Social Media Talkers vs. Social Media Doers.

I am kinda lucky cause I get to go to a lot of conferences. Conferences are fun because you get to sleep in other peoples beds and every now (I have been told) and then you get invited to really sleep in other peoples beds.

Even luckier than going to a lot of conferences is that I get invited to speak at a lot of conferences and try to accept every invite I receive, cause you never know when the invites will stop coming.

When I speak I talk about a slew of different topics with interesting examples that almost always involve myself as a case study. I dont do this because I am an ego manaic (an argument could be made) but because I am the only person who can really tell you what was going through my head when I dreamt up whatever idea or concept I am talking about.

I was at a conference recently and I sat through two separate presentations from two people with nothing memorable to their credit explain (as fact) why Zappos sold/merged with Amazon and the best part was that the two speakers who spoke one after the other had opposite opinions...and this makes perfect sense because well, the only person who can really tell you why the sale/merger really happened is Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) and some of his business associates...and this got me thinking about how easy it is to be a social media talker and how few social media doers there are.

I am using Social Media as an example here cause it is easy and makes for a snappy title but in reality I am talking more about people in general.

So still with the conference speaker example (and I can come up with many more examples if you want them) why not make some minimum requirements to speak at a conference....something like you need to have done something.

Pretty outrageous huh?

...and by something I don't think it even has to be a successful "something" since you can learn more from people failing then you can from the stuff where everything goes well. Conference presentations should be about your projects and learnings from the time YOU did something and not a new spin on something you read in INC or Fast Company.

If you can't point to a handful of url's showcasing your accomplishments and you are not willing to present about yourself then what are you really talking about?

Sure there are exceptions like people talking about Metrics and such but even that can come from a personal angle with personal insights.

If the goal of a conference is to teach or inspire then the goal of the conference organizers should be to invite doers and not talkers because people who "do" are usually the ones that inspire...and people who talk, well they are just talking.

P.S. If you are reading this and thinking I am being harsh and making it harder for people to "break in". I see it as the opposite and if you want to become a doer as apposed to a talker just go out and do something, make some content, stop repeating other peoples stuff and discover something on your own...I promise, you will sleep better at night...and get more of those conference invites to sleep with others.

*UPDATED* I have gotten a slew of (and by slew I mean 4) email/DM telling me that this post is harsh and that in fact I am a consultant (this is true...you should totally hire me) and I don't know what I am talking about. All I can say is that this is my opinion and I stand by it. All it takes today to become a "social media expert" is getting a shiny stack of business cards and that is kind of the problem. If you show results you are a doer. If you can point to projects and says "That was me" than you are a doer. Anyone who thinks the solution to any companies problems is to sprinkle a little facebook on it and set up a fanpage and walk away is not a doer.....and if you own a home that is mobile and 5 cars that aren't..you might be a redneck.

Is it possible that Dov Charney is smarter than us all?

I have never been diagnosed with OCD not do I think I suffer from it but I certainly do have a some obsessive tendancies in me. This isnt anything that people need to worry about and what I mean by this is that once something interesting gets in my head I usually try to read everything I can about whatever it is until my thirst for knowledge is satisfied. I have done this for topics like Comic Book History, P.T. Barnum, Baseball, Movie History, Business and Marketing and most recently I have been focusing a lot of energy on the Startup Fund Y-Combinator and the Ceo of American Apparel, Dov Charney.

Dov Charney is a facination of mine and I have written about him a few times before on this blog. Part of what fascinates me is that if you look past the AA ads and if you look past the sexual harassment suits and the wacky stories that have been written about Dov in the press there is actually a lot of substance to the man.

Of course I say this without having met him nor am I making light of the seriousness of his harassment allegations but in a time where few (new) brands are cutting through the clutter, he has.

American Apparel does interesting things.

Like make a dress that can become dozens of different looking outfits with a little tinkering and they even made a serious of YouTube videos to show you how to do it.

Dov Charney does interesting things.

Like spend a lot of money and devote a lot of time fighting Immigration reform and trying to make the world...er Los Angeles a better place to work for a segment of the work force.

So taking all this into consideration is it possible that Dov Charney uses the nudity and the public masturbation as a way to not be taken seriously while at the same time he is really just smarter than us all. A modern day P.T Barnum who does remember that experience and image are important if you are going to capture people's imagination. American Apparel is as well known for their "everyman" plain t-shirts as it is for the skin tight cool kids clothes, so in a way they have built a lasting brand without putting all their eggs in a "fad/trend" segment....if this was done on purpose I would say he is probably showing us what he wants us to see.

Or maybe he is just a guy who likes to masturbate.

Sometimes you just want to shower with 40 of your closest friends.

Please take a moment and Vote for my SXSW panels!

It's that time of the year again.

The time of year when people start counting the days till they have to put away their white pants and those with kids start getting ready for back to school.

It is also the time of year that thousands and thousands of the smartest, most fun and best looking technology enthusiasts and teachers learn whether or not their speaking applications will be voted in to being a full fledged panel at the SXSW Interactive Festival in March. (South By SouthWest)

I have been very fortunate to have spoken at the last two years festivals and would like to keep my streak going since this year I feel I have submitted two very interesting and timely speaking topics.

Part of the reason I am telling you all this is because to be selected as a speaker you need the support of the festival organizers as well as the community attending (and not attending). So I am asking you to please look at my panel topics and please give me your vote. Even if you have no intention of attending the festival you can still feel the "rush" of democracy as you click on the Thumbs up button to propel my topics into a higher voting category.

I appreciate all of my readers and I hope you guys will consider helping me with this.

Below are my speaking topics and I could love to not only have your votes but also your comments so please let me know what you think of my ideas!

(click on the panel titles to vote.)

Community Management: Future Skills you need to know

Community Management is a key role in any startups but with any new role in a company they need to evolve over time to survive and prosper. Come listen to what the future of community management will look like because the future role is more than just drinking with customers!

and

Tweet Your Way to Your Next Job

Obviously, we all know that Twitter is more than having a sandwich. Learn from two savvy marketers who used Twitter to further their careers. Saul Colt and Warren Sukernek have each used Twitter effectively to find new positions.

Thanks for your support and remember you need to vote now and vote often to really appreciate the freedom we share and not take advantage of it. <-----ok that was maybe a little too much :)

Are you willing to work for free?

A lot of has been written about Chris Anderson's new book "Free" and while I haven't read it yet (I have it on my nightstand) I think there is a different kind of "Free" that people don't talk about enough...or actually do.

I am talking about free work.

Call it Advising, Consulting, Working for Food, whatever, it is something that you should do a little of if asked because (and this is the closest I get to preaching) the more profile you get for your work and if you want to get along in life you have to be prepared to do a little free work.

I get asked to give advice a lot and up in till now I have almost never said no, and being honest I am going to have to start being choosier because the sheer number of requests is growing too fast, but one of the reasons I do say yes so often (and that you should too) is because it is the Free Work that keeps you sharp and is usually the real fun projects that allow you to do the work that you can later use as examples to get paid work.....or if that isn't an aspiration of yours you can use these fun projects to use ideas and skills that just don't come to play in your day job and there is enormous value and self worth in that....just be careful not to be taken advantage of.

My Dad once told me that "if all the ideas you dream up are being executed on then you don't have many ideas". I could write another 5 paragraphs about that observation alone but I am going to leave it hanging so you can find your own meaning in it.

....and for those who where hoping this post would be more about Chris Anderson, I am sorry if I let you down but I hope you got something out of this and below is a video of Chris so this post has something for everyone :)

I don't want to be thought of as a Marketer anymore.

I was in San Francisco last week for work and took a few minutes out of my schedule to catch up with friends Sarah and Julie. We chatted about a bunch of things like what we where up to and personally and professionally and somewhere in the conversation I had a revelation.

I don't want to be thought of as a Marketer anymore.

I came to this conclusion after explaining to my dinner companions that I am constantly explaining to people what exactly my job is because of my non-traditional title, Head of Magic.

I have been calling myself "H.O.M" for a couple years now because I like the mysteriousness, and because I've never seen myself as a marketer...or at least what being a current day marketer has become.

Ok...so this is the part of the post where I say "The opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of anyone else including friends, family or my employer".

With that out of the way I am going to stick my neck out and say that present day marketing has become all about "cost per clicks" and the super sexy concepts of conversion rates and ROI. Now even I know these things are crucial to a companies growth so there is a point to them but and in no means am I saying these things should be ignored BUT marketing used to be about "fulfilling a promise" and "delivering on an experience" and that IMHO is getting very lost in the quest for increasing your companies conversion rate by an 1/8 of 1%.

It just seems like companies no longer care as much about making a connection with a customer and are no longer building their brands around the idea of delivering on an experience or promise but are making brands more transactional and disposable. Creating customers experiences isn't always tied to a direct revenue stream but does have an overall effect on the bottom line of a business but without that direct link to revenue it is being pushed aside for a rainy day.

One of my business inspirations is P.T. Barnum and I know this "shift" from marketing being an art to a science would make him a little crazy because more than anyone P.T. understood the concept of experience...and sure he had an advantage of not living in the digital age where word would spread that some of his promotions were nothing more than an occasional hoax but he still understood that people are looking for something different...and a great example is that of the Cardiff Giant.

For those not familiar with the Cardiff Giant story here is the real quick version, a cigar maker named George Hull hired a sculpture maker to carve him and artificially age what appeared to be a giant fossilized human. Hall buried the carving on his brother’s farm and waited a full year for it to be discovered by a hired crew, unveiling it with great fanfare and huge profit as a museum piece. Not realizing it was a hoax P.T. Barnum tried to purchase it to add to his museum and when Hall refused to sell it Barnum had his own giant built and presented it with even more fanfare than the original Cardiff Giant saying his was the real one...and for you historical buffs it was this experience that the Quote "A sucker is born every minute" came from BUT it was actually George Hall who said it and not P.T. Barnum.

P.T. Barnum believed in giving people more than their money's worth and in the example of the Cardiff Giant he was doing that by adding a more interesting story to the same hoax that George Hall was offering...and you can say that this is a bad example because the whole thing was a scam but the people who came and paid to see the Giant were transported to a different world and left with a new life experience not that different from going to the movies now a days (and to take this further going to the movies and finding out there are 3 Asteroid films at the same time) remember this all took place in 1850.

P.T. would always say “Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”

So if you are in the position to spread messages and create hype around a product, service, event or just about anything your should be creating a great story around why people need your item or attend your event and promote it the way P.T. would. Go crazy and have fun because people will notice that more than ever because less and less people are taking the time to do it this way.

No one understood hype/promotion (or dare I say Marketing) better that P.T. Barnum. So much so that when he was in failing health he gave permission to the newspaper to announce his passing a few days before he actually died so he could watch how the news spread and what the public reaction was. I love that story and this is what I aspire to be...not dead, but always trying new things and not resting on things that you know will work...and that in my opinion is much more than a marketing person so when I am asked what I do for a living I am going to keep telling people I make magic.

...and if you are wondering what I do that is P.T. Barnum worthy I invite you to keep your eyes open for an national event on August 25th to showcase zoocasa.com that hopefully will make the Barnum and Bailey Circus look like a petting zoo.

My Presentation from DemoCamp 21

I owe a HUGE thank you to Geoffrey Wiseman for not only recording my presentation from DemoCamp 21 but for also posting it online.

Please take a look and let me know what you think...and to answer your questions in advance, yes the SuperFriends story is true.