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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Writing a blog in the hopes that you’ll get noticed — or hired — is extremely passive-aggressive.

Most people who’ve made money have made it by pursuing it.  Therefore, they respect what they recognize, which is a desire to achieve.  So, by pursuing work and striving to get their attention, your actions resonate with them.

Meanwhile, posting amazing free content to your blog on a daily basis, and then hoping someone will someday think, “Gee, I wonder what he’d do if I paid him,” is the antithesis of go-getter moxie.

Consider the guy who claimed to land a job by manipulating Google.  He didn’t just get hired because he was creative; he got hired because he got noticed.

He could have also written a blog post about how great he was, and then hoped that his six art directors of choice would find that post while Googling, read it, realize he was a genius and call him for an interview.

But that would have been stupid.  And desperate.  And passive.  And failed.

Stop being all of those things.

Does That Mean I Should Self-Promote Endlessly?

No.  No it does not.

Look at that Google guy again.  Did he spam the world with his joblessness?  No.  He targeted six art directors he knew he’d like to work for, and he got his message in front of them.

That’s the other difference between being aggressive and being passive-aggressive: identifying the target.

If you believe in yourself, then you’ll be confident in walking your message directly to the right person’s doorstep.*

If you don’t, you’ll spraypaint your desires all over the web, in the hopes that someone — anyone — will notice you, and take pity on you, and drag you home to their quonset hut to nurse you back to health.

Do you want a specific result, or any result?

Skip the hut, and find the right doorstep.

The 5-Step Process to Get Hired Using Social Media

1.  Know what you want to get paid for.

2.  Do that work for free.  (This is called practice.)

3.  Become better at doing it for free than the people who currently get paid to do it.

4.  Figure out who pays people to do it, and show them what you do.

5.  Tell them how much you’ll do it for.

Repeat steps 1-5 until you find yourself gainfully employed.

But Wait!  There’s a Bonus Step!

6.  Write a book about how you landed your dream job using social media — and sell it.

Wasn’t that easy?

*Not someone’s face, mind you.  Their doorstep.  And recognize when you’ve been ignored vs. when you’ve been invited in.  Adults respond to confidence; teenage girls respond to bravado.  Unless you want to be employed by a teenage girl, understand the tonal difference in your delivery.

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One of the web’s primary flaws is that it’s actually too easy to use.

And as content becomes ever easier to create, finding quality content becomes even more difficult.

That’s the general premise of Andrew Keen‘s Cult of the Amateur, which lobbies for the return of cultural gatekeepers.  It’s when those gatekeepers are reinstated, Keen argues, that the cream [at least according to the gatekeeper's opinion] of YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, etc., will rise to the top more easily, while the trash will sink to the bottom.

But even if that idyllic (if patriarchal) picture did occur, we’d still have one big problem:

Who’d actually bother to watch quality content?

“Quality” implies an investment of time and effort from both the creator and the audience.

And that’s problematic because, at its root, the web operates as a series of willful disruptions.

Is the vast majority of the content on YouTube actually good?  No.  But that doesn’t stop swarms of people from creating (and watching) millions of videos every day.  For them, a lack of quality is not a deterrent.

In fact, it may even be the point.

Short Attention Span Theater

The very act of “surfing the web” implies a constant state of motion.  Ideas collide.  Interests expand.  The citizens of the web spend their entire online lives as willing nomads in search of ever-newer stimuli.

In such a milieu, breadth trumps depth and skimming supersedes absorbing.  Our eyes are drawn to bullet points, pull quotes and captions — any shortcuts that help us grok the gist of something without actually needing to process it completely.

And it’s not (entirely) our fault.

The media we create — and our ability to process it — is constantly evolving.  Our post-MTV generation can now intuit the complete meaning of a film from a 30 second preview, thus rendering the viewing of the film itself unnecessary.

We’ve become so familiar with the formula of information, it’s increasingly difficult for media creators to reward our attention by providing us with actual revelations.

So we skim.  Chronically.

And who can blame us?

Why read a book when you can read the CliffsNotes for five books in the same amount of time?  (Or, more likely, when you can skim a few pages of the CliffsNotes and then do well enough on the subsequent test to pass it, which invalidates the need to read the book in the first place.)

Why surrender our attention to one-way media like novels and films when video games and social networks provide us with the illusion of control, choice and unpredictability?

Why invest ourselves in one piece of media when so many others might be worth our time?

Being Unfulfilled Is My Default State of Mind

I’m no stranger to the paradox of quality.  One of my own complaints about the web is its lack of content that blows my mind and inspires me to action.

And yet, whenever I find a piece of media that has the potential to do such a thing, I immediately become desperate to click away from it at the earliest possible convenience.

Why?

Because no matter what I’m doing online, I always feel like I should be doing something else.

I used to think this was my reaction to the generally poor quality of the web overall.  But now I’m not so sure.

Because even as Google, social networks and other disruptors work night and day to disprove Andrew Keen’s premise simply by making it easier to find good content, I don’t find that I’m actually spending any more time with the good content I do find.

I just spend my time finding more of it.

It’s as though the web’s old problem — a lack of quality — has been replaced by a new problem — too much quality, or at least, quality that’s too easy to find.

Sooner or later, we all find the information, entertainment or enlightenment we’ve been searching for.  And it’s getting sooner and sooner all the time, until we no longer have the time to make use of what we did need because we’ve already discovered something new that we’d rather have.

In order to actually stop and absorb the information and insights at our disposal, we’d need to switch off the parts of our brains that feel compelled to find more of the same and just be content with what’s in front of us at the moment.

And I’m not sure we’re wired that way anymore.

In fact, maybe Andrew Keen was on to something.  But his premise is still flawed.  It’s not that we need gatekeepers to help us find the good stuff; we just need them to stop us from finding too much.

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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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This past week, I attended #140conf in New York City.  Every session was recorded for posterity, so if you weren’t there, you can see what you missed at your leisure.

Instead of recapping the event with a play-by-play, I’d rather share one key observation I made during the event that, I soon realized, applies to conferences as a whole:

Always deliver more in person than you deliver online.

More of what, you might ask?

Exactly.

Whether you’re a conference organizer, speaker or attendee, your goals may differ but the same rule applies: You always want to get more from the people you’re staring at than what they make available to you digitally.

But in order to do that, you first need to give more of yourself.

Web time is compartmentalized; face time is linear.  Face time is worth more.

We have to earn the benefits that come with face time.

Here’s how you can do that.

10 Tips for Conference Organizers

1. Promise attendees, speakers and sponsors one specific payoff; then deliver it.
2. Start on time, stay on time, stop on time.
3. Make it easy for attendees to network before, during and after the event.
4. Don’t enforce your event’s brand at the expense of your audience’s experience.
5. Nourish the attention spans of your attendees.
6. Sponsors deserve better than being chained to display tables and ignored.
7. Provide more value than the ticket price would suggest.
8. Would you pay to attend your own event?  If not, add value until you would.
9. Be conscious of homogeneity; sexism, racism and cronyism damage when implied.
10. Promoting your event doesn’t stop when the event itself stops.

That last point deserves some explanation.

Having organized several live events myself, I’m very aware that the core team of organizers is generally exhausted by the time the event is over.  The last thing anyone wants to do talk about an event they’ve already been talking about for months.

But you don’t have to.  Instead, assign one person from your promotions team to cultivate and curate the best of what other people are saying about your event.  This includes:

• Finding the most revelatory blog post recaps from attendees
• Seeking out the best photos from the event
• Identifying the most important videos filmed at (or about) the event
• Interviewing the sponsors to obtain their immediate feedback
• Asking the speakers for a list of their favorite event sound bites

Then, the week after the event, post your curated summary of conference-based media on the event’s website and email it in a final e-blast summary to all sponsors and attendees.

Why?

Because the buzz surrounding your event will now be shrinking, just as your attendees have finished recuperating from their live experience.  They need a reminder of who they just met and what they just learned.  Plus, those who couldn’t attend this time around will need proof that your next conference is going to be a can’t-miss event.

And if you don’t do it now, everyone’s memory will turn to mush.  (Trust me, without documentation, all live events quickly become either legends or lost weekends.  And no one wants to pay top dollar only to immediately forget why you matter.)

10 Tips for Conference Speakers

1. Stop repeating your bio; we can find that on our own.
2. Don’t thank the organizers for inviting you; save that for the VIP room.
3. Tell me a story.  Data without context is just numbers.
4. If your entire presentation consists of information I already know, you’ve failed.
5. Ditto presentations comprised of things I could discover by Googling you.
6. The auditorium is your bedroom.  Dazzle us.  We paid for it.
7. Everyone in the room should want to hear you speak again.
8. Always leave time for a Q&A.
9. Don’t make your entire speech a Q&A; the audience paid to hear you, not itself.
10. Leave us with an action item, so your revelations will live on beyond your exit.
11. Bonus points if you rejoin the audience after your presentation; it reminds us you’re human.

10 Tips for Conference Attendees

1. You paid to be there (with your money, time or both).  Use it.
2. Don’t come to sell; come to help.
3. You’re not required to listen.  If the stage is dry, seek wisdom in the gallery.
4. Every conversation you have could change your life.
5. Spend less time documenting the event than experiencing it.
6. A speaker is more (or less) than a sound bite; anoint your saviors accordingly.
7. Nobody wants to hear your pitch; they want to know why you matter.
8. Identify one interesting thing about yourself; when in doubt, talk about that.
9. Always make time for the after-party.
10. Always leave the after-party before you can’t.

And one bonus tip for everyone:

Time Stops at Live Events

At least, it should.

Online, our attention is perpetually assailed by more information than we can process.  As such, any interaction that lasts “too long” automatically starts to feel “wrong” because we feel compelled to look elsewhere for input.

At a live event, we have the luxury of turning off the endless stream of stimuli and really focusing on the human beings staring back at us.  We can have one-on-one conversations without the obligatory multitasking.

Enjoy this.

For me, one of the high points of #140conf was a late-night conversation I had with C.C. Chapman and Matthew Ebel in C.C.’s suite at the Roger Smith Hotel.  We talked about family, technology, business, theology, sex, money and the future — essentially, everything but Twitter.  (Which, at a Twitter conference, is impressive.)

That’s not the kind of conversation that fits into 140 characters, or a blog post, or a series of emails.

That’s the kind of personal connection that makes all the digital work we do worthwhile.  It reminds us that our machines connect us to complex humans with more to say to one another than we can ever squeeze into our momentary sampler platters of partial attention online.

And I have no idea what time it was when I left.

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I never accomplish everything I’d like to get done.  And, as a freelancer, I have no one to blame but myself.  I don’t have coworkers and bosses reminding me daily about deadlines like a 9-to-5 employee does.

Therefore, if I starve to death, that’s my fault — and I don’t like starving.

But I have a solution.

Over the past month, I conducted an experiment that was intended to improve not only my productivity, but the productivity of several other Baltimore-based freelancers.  And, after only four weeks, its benefits have already outweighed our initial expectations.

Here’s what we did, and how it might also help you.

The Premise:

For me, any tasks that don’t literally pay the bills are “optional,” AKA “whenever,” AKA “probably never.”

But I also know that I work best under pressure.  So it was time to invent some.

To do that, I approached several local freelancers and pitched them on a simple idea:

Let’s be accountable to each other.

The Process:

Each week, I met face-to-face with my freelance peers, one-on-one.  We’d discuss our business goals, our “must-do” work, and then identify any optional tasks we’d like to accomplish in the next week.

Then, each of us would then make a list of our own goals for the week, as well as the other person’s goals.  One week later, we’d meet again and see how we did.  (And if anyone needed a reminder, a nudge or a mid-week check-in, we could DM each other on Twitter and keep the ball rolling.)

Since the only penalty for not accomplishing our own goals would be the embarrassment of inventing excuses meant to convince a near-stranger that we were busier than expected, I presumed the absurd guilt involved in such an exchange would keep the participants honest (and motivated).  After all, why lie to someone who isn’t affected either way?

And I was right.  But, along the way, we all learned something else completely unexpected.

The Participants:

Initially, I only wanted one partner for this experiment.  I figured one hourly meeting was all the time I could spare.

But when four different freelancers took me up on my offer, I decided to involve all of them, but still meet them one-on-one.  That way, I could compare and contrast each person’s challenges and workflow, while mine would (presumably) remain constant.

My collaborators in this experiment were:

• Katrina Wagner, graphic designer ( @graphicbeans )
• Nicholas Critelli, photographer ( @critelliphoto )
• Molly White, social media consultant ( @mollywhite )
• Daniel Waldman, marketing / PR consultant ( @danieldubya )

We’re all self-employed, we all battle periods of distraction and aimlessness, and we live our days sandwiched between the rush of deadlines and our own long-term life goals.  We’re busy, but we each needed a voluntary reason to stay focused.

So we started relying on each other to keep ourselves honest.

How It Went:

In my very first meeting, Katrina laid out 5 goals she wanted to accomplish in the following week.  That number was arbitrary; some people only committed to one goal a week, others to more, but no week’s total was ever more than 6.

NOTE: Since I was meeting with people 4 times each week, I kept my own stated goals consistent from person to person.  Otherwise, I’d be making myself responsible for 20 different goals each week, and I’d fail spectacularly.

The first week, I accomplished everything on my list.  My fellow freelancers performed nearly as well, with only a few missed goals in total.

However, the following week, each of us hit a stumbling block.

Personally, I over-committed myself when compared to the amount of free time I ended up having (because I was traveling for 5 days that week).  Others had unexpected family commitments, client complications or new business opportunities that required more time than they’d anticipated.

This setback was actually a bonus, because it prompted each of us to think more critically about how many “minor” tasks we could realistically expect to accomplish alongside our recurring obligations.

Each of us continued to experience our own peaks and valleys of productivity over the following weeks, but we made a point of meeting (or calling) weekly to stay in touch, even if we were slightly off target.  (That way, even if we fell short, we had to own up to it.)

What We Learned:

In the end, I accomplished 11 tasks that I probably would not have completed otherwise.  These ranged from the mundane (backing up old projects stored on my various hard drives) to the opportunistic (getting a month ahead on client blog posts).

Surprisingly (and somewhat embarrassingly), the tasks I tackled took far less time to complete than I’d originally expected.  (One dreaded task took four whole minutes to complete.)   Once I realized this, I felt like an idiot for having postponed so many of them for so long.

For me, the biggest tangible benefit came in the last week, when I finally created my own a daily work schedule.  To do this, I listed:

• my hourly client obligations for each month.
• any recurring tasks (i.e., “editing video,” even if the hours differ monthly)
• any recurring personal tasks (writing this blog, walking the dog, etc.)

Then I broke my week down to hourly blocks and scheduled ample time for each task.

The results stunned me.

I discovered that I have more than enough time to accomplish everything on my list each week.  In fact, if I stick to the schedule I’ve created, I’d even have free time every day.

So where had I been going wrong?

Simple: misunderstanding my time was causing my to mismanage my time, and that drove me into the arms of distraction.

Until this week, I’d been tackling new tasks as they came up, or delaying them under the presumption that I’d have “more time later.”  But once I plotted my obligations against my available time, everything fell into place with time to spare.

And yet, the most interesting benefit of this exercise had nothing to do with efficiency.

What We Were Surprised to Learn:

Along the way, each of us learned a lot about one another’s businesses — and our own.

Hearing someone else’s challenges, exploring their solutions and offering our own suggestions all combined to get each of us thinking differently about how we solve our own problems.

For example, Nicholas told me about his complex system for backing up client files.  I mentioned some of his observations to Katrina, who (coincidentally) had experienced a computer crash the week our experiment started.  She thought her own system for backing up files could use some improvement.  I related both of these anecdotes to Molly, who suggested Katrina should try a service called Dropbox.  I passed that information along to Katrina and Nicholas, and now all four of us are using it.

And while that exchange may not have crossed anything off anyone’s to-do list, it’s information and experience that we wouldn’t have shared if we hadn’t sat down to discuss our businesses with like-minded strangers in the first place.

Summary:

Based on my wrap-up discussions with each of my collaborators, here’s what we’ve taken away from this experience:

–  We each accomplished tasks over the past month that we would have ignored otherwise.

–  We learned while discussing our businesses, and got valuable feedback on our choices.

–  We enjoyed offering helpful suggestions based on our own “outsider” perspectives.

–  We’ve each begun thinking about our businesses in new ways.

–  We have a better understanding of our priorities, and a clearer idea of where our time is spent (or wasted).

Moving forward, we now intend to meet monthly, as a group, and continue to share our observations and solicit each other’s advice.  We’ll also be sharing a web-based project management system, where everyone can post his or her weekly goals and check in to see how everyone else is doing.

And if one of us is falling behind, now we have four people to help pull us ahead.

So… who’s keeping you honest?

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Last week, Chris Penn blogged his 11 Little Secrets to staying happy, healthy, productive and sane.  Fellow bloggers followed suit, turning the idea into a mini-meme.

So I’ll bite.

Justin Kownacki’s 11 Little Secrets to Being Moderately Successful

1.  Don’t Use Your Job as an Excuse for Not Having a Life. Ideally, you enjoy your job.  Optimistically, you love it.  And realistically, you can stomach it for 40 hours a week in order to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head.  The rest of your time is your time.  Live it.

Everyone can live a life that’s filled with amazing moments.  Not all of that will happen at the office.  Don’t feel guilty for not living there.

2.  Create Something You’re Responsible for Sustaining. Maybe it’s a business.  Maybe it’s a work of art.  Maybe it’s a child.

When you’re emotionally invested in something, you’re living a life that no one else has lived.  That’s your story.

When something (or someone) relies on you for its very existence, that gives you a clearer perspective.  Your choices now have consequences.  You can be a hero every day.  Embrace that, because it’s a responsibility not everyone has the opportunity (or the stomach) to enjoy.

3.  Pretend Your Kids Are Watching. Imagine the idealized version of you, the way your kids think of you when they’re too young to realize that you’re just another flawed human being.

Now make the same choices that the idealized version of you would make.  Isn’t it wonderful be to able to look up to yourself?

4.  Observe People. If you only ever live inside your own head, you’re missing the big picture.

Everybody you meet is a litmus test for your own beliefs.  Are your presumptions correct, or are people more complex than you give them credit for?

As a freelancer, I choose to work from cafes every day because a) I like coffee, and b) I like watching people.  I like hearing and seeing the ways they interact.  I learn from the choices they make, and from the way they phrase their questions and answers.

And what I learn from observing others helps me better understand myself.

5.  Surround Yourself with People Who Challenge Your Presumptions. The world is the way we make it, so reminding yourself that people have differing worldviews is helpful when you’re trying to understand why the world doesn’t always work the way you’d like it to.  It can also help you think differently about your own beliefs, and lead you to separate the grey areas from the black and white.

Plus, how you’d solve a problem is not always how I’d solve a problem.  If you know how others would act in your place, your artillery of possible responses to any situation increases exponentially.

6.  Be Comfortable Alone. Ultimately, we live our lives alone.  If we’re lucky, we spend those lives affecting and being affected by others, but that’s entirely external.  The bulk of your life is lived alone, in your own head.

Be comfortable there, because there’s no getting out.

7.  Draw a Line Between Quirks and Flaws. Our irregularities come in two flavors: the quirks that make us individuals, and the flaws that prevent us from succeeding.  Don’t waste time perfecting your quirks when your flaws are what’s actually holding you back.

Your high-pitched laugh or your tragic fashion choices are quirks; others may find them annoying or endearing, but they’re incidental to who you are as a person.  Your chainsmoking, your grudge-holding and your refusal to show up on time are flaws; if they don’t kill you directly, they’ll certainly degrade your quality of life.

Remember the idealized you?  The idealized you doesn’t have those flaws.  Work on that.

8.  Be Specific with Your Language. Words mean something.  Don’t take them for granted.

Like him or loathe him, Christopher Hitchens is one of the most specific writers I’ve ever read.  The words he chooses to express himself mean exactly what he intends for them to mean, which leaves very little room for ambiguities or misinterpretation of his ideas.

Relying on tired metaphors and figures of speech is lazy, and it muddies our ability to understand one another.  When you’re writing or speaking, be conscious of every word you select.  It’s better to use your 1000 word vocabulary well than to sleepwalk through a minefield of ambiguities.

9.  Walk Where You Can, While You Can. America is a car-based culture, which leads us to consider most locations as widespread vistas.  But that’s just one sweeping point of view.

Walking through a neighborhood gives you the time to see the bricks and pavement that comprise the daily lives of the people who live there.  It prompts you to consider the ways our lives are connected, and to marvel at the ways our lives have evolved from the times when walking was the only way we could have gotten from place to place.

It’s also good exercise, great “thinking time” and better for the environment than driving.

10.  Take Naps. Few things in life are more pleasurable than pressing the pause button on your obligations and recharging.  Don’t let a puritanical work ethic rob you of the freedom to disconnect on your own terms.

11.  Have Extremely Few Inviolable Principles. Life is a grey area.  People, situations and opportunities are constantly evolving.  What’s “right” for one person may not be “right” for you, and it all may be “wrong” tomorrow.

The fewer filters we invent to ignore other people and discount their opinions — or to judge them into categories, instead of as fellow complex humans — the richer our lives and the greater our potential will be.

Plus, the less you believe in, the less often you’ll consider yourself a hypocrite.  And then the idealized version of you will have a lot less explaining to do.

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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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Let’s say you have a business idea that involves building a community.  (Think Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or, more recently, Foursquare.)

To succeed, your idea must attract an audience, but the type of audience your idea will attract is self-selecting based upon the idea itself.  This means you’re not really building a community; you’re simply providing a service to a specific group of users most likely to need it.

Therefore, your paradox is this:

In order to “build” your community, you actually have to be discovered by an existing community… who will ultimately reject you once you succeed.

Allow me to explain.

When Is Success Not Really Success?

A community-driven site works best when a lot of people are using it.

This year’s SXSW seemed to be an ideal breeding ground for Foursquare, but as Mark Hopkins explains, Foursquare’s success for 10 days in Austin may be more of an aberration than a proof of concept.

In Austin, everyone had smartphones, and everyone was interested in finding everyone else who was also in Austin during those 10 days.  As Jeff Pulver noted, Foursquare and Gowalla became the tools of choice for that task, not Facebook or Twitter.

But apart from tech-heavy conferences, where else is Foursquare likely to find huge throngs of target users, all needing to use their service on a regular basis?

They’re not.

But if they can keep enough of those users talking about their service while they add broader value, they may survive long enough to attract the kind of wider audience that actually pays the bills.

If You Build It, Scoble Will Come

When Foursquare debuted, Robert Scoble bought into it.  And because Scoble is hugely influential within the tech and social media communities, his acolytes followed suit.

Getting Scoble’s attention was key.  Without him, Foursquare’s adoption rate would be an even steeper challenge.

But getting Scoble’s attention also triggered a certain domino effect, in that the next wave(s) of adopters were all people who are, generally speaking:

• Familiar with social media
• Smartphone multitaskers
• Endless oversharers

Target audience?  Yes.

Representative of a larger community?  Not necessarily.

The only people who voraciously embrace social media are the media.

The only people who live and die by their mobile devices are businesspeople on the go.

And the only people besides social media practitioners who share this much information about themselves on a daily basis are teens, and there’s a built-in legal bias against teens sharing their GPS whereabouts publicly.

Thus, while hooking Scoble’s audience was an early boon for Foursquare, it also means that the users most responsible for growing the platform will be using it differently than most “normal” people would.

Isn’t that counter-productive?

Only if it’s unprofitable.

The Bottom Line

Users won’t use a community site if there’s no community there.

By default, the early adopters have a disproportionate amount of control over the future growth of the site, in terms of direction, aesthetics and meaning, than they would with a product or service whose value is self-evident.

So: your community-based business needs to attract the best possible early adopters.

You’ll want to empower them… as long as they’re empowered to build your community in a direction that you feel comfortable managing and which you believe will be profitable.

And, if possible, you may want to include them personally in your growth plans — perhaps not as literal partners, but certainly in terms of rewarding them for helping your site achieve liftoff.

For example: years ago, a vocal group of Twitter dissenters nearly abandoned the platform entirely and switched to Jaiku.  Had Jaiku managed to pry the Scobles and Brogans away from Twitter 3 years ago, and kept them away, the web might look very different today.

And Yet, Here’s the Irony…

If you’re good at what you do, your enclave of social media users will eventually raise the profile of your service to the status of being “news-worthy” to the general public, or to actual celebrities.  That’s when CNN, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey will take notice, and encourage their own audiences to jump in.

And that’s when your service stands a chance of becoming profitable, rather than burning through investor capital while catering to a small group of vocal early adopters.

But once the mainstream arrives, your service will change by necessity, both to meet the needs of new users and to scale in support of their increased demands on your system.

And that’s when your early adopters will start moving on, looking for the next undiscovered country (or service) where they can congregate, explore, tinker and empire-build, all without the notoriety that comes with being “mainstream” — which is what you, the business owner, are ultimately pursuing in the first place.

Welcome to life on the Internet, where everybody uses everybody, as long as someone else is paying to keep the lights on.

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If you’re good at what you do, (some) people will like it.

If you’re really good at what you do, (some) people will hate it.

This is good.  It means you’re conveying ideas in a visceral way that makes people react.

But if your end goal is to be loved by everyone, it’ll never happen.  And this means you’re in for a life of misery.

Don’t believe me?  Take it from Shakespeare.

“A Nashville Audience Is Not a Toronto Audience.”

A few months ago, Nashville was drubbed by art lovers for requesting that Toronto’s Classical Theatre Project “tone down” the sexuality in their performance of Romeo & Juliet so as to not offend the sensibilities of a Nashville audience.

Ultimately, the performers rejected the request, which left some parents quite displeased.

[A] woman who identified herself as Val, a home-school teacher from Hermitage, “struggled being here with my son. The sexuality was too much. Our children need to be more pure.”

As expected, the comments from the newspaper report of the incident ranged from blind support of the actors to enraged support of the parents, including denouncements of Shakespeare himself as being “too lewd” for any tasteful audience.

So, if we can all agree that even Shakespeare can’t please everyone, the question you need to ask yourself is:

What kind of audience are you trying to please?

Approach #1: “I’m in It for the Money”

If you do what you do because you want to get paid, then you probably want to get paid by as many people as possible.

Suggestion?  Offend as few people as possible.

The less objectionable you are, the easier you are to hire.  The fewer excuses your boss has to make for your behavior, the longer you’ll remain employed.

Safe?  Yes.  Interesting?  No.  Fulfilling?  That depends.  Would you rather be admired or pay your rent?

Approach #2: “I’m in It for the Experience”

If you’re not worried about starving to death, you can afford to take chances.

You can afford to piss people off.  You can afford to define yourself, rather than allowing yourself to be defined by others.

Suggestion?  Be extreme.

Anybody can push the envelope, because it’s easy to push the envelope right back.

So set that envelope on fire.

Sure, you might get burned, but flames attract an audience.  And you’ll immediately know who’s on your side.

Once you know who your friends are, you can decide whether or not you want to bridge the troll gap and form a consensus, or if you’d rather keep forging ahead on your very own path.  One can be lucrative, the other can be memorable, but if you go big, you’ll never go home alone.

Approach #3: “I’m in It for Myself.”

This is the hardest path to advise because, really, you’re entirely on your own.

Nothing anybody else says at this point will convince you that you’re wrong, and no amount of ass-kissing will make you feel any more right.  When you reach this point, it’s all you.

And by then you won’t care if you’re surrounded by trolls because nothing they can say or do would distract you from pursuing your own goal, whatever that goal might be.

(NOTE: It bears noting that “trolls” and “cops” are not the same thing.  If your personal path leads you to be surrounded by the cops, you may have pushed that envelope farther than anybody else appreciates.  Sanity is a treasure; guard yours.)

A Word About Being Needed vs. Being Needy

Audiences are tricky things.  Without them, you’re no one (other than who you already were yesterday).  But with them, you may become someone unrecognizable.

You want to be wanted, but you hate being reliant on someone else.

You want to be loved, but you never want to get hurt.

But having an audience is not a one-way street.  (Even Julia Allison knows that.)

If what you do becomes popular or profitable, you’ll want it to remain so.

Thus, if you become needed by others, you’ll become needy by association.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does limit your ability to experiment.  It does mean your choices will be judged.  And it does mean you may someday have to make a choice about what you really believe, and who you really are.

Are you Toronto or Nashville?

When the time comes, you’ll know.

In the meantime, enjoy the ride.  And when in doubt, remember: trolls like fire.

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