If you write, speak or perform for a living, you need an audience.  Without one, you don’t get paid.  (Hell, online, you still don’t get paid even with one.  But I digress…)

Your audience is one way to validate your success as a communicator.

But your audience is also a trap.

If they love you, their adulation becomes addictive.  You learn what they like, what they respond to, and what makes them appreciate you more.  Naturally, you’re inclined to pursue those reactions because they make you feel good, and that means you’re less likely to experiment with anything outside your audience’s comfort zone.

Which Begs the Question…

What’s more important to you: how your work makes you feel, or how your audience makes you feel?

If you want to grow as a creator or performer, you may need to push your own boundaries.  You may need to say and do things your audience won’t like / understand / appreciate, so you can learn from your own experiences — whether your audience enjoys it or not.

Do you worry that your audience may not follow you down every rabbit hole you want to investigate?  Don’t be.  The fewer people  you have paying attention to you, the freer you are to innovate (and learn from your mistakes) without being judged.

And if your audience complains, derides or discounts your divergence from “the norm,” relax.  They’re only people, just like you.  In fact, there are plenty of…

Reasons NOT to Listen to Your Audience

… including:

• Your audience doesn’t always know what you know.
• Your audience doesn’t always know what THEY know, either.
• Your audience has different goals than you do.
• Sometimes your audience is your competition.
• Your audience is afraid to look stupid, needy or uncool.

History is filled with the tales of innovators who were initially (or repeatedly) ignored or disparaged by their audiences, from Vincent van Gogh to Dr. Seuss.  For every film or book we now consider to be an influential classic, there are dozens of reviews that disregard it as amateur, ineffectual or just plain bad.

And those are the successes.

Sometimes, your ideas really aren’t all that great.  Sometimes they’re half-baked, incorrect, premature or — yes — just plain bad.

But if you don’t pursue them, and learn from the experience of your hard-fought victories and spectacular misfires, you’ll forever be clinging to the safe bets.

And that means your audience, fickle creatures that they are, will eventually abandon you anyway, transfixed instead by something newer, shinier and more compelling — something that pushes their boundaries, even while you refuse to test your own.

Of Course, There IS a Catch to This Advice…

If your audience isn’t always right when they disagree with you, then they’re not always right when they idolize you, either.  Their judgment is just as flawed, mercurial and subjective as yours is, rain or shine.

So yes, by all means, absorb your audience’s feedback.

Just make sure you keep their notes in pencil.

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What if, one day, everybody decided to stop using screwdrivers?

“They’re too awkward.”

“They’re confusing.”

“They’re ugly.”

What if everybody used drills and wrenches instead?

And what if the people who kept using screwdrivers were mocked and insulted by the suddenly hip drill-and-wrench crowd?

What would it take for screwdrivers to crawl out of the perception ghetto and become relevant again?

What would it take for you to use a screwdriver again?

Would you need to see someone you trusted using a screwdriver?

Would you need to see a case study that proves a screwdriver is, in certain circumstances, just as useful as a drill or a wrench?

Could you swallow your pride and embrace the now-derided tool that you once loved?

Now, here’s the twist:

Replace “screwdriver” with “MySpace” and ask yourself the same questions.

Bring Out Your Dead

A few days ago, Scott Ludwig asked the Twitterverse the following question:

SM Marketers – If you had a client approach you, saying they want/need to be on MySpace, would you know what MySpace currently offers users?

And while my answer was predictably glib, Scott’s question also got me thinking…

According to Alexa, MySpace is currently the 17th most-visited website on the planet.

Compete.com lists MySpace at #16, but it’s no longer in the same traffic stratosphere as Facebook, listed at #2.  In fact, seeing each site’s trajectory over the past year, you might think MySpace was completely collapsing…

… until you look at their actual traffic: over 44 million unique visitors in February alone.

And, to the best of my knowledge, not one of them was a social media guru.

The Re-Undiscovered Country?

In actuality, I’m sure some social media gurus still use MySpace quite frequently.

I just don’t happen to know any of them.

Some of the companies I work with still have MySpace profiles, but they’ve basically been left for dead.  Someone checks on them once a month to see if they’re still breathing, but otherwise, they get minimal attention compared to Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Why is this, exactly?

I mean, I remember when I personally quit MySpace because it had become a festering cesspool of porn spam and bad design, but I’m an elitist.  The benefit I was getting from MySpace was microscopic compared to the effort required to simply maintain a spam-free presence there.

So I quit.

And I bet a lot of you did the same.

And I bet Scott Ludwig is right: none of us know what MySpace offers these days, or at least not enough of us to convince everyone else that MySpace could possibly be worth adopting again.

And yet, there sit 44 million people, just aching to be marketed to by your crack team of social media experts.

Surely your messaging techniques have advanced well beyond the rudimentary tasks MySpace allowed you to execute in 2007 [which is the last time most people I know admitted they even had a MySpace profile].

So what’s stopping you from carving out that lucrative niche as a MySpace specialist?  Or at least re-incorporating MySpace into your toolbox?

Simple: we’re all waiting for someone else to tell us we can.

Pipe Down; I’m Not Done Shunning You Yet

Nobody has the time to re-master MySpace because we’re all invested in the same tools everyone else is using.

If nobody’s talking about MySpace, there’s no buzz bandwagon to benefit from.  There’s no SEO juice.  There’s no community of peers, and there’s no cool factor that comes with belonging to the same group everyone else is in.

Which, of course, makes it ripe for wildly profitable niche exploiters.

Maybe “MySpace” will become the reheated buzzword of 2010.

Maybe we’ll reclaim that territory and help it matter again.

Or maybe… if you’re really thinking outside the box…

… Friendster.

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In response to my blog post about popularity vs. relevance, Gradon Tripp mentioned his own quandary: he’s not sure if “being himself” is costing him money.

This is a doubt we all suffer on a regular basis.  Social media is supposed to be freeing and profitable, so we do our best to split the difference.  This means we’re forever studying our own public behavior to ensure that we’re being “professional enough” and “personal enough” at the same time.

But what if the real dichotomy isn’t “personal vs. professional”?

What if it’s “personal vs. practical”?

The Truth Is Only Half of the Story

You don’t get far in life without solving problems — first your own, then someone else’s.

The more problems you can solve, the more relevant you are, and therefore the more popular you become.

But not all problems are created equal.  Some are a problem of function, and some are a problem of perception.

When I recently tweeted my take on the vicious cycle of how Baltimore’s crime rate drives affluent workers (and their tax revenue) to the suburbs, resulting in budget shortfalls that force the city to cut police jobs, Dave Troy insisted that my view was inaccurate.

But whether or not my view is flawed, that’s only half the story.

The full story is Baltimore’s economic issues + people’s perception of Baltimore’s economic issues.

You can fix one and still have a problem with the other.  But you can’t fix both simultaneously.

So which would you choose to fix?

That depends on your personality.

Plumbers vs. Jugglers

Some people are plumbers.  They fix tangible problems.

Some people are jugglers.  They fix aesthetic problems.

You wouldn’t hire a plumber to entertain you, and you wouldn’t hire a juggler to fix your pipes.  One is good at improving function, and one is good at altering perception.

The problem with social media is that we’re led to believe we can do both.

I’m not so sure that’s a wise plan.

Let’s Be Reductive.

What’s the primary reason someone should pay attention to you?

What’s the secondary reason someone should pay attention to you?

Break your work down to an adjective and a noun, and you’ll get your answers.

Are you a “witty instructor”?

A “perverse artist”?

An “opinionated guru”?

The noun is what you do; the adjective is who you are.  Combined, they’re what you bring to the table.  Make sure they can coexist.  (Does anybody buy from an “opinionated salesman,” or hire a “slacker photographer”?)

You can be great at what you do, or you can be great at who you are.  Figure out which half of the equation you choose to define yourself by, and proceed accordingly.

You Can’t Be All Things to All People

If Baltimore has economic problems and perceptual problems, they need a plumber and a juggler.

Maybe Dave Troy is a plumber, and he’s focused on fixing Baltimore’s tangible problems.

Maybe someone else is the juggler who can teach people to see Baltimore differently.

But expecting one person to do both is asking too much.

What do you offer that someone needs?

Why should people care about you?

Because that’s what you should do.

And nobody needs a juggling plumber.

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When you’re surrounded by strangers, it can be hard to strike up a conversation.  Presumably, things would be easier if you already knew something about some of those people.

But what if that knowledge actually made you more reluctant to start a conversation?

That’s what I’m wondering about Meet Gatsby, a Foursquare-related program that connects you with fellow users in your proximity who share the same interests you’ve divulged to the program.  It’s basically an icebreaker service for complete strangers sitting in the same room who happen to share a common interest.

For example, if you tell Gatsby that you like comic books, and someone else who also likes comic books checks into your location on Foursquare, Gatsby will introduce you.  You’re under no obligation to speak to each other, but you now have that opportunity.

In theory, this should help us all leapfrog over our fears of meeting strangers.

In reality, I can already think of several potentially awkward scenarios — including:

• What if one person is an expert in a field, but the other’s just casually interested?
• What if someone’s trying to work, but they’re accosted by a bad conversation?
• What if someone’s already in a conversation with someone else?

But while those examples might be disappointing, annoying or uncomfortable, they’re also beside the point.

The real power of Gatsby is in the way it makes you re-evaluate a central question:

What kinds of people do you really want to meet?

Hi, My Name Is ________.

In order to meet a wide array of people, your instincts might lead you to supply Gatsby with lists of incredibly obvious interests.  “Music.” “Movies.” “Sports.” “Blogs.”

But this presumes you’d be happy to meet anybody.  If that were the case, you wouldn’t need Gatsby; you’d just ask the nearest stranger if they’ve seen any good movies lately.  Supplying Gatsby with ultra-common criteria is like supplying it with no criteria at all.

You could also program Gatsby with all sorts of hyper-specific interests that are extremely personal to you… except they’re immediately obvious to anyone looking at you.  Trust me, if your interests are Skinny Puppy, Joy Division, The Cure, and The Crow, I can probably figure that out without consulting Gatsby.

So what does that leave us with?

The future.

I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On… Mentally

To me, the real hook for using Gatsby is the opportunity to meet people I’d want to talk to because:

• they know a lot about something I want to learn more about
• they’re experts in something I know nothing about
• our shared interests are likely to yield new discoveries for each of us

For example, if I said I liked “movies,” that would be nearly useless.

But if I said I was a fan of Whit Stillman or Atom Egoyan, two lesser-known indie directors with very unique storytelling styles, I’d be less likely to find people who matched that interest but more likely to have fruitful conversations with anyone who did.  Because if we both like Egoyan, we can probably each suggest half a dozen amazing films that the other’s never seen.

To accomplish this, we need to rethink the words we use to identify our interests, like…

• Would the people we meet differ if we were fans of “movies” versus “films”?
• Are your interests “politics,” or are they “liberal politics,” or “Libertarian”?
• Do you like “blogs,” or do you like “blogging”?

This isn’t just semantics; this is SEO for your personality.  The more specific you (and others) are, you the more likely you are to find conversationalists who matter.

But this still leaves one loose end: how do we bridge the gap between “students” and “teachers”?

Single White Male, in Search of Enlightenment

Meet Gatsby is still in its earliest stages of development.  (As I type this, their Twitter account only has 61 followers.)

And since they’re currently accepting suggestions from users, I have two:

• Subdivide interests into Things We Know About and Things We’d Like to Learn About
• Allow users to rate their own expertise, and the expertise of others

Why would this matter?  Context.

Let’s say two people with interests in social media happen to meet up through Gatsby.

If Person A knows enough about social media to rate himself a 7 out of 10, he can probably offer advice to someone who’s only rated her own expertise a 4.  But if she disagrees with his suggestions (or thinks he’s making it all up), she should have the same opportunity to affect his credibility rating as buyers and sellers do on eBay.

Ultimately, Gatsby is positioning itself as a marketplace for human interaction.  And people will always want to interact with others who offer them the most value for their time.

The more ways we have to find the people who matter to us, the more valuable every Foursquare check-in will be — and the more relevant our own accumulated knowledge becomes.

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Do yourself a favor: stop reading Copyblogger.  If you really want to learn how to blog, read Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs; it’s the only writing guide you’ll ever need, because it has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with making ultra-personal, compulsively readable arguments about anything.

Why This Book Matters

Despite being published in 2003, Puffs reads like a hyper-modern guidebook for our currently self-obsessive culture.  Yes, it preceded the explosion of MySpace, YouTube and Twitter, but the absence of web-related case studies in Puffs* actually reinforces my point:

In 2003, Chuck Klosterman created the blueprint for writing the kind of blog you’d kill to be known for today, and all before anybody knew what a blog was.

But there’s a problem: intent.

Chuck Klosterman is a career hybrid of journalist, essayist and memoirist.  He’s a best-selling author and pop culture deconstructionist.

You write about SEO.

So where’s the overlap?  Easy: it’s all in the way you make your argument.

Listen to Me, and I’ll Say Something That You’ll Think Is Amazing

Simply put, Chuck Klosterman may be the best contextualizer of pop culture writing today.

His explanations of how and why our culture shapes our reality is the kind of writing that makes you think, “Of course; that’s so obvious!” AND “I never would have thought of that!” at the same time.

This makes Chuck Klosterman the kind of expert you want to be: a highly-opinionated amateur whose articulate assertions about “the way things are” have elevated him to cult-like status in the minds of people who believe Chuck Klosterman is “just like me.”

How does he do it?  By employing the same literary devices that have been adopted by the very bloggers you quote endlessly:

• Start with an authoritative argument that seeks to define something anew.
• Cite a vast array of facts that imply your encyclopedic knowledge of the subject.
• Use indefensible phrases like “this is perhaps the most ___ aspect of ___”
• Seemingly concede others may be right… “but.”  Then, disembowel their POV.
• Embed your subjective experience into your otherwise objective dissertation.
• Conclude your argument on an ambiguous note that betrays the entire venture as your own personal attempt to better understand your own consciousness, rather than the generalized education the reader had initially presumed it was meant to be.

In the end, you’ll have said something that may or may not mean anything to anyone but you, but you’ll have provided your audience with ample opportunity to draw their own conclusions.

What Billy Joel’s Worst-Selling Albums Can Teach You About Social Media

You may not think pop culture and social media necessarily overlap, but here’s the kicker: the unifying themes among the 18 essays published in Puffs are the exact same themes that fuel our social media-driven culture.

For example, Klosterman covers such diverse territory as:

• How breakfast cereal mascots train kids to become hipsters.
• Why pornorgaphy made the Internet acceptable, and vice versa.
• How The Empire Strikes Back created Generation X.
• Why the otherwise forgettable tween “comedy” Saved by the Bell succeeds as a litmus test for your own understanding of how “the real world” works.
• What it means to have known a serial killer — and what that says about fluidity of our individual morality.

The pattern?  Like social media, pop culture creates your own reality.

When Klosterman explains how Billy Joel has written some of the most universally-relatable pop songs ever, but we rarely notice how relevant Billy Joel actually is because he consciously rejects any attempts to “brand” himself, you realize that same lesson applies to your brand — or lack thereof.

And when Klosterman declares that MTV’s “The Real World” ceased to document “reality” after its first season and has been creating reality ever since, it blows your mind a little.  Then you realize his central thesis — that a generation has grown up realizing that the only way they’ll ever get to be on a “reality show” is by being a “reality show type” — is undeniably true, and you can’t help but take his side.

Debunking the Deconstructionist

Make no mistake: you could easily debunk every assertion Klosterman makes.  But this in no way devalues his skills as a writer; if anything, it makes him even more readable, because you find yourself forming your own arguments as you’re reading his.

For example, he claims best-selling “Wal-Mart country” artists like Toby Keith  and Trisha Yearwood deserve their success because they document the human condition more simply — and, therefore, more relatably for the masses — than Bob Dylan or Liz Phair.

Obviously, the flip side of that argument (which Klosterman glosses over) involves cultural isolationism, geographic limitations and flaws in our educational and media distribution systems.  But Klosterman doesn’t explore that side of the big picture.

Why not?

Probably due to one huge stumbling block created by his preferred format: length.  If he writes too much, he knows his essays will become too dense for us to read in a single sitting.  And shouldn’t pop culture analysis be as digestible as pop culture itself?

Besides, there’s also the matter of being prolific.  Every spoke on the argument wheel is an opportunity for another article, another essay…

… or, if you prefer, another blog post.

* NOTE: I’ve only read the original 2003 hardcover printing of Puffs; the recent reprint evidently contains new essays, which may be more web-centric.  Klosterman has also written in Esquire, The Believer and beyond; his latest collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, is now at the top of my to-read list.

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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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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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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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