Deerfield Cove Marina in LaFollette TN wanted to create not only a presence on the web but do something a bit different, something that would show just how special they are.

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

 I am completely captivated by fog. I call it Dragon’s Breath. Ok, I admit I don’t say that out loud, but those are the words I hear in my head when I wake up to a fog filled morning. It’s no different now that I am 42 than when I was eight, or ten, or 13, or ever, for that matter. Somewhere out there, in that fog, there is a knight searching his fortune, fighting an evil dragon, or on the most noble of quests… rescuing the imprisoned princess. Yes, I am that geek, but it goes deeper than that.

Quite a bit of my growing up I was enthralled with the knights of legend. I was an avid D&D player, but that was later on. Much earlier than that, around age seven or eight, Tennyson was my man. The Ninth Wave was, and is, a piece of work I can read over and over again. I have, at various times, been the embodiment of Lancelot, Galahad, Gawaine, and sometimes if I dared, even Arthur himself. While I realize that this was just the pretend games of my childhood, there is quite a bit that I took away from it. Knights, were brave, galant, chivalrous, and above all, stood for what was right no matter the cost. These were brilliant, beacon like qualities that called to me. Who knows, maybe it all has to do with my Scot lineage, and the nobles in my bloodline. At any rate, these ideas of nobility shaped how I played my games. Countless times, I charged into a fog bank to defeat some evil dragon, or best a Black Knight in combat. It was great fun, and to this day, remembering it, puts a smile on my face.

When I got older I found that there was actually a knight’s code of honor, or officially the Code of Chivalry. All of the ideas of virtue I had put into my childhood games could be found here. 

• To protect the weak and defenceless
• To give succour to widows and orphans
• To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
• To live by honour and for glory
• To despise pecuniary reward
• To fight for the welfare of all
• To never turn your back on your foe
• To respect the honour of women
• To never refuse a challenge from an equal
• To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
• To eschew unfairness, meanness, and deceit
• To guard the honor of fellow knights
• At all times speak the truth

At all times, speak the truth. The truth is that at such an early age, I didn’t realize what much of all that really meant. I did know, however, that it spoke to me. It stuck…kind of. I forgot about a lot of that in my teens and 20′s but as I became a father, I started hearing the voices of the knights again. I started to realize what it really meant to give succour, to live honourably, to respect the honour of women, to persevere, and to always speak the truth. It took the life  of an innocent, born into my care, to teach me the true value of this code. 

When I created Anocial I thought a lot about how I wanted to run my business. Once again those voices echoed through my head. Almost, if not all, of these can be applied to how I do business, how I treat my clients. So now, whether I am driving into a fog bank, or walking into a presentation, I can hear the clank of noble armour, and I smile to myself, just a little bit.

And then the two
Dropt to the cove, and watched the great sea fall,
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe, and rode to Merlin’s feet,
Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried “The King!
Here is an heir for Uther!”

~Lord Alfred Tennyson

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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:

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?

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Colorburned

Colorburned is one of the first sites I found a few years ago when I had a webdesign class in IT school. It was then, and still is a great resource. You can find free vectors, textures, patterns, Illustrator and Photoshop brushes as well as tutorials and interviews with some of the biggest players in the design industry.

Six Revisions

Six Revisions provides practical, useful information for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer. You’ll find a variety of content from tools that can speed up your work-flow processes to showcases of beautiful designs for inspiration and tutorials on JavaScript frameworks like jQuery and MooTools.

Design Reviver

Useful tuts, great inspiration.

Abduzeedo

This blog is all about design. Again, unique tuts for Photoshop, Illustrator, and more, plus great inspirations.

Webdesigner Depot 

Full of free icons, brushes, and tools for the web and graphic designer.

Web Designer Wall

A great blog by Nick La focusing on tuts and current design trends.

NetTuts+

Tuts, tuts, and more tuts. Here you’ll find instruction and tips on HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS’s, PHP and Ruby on Rails.

Design Mag

Community-based website for web designers and developers. The site includes a popular blog, a user-submitted news section, a design gallery, and a design job board.

CSS-Tricks

A great collection of articles and vids on CSS related topics.

Spoon Graphics

A great little resource blog for designers by Chris Spooner.

Just Creative Design

Australian born Jacob Cass owns Just creative Designs, is based in New York City. He is a web, graphic, and logo designer, and his blog is one of the best.

imjustcreative

Graham Smith’s work is simplicity taken to a new level, and his blog is pure inspiration.

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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?

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2012 Anocial. All Rights Reserved.