Blog
Has the Bubble Popped for Social Media?
Ok, I know that I am not the first to write about this. This type article has been written and rewritten over and over again for the last few years. I am not about to state that social media is dead, far from it really. There are, however, a few alarming trends that I have noticed. Over the last few months I have been decidedly absent from social media. I do not post near as much as I used to. I sometimes go for days without even looking at a feed. I’ve been gone for two main reasons. First, I’ve simply been busy. I’ve been focusing on evolving my business and have gained some clients. Second, I’m exhausted. When it comes to putting the energy needed into all the social media platforms I was on, it just wore me down. I needed a break.
Back to the alarming trends. I guess it’s not entirely truthful to say that I have been absent from social media. I have still been here, I’ve just been listening. And what I have heard as been…well…boring. Alright, so I may be a tad bit harsh here, and I am not talking about social media used on a personal level but on the marketing level. Platforms seemed to have carved out little niches for themselves and what I see is the same stuff over and over again in each individual platform. It’s like, we used to have a big mix of brightly colored eggs in each basket, but now all the green eggs are in the Facebook basket, the red eggs are to be used only in the Twitter basket, and the blue eggs can only be found in the LinkedIn basket. Oh, and if you want to see how your eggs are doing then you better head over to Klout.
This distillation would be fine, except nothing new is happening. The new campaigns copy old campaigns. Social media became hot because it was new and the people in it were doing new things. Is it possible that we have already run out of new things that “burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww’” ?
And while I’m at it, not only have the campaigns gone dry but so has much of the conversation. We have always called social media the ultimate cocktail party. Maybe it was a self fulfilling fantasy but we have started talking in very bland small talk conversations. Here is an example:
Brand: So what did you have for breakfast today?
Facebooker: Sausage and eggs!
Brand: Mmmmm. I love me some sausage.
Really? It this their campaign? What has this accomplished for the brand? What has the brand done for the potential client? What problem has it solved for their clients? I could understand if this were a restaurant fan page but it was an IT support company.
I don’t believe that the pioneering days of social media are done. We need our vanguards back, the ground breakers, the trend setters. Instead of bland water cooler conversations we should be debating where we go next. We should be flinging ideas around the datascape until something pops and makes us go Awww!
Has the social media bubble popped? No. It’s just becoming a very beige bubble filled with a lot of meaningless noise. Time to stop that.
How about you? What is your next, big idea?
Monday Inspiration: My Top 12 Design Blogs
They say that if you want to learn anything then you need to immerse yourself in the culture. As I, and Anocial have been moving more and more towards web design, I have been reading more and more web design blogs. I thought I take a second and share a few of my favourites with you. The images link directly to the sites. (more…)
Find Your Voice
If you are going to create for a living and be successful at it, you must find your voice.
We are marketers, designers, writers, parents. We are builders of everything. Truly though, we are not really expressing ourselves, not speaking truth, until we find our own voice. It is our essence, laid bare for the world to see.
The problem is that many of us do not know how to find our voice. Simply put, there is no easy answer. I know for a fact that I haven’t fully found mine yet. It’s a never ending journey, not a quest for the Grail, so much, but a constant evaluating, a consistant return to my core. It’s a willingness to find out who you are today, on a daily basis.
I’m learning, and I hope that my learning helps yours. I wrote this for the writers, but really this can be for anyone who enjoys creating. I think that along the way I have found some texture of truth, if only a tactile approximation.
Write a lot: Nothing else matters without the constant practice of writing…a lot. The sheer mass of your writing becomes the raw matter from which to chisel your voice.
Experiment boldly: Rip off the greats and the pretty-goods as well. Mimick and make it your own. Try and fail.
Learn to hear yourself: My writing voice is actually the voice in my head. It’s not so much how I speak aloud, or maybe it is I really don’t know, but it is how I talk to myself. That’s the voice I try to get down on the page. That’s the trick though, isn’t it? Getting what’s in your head, onto the page. It’s not easy. In fact, it can be damn difficult, but it does get easier the more you do it. You have to rewire how you think, how your synapses fire off. Eventually you get to the point where what is in your head shoots right out your fingertips.
Find what feels true: Once you start writing a lot, most will be complete shit. You need to get through all of it to find truth. Filter through all the junk to find the truth, by how it feels, not by logical elimination. You’ll generally find that the truth looks a lot like shit.
Find clarity: If your thinking is muddled, your writing will be. Nuff said.
Remove the noise: This isn’t all about finding a quiet spot to write but removing the noise from your writing. Simplicity is key here. Many people use too many words, obscuring the point they are trying to make. Subtract and refine until you have your point made in as few words as possible. Many people also have too much noise in their lives to hear themselves. You cannot hear your truth when it is clouded by the noise of life. You must be able to find your own solitude to reach your voice. For me that means a little background music, and shut out any of the day’s troubles. All that can be dealt with after I have written what I have to say.
Use your voice: Once found, you must use it. You can use it to help yourself, help others, change the world, or just express. How you use it is up to you, just use it.
I write about fatherhood and how dynamic a job it is because many are scared to really be a father.
I write of distance running and soccer and the spiritual aspects of physically pushing your limits.
I write of contentment because too many aren’t.
I write of social injustice because people need to know.
I write about politics because Rome fell when people became more concerned with Coliseum than the Senate.
I write about freedom in an increasingly totalitarian environment.
This is how I use my voice. How will you use yours?
The Art of Quiet Influence
Quite a lot is being said about influence. Klout, Grader, and an array of other sites will grade your level of influence, and that is quickly becoming the standard of measurement for how we are doing on the web. Many online marketing people will teach you to expand your audience, how to use email lists, how to convert pageviews into sales, and teach you about the scarcity principal. They will tell you all about how to gain social proof and create authority.
Many of these people are full of crap.
Spending your time working to convert viewers into buyers is a soul-destroying waste of your creative energies. I find that influence is a better indicator than pageviews, or reader numbers. Find your value in creating something of value. Despite what many screaming marketers will tell you: prefer the calm of quiet.
- When everyone is screaming “Look at me!”, stay quiet.
- While all the others are vying for attention, turn your attention inward.
- When everyone is spending time on pageviews and sales, be of value.
- While all the others are trying to drive people to their site, let people find you.
- When the other blogs have pop-ups and drop-downs that push readers to do things, get out of your reader’s way.
- While the others are fighting over copyrights and greedily holding onto content, freely give yours away.
- Want to change the world? Learn to be content. People will ask you what your secret is.
It really is this simple. When you have created something valuable, you don’t need to push, pull, prod, or drive people to do anything. Your readers will become your marketing. People will find you and think that you are so awesome that they will tell their friends about you.
Look at it this way, if you own a bagel shop and your bagels are average, you will need to spend all kinds of money on marketing to convince people that you have the best bagels ever. Grey Goose vodka showed us how an average product can convince people that they have a superior product when you throw enough cash into a marketing campaign. However, if your bagels make people weak in the knees, people will tell the planet of the pleasures that lie just inside the doors of your shop. If you build it, they will come.
Leave the snake oil salesmen to their tonics. Like Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree, quiet yourself. Be as the reed against the wind, bending, solitary, enduring.
Have I Lost That Twitter Feeling?
It’s not you Twitter, it’s me. I’ve changed. I mean, I know we’ve been together for years now, but it seems that we have grown apart. Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re great. You’re more than great, you are wonderful. And we’ve had some really good times together, some good laughs, funny moments, and shared some meaningful links. But there’s something missing. We both know it and been avoiding this moment but the time has come. You know what I mean. I think we both need our space.
This has been coming on for a long time. We just don’t communicate like we used to. Heck, here I am writing this in more than 140 characters, what does that say about us? Look no one did anything wrong, it obviously just wasn’t meant to be. So let’s skip the blame and let me just express my sincere appreciation for you.
I admire you for your sense of confidence and ease of usability. You always seem so cool and in control and I look at you in awe. You are more intelligent than anyone I know and it goes beyond the normal coding, you have real world applications. You understand the world and people and always know the right thing to do. And then you do that right thing, you share links. You are such a good and beautiful application. Thank you for allowing me to see your lovely soul and for sharing so much of yourself with me.
In all seriousness, I have been on Twitter since the early days, and it is what drew me into this line of work. I think that I am at a point where my needs for my business are not fully compatible with what twitter does. That’s not to say I won’t be on Twitter. I’ll simply be looking for places that better suit my needs.
So Twitter, I hope we can still be friends 
Anocial is Back
New site, new ideas. It’s taken a while but there was really good reasoning behind taking about a month to get my site fully updated. Fully updated, that’s a bit of a stretch. There are simply too many past posts to alter so that it will look perfect on this site. That being said, all the pages have been updated and I have a cool little site, if I do say so myself.
I wanted this site to convey both the professional maturity I have gained since I started Anocial and the fun I like to add into work. It’s a different site for a different type of marketing firm. I hope you like what you see.
The Rebirth of a Website, the Refocusing of a Business
Design is easy. All you do is stare at the screen until a drop of blood forms on your forehead. ~Marty Neumier
In an effort to constantly listen to you, Anocial has gone through a few changes. It is continuing this group of changes with a long needed site redesign. Some time today I will take Anocial down and start on the new look. Along with the new look will be new pages and new features.
I’ve fallen off the mark a bit lately, but no worries. A new focus is just around the corner. Better look, better pages, and better content, is what you have to look forward to.
See you guys on the other side.
Eat. Breathe. Run.
The hardest thing for me about running isn’t getting off my ass and doing it. It isn’t trying to beat yesterday’s time. The hardest thing about running is trying to beat the person I was. When I was 20 I could run forever and I hated it. Maybe I was burnt out after 10 years of soccer and track. Maybe it was because the Army was making me. Either way, I hated it. So when I left the Army, I came to a physical standstill. I didn’t run again until 4 months ago. I’m 41. In my head I can see the runner I once was and kick myself almost every morning for letting it go.
So I get out there, before sun rise, and start putting pavement under my feet. The first 5 minutes is always tough for me. It’s the time when my body is screaming for me to stop, go back to bed, go work on that idea I have for a blog post, paint the living room, clean the gutters, or anything that will make my shin splints stop hurting, anything that will get me to just stop. There is a huge difference between pain and suffering, and while my head would initially have me believe that my body is suffering, it surrenders to my will soon after the fifth minute.
This brings me to my first little gem of realization: Sometimes, things that suck are totally awesome. My calves burn, my ankles hurt, my hips sometimes feel like they are simply going to fall out of their sockets, I get sweaty, smelly, and my lungs hurt. But at the end of a run, the endorphins come flowing in, and I can feel good, really good about my progress, when I add my run into dailymile.com. So very worth it.
The one aspect of running that is true for just about everyone out there is the also true for many things in life, and also the one thing people hate hearing the most. It’s all mental. It really is all in your head. Yep, it hurts. It hurts every time I run. Making that mental switch made all the difference in the world.
I would love to be able to write about how I just ran miles and miles and miles. No, I take that back. I just started running again four months ago. The fact that I am running a little over two miles is a big deal. Take joy in the little things. There is nothing like seeing the sun come up while I’m running. I take in the sights and smells of my neighborhood, and sometimes have a little fun shouting down the barking dog on the other side of the fence. And sometimes I get an unexpected wind sprint exercise because the dog isn’t on the other side of the fence.
I have a life. I have five kids, my own business, my incredible wife, two dogs, and the list goes on. Kids get sick, wives need taken to work, dogs raid the pantry leaving a mess. Running doesn’t always fit into my life, but I’m fine with that. There is nothing wrong with being inconsistent. I find the time to run at least 3 times a week, usually. Sometimes not. Am I officially a runner? Does it matter? I’m running again.
I run. It’s become a spiritual thing for me. Eat. Breathe. Run.
6 Things You Didn’t Know About Google+
The cool new phrase in the social media world is “Circle me.” Google seems to have hit on a great new social media platform with G+. Is it a Facebook Killer? No, it isn’t. Will it be the end of Twitter? No, it won’t. Will it become a viable component to the social media universe? It may. Time will tell.
Aside form some questionable moves by Google, like supporting animated GIFs, + has some really nice options. I thought I’d take a moment to tell you about some of the really cool things available to you that many people don’t seem to know about.
- Import Picts From Facebook: Though you can do this through a Yahoo account, you can also use a program like Pick&Zip, a free backup tool, that allows you to download all your pictures from FB into a .zip file. At that point all you need to do is to drag the .zip into your browser and Google will upload all of them for you.
- Watch YouTube with Your Friends: In Hangouts you and 10 of your friends can watch a YouTube vid simultaneously. The group chat is muted when the vid starts but you can Push-to-talk if you want to talk over the vid.
- Format Bold and Italics in Your Updates: You can use the ‘*’ and the ‘_’ keys to do a bit of formatting in your updates. Use them sortta like HTML tags. *bold* and _italics_. Pretty cool. You can even double them up to create a bold italicized statement.
- Tagging People in Facebook or Twitter: You can use the + symbol before someone’s name and will reach out to them on the other platforms. If you can’t quite get the hang of using +, @ works just as well.
- Direct Messaging: You can send a message to only one person and, unlike Twitter where you both must be following each other, they need only be in one of your circles. It is a simple as creating a post directed at only one person. Make sure to disable re-shares.
- You Can Quit, Easily: Unlike Facebook, where friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos or ask you to join groups. However, with +, if you’ve had enough already, will completely erase all traces of you and let you download all your data you stored on it.
That’s what I got for now. Have any helpful, but little known tips? Let me know, we’ll start our own little circle.
Still Friends I Hope?
The last couple of weeks have seen me making some definitive changes in how I am handling my social media presence. Mainly, I talked about why I decided to leave Empire Avenue, not because it’s not a viable platform, but more about keeping in mind what I have time for and working with platforms I am comfortable with. If we want to succeed, achieve even, in social media we must be willing to try out the new stuff. If it doesn’t work for us, so be it, move on.
I started with Triberr almost three months ago. I wrote about it an earlier post. In that post I talked about how Triberr is one of the best Twitter services out there. I still believe that. I thing that D-n-D have put together something truly amazing. That being said, I am leaving their service. I has nothing to do with them or the application so much as it does the time I need to devote to it.
Triberr has done some great things for me. I have gained in website hits, I have gained in Twitter followers, and comments have drastically increased. On the other end of the spectrum, the majority of the comments have been from those within my tribe, I have not gained any new subscribers, My bounce rate has gone to crap, I have not converted any of the new readers to clients, and I have received a lot of complaints from my core followers about what has been pushed by my account.
This isn’t Triberr’s fault, it’s mine. I haven’t watched the tweets coming out as closely as I need to be. I have not been interacting as much on Twitter to offset the amount of tweets generated by Triberr, and I have not really pushed to build my own tribe. I simply don’t have the time to do these things.
There are so many things going on for Anocial right now that I really have to refocus and critically look at what I am able to reasonably do and what I cannot. D-n-D, thank you for this awesome opportunity, but at least for right now, I must put you on the back burner. Like in any break up, it’s not you, it’s me. I hope we can still be friends.
BTW, in my efforts to get refocused, Anocial will be going under a redesign. This template broke a while back, and I have needed to give it a new layout for some time now. That time is now, well in a couple weeks at least.
