You don't need a flashlight if you're a lighthouse

Social media analysts like to buzz about how important it is to join the conversation. To search it for verbatims. To monitor and measure and react to it. All that is not unimportant. But I don't think it's the main thing, either.

Our job is not to control consumers' conversations, but to capture their imaginations. And the best way to do that isn't by spinning in the comments or linking on the forums. It is to create content worthy of being passed around.

I had a personal experience with viral content recently. On Aug. 24, 2010 I published this post named "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising." It was subsequently picked up by The Denver Egotist. Then by The Orlando Egotist, The Des Moines Egotist, The San Francisco Egotist, The St. Louis Egotist and Design Taxi. It was named post of the month on Only Dead Fish. Quoted on waxmuseum. And linked on Twitter here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And then my eyes glazed over and I broke Google.

I'm not saying my little essay was the equal of Arcade Fire's devastating multiscreen music video. (Linked at PSFK, The Denver Egotist and Contagious Magazine. Go watch it now.) I'm just sharing it because it is a personal story. And the lesson I have learned is this. "Join the conversation if you must. Create it if you can."

Two favorite AC Hair Recovery videos: Female content edition

Can hair loss affect confidence?



What do girls say about men with hair loss?

Hearing the tiny bird sing while you're being assaulted by dozens of screeching eagles

I thought this comment I put on Noah Brier's blog merited its own post here:

Over the summer, someone asked me how I can keep track of all the digital information - music, RSS feeds, Tweets, iChat, and whatever file I am working on - at once.

I said, "Take a second to think about everything you are experiencing right now. You're listening to me, about three other conversations going on around us, the air conditioning. You're seeing me, my desk, the carpet, the wall, the wall art, out the window, the trees. You're feeling the air around you, the clothes on your body, the floor beneath your feet. You're smelling the dust from the vents and the coffee in this cup. If you tried to explain all that to someone who was deaf and blind, they'd probably say the same thing. 'How my god, how do you process it all?' And the answer is, 'You just adapt. You learn how to decipher what's important and what's not and how to focus and refocus on things throughout the day.'"

I'm not normally that eloquent, so I assume I'd either thought of or heard that explanation before. But I can't remember when or where

I heard a great Buddhist story once. The student asks the master how he managed to hear a tiny bird singing softly at the window and the master replied, "The real question is, 'How is it that you did not?'"

The interesting thing is that my comment directly contradicts a post I wrote in 2007:

Some [social digital tools] have proven valuable. Others have increased my mania. But now it appears I may just be making myself stupid... Navigating the maze of strategies, media and applications can be awfully distracting. Especially to a creative mind that verges on the manic without any help from hyperlinks.

Welcome to my homepage. Now get going.

I can't think of a single personal or brand website that I visit on a regular basis. (Maybe The New York Times.) Instead I grab feeds that interest me (Like ColoradoPols, Noah Brier, Reach for the Wall, Selectism, Pitchfork and Sometimes Daily). I integrate interesting people into my news stream (Such as Alan Wolk, Barack Obama, Andrew Hyde, Universal Sports and Redhead Writing.) I subscribe to video channels on YouTube and look through my friend's photos on Facebook.

Like Jaffe said:

Today, consumers' digital homes are their Facebook profiles, their blogs, their custom-created communities. That's where they "live" in the digital world and that's where we need to hope they invite us to come and hang out from time to time, not the other way around.

My favorite personal websites right now are single-page designs that encourage visitors to connect on social platforms. Sites that are portals into larger stories. Sites that encourage you to leave them. (Such as Adelle Charles, Bud Caddell and Zach Klein.) My home page, Ingwalson.com, works the same way.

Brands could think of their websites as hubs, with links to content, connections and on- or off-site storefronts. Help people get where they're going. And don't bog down the pace of their lives.

Twitter is screwing up Friendfeed

On January 4, 2008 I wrote, "Serial online publishers need a great way to aggregate their content into a single news stream." Since then, real-time news streams have cropped up faster than social media gurus at a travel and tourism tradeshow. The recently sold-to-the-man Friendfeed seemed especially promising. I can't tell you how many times I've stared at my Friendfeed page and wished I used the damn thing. But I don't. Here's why.

Ninety-two percent of Friendfeed users post to Twitter way more than any other social network. (I am guessing at that number. But it's definitely really high.) Which means that when viewed in real-time, any given user's Friendfeed page looks like a duplicate of his or her Twitter page.

It's not, of course. If you sift through it there are probably blog posts and YouTube uploads and music links. They're simply lost among the tweets.

Thinking about that made me realize a way in which Twitter is different from every other social website in history. All social media is about conversation. But YouTube, blogs, Flickr, Facebook, Upcoming, Slideshare, delicious and so on all start with shared content. The content starts a conversation. The conversation creates a relationship.

Twitter starts with a conversation. Some people join Twitter, realize they're in the middle of a conversation they don't understand, and eject. That's fine. Hang with the conversation long enough and you start to get actionable intelligence.

But the conversation itself is not fit for a news stream. Because there is no news there. It's just data exchange.

So today I pulled my Twitter feed off my Friendfeed news stream. If everyone in the entire world could follow suit, I would so appreciate it.

[Ed. - Crossposted at Ingwalson and Karsh Connect.]

"We decided that to know and be known was a good thing"

PSFK:

And these [online] communities blossomed, starting with close friends and family then expanding to include co-workers and long lost childhood chums, finally welcoming obscure acquaintances and total strangers with whom we’ve never had a face to face conversation. We decided that to know and be known was a good thing, but never really thought it through.

This is good stuff. It's infused with melancholy and understanding. It gets to the heart of the human condition, to the war that rises from the conflict between the need to be loved and the desire to be left alone. And it is a subject that resonates with anyone who has ever experienced something too heavy for Twitter. Social media encourages infinite how-you-doings, but is totally unprepared for any answer other than, "Fine."

Marketing takes intelligence. Advertising takes guts.

These are words I have written before:

[Blogging] immortalizes everyday language, holding it to an impossibly lofty standard.

And I am thinking about those words now after reading a post by Noah Brier named "When Too Much Listening Is A Bad Thing."

It's precisely those emotional comments that [the Microsoft/Jerry Seinfeld ad campaign] should have been aimed for and seemed to have succeeded at. So why did they drop it? Well, my theory is that it's because a bunch of people with blogs and such started talking about how they didn't like/didn't get the ads. Lots of people were saying that Microsoft needed to respond and listen to what the consumer was saying, but I call bullshit. In a quote for PRWeek I explained, "Other than the Super Bowl, how often do people talk about ads? Microsoft should let this play out. I think there are times to listen to everyone and there are times not to listen to everyone... The people talking about this may not be the audience for this ad. They may not be talking to early adopters." And I stand by that.

In the end I guess my point is that there are times to listen and act upon what you've heard and times to listen and respectfully ignore the feedback.

Brier is right. More than once I've prepared a marketing director for the idea that an ad (this radio spot, for example) might offend someone. But these days, a client might get more than a cranky phone call. He or she might get an angry blog post that an antsy junior marketing executive sends to an unpredictable CEO who forwards it to the whole senior management team, which immediately convenes a committee to seriously consider the matter. The next day the agency phone rings, a junior account coordinator picks up the call, and an effective, wonderful ad dies.

In Hey Whipple, Squeeze This Luke Sullivan wrote that we marketers get so tied up measuring public opinion, we forget that we have the power to shape it. The Internet appears to give us the ability to measure opinion more accurately than ever before. But it gives disproportionate weight and unprecedented permanence to isolated, impulsive rantings.

For the most part, I've been blessed with courageous, focused clients. But the weight of the written word makes even stout hearts wobbly. Sometimes the best course is to just sack up and plow on.

It's just this simple

1. Identify a niche. Two years ago, inspiring, visionary leaders were in short supply.

2. Have a great product. Barack Obama had a compelling life story, a good grasp of policy, and a talent for politics.

3. Build your product into a brand. Obama could have been beaten. Change could not. And a killer logo didn't hurt.

4. Create a relationship. Obama's campaign encouraged user-generated content, experimented with new strategies, optimized social networks, and did anything else it could think of to capture data - along with hearts and minds.

Of course, for most brands, the journey ends here. For Barack Obama - and the USA - it is just beginning.

Three Facebook groups for Denver creatives

The ad club, the art director's club and the Egotist have Facebook groups. Join them all to get news and conversation about the Denver market.

The tubes are a utility

Some folks don't quite understand online social networks:

I'm still one of those people who looks a person in the eye when I'm talking... Frankly, what I've learned over the years is that a couple of true friends can help you get through anything. It won't be easy jumping into this new world of make-believe.

The other day I sat in a focus group made up of college-bound high school students. They all had Facebook pages. But not a single one of them thought of the Internet as a "world of make believe." Their online social networks were merely tools they used to enrich real-life relationships.

Speaking of Facebook, here are three amazing things that happened to me there.

• An art director in Sweden found me on Facebook and sent me a message, asking me to recommend broadcast producers in Denver. I did.

• I learned that a woman in my office cut her hair when she updated her Facebook status with the words, "Still getting used to my new bangs." I then walked the 50 yards to her desk to see her new style.

• My Facebook friend noticed that my other Facebook friend was the stranger whose mail she had been receiving for six months. They connected and he finally got his lost mail.

I could tell similar stories about Twitter and LinkedIn. But the moral is the same. The end of value of the Internet is that it helps real connections to take place in marvelous and unexpected ways.

iRovr getting traction

The iPhone-based social networking application iRovr earned a spot in the 2007 Denver 50. Now it's inching towards the tipping point nationally. Love seeing a Denver agency thinking like this.

Aggregation nation

I realize that what I'm about to write is trendier than a Barack Obama t-shirt. But I'm going to write it anyway.

Serial online publishers need a great way to aggregate their content into a single news stream.

The Biz of Coding agrees:

Managing scattered online Social Life on multiple Social Networking sites, I sense, will become a Killer App Category 2008.

So does Mashable

[A]s I try out more social networks and lifestreaming utilities, I’ve spread my personal brand all over the Internet. I’ve got podcasts, domains, writings, tumblogs, linkblogs and RSS feeds scattered all over the internet bearing my name. I need to find one or two good utilities and a slick looking format with which to consolidate it all in a useful, user-friendly manner.

There are several startups in the space. And SocialThing!, which is being developed by friends of friends, sounds similar.

Plaxo Pulse is similar, too. I have a couple gripes about it. One is that when you load your address book into it, it automatically invites everyone you know, instead of letting you select who you'd like to connect to. The result is that you're connected via pulse.plaxo.com to a whole bunch of business contacts who don't actually create any content of their own.

Someone's going to get this ironed out eventually. I just know it.

Cross-posted on karshconnect.

Am me getting myself dumber now?

I consider it part of my job to stay on top of the ways in which people communicate. Blogging, microblogging, social networks. Updating my Twitter page via my cell while overseeing a spot edit and rewriting the script on the fly.

Some of these tools have proven valuable. Others have increased my mania. But now it appears I may just be making myself stupid. From The Atlantic Monthly:

Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy.

The rest of the article is protected behind a password. But here's an excerpt from the magazine:

At the most basic level, the the mental balancing acts that [multitasking] requires - the constant switching and pivoting - energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning.

In other words, you can do a lot of stuff, but after you finish, you can't really tell anyone what you did.

It may be true, because while I was typing the excerpt from The Atlantic, I must have forgotten my place at least a dozen times. This from a guy who can recite the alphabet backwards and perform chunks of Shakespeare from memory.

I think maybe this is why many in the ad world - like Sally Hogshead - are worried that new media will hurt our ability to concept. Navigating the maze of strategies, media and applications can be awfully distracting. Especially to a creative mind that verges on the manic without any help from hyperlinks.

It's easy to say,"Unplug, grab a Sharpie and go concept in a coffeeshop." But what happens when your creative director asks you if you've seen the latest viral video and you haven't because you've been off, you know, working?

And now, in an act of WTF blogging, I'm ending this post. Because I've checked my email and my RSS feeds at least a dozen times in the last 20 minutes and I've forgotten what my point was. If indeed I had one.