy to write off the latter as the product of an entitled society, but it’s difficult to ignore the kind of criticism that seeks to address and improve a perceived problem.  And yet valid criticism also requires thoughtful analysis on the part of the customer, who’s usually only invested enough of themselves in the experience to say: “This sucks.  Fix it.”

And they may be right.

But they were right before Twitter, and they’ll be right after we’re all bitching telepathically.

So can we all just calm down?

When Twitter rolled out list functionality this month, the predictable happened:

• The early adopters experimented with their shiny new toy.
• The users who didn’t initially have access to it ached and pouted.
• Mashable wrote a how-to guide.
• The easily-distracted got bored.

But since technology only stays in the headlines when it’s new, polarizing or from Apple, something had to stoke the flames, and that something turned out to be a polarizing post from Chris Brogan.

In it, Chris argues that lists are just another form of exclusion — that by adding Person X to my list but not Person Y, I’m inferring that Person Y is less interesting or less valuable than Person X, and that’s mean.  And since social media is primarily the domain of easily wounded narcissists, excluding them can’t possibly be good for the team.  Fellow gurus like Mack Collier concurred.

This argument was then eviscerated with pulse-pounding fervor by Robert Scoble, who — armed with a litany of narrative tricks that make his post read like a gradeschool taunting — made Chris look like a girly-man for wanting everyone to feel loved.  In Scoble’s world, people are judged by their merit; simply wanting to be included is not enough to get you invited to his party.

And since this contentious issue’s SEO juice had now been percolated, hundreds of comments and companion posts popped up from people with equally valid opinions.

None of which is the actual point.

Nor is the actual point this, though it bears explaining: Twitter lists are a tool which, like Twitter itself, can be used any damn way you please.  You want to make a list of Thought Leaders?  Be my guest.  If I’m not on it, I’ll survive.  I’m not you, and I don’t use Twitter the same way you do, so I can’t judge the way you use it.  (Except for those times when I do.)  I may disagree with you, but I grant you the freedom to be horribly wrong.

No, the actual point is that social media misunderstands itself.

Why We Can’t All Just Get Along

This most recent debate over merit vs. popularity was born from Chris’s concern that some very talented but underrated bloggers and social media innovators will be left off other people’s Twitter lists, and that — like a teen, whose suddenly obvious unpopularity fuels her weekly trips to Hot Topic — this exclusion would somehow discourage them from participating further.  This concern is similar to the conclusion of The Incredibles, in which young Dash is urged by his father to “come in second” so as to not crush the hopes and dreams of his fellow racers — who, because they’re trying so hard, are equally deserving of success.  Chris’s argument presumes that failure is a catalyst for giving up, and that runaway success is to be avoided at all costs so as to not demoralize one’s peers.

But Chris and Scoble’s debate wouldn’t be as contentious as it is if he and Scoble weren’t as popular as they are.  Ironically, the very merit bestowed upon Chris by thousands of discerning readers who’ve judged him “worthy” over the years has provided him with the immense platform from which he can now summarily declare that all tweets are created equal.

Except they’re not.

Social Media Is Functionally Unable to Be a Meritocracy

As much as everyone in social media claims they’d like their work to be judged on its actual merit, the metrics we use to measure that merit — followers, readers, page views, reach — are really measurements of popularity.  Our system of separating the worthy (Brogan, Scoble) from the non (everyone who’s writing about Brogan and Scoble) isn’t based on the relative value of the worthy people’s statements, but on the likelihood that those statements will be read, considered and adopted by the fishbowl at large.

What’s ironic is that Twitter lists represent a departure from that norm, in which users are free to form lists based on their own criteria, rather than the obvious power numbers.  And just like everyone has different favorites on YouTube, Flickr or Digg, everyone who builds his own Twitter lists will have different criteria to help determine who he thinks is “worthy” of inclusion.  In turn, this increased exposure may help those underrated and undervalued gems that Chris was originally concerned about slowly gain the type of exposure that passes for validation in this fishbowl, thanks to increased awareness by the people who are searching for just such an underdog.

Social media is a lot of things, but thick-skinned isn’t one of them.  It’s a medium of instant validation (or lack thereof), and seeing others succeed while you continue to tread water can be disheartening in real time.  But there’s a converse to that mentality: if the next guy has more blog subscribers than you do, consider it a benchmark to aspire to, rather than a reason to quit.  (Or realize that you’re each trafficking in different audiences, and be content to grow yours organically.)

We may not all be equal, but we’re all individuals.  And that realization will carry us much farther as a whole than any insistence that we all be invited to the same party.

Lately, several websites have scraped my blog posts and repurposed my content as their own.  I know I’m not the only person whose blog is being plagiarized in this way.  But I wonder if authors like Chris Brogan, John Moore and Tim Ferriss realize it’s happening to them, too.

Say Hello to Joel Goldstein, Marketing Douchebag

Last week, Chris Brogan wrote The Audacity of Free, a blog post about the flaws in a “freemium” pricing system.  But if you went to Joel Goldstein’s website, you’d think Joel himself wrote that article.  That’s because he scrapes and reposts other people’s blog content as his own.  (In Joel’s defense, this particular post includes the disclaimer “Posts are pulled via RSS feed from writer’s blog.”  But since the name or website of the actual writer isn’t included, logic would lead a visitor to believe the “writer’s blog” being pulled from is Joel’s own.)

Likewise, Joel’s “Would You Miss Denny’s” think piece is really an uncredited scrape of John Moore’s long-running “Would You Miss [Brand Name]?” theme at Brand Autopsy.  And, unlike the Brogan post above, the Moore piece is reposted without a disclaimer referring to any other writer at all; it’s listed as having been written by “admin”.

But Wait, It Gets Better…

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time Joel Goldstein has been caught plagiarizing legitimate authors.  Last month, Ajit Verghese noted that the “About the Author” page from the website for Goldstein’s book A Professional’s Guide to Social Media steals not one but two testimonials originally written about Tim Ferriss‘s 4-Hour Workweek and attributes the sentiment to Goldstein instead.

At that same time, Peter Kim accused Goldstein of plagiarising one of David Armano‘s Logic+Emotion blog posts.  When confronted, Goldstein evidently took down the page on his site that used Armano’s work without attribution.  However, judging by the URL structure of that now-missing page, it matches the structure of the Brogan lift mentioned above, which means it was probably a page created by the same blog scraper.  If Goldstein truly doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, as he asserted with Kim, he must also not believe that defending his position is worth the hassle.

Your Work Speaks for Itself

Chris Brogan, John Moore and Tim Ferriss are well-known and respected names in social media.  The relevance of their ideas and influence over thousands of readers is what makes their posts worth stealing.  They don’t have time to hunt down everyone who claims authorship of their ideas because they’re too busy doing actual work.  (Except possibly Ferriss, who’s probably too busy not doing work.  But I digress…)

On the other hand, Joel Goldstein (via his LinkedIn profile) claims to be a specialist in “social media, online branding and internet marketing” despite just joining Twitter in March of 2009 (unless you count his underused personal Twitter profile, which he launched in December of 2008).  Then there’s the matter of his chronically unwatched YouTube channel, and his business website that includes “viral videos” (yes, really) among his services.

Some people work hard to earn their reputations.  Others work hard to steal the reputations of those who’ve earned them.  For hacks like Goldstein to make a living by feasting on the grey areas that surround unlicensed attribution (or outright theft) of other people’s work is deplorable.  And for that, he makes our ever-growing list of Marketing Douchebags.