Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 350

Steve

Do you remember being in your teens and buying a ticket to a concert?

I was (and still am) a huge fan of music. My genre of choice is anything loud, hard and aggressive, but I've mellowed over the years and get as much joy out of jazz, classic rock and stuff in between. I can remember being in my early teens and hearing that a band that I loved was coming to town. First, I would wait weeks for the tickets to go on sale and then, after waiting in line for hours on end, I would post the ticket to a corkboard in my room and stare at the date for months until the band finally came to town. People often forget that a lot of the joy derived from the concert experience is actually in the waiting, anticipation and getting ready for the big day.

Do you remember the first time you ever saw a personal computer?

I grew up in a typical middle class environment. I was given everything I needed (and more) but not to excess and I was never spoiled. My parents worked very hard to give me and my three brothers the best life possible (funny enough, they still work hard and push us to create our best lives possible, to this very day). Instead of individual gifts for every occasion, the money was pooled together for something that we could all share. From the first versions of Pong and the Atari 2600 to our first personal computer: Atari 800. As technology advanced, we were one of the first families to own a PC (IBM clone) and when modems entered the market, I was right there busting the piggybank to get connected. Around the same time that I was deep diving into my first PC, two of my best friends got Apple Macintosh computers. Most people didn't even know why anyone would need a computer in their home (this was the early days of the early adopters). True story: I once got into trouble at elementary school because I had written a book review on the computer and handed in a print-out from the dot matrix printer instead of writing it by hand. The teacher forced me to transcribe the printed page by hand on to loose leaf paper.

Old habits die hard.

I never really used Apple products much growing up and into my adult life. Don't get me wrong, I have always been around Apple: I knew the brand, I knew the product lines, I could fumble my way through it, but since the early eighties, I was on a PC. During Christmas of last year, I changed everything. I decided to drop the BlackBerry and the PC laptops and switch to Apple only: iPhone, iPad and MacBook. I wanted to understand, feel and learn what it's like to be completely uncomfortable with technology by causing disruption in my life. I even had a plan: I was going to start with my smartphone. I bought the iPhone on a Saturday morning and figured I would carry both devices around until I was comfortable with just the iPhone. Bad plan. By Saturday afternoon, my BlackBerry was in the drawer and I have not looked back since. Same with my computer. I traded in my Sony Vaio and Dell notebooks in for a MacBook Pro. Again, within hours, there was no looking back. Apple's marvel was not in technology or design, it was in making technology through design a completely comfortable experience.

Recently...

Recently, I switched from my MacBook Pro to the new MacBook Air (13 inch). In case you didn't know, I rarely mention brands, products or services, but my MacBook Air is such an amazing computer that I was actually considering writing a Blog post review of my laptop (and, as someone who changes their computer more times than I care to admit, that is really saying something). I love my MacBook Air so much, that I was recently telling both Julien Smith and Hugh McGuire that it is making me a better writer. I simply enjoy the writing process and experience on my new laptop so much more because of how great of a computer it is. Imagine that. In fact, I've been a huge advocate for the iPad, but since I've been working on my MacBook Air, there hasn't really been a need to use the iPad as well.

Thanks, Steve.

I've been down about the news that Steve Jobs has resigned from Apple. As a business owner and entrepreneur, I know that the business will roll on and that Apple will continue to innovate and change how we use technology and media. I too marvel at everything that Apple has accomplished under Jobs' command, but I'm more down about how somber and morbid both the news analysis and punditry is. Most of the media reads like an obituary. I'm down because I can't imagine what it took for Jobs to write that letter of resignation. To be at the point where he feels like he can't complete his daily duties. It's sad. Not because the world needs more iPhones. It's sad because I'm sure he still wants to go to work every day, to think about what his customers might not even know that they want and to push people (and himself) to create the future (or, as he says, "make a dent in the universe."). Jobs is obviously focusing on a very serious personal fight for his health and it's not hard to link his resignation with how tough of a battle his health is putting him through.

Thanks, Steve.

I don't know about you, but it's fun to be a grown adult, with a family of my own and to still get that feeling that I used to get when it was announced that one of my favorites rock bands was coming to town, but now it's about the stuff that Apple is doing. It's funny how life changes. The rock stars in my life are now people like Steve Jobs.

I'm cool with that. 

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One Step Forward And Fifty Steps Back For Bloggers (And Society)

What year is this?

Instead of treating Bloggers as if they're not capable of reporting the news or having journalistic integrity, why not just elevate the journalists that we deem as "worthy" to a more professional status? This way, we can both control the media and - at the same time - let organizations decide who they should give more media access to based on an ID card. Does it sound ridiculous? Does it sound like the year 2000 all over again? Guess again. In the National Post article, Quebec seeks special status for select journalists, published today, it reads: "Quebec's Culture Minister, Christine St-Pierre, announced this week that she is pushing forward with a plan to create 'a new model of regulation of Quebec media.'... Key to the plan would be legislation establishing the 'status of professional journalist' in order to distinguish those committed to 'serving the public interest' from 'amateur bloggers.' It is proposed that state-recognized professional journalists would enjoy unspecified 'advantages or privileges' not available to the great unwashed... The government says it does not want to prevent anyone from practicing journalism. But it would create a separate class of journalists, who in exchange for their new privileges would have to respect certain criteria, yet to be defined. The new status would not be awarded directly by the state but by organizations representing journalists."

Well, isn't that special?

Do you like the way that journalists "serve the public interest"... and then there are "amateur Bloggers" (who don't)? Bloggers and journalists no longer have a symbiotic relationship. Even those days are over. Blogging is journalism and journalism includes Blogging. Pushing this further: journalists simply can't do their jobs without Bloggers anymore. Don't believe me? Look at both the sources used and where the news is initially culled from as proof. News breaks on Twitter in real-time (newsflash: Twitter is a micro-blogging platform) and Bloggers are often cited in both breaking news stories, digging deeper to find a truth and quoted as subject matter experts. Taking that even further, how often does the mainstream media simply report on a news item created by Bloggers? The answer: all of the time (from a plane crashing in the Hudson River to the Arab Spring to TMZ). I mean, what is Blogging anyways? It used to be an online journal that was powered by RSS, but the concept has evolved. Blogging is the ability to publish anything in text, images, audio and video instantly online to the world. Is The Huffington Post not considered to be a credible news outlet (their traffic trumps that of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal)?

What about the discourse?

Sometimes the news isn't fit to print. Here's the dirty little secret of the traditional publishing world: the pages of content are limited by how many pages of advertising are sold. The amount of content is not predicated on what's happened in the news or how much news was created. The news that's fit to print is predicated on advertising. Let's also not forget about the value that Blogging platforms provide in terms of the discourse in the comments (and while many complain of the quality of the comments, it's still a forum for discourse that does push a story further). Journalists and others often use the Blogging platforms to tell more stories or to expand on a story that was edited for size. It's not uncommon for traditional media outlets to publish the audio and/or video interviews that were used to create the news pieces. Those extras are frequently published on a Blog or Podcast platform.

Who am I?

Based on the description above, I'm an amateur Blogger and would not qualify for a status of professional journalist... or would I? I have a bi-weekly column in both the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun that frequently gets picked up by other newspaper outlets across North America and I have a regular column, Media Hacker, in The Huffington Post. So, I guess I might qualify... then again, all of my columns and traditional media contributions came because of my Blog, so I might not.

See what I'm saying here?

Instead of putting an effort on who is and who isn't a journalist, why not focus on where the audience is, how diverse the perspectives are and how to get the information more effectively disseminated to everyone? Especially when it sounds like taxpayers are footing the bill for this type of legislation (hard to believe, isn't it?). If we want to get really raw here...

Why don't we let the public decide what is credible media instead of letting those who are trying to control the message or those who are trying to hold on to their legacy instead of evolving?

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New Media By Design

Why is it that the majority of online news sources all look the same?

There is no doubt that news as we know it has forever changed because anyone and everyone can report on an incident live and in the moment. It's hard for the most respected traditional media outlets to break major news events in this day and age. There's even been some recent discussion online about whether or not any one outlet can break news anymore with an exclusive report because of our always on/always connected world. In fact, it's not uncommon for major news outlets to be following the social media channels to source stories as they happen. Look no further than the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed and you'll find a short-step to a tweet by IT consultant and Abbottabad, Pakistan resident, Sohaib Athar, who unknowingly busted the Navy SEAL's cover when he tweeted, "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)" as the dramatic military operation was happening live and in real-time. Things got even more Twitter-centric when Keith Urbahn (former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff) tweeted, "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn," nearly one hour prior to the official announcement from President Obama to the media and public. While CNN would like to take credit, it could be argued that Twitter is one of the many digital places where the real news is unfolding before our eyes... long before the journalists get their scoops.

What could the news look like now?

With apps like Flipboard and people saving interesting online snippets in places like Instapaper, the look and feel of our news is beginning to morph, but the look and feel has not been re-invented and this is a very curious thing. For the most part, we have a title, sub-title, byline, date of publishing, body of text and  - if they're more web-centric - reader comments. Some of the more forward-thinking online publishers may include more updated information as the story unfolds, but the common/only way of knowing this is by a "last updated" insert that resides next to the date of the published piece (more often than not, it's hard to tell which parts of the content have been updated).

We fail to realize that text is now three-dimensional.

The Web is not a printed sheet of paper and those publishing content online should experiment with what that means. Because of links, people creating their own content on a similar theme and the constant evolution of a news story, we have to look at better ways to both present and keep the content fresh, up-to-date and more interesting. Recently, the CEO of an up and coming pharmaceutical company was injured in an accident. The individual was someone I knew, personally, but was - for the most part - an acquaintance. I was interested in staying apprised of their situation, but the online channel wasn't much help. The only news published online was a copy/paste of the articles that ran in the respective newspapers. It would be interesting if these types of news items became more three-dimension by allowing people with information to update the news item (perhaps the publishers could then vet this information and put a star next to items they have validated to be accurate). Pushing that idea further, the news item could then be updated but readers could go "back in time" to see how the versioning has evolved from when it was first reported. Why not allow readers to "subscribe" to the specific news item and they can be notified (by RSS or email) when the news item gets updated (and this includes entirely new articles about the same issue)?

This is what will make the digital news more interesting.

It won't only make the news online more interesting, it may actually make it worth paying for. In fact, if done well (pushing beyond just how the news is reported and looking at the overall layout and design) it could make digital news worth more than what we're currently paying for news and information. The trick (of course) is in making it better. Currently, even the most engaging Blogs and mobile apps are nothing more than an evolution of what was available in print. The hard work of making the new media worth paying for isn't only about the quality of the content, it's also about making the actual platform more engaging by design and function.

The good is news is that anything is possible. The bad news is that most media brands see it as an impossible task.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

The Huffington Post - New Media By Design .

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Listen To This Before Your Next Meeting

Episode #267 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Several weeks ago, I published a Blog post titled, Your Meetings Suck. The Blog post was based on a conversation I had with Al Pittampalli. Pittampalli is the author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting (published by Seth Godin's The Domino Project powered by Amazon). It's a great book that looks at one of the biggest problem facing the corporate world on a daily (and hourly) basis: death by meeting. Pittampalli is on a mission to change that. He believes that meetings can (and should) be used in much more constructive ways. I'm not sure about you, but I couldn't agree more. If you spend your days locked in meeting after meeting, this Podcast is for you. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #267.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #61

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Sparks Fly - Stanford Magazine . "Stanford's design school is hot. Increasingly, a company's success comes from how it engages with customers across many fronts. Design is a huge competitive advantage. But thinking like a designer isn't easy. Here's a look inside Stanford's Imagination Dunk Tank." (Alistair for Hugh).

Building A Burning Man Theme Camp - John Clarke Mills . "I'm headed to Black Rock City next week for the 25th anniversary of Burning Man, a hard-to-describe mix of music, recklessness, and art in the desert North of Reno. I'm going with a camp that makes the experience vastly better than going it alone. This write-up by John Clarke Mills does a good job of explaining the nonsense." (Alistair for Mitch).

Advance of the Data Civilization: A Timeline - Stephen Wolfram Blog . "Data data data data data. That's what it's all about these days. Academic, entrepreneur, very smart guy Stephen Wolfram gives us a historical overview of... data." (Hugh for Alistair).

NY Times Chrome Extension Ochs - Michael Donohoe . "I've mentioned before the 'end of design,' a concept that I don't quite believe in, but I do believe this: on the open Web it will become harder and harder to control how people see your information. This is especially true as we start to have so many devices (desktops, netbooks, laptops, mobile phone, tablets), each with different display specs. The efficient way to design is to make things flexible so that they will look good on all devices, but as the plug-in Readability and the app Instapaper have shown, web publishers aren't necessarily very good at figuring out how their readers would like to read; or if they are good, they often don't care. Well, Michael Donahue has built a Chrome Extension , that will format the NY Times nicely, to his design specs." (Hugh for Mitch).

Criticism of a brand lowers the self-esteem of its adherents - BoingBoing . "Scott - one of the copywriters at Twist Image - sent me this link earlier in the week. We often look at data, web analytics and social media monitoring to figure out what people think of a brand. The tough part has been sentiment - truly knowing what the person thinks instead of just using technology to decipher words. There are a few technologies that claim to have cracked that Da Vinci Code, but there's another - more fascinating - side that few people have thought about: if you love a brand and people are constantly criticizing it online, what are the ramifications on the individual and their loyalty towards the brand? Does brand bashing affect the self-esteem of those who like the brand?" (Mitch for Alistair).

Deciding on a Book, and How to Read It - The New York Times . " Nick Bilton wrote the book, I Live In The Future And Here's How It Works . He's also the Lead Technology Writer for The New York Times Bits Blog and a reporter for the paper. The title of this piece made me laugh (and the full article was quite fascinating). Let's face facts: the average person does not read enough... pushing that further, the average person doesn't read all that many books (I've seen research that says 1 - 3 books per year). Does technology make it easier to read a book? Yes. But, it also adds in another layer of complexity: 'how should I read it?' On a Kindle ? iPad ? Nook ? iPhone ? What? Life used to be pretty simple: you grabbed a book off the bookshelf, found a quiet corner and escaped reality. Now, you have to make sure you have the right device, that it's charged, that the software is installed properly, that all of your credit card info is saved right so that you can buy the book, and that you're in the right place so that you can see the screen instead of the reflection from the sun, etc... Personally, I read books exclusively on my iPhone and iPad through the Kindle app, but even writing that line out sounds complicated." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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Don't Quit... Yet

Are you thinking of quitting Twitter or Facebook or Blogging?

Google + is getting a lot of attention lately. The people that are really enjoying it are now considering quitting Facebook and Twitter for it. It's hard to say where and when is the right time to quit anything (unless it's an unhealthy habit. For unhealthy habits the answer is always, "right now!"). The history of civilization (and business) is littered with messes because people misjudged when to quit something. We've seen people quit too early. We've seen people quit too late. We've seen people who never quit. We've seen people who always quit. One of the best books that Seth Godin has written to date is called, The Dip, and subtitle is, "A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit And When To Stick." It's a book about quitting (and it's powerful).

Knowing when to quit is key.

Today, Hugh MacLeod, decided to quit Twitter and Facebook. In his Gapingvoid Blog post, "Reclaim Blogging": Why I'm giving up Twitter and Facebook, he says: "Keeping up a decent blog that people actually want to take the time to read, that's much harder. And it's the hard stuff that pays off in the end. Besides, even if they're very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it's not your content, it's their content. The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important. And as I've said many times over the years, Web 2.0 IS ALL ABOUT personal sovereignty. About using media to do something meaningful, WITHOUT someone else giving you permission first, without having to rely on anyone else's resources, authority and money. Self-sufficiency. Exactly."

Don't quit... yet.

I often tell brands that are trying to figure out if Digital Marketing is going to replace their traditional marketing endeavors that, "everything is 'with', not 'instead of'." There is no doubt that focus - and knowing what you are focusing on - is critical too, but Blogging should never replace Twitter and Facebook. In fact, I would argue that Twitter and Facebook - if used in a certain way - can augment the Blog experience. It helps people share your content and creates another platform for discourse.

Social Media will not bend to your will.

Telling people where and how you would like them to engage with your brand can be tricky. If many people are on Facebook and Twitter and those people are the exact same kinds of folks that you're trying to reach to grow your audience, abandoning ship can be a risk. People know and like Hugh, so this may be the perfect moment for him to quit and focus solely on his Blog, but I'll miss him on Twitter and Facebook. My guess is that I'm not alone. I look forward to his tweets, the links he shares and meeting/following the people he responds to. His little nibbles of content make me hungry to check out his more robust Blog posts and his art. Twitter and Facebook act as an alert that keeps me reminded of how relevant and important Hugh and his content are (and it's not just Hugh - it's many other individuals and brands). Odds are that people don't love your brand half as much as they like someone like Hugh, so your job isn't to remove all of the ideal ways that they can connect to you. Your job is to make everything that you create as shareable and as findable as possible. I believe that to be the core truth of Social Media: how a brand makes itself as shareable and findable as possible.

My advice to Hugh - and others who are on the fence - is: please don't quit... not yet.

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The Internet Is Not Evil

It's easy to blame technology, Social Media and even Facebook when people do bad things.

Please watch this:

"Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

I actually don't believe that. I'd prefer a world without weapons. That being said, the Internet is neither good nor evil. It's what people do with it that will make it good or evil. When the Internet first began its ascent into our daily lives, the skeptics would often say, "the Internet is nothing but porn and gambling." The truth is that you get out of the Internet what you put into it. You can spend years reading, sharing and contributing to online channels without ever being faced with porn and gambling. It can just as easily be used for good (look at Kiva, Kickstarter, etc...), it's when the people who do bad things use it to do more bad things that we tend to shine a light on the channel of communication instead of on the root of the problem. Flash mobs, text messaging and Twitter doesn't create a platform for crime.

It's the people. Not the technology.

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Great Content Is Like Pornography

"I know it when I see it."

Recently, someone asked me if I could teach them how to create great content. At first glance, a statement like that seems plausible. There are some core pillars of what makes certain pieces of content compelling in relation to the content that stiffs. On second glance, it's like asking someone to teach you how to write a hit song. That's where things get a little bit fuzzy. While the notion of content as media is nothing new (it's something I was Blogging about back in 2003 and a topic I tackled extensively in my first business book, Six Pixels of Separation), it's amazing how new and fresh this all still is for Marketers who - traditionally - have not had to focus on the role of content creator as a core pillar of their day-to-day business.

What does great content look like?

Great content is contextual. It's less about how long or short the piece of content is (I often argue that a great piece of content is as long or as short as it needs to be for it to be great) and it's much more about how relevant it is to the consumer's life. Contextual content is completely relevant in the now. In order to achieve this, it's important to think about whether or not you are producing this content to be contextual and relevant or if you're producing this content to sell something. If it's the latter, please understand that it's contextual to you, but probably not so much to the consumer of the content.

Great content is based on frequency. There is an ongoing debate about how often you update your Blog, Podcast, tweet, post to Facebook, etc... The smart folks will tell you to only post when you have something relevant and contextual to say (note my first bulletpoint above ;). While this is - without question, the best strategy, the truth is that if you don't have something interesting to say on a frequent basis, you may want to reconsider publishing content on your own. Instead, offer up your more infrequent pieces of genius to a place that accepts guest contributors. Heresy, you say? Optically, if someone comes to your space for the first time and sees that the content hasn't been updated in months, it hardly matters how relevant that last piece of content was as it gives off the perception that things are not new and fresh.

Great content is based on a schedule. There is a big lesson that New Media content producers can learn from traditional media outlets: publish on a schedule. How would you feel if every morning before you woke up, I snuck into your kitchen and moved your coffee maker to a different location... every single day. Something tells me that by day three, you would be making statements like the ones we hear from Michael Corleone when someone crosses him. Publishing relevant content on a frequent basis can only work if you publish on a regular schedule. Always remember this: nobody like to be irregular and human beings are creatures of habit.

Great content has a voice. What's better: to be the only one covering your space in the industry or to be a unique voice in your space? In a perfect world, it would be to have both of those positions, but the majority of us do not. Is this the only Blog looking at how New Media is changing business and marketing? No. Is this the only Blog covering how New Media is changing business and marketing with my perspective? Yup. Is my "voice" something that is defined? No. It is iterative and evolving. The more I Blog (or Podcast), the more I'm able to find a unique voice and perspective that (hopefully) gains an audience and builds a community over time.

Great content gets shared. I love Social Media because it keeps me very humble. Prior to Blogging, I would pitch an Editor on a story idea. If they bought it, the article would get published in a brand name magazine. Regardless of the quality of the content, my job was done. By simply having a byline in that magazine, the content was immediately given a level of credibility. With a Blog? Not so much. There are times where I will write a Blog post that makes me smile from ear to ear. I hit the publish button, I tweet about it and all I get back is the digital equivalent of tumbleweeds. Nothing happens. There are other times, when a post gets published and it gets tweeted about, garners a lot of comments, gets Blogged about and beyond. The bottom line: great content gets shared. Even with a small audience, it's possible for a piece of content to go "viral." And the best stuff does get linked to, tweeted about and shared in places like Facebook and Google +. It's humbling to know (in near-real-time) what people truly like and don't connect with based on how it gets shared.

Great content is open to discourse. Great content is the subject of discourse (I Blogged about this recently here: The Me Media). Great content acts as either the place where discourse can be held or the catalyst that brings the discourse to the masses. The best content is not the pieces of content with a lot of comments. The best content is the one that acts like a mother giving birth to many other different and varied pieces of opinions that proliferate throughout the online channels in many different formats and in many different places. This doesn't mean that one should create content simply to create discourse, but it does mean that great content will, inherently, be something that people will want to discuss, debate and dissect.

With all of that, always remember that there are exceptions to every rule.

Some of the most compelling content doesn't come out frequently or regularly. Some of the best content doesn't brim to the top of the online zeitgeist. Those exceptions are gems, but they do happen even if they are rare. If you're still struggling with content and what this all means in the context of your business and how it works within these New Media channels, you may want to read the book, Content Rules, by C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley for more of a deep-dive (the book came out in late 2010 and is still very-much relevant to how businesses can create compelling content in New Media).

In the meantime, what do you think it takes to create great content?

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Spamming Mechanisms

It used to be a very clear line between what was considered spam and what was not.

Things have changed over the course of the past decade. I'm with the Wikipedia definition of spam: "to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately," but I would now willingly remove the words "bulk messages" and change it to just "messages." The sheer volume of spam is staggering. I'm not just talking about the ridiculous requests from Nairobi sheiks who wish to give you millions of dollars or creams that are guaranteed to correct any form of erectile dysfunction. A few weeks back, Sanford Wallace (aka Spam King) was accused of mass spamming on Facebook (more on that here: USA Today - Las Vegas man accused of mass spamming on Facebook).

Is nothing sacred?

Spam is most irritating not because it clogs up every channel of communication and not because it is clearly a speed bump in everyone's productivity. Spam is most irritating because it gets lumped into marketing. Spam is not marketing. Much in the same way that shoplifting is not shopping. I get frustrated (beyond words), when the media portrays spammers as marketers. Then again, Marketing has not done a great job of distancing ourselves from these types of people. At the end of the day, there are many people who consider the advertising part of the marketing industry a spamming engine unto itself. If people can't place their shoes in the bin at the airport or take a pee without being exposed to an ad, it's hard for us Marketers to argue that spamming is not some kind of bastard step-child, isn't it?

We do it to ourselves.

There's no shortage of articles and conversations about visual pollution and advertising (see The Economist from 2007: Visual pollution), but when it comes to spam, we're talking about a hybrid of both marketing and communications. I often say that I used to be a Journalist, but the truth is that between the Blog and Podcast and my columns in places like The Huffington Post, Vancouver Sun and Montreal Gazette, I still get treated like a Journalist by many public relations and communications professionals. The results of these interactions are often appalling (this is only augmented by the fact that I have spent some time working in a PR agency, so I've been on both sides of the equation). In the end, they're spamming me to death. Just this week, I've received multiple lame press release pitches that were either immediately deleted or sent to my junk mail folder only to have these communication professionals re-email me with a follow-up to see what I thought of their initial spam. On multiple occasions, the follow-up emails included PDF attachments and more (as if a PDF press release or picture of their thingamajig was what was holding the big story back). I've even had instances where their spam messages are "recalled" by the sender (with an email message being sent to notify me of their "error) and then the "corrected" version is sent later in the day.

All without permission.

In February 2009, I published a Blog post titled, Attention PR People: Here's How To Pitch A Writer. While some considered that Blog post to be a little harsh (check out the comments!), I stand behind each and every point. If you're sending a message to anyone in any of the communications channels that we all have at our fingertips, and you have not received my permission to communicate or reached out in an earnest attempt to create rapport and gauge my interest in the work you're doing, you are spamming. Too harsh? Possibly. But now that every channel has become a spamming mechanism, maybe we need to reverse course and get overly rigid in what types of communications are really "fair game." Perhaps by getting this serious about what constitutes spam, it will force the Marketing, Communications and yes, even the real, nasty and evil spammers, to think differently about hitting that send button, messaging people on Facebook, blasting out tweets on Twitter... and more. In the time it takes to be annoying, you can use that same amount of time to make your marketing and communications moment shine.

Why waste it?

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The Business Of Motivation

Motivation is a strange beast.

In April 2007, I was asked to be a speaker in a full-day conference that was billed as a day of "motivation and leadership." The event featured speakers like former President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, Ben & Jerry's co-founder, Jerry Greenfield and motivational speaker, Anthony Robbins. Over 6000 people attended the event that was headlined by Anthony Robbins - who delivered over two hours of high-energy insights about what it takes to move your life to the next level. There were moments in his presentation that elevated the day to levels of rock concert mayhem. This included people jumping up and down, standing on their chairs, cheering at the top of their lungs and hugging complete strangers. If you weren't motivated to change, if you didn't take two extra minutes to think about how your inner voice dictates almost everything about you, all was lost. Thankfully, nothing was lost on this crowd that gave Robbins a standing ovation. As someone who speaks publicly, this was a master class in the art of presentation, beyond the practical and honest insights that Robbins offers up. How could people not have been moved to change? And, by the looks of the line-up at the merchandise table, where Robbins was selling his motivational programs, people were desperate for more... and to change their set ways.

Fast-forward thirty minutes post presentation.

I'm now in my car maneuvering through the underground maze that is the parking complex attached to the convention center. It has been a long day of presentations and learning. I'm both mentally drained and physically ready for a shower and some loafing on the couch (don't tell Tony Robbins!)... then mayhem breaks loose. With only two stalls to pay for parking, the thousands of born-again humans trying to be better suddenly regressed to the white-knuckled, road raged, people that we were thirty minutes before coming down to the event earlier that morning. Suddenly, people are honking horns, arms are flailing and the language of love for our fellow humans has turned into sewage of four-letter diatribes. As I took a deep breathe, I remember saying to myself, "well, that didn't take long!" 

I am both cynical and sarcastic, at times. 

Just like New Years resolutions or starting your diet on Monday, all of the motivation in the world means nothing without the determination to see it through to the bitter end. People often marvel at others who have lost a significant amount of weight or have completely rehabilitated from a drug addiction, but we see efforts towards our own psychological motivation or personal development in relationship to our brain as "weird." Think about it this way: how do you feel when someone says that they have a personal trainer at the gym versus how you feel when someone says that they have a life coach? What needs to be in better shape for you to be successful in business: your body or your mind? The answer is that they're both equally important. In that case, why is it that so few executives spend the time to train their brains as much (or more) than they're doing to make sure that their blood pressure or waistlines are in check?

Who's fault is this?

The problem is partially Anthony Robbins' fault. He spent years making promises about life-changing moments if you would order his program on late-night infomercials. It became the type of stuff that made for hilarious parody on Saturday Night Live. It's too bad, because Robbins' content works. In fact, most of the content that motivational speakers and life coaches put out into the market works - whether the coach is an original or derivative of someone that walked before them. The challenge is that the majority of people either think that the content can't work (the skeptics) or those that buy it never actually get around to taking the time to study, apply and implement the content - much in the same way that the majority of people buy an annual membership to their local gym only to drop out after a few sessions (or never go in the first place).

It's tragic when you consider that the Internet makes it even easier to get a hold of this type of information and training (on-demand and fairly cheap too!).

The truth is that you don't need a motivational program or life coach to improve your business, but you might. Some people do great by just hitting the gym on their own, but the truth is that those people (and everyone else) would probably have a more effective workout and better long-term results if they did the occasional session with a personal trainer. All of the reading, conferences and post-university courses will make you a better (and smarter) businessperson, but why not make the effort to get some additional coaching for that critical part of your life as well?

Who knows what new, unchartered business success might be right there for your taking with the proper motivation and the determination to see it through?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - The Business of Motivation.

Vancouver Sun - not yet published.

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