The Basement Like a blog, only interesting.


28
Aug/098

5 Authentic Realities of Social Media…

Last Sunday Mark Schaefer posted Five social media myths that MUST STOP NOW! on his wonderful blog {grow}. It was linked to several times in my Twitter timeline. It's a good read and you should go read it now if you haven't already... go ahead... I'll wait...

I really appreciate Mr. Schaefer's effort to defuse several ridiculously overused clichés of the industry. You have to admit, for a group of folks who incessantly preach authenticity, engagement and conversation, the social media kids love to yell out their talking points from atop their soap box.  As I read Mr. Schaefer's post I began to realize that he didn't wholeheartedly disagree with the original foundational sentiment of each of these "myths" but rather he objected to the oversimplification and subsequent misinterpretation and misuse that has ensued.  This sort of thing is rampant in social media - especially today with our obsession with micro-blogging.  We pluck things out of context that we didn't fully understand to begin with and then paraphrase into 140 characters which is then immediately edited even smaller by a retweeter. Meh.

I commented on Mr. Schaffer's blog that after reading his post I felt more like his call to action wasn't so much to stop these myths as it was to edit them - to rethink them slightly in order to return to the original foundational meaning.  To this end I authored 5 Authentic Realities of Social Media:

Authentic reality one:  To be effective in social media, you must accept that you have never had control of the conversation.

Seriously, if you're a marketer or PR professional in 2009 and you still believe that you control what people think and say about you and your company then you're a naive moron and a liability.  Forget social media, or any other media for that matter, people have always talked about you and your company. They've always seen through your marketing rhetoric. They've always known the what's up and even if they didn't know where they smell was coming from they've always smelled the fish. Deal with it.

What is different about social media in this regard is velocity and volume.  Before the Age of Transparency you at least had time to leave the press conference before the crowd got wise.  At least for a moment you got to be story.  Today, more than ever, the story is the reaction of the people, not the action of the company.  Unlike decades past people that want a voice can get it, cheaply and easily. With 437 channels on TV and nothing to watch any Joe Schmo can inspire a vocal following with little more than time and passion - both which he happens to have in abundance. The reality is that marketers have neither the time, nor the money to broadcast a message through social medial channels. Social media as a marketing tool works only when individuals carry forth a message that will ultimately support the goal of the marketer. The catch is that marketers don't get to craft the message - all they can do is set the stage and be encouraging. It's a little like a typical elementary school play - if you've done everything right the play can be very enjoyable... but the one things that's certain is that won't be anything like rehearsal.

If marketers fail to understand that they don't control the conversation they'll probably fail in traditional media, but they'll fail twice as fast in social media.

Authentic reality two: It’s all about making money... through engagement.

How many things can social media be "all about" at any given time? For you math-averse marketing types, let me give you a hint: ONE! And as Mr. Schaefer aptly point's out, when using social media as a marketing or PR tool that one thing is making money.  That said, if you're not engaging your public then whatever you're doing is not social media.  Don't get me wrong here - whatever you are doing might be very effective, and very profitable. It just may be something other than social media.

For those in the back row, let me highlight the very important subtext here. If you are using tools designed to participate in social media like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube but do nothing to listen and interact with the people who consume your content through those platforms then you are not using social media.  Using social media tools doesn't necessarily mean that you are practicing social media. Not using social media may work for you. Power to you. I just don't want you to go around thinking that you are way more progressive and hip than you actually are - it can lead to some very embarrassing cocktail party moments.

Authentic reality three: Never BLATANTLY SELL (and do some of that relationship building stuff while you're at it.)

Alright, you've already come clean about the fact you're in this for the money - why stop there? You're trying to sell something. Fine. We accept that. Now just don't be annoying.  This is an idea best illustrated by this Hugh MacLeod cartoon:

So if you're not talking to people like advertising talks to people, then what? Obviously, you talk to people like people talk to people. Relationships ensue, etc. Still having trouble letting up on the hard sell? I think it's helpful to think of it this way - unlike direct sales where you're trying to sell something directly to the person you're talking to, in social media you want the person with whom you're talking to sell someone else. Like maybe next week. For free. Without being asked. Because he likes you and finds you credible.   From a sales perspective, the person you're talking with in social media is not your mark - it's their secondary and tertiary social networks that you're after, except you never get to talk with them.  If you don't have the time or patience for this sort of thing then delete your Twitter account and buy a Superbowl ad. Let me know how that works for you.

Authentic reality four:To be effective, you must have BOTH quantity and quality.

Duh. Oh, and before Bill Handy and  Abby Wambaugh get into a fist fight in comments  you need BOTH content and good design too.

Authentic reality five: Social media is about being polite and likable... and honest.

I can further paraphrase this nugget of wisdom by quoting a dear friend: Don't be a douche bag.

Any other social media myths you'd like to debunk or defuse? What other social media realities have you observed?

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14
Aug/098

Why Love Songs Suck

If you've been following me on Twitter you may know that I've been playing music lately. Currently I'm playing drums for Mano Roja, a local Tulsa band that's slowly being built around singer/songwriter David Salazar. I've been playing drums since I was a kids and I love, love, LOVE music. That said, I think love songs suck.

Okay, not all love songs suck but the clear majority do.  Ah, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I'm thinking love songs suck because of some painful personal crisis that enable love songs to drag me back into the harsh reality that I'm destined to be alone and unloved. Wrong. I'm blissfully married to my earth-movingly amazing wife, Hetty, whom I love beyond all reason will all my heart. She's my soulmate. Privately we like to say that long ago we were both a part of the same star.

Did you feel it?

You know, that near convulsion feeling where a little bit of vomit climbs up into the back of your mouth when somebody gushes about how much they love their significant other? Yeah, I thought so.

This is exactly why most loves songs suck. They're too saccharine, over-the-top and unbelievable.  Sure, when you're 22 and liquored up, swaying to some ridiculous Hallmark influenced sappy crooner while clinging to the latest in a long line of newly found love-of-your-life's, starry eyed and impatient for the impending and inevitable nakedness that's certain to follow, even the worst of cheesy love song tripe can seem like it's plugged directly into your soul. Unfortunately, that's probably the booze or the hormones, or most likely, both.  You listen to that same song in the car, by yourself, on Wednesday, right after lunch, on your way back to work and bingo... the uncomfortable taste on puke in the back of your throat.

So what specifically is it about loves songs that invoke the gag reflex?  First off, they're too damn slow. I mean c'mon, seriously.  What about the passion and scorn of love, or the near fatal pulse rate of a heart leaping out of your chest suggests the retirement-village-recreational-director-approved tempo of sub-60 beats per minute?  I don't know about you, but love tends to speed time for me, not slow it down.  In fact, if I were to write a slow song it would be about the seemingly eternal time stopping agongy of being stuck in a realtionship with someone whom I had come to realize that I not only didn't love, but loathed - the nails-on-chalk board sound of their voice, their inept attempts at humor, and the inane topics of their twaddle.  Slow songs make me sick.

Tempo ain't the half of it though, the real atrocity of the typical love song is the formulaic vomit-invoking lyrics riddled with trite couplets and pithy metaphors. Love is like a flower. Love is like a river. Love is like oxygen. Love is like a rock. Love is like a butterfly. Love is like a bottle of gin. Bleh. Love is a battlefield. Love is not a fight. Love is on its way. Love is here. Love is all around. Love is gone. Love is the answer. Love isn't always on time. Ahhhhhhh! Gimme a break!

I'm not saying writing a good love song is impossible, but it's not easy. Part of the problem is that it's hard to talk about love in a song without being too specific, so love songs tend to over generalize. When we talk about love we tend to want to... uh... romanticize it. And if a love song isn't unapologetically euphoric, it tends to be overly dramatic about the devastating unrecoverable agony of heartbreak. In reality, of course, love is a spectrum of gray that runs the gamut between these extremes but it seemingly impossible to capture this sentiment in a song.

It takes a truly remarkable songwriter to capture the reality of love, the real sentiments of daily uncertainly, struggle and hope.  It's hard to chose words that sound both poetic and realistic, especially without sounding formulaic or trite.

So what got me off on this tangent?  Listening to the practice demo's David Salazar recorded for me and reading the lyric sheets. David Salazar writes truly great love songs.  Full of hope and passion but grounded, and real. I'm amazed such perfect lyrics, phrasing and music come from such a young soul.  As you've probably gathered, I'm generally not a fan of love songs, but I love David's love songs and I'm so honored to be able to play along.

One of my favorites is a tune called "With These Two Hands." (click on the title for an mp3 of David's practice demo) Here's the lyrics:

Maybe you’ve been here before
Where reality comes and knocks on your door
Is there a way to see the light?
No matter where you are
No matter where you stand in life

But I’m not sad
I’m in love
I have hope
I’m just trying to hold
All at once
With these two hands
And so little time in between them
Ye-e-eah

But don’t be afraid
I am learning how to juggle
And I know you will too
And the path that once shone
Is being eclipsed to show that life
Is soooo good

That’s why I’m not sad
I’m in love
I have hope
I’m just trying to hold
All at once
With these two hands
And so little time in between them
Ye-e-eah

And all I know is that you are good to me
You are good to me, you are good to yeah
And I’ll know is that you’re good to me
You’re good to me God, you’re good to me yeah
You’re good to me lord, you’re good to me

If you'd like to hear Mano Roja perform this and other David Salazar originals come check us out next week.  We'll be playing at:

Wednesday August 19th, 6-7p @ The Dog Dish's Ice Cream Social in that Farm at 51st & Memorial. Free event open to the public... and their dogs.

Thursday August 20th, 7-9p @ The Gap in the Promenade Mall, 41st & Yale. Free & open to the public. Yes, The Gap like the clothing store in the mall.

You can also check here for future dates. I hope you come out to hear the rarity of love songs that don't suck. We'd love to see you.

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12
Aug/092

Speaking of “organic,” what the hell is “natural” cheese?

All online posters are narcissists. I believe this to be a fundamental maxim of online life.  After all, one has to believe that what they are posting is more authoritative, relevant, interesting, informative, articulate, accurate, whatever than the billions of pages of drivel already overflowing from Google. The good news is that only about 10% of the population post publicly online with any regularity. Unfortunately, most of that 10% are delusional and are, in fact, creating more drivel.  But there's a handful of folks that really are smarter than everyone else. They think better and they write better. They're funnier and generally have significant others that, judged on appearance alone, are way out of their league. Sure they're still narcissists, but unlike everyone else they have foundation for their self-absorption.  It's these folks that attract me to the social side of the internets.

Two of my very favorite narcissists were kind enough to stop by my shiny new blog and leave comments today: Bill Handy and Natasha Ball. After reading my dissection of "transparency" Bill asked when I was going after "organic" to which Tasha replied  Speaking of “organic,” what the hell is “natural” cheese?

Read what you may into these seemingly flippant comments, but I think these kids are brilliant.

I love words, but I'm often aggravated by our societal compulsion to stretch old words to mean new things (particularly in and around technology), often things that we already have perfectly good words for. George Carlin was taken too soon.  Buzzwords exhaust me; yet I still use them because I try to match the language of my audience.  Blah. Whatever. #stupidjustification

At least now I have a retort. The next time I hear some ridiculous new marketing-approved jargon my reply will flattly be

Speaking of "organic," what the hell is "natural" cheese?

Filed under: Epiphany
2 Comments
11
Aug/097

Transparency Ain’t Invisibility

The problem with metaphors is that they are like Newtonian physics.  They work pretty well until you try to apply them at the speed of light, or at subatomic scale.  In the case of metaphors, of course, "speed of light" and "subatomic scale" would have to be take metaphorically to means something entire different altogether.  I think one of the most important discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton was the idea that if two things were metaphorically related that they are, in fact, not the same thing. For if they were, he reasoned, then we wouldn't need the metaphor itself, or a whole other set of words to describe the other thing for which the first thing is a metaphor for… but I digress.

The metaphor that got me started on this diatribe: transparency – as in "organizational transparency", "transparency in communications", and "we need more transparency." Transparency has been a popular buzzword for the last several years and is often used as a battle cry of social media practitioners and posers alike. The idea of transparency is simple – be sure that your public facing image/brand/marketing messages/public relations/etc are aligned with who you really are.  (Some folks will say that transparency is also about exposing more of your inner workings to the public. This is an idea I don't necessarily agree with – as I'll discuss shortly.)  Why is transparency important? And why now? Transparency is important because if people find out that what you say you are doing doesn't match what you are actually doing they will revolt. You'll be tarred and feathered and then burned at the stake, metaphorically speaking. This has always been an important idea but historically companies could more effectively manage public perception by controlling information than they can today.

Thanks to Al Gore, plain folks have gotten awfully good at sharing dirty laundry about companies they loathe with each other. Sure, customer support folk can tell customers that they've never heard of that problem before, but 74 negative reviews on Amazon tell a different story.  If an organization is "transparent" then customer support folks acknowledge the problem and provide information about the plan of action. If an organization is not "transparent" then customer supports folks deny the problem, or in other words: they lie.  In fact, if we were transparent about transparency we would call it by it's real name: honesty. Yes, it's true. Transparency is marketing spin for "Stop lying to customers by telling them what you think they want to hear and instead tell then the truth because with the internet they are going to eventually find you out, you moron."

The corporate communications and marketing kids, it turns out, are a sensitive lot. They don't like to be called liars. So instead they crafted an elaborate …wait for it… metaphor: transparency. Like all good metaphors that are played to death in business books and on the internets, transparency, as a metaphor, has been pushed beyond all reason. Folks keep trying to apply it at the speed of light, or at subatomic scale so to speak. "What does transparency mean?" they query as they slip from the metaphorical into the literal.  "Transparency means invisibility." they conclude.

Many folks in the social media space are forwarding the idea of transparency as invisibility (even if subconsciously.) This thinking lead to ideas like "turn your brand over to the people", "we don't need a corporate website as long as we're on the social media sites", "let's let our customers design our products" and "our customers can create all of our (marketing/website/etc) content." While each of these ideas has merit when implemented in a limited capacity in an appropriate context, a truly invisible company would have no identity, no brand, and no soul.  A company cannot find success by being controlled by its customers. The idea that a company should become invisible (through the application of social media or otherwise) is far from the idea of transparency.

Transparency ain't invisibility.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm a huge advocate of engaging the customer, amplifying their voice and encouraging their participation and enthusiasm for your brand.  Social media is often likened to the childhood game of telephone where a simple phrase is verbally passed from child to child become increasing distorted with each transaction.  What folks often forget is that somebody has to start the game, someone has to provide that very first message. If people are talking about your product/service/brand then, ultimately, the game has started with you. What will you choose to say?  Transparency suggests not only that it should be the truth, but it should necessarily come from you.

Nothing about transparency should suggest that you're relinquishing control of who you are or the actions you take as a company. Transparency is not about decreasing visibility of your company, it's about making what is visible aligned with who you already are. If you don't like who you are then transparency suggests changing rather than spinning. Transparency is about finding effective ways to keep interested folks informed about what you're doing, and where you're going. Transparency is about understanding what your customers are already saying – in person, on blogs/Facebook/Twitter/etc – and tuning your message so that it resonates with them.  Transparency doesn't necessarily mean that you need to expose more of your inner workings to the public, but the inner workings you don't share need to be consistent with your actions, so that if the information you've held back does become public it's already consistent with your message. Sure, thanks to social media, you may not control what others are saying about you, but didn't your mom already tell you this right before she told you that you can control your own actions? Well mom's wisdom still applies. Companies don't control social media or word of mouth about them, but they do control their own actions, and they also control the method and message by which they communicate those actions to the public. In doing so they should be transparent which is to say honest, not invisible.

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9
Aug/094

Welcome, or whatever.

Welcome folks.  I haven't blogged in a few years and I'm a little out of practice, so bear with me as I get my legs back. I was an active blogger in 2005-2006 and mostly focused on what we're now calling social media. At that time there was almost no one in this space in and around Tulsa or elsewhere in Oklahoma for that matter. I met a lot of great people from around the country and around the world but I often wished there were more local folks that I could connect with. About a year ago I started dabbling with Twitter and last February I attended  a local tweet up. There I met some super interesting folks doing really interesting things with social media right here in Tulsa.  I discovered that social media is a bit like the mob, I keep trying to get but they keep pulling me back in.

Almost immediately after that tweet up I started itching to blog again. I've been on again/off again about this ever since. Blogging can be consuming. I'm not sure I want to spend the time needed to build a following, etc. It's hard to be more interesting than everyone else all the time... even for me. If I'm not building a following then why would I want to blog?  Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

So why am I blogging? Well, I've found myself on a couple of occasions over the last few months where I really could've used a place to hang some links to projects I've worked on. I love Twitter but sometimes 140 character just isn't enough - and nobody likes a long form tweeter. Thinking about things I'd like to accomplish over the next few months I think having a blog around will be handy. What am I working on? For that you'll have to check back.  Another reason I finally decided to start this blog is that I've found myself recommending WordPress to folks with some regularity lately and I feel like a bit of a poser having never maintained a WordPress based blog myself. Killing two birds, etc.

Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully you won't need to wait too long for something of value to pop up here. I hope I see you then.

Thanks for your attention,

Matt

Filed under: Noise
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What’s in The Basement?

The Basement is the online home of Matt Galloway. I'm a technologist, musician, and creative and critical thinker. I am the Founder & Chief Technologist for Architactile, a Tulsa based company developing iPad applications for architects. I'm interested in interesting things and sometimes write about them here.

Mobile Phone: 918-808-3072

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