Waiting to write makes you a waiter not a writer, the sage advice from Somerset Maugham. It is advice I give myself regularly and have shared with many others, both privately and publicly. There exists a strange new beast in the creative world, the content scientist. These people can tell you how many times a word needs to exist in a post to count as a “keyword”, they can tell you with accuracy akin to the Swiss railroad when you should post to maximize your audience. They can tell you all this and more. In doing so they scare the writer clean out of you.

Writing isn’t a science, it is an art. Writing doesn’t run like a railroad, if it is any kind of transport it is more likely a rickshaw. Driven by sweat, a heaving mass dragged through the streets by a struggling human engine striving to get to its destination. Of course the content scientists will show you charts and graphs, they will talk about increased readership, click through rates and other impressive statistics. All of which are fairly meaningless. Like murder, good writing will out.

Waiting to Write: Art vs Science

I’m not dismissing the content scientist. In the same way as we need those who write code to enable us to publish our writing online, we need content scientists to show us how we might improve what we do. Just as painters need the scientists to create new shades of paint to enable them to express themselves. The trouble starts when the writer focuses on the numbers instead of the letters. Is Monday at 10am the best time for my audience to see my post? Should I be posting three times a week or five?

I try to write regularly here, if for no other reason than the discipline. I even try to think about what you, the reader might enjoy reading. For the most part, and given the responses I receive, it seems that this blog after existing for the past few years has found an audience that, at least some of the time, enjoys what it reads. There is definitely no science behind what I do. For the most part I post twice a week, but that depends on what else I am doing. Sometimes I write in advance, and other times it is on the same day. I have read many many posts and books that refer to timing, SEO, and all many of other numbers and devices that could increase my readership. I have, to date, ignored them all. At the end of the day, I would rather write for a handful of people who enjoy my writing than try and outsmart the scientists at Google.

Waiting to Write: Enjoyment vs Business

This is not a business blog, or is it? I suppose that depends on how the reader reads it. I think of it as more akin to an advice column, a Dear Prudence of Marketing if you will. I understand that the content scientists aren’t really writing for me, they are writing for people looking to make money from their blogs through advertising and various other means. I understand that, but that isn’t writing, not in the sense I am talking about here. That’s promotion, advertising, content marketing. Its about page views, and uniques, and click through rates.

I’m not being a purist here. Everyone is entitled to create for whatever purpose they deem fit. But those who agonize over when to write, when to post, who to write for and spend their time on reading all that the content scientist have to say are missing an important event – the writing.

Waiting to Write: Waiter or Writer?

So what are you, a waiter or a writer? Will you allow the excuses and the content scientists to distract you or will you take a breath, open the page and make a mark on it? Whether it is poetry, prose, a hobby subject or a business subject, at some point you will have to decide whether those thoughts exist only in your head or if you will give them life outside your head and put them on a page.

Your decision, waiter or writer?

Check Your Hair, Make Sure Your Mic Is On is the title of a  post I wrote a few weeks ago in which I talk about the importance of appearance for speakers. In talking with new, aspiring and even existing speakers it seems people would like to read more of the same.

Rather than simply share my thoughts on speaking  I thought you would find it more interesting to hear from other speakers. To this end I have extended the invitation to some of the speakers that I enjoy a lot to share their stories of being a speaker. What works and what doesn’t, how to handle technology, the good stories and the nightmare stories.

Watch the video below and you can see why I wanted to put this series together:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rHFNJnDPYY

Each wednesday there will be a new post from a speaker who will share their experience. Who are these speakers? Well to name drop a few – Ann Handley – Chief Content Officer for Marketing Profs, Hank Wasiak – 14 time Emmy Nominated TV Host, Lynette Young, Podcaster and Founder of Women of G+ and many others.

The best way to make sure you don’t miss this great content?  Subscribe by email in the top right of this page and get it delivered to your inbox.  Of course I’d love you to just keep coming back to the site because, well that helps my stats and makes me feel good about myself – but I’d rather you got the content the way you want it.

image used under CC License by Ford Buchanan

Last week I wrote about the Three Types of Social Content. I want to extend that conversation by looking at how the use of Social Content is killing Social Networks. Consider your own Social Network streams, whether it is Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus – I’d place a bet that most of what you see is content that has been curated for the purpose of capturing your attention. Very little of it is original content. From Cat videos to reposts from news outlets users want to be able to share others content and be known for sharing helpful, funny, and interesting content.

Social Content – Not Friends but Publishers

When we decide to Follow, Circle or Friend someone – our major points of contact (unless we know them in real life) with them are not who they are but what they share. Does what they share fit into our groups of interests? This removes the effort of seeing them as a person but instead we are seeing them as a source of Social Content. Will they provide us with interesting, informative and importantly shareable content?

If you think about the way Social Networks were originally structured, they were meant as virtual places for meeting people. The people you met revealed something about themselves and you in turn revealed something about yourself, in other words a normal social interaction. Now we are moving to a situation where we careless about the actual person and more about the content they share. We like people who share original content, but actually we are hopeful that they will simply share something that is going to be popular and will in turn increase our own Social Currency.

Social Content – Content For Content’s Sake

We are used to hearing that content is king. We all want to be a part of that royalty, the Social Web thrives on popularity and users are seeking ways to promote themselves, their business, their brand through the use of content. Content Marketing is the panacea to all your woes. Your content will help you build a business, develop a network, create a platform. All of these things are actually true. The problem with this is that while these mantra’s were developed originally for business, they have permeated the personal world.

Every user is now a brand, but instead of that philosophy humanizing brands, it is having the opposite effect, it is dehumanizing people. Users of Social Networks are less interested in being Social and more interested in being publishers. There are endless posts on tactics to get “more retweets, more links, more views”, which are great if you are in the content marketing business, however, these posts are being read and utilized by people, real people, ordinary individuals who are actually quite interesting in their own right.

Social Content – Stop Publishing, Start Humanizing

I know that you won’t stop sharing cat videos – I’m not really asking you to. But every once in a while how about sharing a story about you. Share something that lets me get to know you as a person – heck I might even like you and if I don’t well that’s ok too, because there are plenty of others out there that will.

Take a risk and be a human being on a Social Network and let’s stop seeing ourselves as just producers of Social Content.

image used under CC license by tölvakonu 

The Three C’s of Social Content – Creation, Curation and Cultivation. In looking at online content, particularly that shared on social networks I’ve come to the conclusion that there are generally three broad categories of social content. I’m going to expand on this premise in this and a couple of upcoming posts and certainly the later posts will be colored in part by the responses I get to the original concepts that I outline here.

The Three C’s of Social Content – Creation

While seemingly self explanatory, content creation seems to generate a lot of controversy. What constitutes content creation? Is it something wholly original, can it be something that is inspired by other work? Can it be an adaptation of existing work?

I honestly don’t think there is a hard rule for this. I have a personal opinion about what I consider original work and therefore content creation, but that is just my opinion. I happen to think that for content to fall into the Creation category it needs to be wholly original in nature. Now that of course would mean that 99% of everything I write wouldn’t fall into that category because it is, in one way or another, inspired by other external influences. I write about things I have seen online, in real life, about books I have read, commercials I have seen etc. However, I would like to think that my interpretations of these external influences is unique and therefore original.

I occasionally create images, either for this blog or for Google Plus posts that are based on words that I have seen in other places – I consider those not to be original content. Yes, I have used the words in a way that might well be original, but the emotion that is being evoked is not original. I didn’t create that response originally, the words that I have chosen have already done that.

The Three C’s of Social Content – Curation

Many social networks have really become social curation depositories. Google Plus particularly strikes me as being this type of network. While I do see plenty of original content there I also see much that is the collecting and resharing of content. Sometimes grouped together in an organized manner, sometimes not so organized. I personally tend to think that truly curated content has at least some form of index to allow it to be found quickly. Pinterest is a great example of a social network that focuses solely on content curation – to the point of having indices that allow users to quickly find content that they are looking for.

The point of content curation was of course originally a selfish one. I find something interesting that I want to refer to later and I want some way of  finding it later, browser bookmarks and then bookmark sharing sites were great forms of this. The rise in popularity of sharing these pieces of curated content led to more sophisticated sharing strategies, ones that focus on carving a niche based on the content of others.

The Three C’s of Social Content – Cultivation

This is the last form of Social Content in my observation. When a publisher – someone who posts content of any kind to a social network focuses on a specific niche to attract or nurture an audience it can best be described as content cultivation. The content itself is less important than the impact it has on the end goal of audience development. Frequency, density, imagery, time of day, all of these things start to play an increasingly important role in the social content cultivator’s arsenal.

Which type of Social Content do you consider you produce?

Check your hair, make sure your mic works – sound advice given at the start screen of a Google Hangout. Increasingly bloggers, marketers, and others involved in the online world are making appearances in the real world. Taking their content from the virtual to the real world. I asked a question on Google Plus a few weeks ago – is speaking the new blogging? It seems that every blogger wants their 30 mins of stage time and there are no shortage of conferences for them to speak at.

Check Your Hair – Paying For the Dancing Bear

Some are realizing that they can supplement their income and in some cases generate their entire income from paid speaking. Like blogging this is something they have stumbled upon and they are watching the success of others and want their share of the pie. When bloggers see other bloggers earning six digit speaking fees they believe that it is as easy as that. Just put a price tag on their last blog post and deliver it. What they are missing is the years of hard work that goes on between deciding you have something worth sharing and being paid to share it.

I reject far more conference requests than I accept simply because the organizers want my content but have no way or intention of paying for it. They also expect me to cover my own travel and accommodation costs. All this while they charge attendees anywhere from $150 to $5000 per ticket to attend. However, speaking for free is definitely something that all speakers do at the beginning of their careers and will continue throughout their careers given the right circumstances.

The point here is that just because you think you have something worth sharing don’t expect to be paid for it immediately.

Check Your Hair – The Dancing Bear Show

If you are tempted by the thought of speaking then you have to consider a lot more than just what you are going to say. The best speakers provide not just information but entertainment. The session is an experience. The audience walks away talking about it, not just the content but the presenter and the way in which the information is presented. Everyone has a horror story of having Powerpoint slides read to them in a conference session. Presentation goes past this, a long way past.

The trend for a many recent years has been to follow dress codes from the work place, in other words downwards. Jeans and a T-Shirt are considered “cool”, almost de rigueur. I’m not saying that your outfit is more important than your content, but consider your audience. They have paid good money to sit in front of you and look at you for anywhere between 30 and 75 mins – giving them something that is comfortable on the eye is definitely going to win you points. Personally I prefer to be slightly over dressed than under but that is my preference. Blending in with your audience is unlikely to leave a lasting impression.

Don’t go the other way either – I’m not suggesting you come to your session dressed like Bjork in a Swan Gown! Think of it more as an interview situation. In that audience are potential clients, potential event bookers, in other words people who might just want to spend money with you. Even if you have the most compelling content available, image matters. Having the audience see you as not only knowledgeable but also capable of sitting in their conference room might just be the line between additional work and none.

Check Your Hair – Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words

Find someone to take your profile picture – preferably a professional but at least someone who knows their way around lighting and can make you look good. When someone is considering you for a speaking opportunity you can guarantee they are going to look at your online presence – and if your profile doesn’t project the right professional image – if it looks like you just rolled out of bed and took it in the bathroom mirror are they going to trust you to deliver quality content to their audience?

If you are seriously thinking about adding speaking as a revenue source or just as an additional way to promote your content you really need to think about the whole show and not just what you are going to show on the screen.

What do you think of speakers who don’t pay attention to their appearance?

image used under CC license by RPhlegm

Companies that refer to themselves as Global do so to illustrate their ability to operate around the world and of course to give the impression of size, reliability and capability. However, I am constantly surprised at the number of companies that refer to themselves in that way but really mean they have operations in other countries. Operations that have no integration, no common systems and no ability to work together, so much for Global.

Global Companies: A Tale of Two Countries

I recently wanted to fulfill a wish from one of my daughters for her birthday. She had found a necklace sold by Tiffany & Co. It was her 21st birthday and given that the necklace was very reasonably priced I wanted to get it for her. I live in the US, she lives in the UK. Usually this is not a problem. I either have whoever I am ordering from ship direct or I go to their UK website and order from there. I do this all the time with Amazon and it works without fail.

However the Tiffany US website, having led me through their checkout process, doesn’t allow for international shipping addresses. Ok no problem I’ll use the Tiffany UK website, I go through the same checkout process only to find that their payment screen doesn’t allow International billing addresses. Undaunted by this I phone the Tiffany helpline, where a very helpful support person informs me that they are familiar with this issue, that they are working on a solution and that they are sorry to have caused a problem. She then tells me the solution is to phone the nearest store to where my daughter lives in the UK and have them ship it. She even provides me with the telephone number – great service.

I phone the UK store, explain what I am trying to do only to be told that they can’t take international payments, her advice was to go to my local Tiffany store buy the item there and ship it myself!

Tiffany fails on being a Global company in my book – they definitely need to be able to transact across borders.

Global Companies: A Further Tale of Two Countries

So I bought the necklace at my local store and then headed to Fedex, because after all they are an global shipping company. I filled out the requisite paperwork and then discovered that the Fedex could not find the city that the package was going to. In fact the assistant in the store referred to the destination as “some small country”!

Fedex failed because their people are trained to believe what the system tells them and not use their initiative. In the end I took my package to the Post Office, who within minutes had it addressed, labelled and on its way to the UK – also for a lot less than Fedex would have charged me.

Global Means Integration

So the lesson here is, if you are going to refer to your organization as Global or anything else for that matter make sure you can actually deliver on those claims. If you are going to be a global company then you need a lot more than a store in another country.

What are your experiences with global businesses?

Image used under CC license from Gerry Balding

We would all like to believe that we are good communicators. We have probably all had situations arise where we have discovered that we are not quite as good as we think we are. I recently had an experience that made me realize that adopting the receivers perspective can make you a much better communicator.

Communicating Your Message:How Others Receive It

I recently wrote a script for a video that I was putting together for a client. The videographer is based in another city, so communication was mostly via email with a few phone calls. Scripts are a great way to communicate certain visual ideas because they are fairly standardized, and they call for the writer to think about all the smallest of details that can impact a scene. At the same time the writer has to allow for the creativity of the videographer and their interpretation of what is on paper.

When I got to see the final version of the video – not having been able to be on set during filming I was astounded to find that the images on the screen matched almost exactly those that had been in my head. I don’t take the credit for this, what I credit it to is the formal structure imposed on my communication by having to write a script that included all the details.

Communicating Your Message:What’s Missing?

I’ve run a few management training sessions throughout my career. One of my favorites was to take some lego bricks of various colors and sizes, and build a random abstract object. Then, using the same amount of bricks, of the same color and sizes, have a team who cannot see the original try to replicate it using only instructions relayed to the team by another person. The catch is that the team can’t see the original and the messenger can’t see what the team are building.

The results of this exercise can be extremely revealing. Which bricks are misplaced, which ones are missing altogether? Who takes responsibility for the errors? Taking part in these types of exercises can really assist communicators with identifying where they are strong and where they have weaknesses.

Communicating Your Message: What Your Audience Hears

What this experience has reinforced for me is that the best communicators learn to think like their audience. Instead of focusing on what you want to say, focus instead on what you want to be heard.

How are you communicating your message?

How do others see you is a question that I was asked yesterday. It really made me think, I know how I want others to see me, but do I really know how they actually see me. No of course the “me” I’m talking about is the brand me not the person me. That can be a hard line to distinguish when you are talking about a person that has also worked to create a brand around themselves. Easier when you are talking about a company or an organizational brand.

How Do Others See You – What Image Are You Portraying?

Knowing how others, whether those “others” are customers, clients, readers etc see you can be a great aid in closing gaps in your brand image. During the conversation that sparked this post I discovered that the person I was talking with saw my brand in a very different way than I see it. This was actually a very positive thing for me, as they saw me much further developed than I saw myself. Nonetheless having that conversation made me realize that so often we plough ahead with our own perception and forget to actually check-in with the constituents that really matter – our audience.

I intend to check in with my audience on at least an annual basis and find out how they perceive my brand. What qualities do they associate with it, what attributes come to mind when they think of the name and also what do they not think of when they think of my brand.

How Do Others See You – How To Ask

How do you find out how others see  you? Especially in perhaps a more structured way than just a casual conversation. Big brands can afford to have market research conducted to obtain this type of feedback. How does a smaller organization or even a solo entrepreneur get the same feedback?

This is where relationships come in. Building a network of customers, clients and trusted voices that you can reach out to for answers to these questions is the easiest way to get that feedback. Of course it takes time and if you haven’t already started then you have a long path ahead of you. But building it has so much value that it simply can’t be expressed in revenue terms. Customers and clients have so much more to offer your business than just money. They have the perspective that, as business owners, brand managers and marketers we so often lack.

So as my group of readers – how do you see my brand? What attributes do you associate with it?

How will you ask your audience how they see you?

Image used under CC license by Tambako

There are approximately six weeks until the New Year, I find that this is a good point in the year to spend some time focusing on strengths and decide what next year is going to look like. What are you going to do differently next year? Defining next year is not just about writing a wish list of things you hope will happen. Nor is it just a matter of creating a plan that you can execute. An element of reflection is a strong component of moving forward.

Focusing on Strengths – Gaining Perspective

In determining what I want next year to look like I spent sometime reflecting on the past year – what did I change, what worked, what didn’t, what did I not try? These seem perfectly good points to reflect on, but I also spent some time taking an honest inventory of my strengths and of course in doing so, highlighted my weaknesses. Focusing on strengths gave me a sense of what I enjoy most about the work I do and how I might spend more time doing those things and, being honest, increase the amount of income those activities generate.

There are things I should be better at but am not. Some of those things will remain no matter what I decide to make 2012 look like, they are core activities necessary for any business. There are however things that are not only not core activities they are neither strengths nor things I enjoy – so why am I still doing them? In part I would imagine because I wanted to ensure that I at least tried them – which is a good reason to do something but not a good enough reason to sustain an activity.

Focusing on Strengths

Auditing yourself and your year is an interesting experience. A lot can change in a year – for example today is the one year anniversary of my move to Dallas from Austin – that was a significant change, and one I wouldn’t have predicted at the beginning of 2010. In performing the audit on my own activities I highlighted three areas that I feel have both become strengths and are things from which I derive great enjoyment:

• Speaking
• Writing
• Creating

I have spoken in public for many many years and to be honest, as anyone who really knows me well will tell you, I am happy in front of an audience of a couple of hundred than I am sitting at a table with a couple of people. This past year has given me the opportunity to travel extensively speaking in various settings and to a wide range of audiences – all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed. The fact that this is also becoming an increasingly significant contributor to my income is a distinct bonus.

Writing is something of a passion and a torture for me, as I know it is for a lot of writers. I never really imagined I would be able to earn a living writing, but surprising things happen. Not only did I manage to get a book written and published but I’m currently working on a second book for publication and a third for digital distribution, along with contributing as an author to various other outlets. It really does give me a lot of pleasure to write and so why would I not include that in my activities.

Creating is a vague term at best. For me it can best be described as working with ideas. Some people would call it Strategy, some people Ideation, some day dreaming. Of all the elements that I perform for companies, the big picture thinking, the wild ideas, the “what if” scenarios are what I enjoy most, so that definitely stays.

Focusing on Strengths – losing the weaknesses

In deciding to build a year based on what I feel are my strengths it also implies that I am not going to focus on the weaknesses. That is mostly true, I am acknowledging them and where possibly cutting them out of the processes and activities that I engage in. By focusing on strengths I am hoping that I build a stronger year in 2012, it’s a gamble because, while I might see something as a strength that might not be a shared view and perhaps some of those activities that I consider weaknesses just might have made a difference if they were included in the mix.

What are you focusing on for 2012?

I recently signed up for another social network, as though I don’t already have enough to manage. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Untappd, Foursquare etc. etc. etc. So why would I sign up for yet another platform? Well firstly of course I sign up for platforms to review them, see if they have anything to offer and see if there is a reason for either myself or a client to use it. The reason I signed up for Chime.In was that it supposedly handled the noise pollution problem differently.

Chime.In : Less Noise More Quality

Chime.In follows the same layout as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. A main stream which contains all the posts from the people you are following. As with those other platforms, recommendations for people for you to follow are in the right hand margin and methods of filtering are on the left. This is not a bad thing, it makes getting around the site fairly intuitive, you see things where you expect to see them. You have a profile page to edit which contains the usual information – name, location, short bio, link to your website etc.

Nothing new or dramatically game changing here so far. Why would someone think they could beat Google or Facebook at their own game? This is where Chime.In differs. When you follow a person on Chime.In you get a choice, you can follow all their posts or you can choose to only follow the particular interests that you have in common.

Chime.In: Combating Noise

This is how Chime.In combats the noise. For example I have the following interests listed:

• Photography
• HDR
• Street Photography
• Social Marketing

So if you wanted to follow me, but really didn’t care about my thoughts on Social Marketing but were interested in my thoughts on Street Photography and HDR you could just follow me and see when I post about those topics. This maybe the first platform where it’s safe to follow Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble and not be flooded with posts. For example I like Chris’ reviews of tech, I like his pictures and videos of Lego, could definitely live without the Cat gifs. If he set his profile up with interests like:

• Tech reviews
• Lego
• Cat gifs

I could choose which topics to follow him by and only see those posts. That gives me a much better level of control. After all that is how we segment people in real life.

Chime.In: Reflecting Real Life

The intersection of You and Me is Us. In any relationship there are overlaps in interests, the greater the number of overlaps the closer the relationship. For example my girlfriend and I both share interests in Sci-fi, tech, cats, books and travel. However, she likes Sushi and I do not, I like Muscle cars and she isn’t really interested. So we have common interests and we have our own interests. This is true online as well. I want to see Robert Scoble’s interviews with startups, I’m really not interested in his political views.

Could you do with less noise in Social Media?