A sweet spot is a spot where a combination of factors suggest a particularly suitable solution. On a racquet or baseball bat, it’s the ideal spot you want to hit the ball. It’s the spot where you have a confluence of things that all align into harmony at once. Below is diagram that defines what I think is the sweet spot for social media.
I have been tagged by my friend Beth Harte to share seven things about me that you might not know (or want to know). I would say this though, as much as we all are about transparency, choosing 7 things can be tough without challenging The Communications Decency Act. But here goes.
1. In college I majored in Political Science and I hate politics. I just don’t have the passion for it like others, but there was nothing else that interested me or perhaps I didn’t try hard enough to find the right fit. Though I did minor in French…Why?
2. Because I was born and raised in New Orleans, and spoke french throughout my childhood; as it was taught in school and I had lots of cajun friends. My Family moved completely away a year before Katrina, but it still took a heavy toll on me personally. I lived nearby the fairgrounds which is home of the Jazz Fest which I would highly suggest attending if not for the food, then for the music of course. i could hear the music from my front porch.
The house in N.O. 5 minutes from the Jazzfest
3. Speaking of music, I have a tremendous passion for it. Perhaps because of my heritage and the fact that though I couldnt get into the bars on Bourbon St. until I was 16, I still would catch a bus and go down and listen to the music emenating from the bars for hours on end. With that being said, I have about 600 cassettes, 800 CD’s and roughly 2,000 songs on my ipod. It was this love for music that prompted me to…
4. Sell concert t-shirts for almost 5 years. After I graduated from college, I realized that my degree was pretty worthless, so I decided to go to Graduate school for a masters in sport management. While in school I met a guy that sold concert shirts, not just any kind, they were bootlegs. That’s right, the guys outside the arenas and stadiums, hustling. It was the perfect college job. I just didn’t know it would suck me in for 5 years. There is a book forthcoming of what I saw and experienced. BTW, I have gone to over 500 shows from Hawaii to NYC. But once I got done with my degree, was pretty much fried from all the travelling and realized that the business of sports paid nothing if you wern’t a “playa”, the internet had arrived. Thank god.
5. So I decided to create 2 websites, one devoted to concert t-shirts and the other devoted to music reviews. I learned as much as I could and built them from scratch. One tanked and one thrived. The review site thrived and I started receiving demos and samples and tons of music from the major labels and the indies. I just couldn’t keep up. Though I loved doing it. A shell of it’s former self is still up, but it is so neglected and I still don’t have time to manage it which is a pity. The original business plan was so before its time too…oh well. But that initial experience led to more tech related jobs, so I thank music for getting me started.
6. In between tech jobs I also was the Dir. of Mktg for a now defunct alt. music radio station in Pittsburgh, PA. The gig lasted less than a year. Why? As stations are wont to do, they changed formats from alt. rock to smoooth jazz. Oh and they did it while I was on my honeymoon in Greece. I came back and my stuff was in a box with 2 weeks severance and the smooth sounds of Kenny G wafting through the hallways. Sweet. Oh did I mention I moved to Pittsburgh right after college? Guess not. Try melding a New Orleans/Pittsburghese life into some sort of twisted “Yat-Yinzer” accent. But I love Pittsburgh, which many might not know, but hey that’s what the point of this is right?
Lastly, 7) I have 2 kids who rock, a wife who I married because when I asked her what her favorite music was, she answered that it was the blues, when I pressed her to elaborate, she said, “Stevie Ray”. At that point, she had me. When we met, I had insanely long hair and I owned a motorcycle. I also have roughly 11 strategically placed tattoos as well, but you would never know. One of the tats is an image from an Alexander Calder painting I own that I bought with my college student loan money that was supposed to go towards a class…By the way my 8 year old son just asked me how to play the blues…:)
Now that that’s out of the way I’m going to tag the following people:
Here are the rules:
I was listening last week to a football coach being interviewed on the radio. I can’t remember the college team he coached, but he had a law degree and he was talking about something other than football-so it was turning into a good interview-because it was free of cliches. He was telling a story about his mentor in law and he asked his mentor if he liked law. His mentor responded that he “thought about law at all hours”. He said that it consumed him, but in a good way. He said that in life you should “do” what consumes you.
I thought about that as I drove. Beyond your family, What get’s your motor running? What can you talk about with relative ease? It can be your passion. But even more, it’s easy for you to think about it. It’s a no brainer. The more I thought about it, the more I’m starting to realize that I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking of the ways that social media can be used in all walks of life, in social settings, and in work environments.
To me, I see social media as a way to connect, to solve problems, to communicate and to converse on a scale that we have never seen before. That consumes me. That possibility. That challenge.
So…. What Consumes You?
Anyone know who Travis Bickle is? Back in 1976, an actor you may have heard of, was still trying to carve out a name for himself in Hollywood. He was in a movie called Taxi Driver, In this one memorable scene, Bickle is looking into a mirror at himself, imagining a confrontation which would give him a chance to draw his gun. He says the following line:
You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?
So my question to you, who are you talking to? When you write your blog, who are you writing for? Are you talking at them? or to them? Who is them? Someone had written recently that you don’t have a successful blog unless it’s loaded with trackbacks and comments. I bet to differ, but I do think it’s important that you are writing with purpose and conviction. That’s what makes a blog successful. But one other important aspect of blogging, is the ability to listen and the ability to focus.
Here is your thought for Monday. take a step back and figure out what is the message and the theme of your blog. When you do get traffic, what brings them to you? And how can you get them back again. What is your unique value proposition? it should be, listening first and talking second. I’m not saying your blog is wrong, I’m saying, be more succinct in the theme. BE CLEAR There’s nothing wrong with randomness, but if I want random, I can find that anywhere. This is especially true if you’re first starting out as well. Know why you want to blog. Here’s a good primer on how to blog ,for the uninitiated.
BTW, Travis Bickle was played by Robert DeNiro, but you knew that right?
First off, I have to tell you about a very funny post about The 10 commandments of Facebook that you should read.
Next I was reading another great post on Social Media Today by John Bell about whether Twitter was breeding a lack of authenticity and it pushed me to think about how authentic people are now, or rather how social media has allowed us to be more visible and “out there” and god forbid but I’m going to use a very tired word…”authentic”.
But has the explosion of social networking tools, resources, and outlets, forced some people to try and be interesting? Or forced them to think they have to be more interesting? When they otherwise might not be? Or has it, or does it force us to inflate an average persona into something entirely not us? I think so. I think some people think they have to “be” in order to “be”.
Or… how often is someone forced to be the voice of a corporate brand and asked to be more interesting for the sake of their corporate or personal brand? When in fact…. They otherwise might not be? Or otherwise would choose not to be?
Hey I applaud you for jumping in, but don’t blog or talk, or brag, or bash, or be snarky for the sake of trying to be interesting. We like the real you. We appreciate real people. It’s why the social net has evolved the way it has. It’s allowed us to learn and share with more people than ever.
Which begs the next blog post.
Is social media raising the bar of expectation?
I was reading Paul Chaney’s blog post on Social Media Today this morning in which he thinks that there is a serious reduction on the number of comments flowing into blogs and he’s right. the quality is going down as well as the quantity. Part of the reason is that we now have more ways to access the writers of blog posts. Namely through Twitter, Plurk, Pownce et al. I basically told Paul “thats great that we can do that, but now our conversations are somewhat muted and shorter”.
Does that mean that blogging is dead or dying? That we need a lesson in blogger ethics? No.
But as I thought about this more and looked at some of my posts and my comments on other blogs. I make a concerted effort to engage others. I’m not sure what the requisite amount of replies or back and forths are required between writer and reader, but I personally think that there is an expected return on the comment expected. Maybe. A requisite expectation if you will. But what I’m starting to see is smuggness and a “I started it, contributed some, and thats sufficient, attitude” starting to permeate some really good blogs. I’m also seeing really nice blogs, with some decent content, and some history, tailing off with posts, and an otherwise obvious downtick in effort.
What this tells me is that, perhaps that blog strategy or the author, have gone in another direction. What this tells me is that you can’t finish what you started. It tells me you are not practicing what you preach. It tells me that if you are a PR or a marketing person, no way in hell am i going to work with you. You started the race and you can’t finish it. You built the frame but you can’t put up the walls, the roof and anything else. You’ve done a half fast job and it shows.
Or maybe just maybe, Twitter is now cutting into our desire to comment?
Or… You’ve written a good blog post but you can’t comment or respond to the people who have made the effort and done the same to your post. I know you can comment via email, or Twitter, and maybe you have, but if we’re to extend the conversations beyond a micro-blogging platform and bring them back to blogs, we need to see that you have a vested interest in your blog post and you’re not posting just for attention or link juice, or extending the conversation privately.
The bottom line is you started it, now finish it with transparency and efficacy. We’re still watching we’re still reading.
I was reading Jackie Huba’s and Ben McConnell’s blog and they were interviewing Tom Fishburne as part of the Post2Post blogging book tour he’s doing. So they asked him if branding was dead and if so, where do we bury the body?” The following cartoon was inspired by the question. All I can say, is amen. It’s dead on. It’s a great interview by the way.
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