Common hacking references I hear most often:

• The most popular usage of the term “hack” that I hear refers to customizing one’s life or digital lifestyle to suit their needs. Isn’t it sad that in order to customize what we engage in the most intimate of interactions we must overcome a wall of code and binary dictatorship? How is that prescription right or moral?
• Hacking your phone to add functionality/features/derive more utility to get what you paid for – Legality does not define morality, neither does honoring ToS. Fair is Fair. If someone walked up to you and said they hacked their phone, would you look down on or admire them? When someone tells me that they’ve hacked their phone to add more features and functionality or open up a marketplace, I don’t for a moment think of it as unethical behavior. How is programming code different than oral dictation? The difference or line is only drawn when we accept the abstractions and concepts, which is of course why hacker types refuse to view it as unethical?
• Life Hacking- Productivity/Happiness/ Efficiency. If digital lifestyles are a part of life, how are they not therefor under the positive umbrella of life hacking? Do you look down upon those who do not accept life as it is prescribed to them? Or, do you admire them? I think of hacking as an investigation of what is being prescribed for you, and from knowledge gained, overcoming obstacles to make something more usable to your individual needs. Why is it okay to hack life but not okay to “hack”? Is there really an overwhelmingly negative association with the phrase.
• Hacking to drive innovation and preserve/create free markets- e.g. Don’t you dare tell me walled in markets of iOS, Android and all across the web are open/free and good for consumers or even legal.
• Hacking requires investigation and often leads to rejection of what is being prescribed on the box. The result? Free market competition, innovation, change, upgrades, patches, in short: a lot. Check out  Steve Jobs’ biography where it is made clear that he and Woz were making and selling blue boxes to cheat the phone company (a federal crime I might add). The mindset for exploration, and contrarian adventure lead to the creation Apple, which has arguably been a more positive force for user centered movement (despite its best efforts to cripple it now).

If you support the philosophical standings of protagonists in films like The Matrix and Tron, and a zillion others, this is a hacker’s mindset that should be honored and expected to manifest into action.  How backward is it to suppress freedom in theory from freedom in practice?

I think, and feel free to counter me on this, those who still hold a negative notion of the phrase are those who complain when you don’t whole heartedly swallow the goods they are selling. I’m curious to know what others think about the issue. Am I such a fan of counter-culture that I am lost on this issue? Or is this a classic sign of our times,  ”the man” wants to keep you dumb and ignorant so they can remain fat and happy conundrum.Hackers, Life hackers, or what have you seem to share a particular attitude that businesses find offensive. They challenge, explore, exploit, bend and manipulate what is presented and prescribed. Isn’t that what most businesses do in the first place? Do they  not leverage knowledge and information to manipulate systems and markets in their favor? Why is it immoral to do so on an individual basis? Excuse me for refusing to be screwed over, manipulated and guilt tripped into accepting how you’d have me lead my life (e.g. under-utilization, blind-consumption, suffering, debt and torment).

I understand from a business sense why some complain about the notion, because a well informed customer, is often a very demanding one. They can be real nags, requiring a great deal of time effort and energy to appease. We call them power users, the few who, use more than 2% of the functionality in the tools they buy. Is it not intelligent and desirable to pursue greater utilization of the tools at our disposal.  The high TEE requirement means high cost. So power users, informed users, and those who lead the way (hackers), are looked upon as cost centers. Then again, however, in the enterprise world – Customer Service and Relationship Management are equally looked at with disdain and negativity as necessary though loathed, cost centers.

To hold a negative view of it comes across a hypocritical. If you’re a student of history and innovation, how can you separate the hacks from other innovations?  The litmus test for morality of the act simply because it was against the “rules” or “terms of service” doesn’t fly. It seems to me that the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, and awareness are pursuits of freedom, and that those who repremand.

Obviously there is a line and a big raging gray area, but by no means is it as black and white as it once was.There are clearly people out there who have mal intent, your standard black hat hackers. They keep the cyber-security complex going. Yet these are the exception rather than the rule. Or is it? Do you think the term Hack, Life Hack, Hacker, Life Hacker, etc. are negative? How and where do you draw the lines? The moment it interferes with a business model is a ridiculous answer; as the pursuit of freedom and knowledge seem to be in opposition to many business models these days especially in an information/services dominant economy. So, again where do we draw the lines.

IMO, the criteria for good film is simple. I pay good money to have good experiences, to be inspired, enlightened, engaged,  uplifted and pulled away from my everyday. Most movies fail to do this and lately more than ever. I don’t know if it’s the times or my tastes that are changing.

Themes

1. Hey Jesus Freaks, Hollywood is coming for you. Higher Ground (where’s the emoticon for gag me with a spoon),  Salvation Boulevard, and uplift you with Courageous. These introduce topics long overdue for discussion and I can’t wait to see the dung heaps flying back and forth over it all.

2. Taking on illegal immigration  and 3rd world countries with Better Life, The Harvest, and Amigo. These films are taking on important topics, and showing us things we should probably take a closer look at. However, I can only hold so much guilt, be only so angry and go about my life. Prioritization is difficult but in this economy, I have plenty of challenges for myself, family and community without taking on all of the world’s problems. So these films will likely float at the bottom of the Netflix queue until things are so cheery I need something to bring me down or make me angry.

Movies I’m looking forward to.

Salvation Boulevard – Hollywood attacks Evangelicals with hwilarity

Detective Dee -Crouching Tiger meets Sherlock Holmes. Cliche movements but visually stunning.

Magic Trip – Ken Kesey’s magical bus tour to find a cool place. The lost footage- awesome.

Haywire – Bourne Identity for Girls only better than Salt.

I Don’t Know How She Does It – Sex in the City style with SJP- taking on life as a working mom. Interesting/funny.- worth a gamble?

Pirates! Band of Misfits- A claymation, mild mannered comedy, sans force-fed, laugh tracks. From the people who brought you Chicken Run. Nuff Said.

John Carter- A Disney Flick – hints of The Fall and Prince of Persia + possibly someone’s dream world. Why do we need to see someone else dream on screen- just show me the dream and let it stand for itself. Not interested in watching other dreamers. I go to the movies to become the dreamer.

Cowboys and Aliens- Can you have a more stereotypical Hollywood movie title? I’ll probably regret seeing it, but  I can’t help it.

The Devil’s Double – A based on a true story about Sadam’s murderous son’s reluctant double. Looks good.

Puss in Boots- Antonio Banderas is Zorr-oh I mean Puss in Boots. Hopefully this film has better script than Shrek 3.

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy – Zack and What’s her name make an Orgy-kinda- looks like a whole lot of laughs.

French Movies That Look Awesome

Special Treatment -Aging french prostitute meets therapist. Good times.

The Hedgehog – The lives of a Homely Shrek-like concierge woman and a dysfunctional, well to do family are changed via an intermediary. Fun. Feel Good. Inspirational. Trans formative. When will American Cinema return to serve its patrons the way these films do?

Upcoming Exception: Hugo- Okay- forget what I just said about American cinema. This movie might bring a little fun for everyone.

Point Blank – Man’s wife is kidnapped, man is framed for murder, and he must help someone escape police custody. Sound familiar? It’s in French.

Love Crime – Damages in one movie or less.

Lazy Sunday Movies

Vigilante- Some jack-ass painting over graffitti with wait for it, wait for it, silver paint- thinks it isn’t graffiti. Interesting Social Commentary.

Pearl Jam 20 – Great Band that’s lasted a while. Looks interesting. Background potential to say the least.

Life in a Day – HD mashup of National Geographic+ YouTube that will make us laugh and cry I’m sure.

Chasing Madoff – Required Watching for all you Heroik MBA’s out there.

Suing the Devil- Finally, Satan gets h is day in court- sued for causing all the world’s suffering. Hope he wins. Take some God Damn- Responsibility world!

El Bulli-Cooking in Progress – Documentary about one of the greatest restaurants and chefs in the world. Foodies of the world unite- in line to see it.

Redemption Road – Michael Clark Duncan, Luke Perry, and some other lesser known names in a story about blues and life and getting them right. Interesting.

Jurie’s Still Out

The Change Up – might be good- but not convinced.

Mysteries of Lisbon- can’t tell if it’s going to be a tragedy or not.

The Three Musketeers- How many will they make? Looks a bit over-produced and that is usually the sign of an underwhelming movie, but I could be wrong.

Movies You Can’t Pay Me to Go See- Save Yourself $100, 15 hours+ popcorn and soda money.

The Harvest- guilt trip about migrant farm workers- I have enough guilt already. Pass.

Amigo - American guilt trip from the 19th century- The Phillipines edition. Pass.

Paranormal Activity 3 – Can we get an IQ test or census for the audience here? I’m just curious about the break down.

Apollo 18- Paranormal Activity on the moon. Bad acting as well. Yawn.

The Future- This one might be good or it may inspire you to go home and start cutting yourself. Watching depressed people mope about- save for the cat narration- how is this different?

Glee 3d- I’m not even linking to it. OK Fine here.

Contagion – The latest apocalyptic fear mongering movie that will all keep us out of the airports w/o gloves. Boring old premise- in a movie with a lot of big names.

Project Nim – A horrible story about a chimp raised by humans. I read about this. Not- a happy ending- pass.

Phase 7 - From executive producer of Paranormal Activity – and it shows- not in a good way.

The Dream House- Daniel Craig, 007 himself in a movie reminiscent of The Shining about one or more fathers who killed his entire family. Who needs a new nightmare? Not I. Pass.

Hacking isn’t limited to computer activity. You can hack anything. Why do we do it? I believe we do it to work-around what we believe to be menial and boring and get to the activities or parts of the activities that we enjoy- (e.g. winning, completion, crossing the finish line, at all costs). Here are some examples that support my point- we’re born to hack.

Games

For every honest player, I bet there are at least 2 people eager to learn how to hack the system, and another person who actually does it.

1. Man has been breaking rules since the dawn of time. War Games and the simulations that were designed to mimic them have been hacked since the beginning. Kings used political pressure to ensure victory of a chess game. Big brothers under penalty of a pounding would coax little brothers and sisters into surrendering properties in Monopoly and so on (sorry).

2. Counting cards and the notion of beating the house qualifies as a hack. It requires you to cultivate a deep understanding of the system and exploit it’s weaknesses. This isn’t cheating, though many think that it is. It is just awesome game hack.

3. In the digital world, there are hacks of all kinds and this is perhaps the easiest to grasp notion. Players can exploit flaws and the system to see their opponent’s moves and goals and respond accordingly. In the political field, we do similar things across the globe with espionage, to the point of cyber war.

Health & Fitness

1. We’re constantly looking for magic pills to make us stronger, faster, thinner, and energized. We could focus on tapping into gifts we’re given, understanding and nurturing the natural flow of things but most of us don’t. After all who has the time. Steroids and drug use are prevalent in just about every popular professional sport, save for Soccer, which I guess isn’t that popular here in the states. Runners do all sorts of things to exploit their bodies to overclock and push them to the limit. In all of this, I can’t tell you at what point optimization ends and hacking/gaming the system (in the negative context) begins.

2. Obesity and weight loss is the biggest issue for Americans. I speak from personal experience and can say with confidence (as a former heavyweight turned athlete), that out of all the ways we hack, this is at the top of the list. It earns the top slot because we hack the hack. We have many diet and fitness programs that work, yet a majority of fat Americans will tell you they don’t. Why? Because they add the rationalization loop to make the hard work easier on the brain. They make excuses for caloric exceptions of cheesecake and burgers. We’re really good at hacking our motivations for food drives. Fitness classes work. Hagen Daas and Fitness Classes don’t work.  And when we hack the body hacks with mind hack rationalizations- the result is failure.

Mind Hacking- Rationalizing our thoughts and behaviors to avoid doing what’s necessary. We make excuses to work around our what our minds and bodies are telling us.

Politics, Law and Business

1. How many subtle linguistic tricks and work arounds do we have? Has anyone even attempted to map out the politcal correct speech dictionary in a big book of douchebaggery? It would take a lifetime for a team of people I’m sure.

2. If there’s one thing that we produce in the U.S.A. it’s Bull Shit, and what I mean by that is the mental and linguistic efforts to deceive, circumvent, any hindrance to any individual, group, or organization’s efforts, anywhere across every medium. We are really great at hacking society via Bull Shit. Most pretend to be value driven and proceed to rationalize and B.S. their way around holding themselves accountable to the same standards.

3. The latest layer of complexity in the murky brown BS world, is the notion that we will transform business into a video game for customers and employees. Great, because teaching everyone that work/life is one big game will remove any moral imperatives and encourage hacking on all sides of the consumer/business/employee structure. This is in fact, the way things are trending.

Conclusions & Discussion Points

If it is becoming like a big game,  The Game of Life:

Why should we fight our nature to hack the system?

At what point does hacking become immoral? At what point are we crossing the line between efficiency and optimization, playing to our strengths, exploiting the system, and doing something wrong?

The answer is a murky gray one. I’d love to know what others think on the subject.

The reality, in the Information Age,  on the cyborg lifestyle scene, I believe we’ve been life hacking at a whole new level for at least a decade, in pursuit of freedom from boredom and indentured servitude. It’s a required mentality to compete with innovation and globalization. I believe that pursuing freedom in this day requires a dedication to hacking your reality, your work and life to mold it the way you see fit.

Let’s accept the Matrix scenario as our premise, since many of the rules can be bent, others broken and accountability at just about every societal level is virtually non-existent, to the extent where we minimize suffering caused, why shouldn’t we hack our lives for our own personal gain?

Tell me why I should stop seeking to maximize the value of my time effort and energy? Explain why I shouldn’t delegate and automate my way into early retirement. Corporate citizenship is a bullshit moral imperative for sheep. Don’t get me wrong, I have principles, but explain to me the merits of accepting the gamified premise & rules of a societal game where those at the top, middle, and a few at the bottom aren’t even following.

Life is short. Make it what you want. Live with virtue and deep compassion for fellow man, but don’t hold societal premises and definitions too high. Corporate culture and many of societal rules are attacks or hacks on our sense of virtue and morality. They are designed to obligate, guilt trip and otherwise force you into submission. How is that fair or ethical?  Most of it is bullshit- built to hack.

-Nicholas

Maybe you thought of family photos, famous paintings/drawings, comic books or branding opportunities. Well good news everyone, there’s a hack for that and it is relatively simple to do.

1. Download Jailbreak  and Screen Saver Hack for your Kindle. Don’t worry, unlike the iPhone and iOS devices, you’re not going to break anything and the process is completely reversible.  *Note: The files below are for Kindle v 3.1 so be sure your Kindle firmware is up to date.

• Download the Jailbreak Update (zip file) for your Kindle. Get it at one of these links [Mirror 1] [Mirror 2] [Mirror 3]
• Download the Screensaver Hack (zip file) for your Kindle. Get it at one of these links [Mirror 1] [Mirror 2] [Mirror 3]

2. Select the right files that match your model/ serial number.

After you’ve downloaded and opened the zip files you’ll notice a slough of different files. There is one file for each particular version of Kindle. There are 9 different versions out there (9! Who knew?).

Note: Also take comfort in knowing that the uninstall files are all right there as well

Select the version associated with the serial number prefix of your Kindle.

To do this, Find your Kindle’s serial #

• Turn on your Kindle, press the Menu button
• Select Settings
• On the Settings page under Device Info (last item at bottom of page), you’ll see your serial number. I have the latest edition Kindle, and so my serial number prefix is B008
• Once you know your serial number prefix, use the guide below to help you choose the proper file.

SN prefix Kindle model (2, 3, or DX) use the file titled update
B002 K2 – U.S. use the file titled  k2
B003 K2 – Global use the file titled  k2i
B004 KDX – U.S.  use the file titled dx
B005 KDS – Global use the file titled dxi
B006 K3 – 3G U.S. use the file titled  k3g
B008 K3 – Wi-Fi use the file titled k3w
B009 KDX – Graphite use the file titled dxg
B00A K3 – 3G UK use the file titled  k3gb

For example, my Kindle serial starts with Boo8- and is a 3rd generation wi-fi version, so I will use the K3W File from both the Jailbreak and Screen Saver hack zip files. The proper file is highlighted in the image below.

Inside the SS zip file are the files for the screensaver hack. In the image below I have selected the file associated with my generation of Kindle (k3w), the same as with the jailbreak hack.

3. Extract the appropriate files  by dragging them to your desktop or folder location of your preference.

4. Install JailBreak.

• Plug in your Kindle via USB and  open the kindle (the same way you’d browse an external hard drive or USB thumb drive)
• First Drag and Drop the jailbreak file to the root directory of the Kindle.
• Eject or unplug your Kindle
• Once back in the normal browsing mode on your Kindle, press Menu select Settings and choose Update Your Kindle

• Confirm the Update
• *NOTE: If you’re using a Kindle 2, it’s likely you’ll see a U006 error- don’t freak out or hyperventilate. Let the Kindle restart automatically. Breath into a paper bag. You are fine.
• You’re ready for some Heroik Screen Saver Hackery!

5. Install the Screensaver Hack. Same process as Jailbreak hack just with a different file.

• Use the file associated with your Kindle version. In my case, I chose the file ending with the suffix K3W_install.bin
• Drag and Drop the Screen Saver “SS” file to the root directory of the Kindle.
• Eject or unplug your Kindle
• Once back in the normal browsing mode on your Kindle, press Menu select Settings and choose Update Your Kindle
• Confirm the Update
• You’re ready to add some Heroik Screens.

6. Add Screensavers – Start by connecting your Kindle to your computer and opening the Kindle drive.

• Once you’ve opened the Kindle drive, You should see a folder called linkss. Open it.

• If you don’t see this folder, restart your Kindle. See step 7 for restart instructions.
• Click on the ScreenSavers folder. This is where Screensavers will be placed.

Image Requirements

• Images must be eitheer PNG (high quality-recommended) or JPEG
• Dimensions 600 pixels wide x 800 pixels high AND they must be in 8 bit gray scale.
• This is easily done in Photoshop see image below

Don’t have Photoshop? Too Lazy to make your own images?

• You can do the same thing with the open source Photoshop alternative, Gimp or Gimpshop
  
• You can also try Mangle – a tool used to convert Manga comics so that they are Kindle friendly but it works for images as well.
• You can use the Screen Savers I made for Get Heroik 
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Here are some converted images that I also love

7. Restart the Kindle

To restart the Kindle, press the Menu button then Settings then Menu again, then choose Restart.

*Note: Each time you upload new screensaver images you’ll have to restart your Kindle so that you can see them.

“You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, not look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”
-Walt Whitman from Song of Myself in Leaves of Grass

Today is Walt Whitman’s birthday and the quote is as relevant today as it was over a hundred years ago. It’s an ironic blurb to quote because doing so betrays his words.

Are you living your life or living through the works and lives of others? Are you experiencing life or reading about it and watching it on a screen? Or, are you simply dreaming of one day living?

Stop being a zombie and take control of your life. Get out there and live it up.

That’s all I have to say about that- I’m off and out- living it up.

Crossing the finish line feels as it usually does, really stinkin’ good. I feel great for completing the race and having a good time busting butt to make it happen. Today, after finishing the race ahead of friends, and seeing my time improve, I felt really good, but what made the feeling far sweeter was knowing that friends and loved ones were there with me and we’re all enjoying the struggle and glory of the moment together.  Diane having completed her 5k, cheered me around the last bend and that inspired me to push it to kick it up a notch and sprint past a guy. Dawn waived me down and had brought strawberries, blueberries, water and Gatorade for me. Dave and Julie were somewhere behind still in the race. Knowing that all these people whom I care about are there is truly awesome (not to be confused with 90′s California “awesome”, rather I’m in awe and truly appreciative).

Dave came through the finish line and though I cherished it, I gave him my Gatorade (what are friends for). If it weren’t for Dawn though, I wouldn’t have had that little moment either. It is these tiny, seemingly insignificant things that are worth calling attention to and enjoying. Noticing the intricate and subtle exchanges ripe with compassion will truly make you smile more.

After cheering everybody safely through and then driving to Mel’s Diner to completely eradicate any sign of physical fitness, the gathering is the second moment.  Feeling the support, love, and the camaraderie define the moments of victory. Little or not, Wherever, whenever, you notice it, call attention to it. Savor it. Allow it to fill your veins with energy to scream “Onward!” to the next race.

#Training with a group

I might not have accomplished the same feat without the help of my friends. I train with Dave Burges just about everyday. He’s 42 years young, a 1st sergeant in the Air Force. We talk about leadership, business, and general bad-assery just about everyday as we run, ride, and weight lift. I push him and he pushes back. His wife is Julie is also a good friend of mine and a Fleet Feet member -constantly improving her time and keeping me on my toes. Her sister is there too, tough as nails and supportive. We all run, train and play together. Somewhere in a distant landscape our epic marathoner friends and celebrity power couple, Kynan and Laura Matz, are off racing ostriches and cheetahs, hustling them for money; but they too inspire me and the group to push forward. Dawn surprised me by showing up to support me.

#Interdependence

In a previous race, my friends were out of town and everyone was busy so I ran it solo. All the metrics, and objectives, times and trials were nice, but alone they did not bring a sense of fulfillment, or true achievement. The realization about the moment of victory is simply an increased awareness about our interdependent nature. In business, and our personal lives, we can choose which ever metrics we like (income, weight, strength, speed, time, etc.) but none of it is valid without community, friendship, love and appreciation. The technical victory after all does not exist outside of all of these elements and people and support coming together.

#Value of Support

One thing we take for granted, and fail to fully appreciate is just how hard it is to simply be there to show support. It’s boring 98% of the time, especially in races, standing around, watching other people do stuff. I’d rather be doing it. I can’t watch sports without wanting to play. It takes great compassion to surrender the pride, find things to connect with and enjoy, and in that one moment deliver my prescription (MORE COWBELL!). The rush of endorphins delivered when we hear our loved ones cheering, the motivation knowing that you’ve got somebody at the finish line waiting for you, are great and powerful contributors to victory.

If we’re so lucky, we might just get to win a race or two, and as much as we’d like to think it was a single person, the motivators that make anything worth doing, are usually connected to other people. At the finish line, waiting impatiently for every great racer, is a great woman, great friends, and great people. When people say Way to Go, or I stop to reflect on today, I’ll think of my friends, I’ll think of the small things, blueberries & Gatorade and who brought them and why we share them.

The defining moments of even the little victories is when they are celebrated with friends.

-Onward to fortune and glory!

2. Buying into points and metrics built into the networks,platforms and tools does not guarantee success. In fact, in most cases, it leads to failure. We live in the age of Free Love digitally speaking. Likes, follows, and re-tweets are given away easily, in some cases automatically and therefor have little value. Liking, following and re-tweeting requires very little TEE (time, effort, energy).

This is especially true for the feed activities of social media. Those who issue their vote or approval risk nothing, not even their word or reputation, there is little value generated to others. Compare this to a lengthy review or blog post, and you’ll see the clear difference between a bumper sticker sentiment, and a long, thorough and accurate account of an experience with your brand. Which has more weight? Which has more value? One requires time, effort and energy and puts reputation on the line, the other sacrifices little to nothing.The answer is clear as is the implication.

Feed strategies are lowest on the totem pole of social media yet most people spend a majority of their resources on Twitter and Facebook updates. Why? It feels like work. It feels like they’re doing something. They look busy. I’m not interested in spending time looking busy. I prefer to be effective and take the rest of the day off.

A better tactic: Find those who take the time to talk about/with you in paragraphs and connect with and encourage them- be they naysayers or evangelists.

3. Steamy Piles of Sentiment. Sentiment is measured by aggregating social metrics (bad numbers) and multiplying them by SEO related figures like number of links, mentions, rank, etc. (AKA notoriously hackable, really bad numbers) to indicate the trending mood. Individually these metrics have a huge percentage of error, multiplied together that number grows exponentially out the window. All of the sentiment tools do this making them a steamy pile of BS.

In fact one of the most popular tools uses subjective personnel to help assess value, disguising opinion as data. It costs a fortune

You can be more effective  by honing  what Hemingway referred to as a shock proof shit detector.

(Bad numbers +Questionable numbers )x (SEO leader-board numbers) = REALLY bad numbers.

4. It is not customer centric to focus on metrics that only boost and support your ego. From the audience perspective, there are few reasons to care and little value associated with the size of your following and re-tweets. Let’s be honest here, are you pursuing likes, links and re-tweets for them or for you.

5. Despite the absolute lack of tracking to business objectives, novices will continue to judge you based on social media metrics. Novices are often small business and unfamiliar marketing teams. Their praise/judgement amounts to blowing smoke up your ass. Don’t fall for it or let the hot air and hype go to your head. Remember your business objectives and pursue them rigorously.

6. A majority of the tweets/updates are generated by a minority of the community and most of them are spam posts from other marketing types. There are many studies, facts and figures that support this. In most cases, when you’re listening, you aren’t tapping into the feed of customer life, you’re putting your ear to the ground inside a marketing firm’s cafeteria. This is how people have justified their social media efforts, they point to the crowd and say that the audience cares about these things. What they fail to mention is that the audience is composed of mostly other people with similar marketing roles.

7. The people who believe the most in social media metrics are the people who matter least to you. Marketing and PR teams validate their existence by these numbers but they are deceptively poor indicators at best.  Don’t listen to those who matter least. If marketing types are your target, be bold and target the niche group not supporting the BS bubble.  Be honest about metrics and your engagements will be more rewarding.

8. It is very easy to get sucked into patterns that rationalize bad habits than to face reality. I argue that by default, the virtual social flurry activity, deep down feels hollow to most people. This explains why people work so hard to double down efforts to make it feel right, much like drug addiction. Addressing reality however, (cultivating discipline, strategy and tactics pursuant to business objectives) allows you to address a challenge effectively with a minimal amount of effort for a maximum effect, without sacrificing quality or your principles.

9. Factor in Information Overload and The Rise of Filters. Focus on audience customer experience. Remember in most cases, that the audience operates on as much information about the tools of the trade and state of affairs as you do. Social media has brought new opportunities for communication and thus, the fight against spam starts again. As more and more of the masses become aware of their own personal information overload, they will be very interested in filtering out the crap. How will your efforts be measured?  80/20 Rule dictates that the masses would be happy to sacrifice 20% of their business follows, if it meant filtering 80% of the spam. Will you make the cut?

10. Ignore the Praise and Judgement of Amateurs. Novices worship tweets, following and likes, but  most of them have no road map that leads to revenue and more foot traffic. Amateurs are more than happy to tell you where you ought to go when they have no map or plan themselves. So let them focus on the social circle jerk while you focus on only effective efforts. By the way, most of the “professionals” involved in social media so ferry across, and find your way.

To steal a line from Sam & Dave, this is all code for you to Hold-On- Cuz I’m Coming

And to those who thrive in BS and disingenuous practice, get ready to be annoyed. In order to help  others get to ROI, we must first dismantle and remove some bad habits and notions that are getting in the way successful social efforts and that journey begins with tough love and addressing some sobering realities.

ROI  in social media- is it measurable? This is an old question that dates back at least half a decade. The answer is  a cautious “Yes”. It can be, but it requires strategic planning and authentic content creation. The enterprise community has more resources to go about this but often finds bigger  ways to mess it up. Small businesses on the other hand, those making up a majority of attendees to this meeting, ignorant and naive to business objectives, are caught up in the novelty of tools and deceptive metrics (likes, follows, etc.). There is a scalable way of going about social media that is not only more efficient, productive, and cost effective, it requires less TEE, Time, Effort and Energy.

1. Social Media is a business objective multiplier. It is the frosting, the opportunity to connect and transparently demonstrate and share how you are upholding your principles internally with partners, employees and teams, and externally with customers and communities while pursuing honest business goals. If you have no business objectives,  how can you claim that you have a strategy? You haven’t defined the challenge, so how can you effectively go about meeting it? You can’t or rather, you shouldn’t.

2. Business Strategy and Objectives. There is a major lack of business savvy and ability to create effective strategy in the social media space. This is perhaps the most obvious and persistent problem, especially for small business. Those trained with traditional business skills and book smarts, tend to be too direct in their efforts, focused on a single move to get the audience to engage. Those more familiar with social media skills than business skills, lack the vision and discipline to discern metrics within tools from measurements that directly correlate to business objectives. However, these street smart individuals recognize that relationships are built in layers and multiple moves.  The book smarts know what they want, and the street smarts know how to get there. To succeed in social media requires one to see the whole board and reconcile and translate both worlds.

A relevant lesson from one of my mentors, Chuck Tweedy, a respected attorney, economist and Taekwondo master, echoes the teachings of Miyamoto Musashi: When focusing on the small you must think about the many, the broad, overall goals, and when you are thinking about the broad goals, you must think about the small; the customer experience.  The Social Media Club – or at least attendees were composed mainly of  small business people who do not enter into the practice with an eye for strategy or tactics.

3.Why We Do It- All the Wrong Reasons. Focusing on the faulty metrics give the illusion of personal validation and those who do so, novices, tend to rigorously defend and obsess over them. The false sense of validity doesn’t track to high returns or hard measurements. All too often, dollars don’t enter the discussion until it’s too late; long after everything is spent. In most cases people are participating for the wrong reasons, vague notions and undefined goals.

A Lack of Critical Thought. For a group that is focused on conversation, there sure is a lack of insight and questions being asked. The purpose of discussion is to drive to conclusions, new thoughts, best practices and bright ideas, yet every attempt to do this is often met with firm opposition. Those who don’t  cringe at at the thought of confronting challenges are the people you want to engage with.

Falling for the Hyper-Consumption Trap. Looking at Twitter and Facebook as paradigms of choice, make it quite easy to come to the conclusion that you need to crank out content at a high frequency to keep up with the feed stream of social media, but, it’s also short sighted. Social Media “experts” often forget that social media includes longer form content like forums and blogs, that the feed stream is dependent upon. These pieces have a longer shelf life  and steer larger returns than the bumper sticker tweets,  but that doesn’t stop people from trying to define their social media strategy exclusively on these paradigms.

Self Centric & Tool Centric. People reading content are like college professors. They don’t care that your dog was chewing on it while you wrote it, or you’re in the middle of a break up, or chasing other deadlines. You are graded on the quality of content and conduct of your character that is directly observed. Who has time to care why you can your tweets? Unless you are a mega celebrity, the masses will rate you lower for it, like it or not.  Despite this, many get sucked into defining and rationalizing their work around their egos and the tools used.

4. Twitter Reality Check. The audience is constantly evolving and unless you are regularly reaching out to cultivate strategic business wisdom about social media, they know what you know. You have the same education. They are keenly aware that a majority of tweets generated are spam, canned and scheduled messages and they have a keen interest in filtering it. If they don’t know this now, they will soon.  I’d be happy to tell them-because I’m sick of the spam as well.

As the crowd continues to evolve and the desire to combat information overload increases, the desire to save time and filter out the noise also increases. Why? The audience you likely want to reach is participating actively, while you are participating passively(scheduling tweets, pre-fab etc.). 80/20 Rule-If your audience can filter out 80% of the spam while sacrificing 20% of genuine business interactions, do you think they’d hesitate to pull the trigger?

The User Experience (UX) on Twitter- Why I Don’t Care The Reasons You Canned Your Tweets, Only That You Can Them. If you consider the user experience on Twitter for example, you’ll reconnect with the notion that  for your audience at least, social media isn’t about you, it’s about real connection and authentic communication. They see a disingenuous action and will judge and filter in a split second, and rightfully so I might add.

Case in point- HootSuite fits the bill for a perfect target.  Most marketing types are aware of the tool and many on Twitter are aware that marketers use this. In each tweet, you can see just how a user is posting a tweet, e.g. posted via Android/iPhone/Twitter. You can also quickly identify and thus ignore tweets with owl.ly links (those created by the HootSuite link shortener). Thus you have 2 different ways to identify 80% of the spam, in a split second decision, and you know what to ignore.

This isn’t yet the trend but as more people become aware of how nuts all this information overload is driving them, they will become more and more interested in filtering out the noise and crap.  A few important call-outs here:

• This was a growing trend that concerned Twitter’s partners enough to get Twitter to change the interface.So now, if you’re looking at the stream, you can’t see how people are posting until you click to expand the tweet as seen here.
• In the image example, Time magazine, is a major media outlet and can get away with it.

The response to this was less than positive. This is the truly concerning part as far as Sacramento is Concerned. I heard every excuse that is completely self-centered, personal and irrelevant to the customer/audience experience. Here are some examples:

“I’m too busy to tweet in real time. I have to do billable work. I can’t participate and actively tweet all day.” And the person reading the tweet cares about this little tidbit about your life because?

“If it’s authentic message, it will be appreciated.” This may be true, but where do you think the wave is pushing? Do you practice to react or conduct business in away that allows you to plan to respond?

“I take tweets less seriously if they aren’t on such a tool (HootSuite)” This is a classic example of a marketer, who has failed to realize that a majority of her following are other marketers and not the active audience she wants to reach for her business.

The looks I got from these people, especially from a few women were particularly stunning. The women in the room were far more personally offended by my assertions than the men, judging by the dirty looks. I find that interesting because women are more active in social media than men in terms of numbers. Judging from the response in the room, this may be because women identify and attach to the notion of metrics that validate emotions. Take “likes” for example; a number and measurement of perceived emotional investment. Men are attracted to numbers and novelty, and women care too about emotion. Social media provides an addictive experience for both, emotive value  and instant gratification/action. Whatever the reasons driving the crowd, they felt personally insulted – which is unfortunate and a clear indicator that they define their business identities on a single tool and are out of touch with business goals. It’s a harsh reality, but one that businesses who wish to succeed have to face. Just as Google changes their ranking formula to weed out those trying to hack the numbers rather than generate authentic content, Twitter and the rest of the social media community are doing the same throughout the experience- through platform and product design, 3rd party tools and consumption practices alike. Why make your job harder by trying to swim upstream? Focus on authenticity and your efforts and life will not only be easier but more fruitful. I said authenticity not just authenticity in message. It’s not just about what you say but how you say it and how you are participating.

Bottom Line for Twitter: It’s over saturated, customers are hard to reach and are learning how to filter. Twitter is should be an icing for your social media strategy not the platform or foundation for it. You can save a lot of TEE (Time, Effort and Energy) by developing a more inclusive, robust strategy that involves longer form content creation.

5. Moron Metrics. In the realm of physical fitness, there are traditional measurements that have proven to be reliable in helping achieve goals like losing weight, gaining muscle, and increasing cardiovascular performance.  Metrics like calories, BMI, heart rate (BPM), weight, and of course time, all play a role in judging performance and deciding where we are getting the most bang for our buck.  We have similar metrics in to measure business efforts as well. Social Media channels and networks however, create their own metrics that cannot be traced to our primary business objectives. In the fitness example, Imagine a new program that added new metrics like counting glances and giggles from pretty women you see while working out, or drops of sweat, etc. These are poor indicators of physical fitness and they distract from the objectives we seek to achieve.  Likes, Follows, Re-Tweets and Sentiment are similarly distracting and equally useless.

6. Steamy Pile of Sentiment. Sentiment is the latest layer to the steamy pile. The tools that track sentiment aggregate all of the bad metrics (likes, mentions, re-tweets, followers, following) to give you a more robust and accurate picture of overall trend. Essentially, this means that they round up all of the bad numbers and average them. How far off do you think these numbers are? Measuring sentiment this way simply adds a multiplier effect to your percentage of error. Likes, reviews, blogs, following, re-tweets, etc. can and are inaccurate representations.

Furthermore, these sentiment tools disguise themselves as steeped in metrics but are in fact very subjective. There are humans pulling the strings behind the curtain, there is no magic decisioning engine, thus making the tools flawed/subjective. This explains why many of the top tier tools are limited to the English language. They require a human judging the validity of content somewhere along the way before it reaches your screen. Bad numbers multiplied by others narrow, subjective opinion equals inherently fuzzy, untrustworthy results. What good are the numbers if they cannot be trusted?

7. Debunked: 99/1 rule- for every active member in a community, there are 99 lurkers. This so called rule is rarely true and most often the exception rather than the rule. The corollary is for every 99 lurkers, there are really 94 people not paying attention at all, and 5 guys with no lives lurking in the bushes. The notion of the lurking community member was an invention of some marketing team trying to bolster their numbers. Lurker implies they are actively paying attention; that they are stalking somewhere and therefor deserve to be counted. The reality is that most lurkers are dead accounts or people like you and me who deal with information overload on a daily basis. Lurkers do exist but not at the ratios currently described by social media  ”experts”. This is yet another BS metric (Bubble Speak Business Solution to a Broken System).

Just how damaging are these bad metrics? Metrics motivate behavior and choosing to subscribe to the wrong metrics can compltely derail marketing, sales, support efforts, and drive business into the ground. They drive attention and focus to a board game and distract from business. The third party tools that reinforce moron metrics are costing companies billions now.

Don’t get me wrong. Secondary social objectives, such as increasing the bond/connection with customers, sharing adventures and challenges, and providing proactive support are good but you should always have an eye on your primary objectives. Businesses large and small are getting sucked in to the social media bubble speak and getting taken for a ride. The right way to approach Social Media starts with strategy and choosing metrics that matter.

I don’t advocate against subjectivity nor do I blindly root for the numbers. I do however, believe that the role of Social Media Director (whether that’s the business owner or someone on a team) should have what Hemingway referred to as a shock proof shit detector. It takes someone with the fortitude enough to trust their gut and have the cajones to be accountable and make a decision on the validity of data.

8. High Demand for Shock Proof Shit Detectors.The really bad news- Due to the persistant BSing, marketers, business, Tech Crunch, Mashable and the rest of Silicon Valley, trying desparately to create yet another B.S. bubble have many in the business world believing that these metrics are valid and accurate. I’d settle for a recent grad with a good, shock-proof shit detector over most of the tools out there.

9.You like Apples? The metrics are so bad that for the thousands spent on insights/social sentiment/analytic tools, you could have spent $12.00 on a magazine rack at a book store and got the same insight.  How you like them apples?

10. Using Fraud to ReachThe Locals. Tools that measure sentiment rely on search engine rankings and other SEO type numbers in their formulas.  As you may or not be aware, the world of SEO has been completely compromised by fraudulent activities and corporate hacking efforts. If part of the sentiment formula relies on the search rank, the number of times mentioned on the web, etc., the results will not be authentic in most cases. Combining multiple sets of fudged numbers to measure anything is a bad idea. Case in point, The economic recession of 2008, housing industry and the layer atop layer of bad numbers used to create the bubble in the first place.  The sentiment tools seek to create a similar bubble based on bad numbers.

One of Google’s largest ad customers, an ad firm whose name I’ll leave out, uses hack tactics to bolster their clients’ web ranking and pushing the competition to the bottom of page 4 of search results. Essentially this firm seeks to Reach Local businesses and advertise via brokering sales of search engine advertising along with other services. One of their more lucrative service offerings is to create optimized blog content on a massive scale.

There are often niche sites for many client’s and these ad firms simply partner with them (creating exciting new fudged number shenanigans) to take credit for every click to their clients’ sites. And, because the marketing budgets are spent according to cost per click, this is a huge money maker for them.

They operate on a mob mentality, luring search users into a van (faux blog without genuine content/substance) and delivers them as promised. These angry kidnapping victims are less likely to do business when they’re already aware that they’ve been taken for a ride. It all makes for wonderful theater and beautiful bar graphs but damages brand perception and does not drive revenue.

You see examples of their work all the time when you click on a search result and you are brought to a blog site littered with ads for that seem to go to the same page. They have  very little substance but just enough of the right stuff (cross links, hacked meta data) to ensure they make it into the top spots in search results.  At first glance, you may think the page was created by an amateur blogger trying to make a buck on ads, but much of that type of content is created by large ad firms. The content is often auto generated and placed there to drive clicks to client pages.

Buyer Be Ware! Any firm offering to help you reach local audience via clicks, search and ads, they’ll bring visitors alright; usually either unqualified, uninterested or delivered in a disingenuous way that makes them feel bitter and angry.

Understanding The Model-How it Works

- Ad firms Partner with local hub websites that create a lot of clicks but rarely any conversions. These local hubs get their cut of a marketing budget and in return provide local listings. Why do the firms partner with these sites? It’s true that these hubs are often at the top of the search results for their clients, but there is a more lucrative game afoot. They spend marketing budgets based on calls and costs per click. The more click activities they create, the more money they get. They have found a formula that allows them to have very little concern for their clients’ success, gets them discounted engagements with partners, and no one is the wiser as they are on contract for at least a quarter, before they’re dropped and onward to their next victim. It’s a white collar con job. An interesting side note on calls: in past dealings with multiple clients involved with this and similar companies, there was a major uptick in random  3 second calls and hang ups all of which costing them as much as $30 per call.

-No concern for tricks or tactics used to get visitors to the website. Imagine if you were looking for a ride to the airport, and a mob disguised as a cab company drags you there, 10 feet back dangling on a chain, in your office chair. Will this affect the mood, whether you enjoy the flight or not, let alone how much money you spend at the airport? Absolutely.  The faux ad filled blogs create by default a lower negative customer impression, that severely dampens the mood of a potential visitor to a site and creates a systematic cynical attitude towards social media in general. Putting potential customers in a bad mood but the firm doesn’t care because they fulfilled their objective. They drove clicks to the page. This creates fabulous numbers for the client but doesn’t deliver in terms of revenue in many cases.

How It Relates to Sentiment

How upsetting would it be to know that the sentiment measuring tools count these faux blogs and fudged results in their numbers? It’s similar to marketing types attempting to label every inactive registered community member a lurker, as opposed to, an inactive or dead account. Everyone wants to fudge the numbers to negotiate for more dollars, preserve their jobs, or rationalize their efforts.

The Problems are Fundamental and System Wide-Why isn’t anyone saying anything?

You have to realize who is using the tools. A director or manager of communications/social media or some other variant is validating his/or her efforts on these numbers. These numbers affect their careers and they have no interest in reporting bad or accurate numbers that are lower than the fudged numbers of their competitors. Their superiors look at the pretty bar graphs and spread sheets and see big numbers without understanding how these systems work. There is a severe lack of integrity throughout.

Conclusion-

Small businesses especially can’t afford to fall for the traps, cons and crap of the social media bubble. The Enterprise too is in dire need of some shot proof shit detectors who operate on integrity.

Good news everyone. There is a better way.

Start With:

• Acknowledging the truth and reality of the value and meaning of the metrics and the real numbers that count.
• Admit where your business knowledge is weak and go back and cultivate some. This can be done with a few books or magazines for under $100.00
• Think about the business first. Define, and I mean intricately define your objectives as best as you possibly can. This allows you to measure and see how your social efforts are translating as well as indicate when it’s time to pull the plug and focus on pouring your TEE (Time, Effort, and Energy) elsewhere.

At Heroik Media, we’re big fans of TEE. We only want to pour it into the finest, fastest and most reliable vehicles and experiences. Life is too short to spend it tweeting and updating simply to appear busy and convince yourself that your working. In part 2 of this adventure, will explore some example business objectives that scale for businesses large and small, and describe how they translate into real returns.

Sentiment is the latest layer to the steamy pile. The tools that track sentiment aggregate all of the bad metrics (likes, mentions, re-tweets, followers, following) to give you a more robust and accurate picture of overall trend. Essentially, this means that they round up all of the bad numbers and average them. How far off do you think these numbers are? Measuring sentiment this way simply adds a multiplier effect to your percentage of error. Likes, reviews, blogs, following, re-tweets, etc. can and are inaccurate representations.

Furthermore, these sentiment tools disguise themselves as steeped in metrics but are in fact very subjective. There are humans pulling the strings behind the curtain, there is no magic decisioning engine, thus making the tools flawed/subjective. This explains why many of the top tier tools are limited to the English language. They require a human judging the validity of content somewhere along the way before it reaches your screen. Bad numbers multiplied by others narrow, subjective opinion equals inherently fuzzy, untrustworthy results. What good are the numbers if they cannot be trusted?

Debunked: 99/1 rule- for every active member in a community, there are 99 lurkers. This so called rule is rarely true and most often the exception rather than the rule. The corollary is for every 99 lurkers, there are really 94 people not paying attention at all, and 5 guys with no lives lurking in the bushes. The notion of the lurking community member was an invention of some marketing team trying to bolster their numbers. Lurker implies they are actively paying attention; that they are stalking somewhere and therefor deserve to be counted. The reality is that most lurkers are dead accounts or people like you and me who deal with information overload on a daily basis. Lurkers do exist but not at the ratios currently described by social media  ”experts”. This is yet another BS metric (Bubble Speak Business Solution to a Broken System).

Just how damaging are these bad metrics? Metrics motivate behavior and choosing to subscribe to the wrong metrics can compltely derail marketing, sales, support efforts, and drive business into the ground. They drive attention and focus to a board game and distract from business. The third party tools that reinforce moron metrics are costing companies billions now.

Don’t get me wrong. Secondary social objectives, such as increasing the bond/connection with customers, sharing adventures and challenges, and providing proactive support are good but you should always have an eye on your primary objectives. Businesses large and small are getting sucked in to the social media bubble speak and getting taken for a ride. The right way to approach Social Media starts with strategy and choosing metrics that matter.

I don’t advocate against subjectivity nor do I blindly root for the numbers. I do however, believe that the role of Social Media Director (whether that’s the business owner or someone on a team) should have what Hemingway referred to as a shock proof shit detector. It takes someone with the fortitude enough to trust their gut and have the cajones to be accountable and make a decision on the validity of data.

The really bad news- Due to the persistant BSing, marketers, business, Tech Crunch, Mashable and the rest of Silicon Valley, trying desparately to create yet another B.S. bubble have many in the business world believing that these metrics are valid and accurate. I’d settle for a recent grad with a good, shock-proof shit detector over most of the tools out there.

You like Apples? The metrics are so bad that for the thousands spent on insights/social sentiment/analytic tools, you could have spent $12.00 on a magazine rack at a book store and got the same insight.  How you like them apples?

Analyzing Sentiment-Basic premise

1. Start with strategy. Know your goals. Where are you trying to go?

2. Pave the road. Make sure you can track efforts back to metrics you can trust. This usually means visits, clicks, time on site and of course, sales. Make sure you have methods that aren’t blurred or combined with other efforts. If you can easily breakdown how each of the various efforts are working, you’ll see where you need to focus or pull your resources.

3. Test and compare across channels and networks. Invite your audience to participate in a poll. Run a few independent polls.  Offer incentives to participate. Compare your sample with % of estimated members/audience or community.

4. Reconcile the numbers from the polls with a few random leaderboard searches. It’s easy to find

5. Run through your shock proof shit detector. Decide what the data means and how you can act on the data. Discuss with your team.

6.  Act on what you believe the data is telling you. If you cannot act on the data, what is the point.

The best tools available replace humans in your company who care, with those more interested in showing you numbers you want to see. Which set of data  are you more likely to comfortably act on? Some tools are worth it as long as you recognize and understand their short-comings. If you blindly believe what the tools are telling you, your losing money chasing fairy tales.

On the whole,  I found the group rather Tool centric and twitter obsessed. Their vision didn’t reach past their shoes. The panelists and group, save for a limited few, defended soft metrics with vague evasions fear response and blatant disregard for the always evolving realm of social media and the audience. They seem a siloed group out of touch with business strategy, their audience and customers. From the company viewpoint, it is in  Heroik Media’s best interest to improve Sacramento’s business image and competitive climate. So, to that end, we will make a substantial effort to raise the bar, increasing the expectation placed on the local social media and business community by advocating for more critical thought and authentic contribution. We will call out and seek to put an end to the everyday BS (Business solutions, Broken Systems and Bubble Speak) to drive progressive change and innovation while improving the quality of service and contribution for those in the region.

To steal a line from Sam & Dave, this is all code for you to Hold-On- Cuz I’m Coming and to those who thrive in BS and disingenuous practice, get ready to be annoyed. In order to help  others get to ROI, we must first dismantle and remove some bad habits and notions that are getting in the way successful social efforts and that journey begins with tough love and addressing some sobering realities.

ROI  in social media- is it measurable? This is an old question that dates back at least half a decade. The answer is  a cautious “Yes”. It can be, but it requires strategic planning and authentic content creation. The enterprise community has more resources to go about this but often finds bigger  ways to mess it up. Small businesses on the other hand, those making up a majority of attendees to this meeting, ignorant and naive to business objectives, are caught up in the novelty of tools and deceptive metrics (likes, follows, etc.). There is a scalable way of going about social media that is not only more efficient, productive, and cost effective, it requires less TEE, Time, Effort and Energy.

Social Media  Club Sacramento ROI #EpicFail

During the event, I was particularly tickled at the beginning of the meeting when Mark Bean, Managing Director at C7 (along with  the rest of the panel including  Josh Hilliker, Director of Social Media at Intel-GE Care innovations) bad-mouthed standard metrics of clicks, time on site, etc. only to later validate their efforts solely on these metrics. What this broadcasts is a conflicting message of a lack of integrity and accountability in social media across the board from small business, marketing firms and at the enterprise as well. What it implies is this type of excuse regarding ROI: When the numbers are bad, you can’t look at the numbers, and when the numbers are good, it’s clear proof about the validity of our social campaign. This reeks of horse puckey.

Path to Sobriety

1. Acknowledge the Problems & Failure Points

• A Lack of Strategy and Business Savvy. This is a persistent problem in social media. Those with primarily traditional, biz skills tend to be too direct, and those with social media skills confuse tools and their metrics for business goals and valid contributors to the bottom line. A lesson from one of my mentors Chuck Tweedy, that echoes the teachings of Miyamoto Musashi: When focusing on the small you must think about the many, the broad, overall goals, and when you are thinking about the broad goals, you must think about the small; the customer experience.  The Social Media Club – or at least attendees were composed mainly of  small business people who do not enter into the practice with an eye for strategy or tactics. Focusing on the faulty metrics give the illusion of personal validation and those who do so, novices, tend to rigorously defend and obsess over them. Few people brought up dollars in the discussion.As a result they obsess over the metrics (likes, follows, etc.) that don’t track to high returns or hard measurements.
  
• Self-Centric and Tool Centric. I was amazed at how the group could advocate for authentic messages and customer experience while rationalizing betraying that with personal excuses in the same sentence. People reading the content, are like college professors. They don’t care that your dog was chewing on it while you wrote it, or you’re in the middle of a break up, or chasing other deadlines. You are graded on the quality of content and conduct of your character that is directly observed. Who has time to care why you can your tweets? Unless you are a mega celebrity, the masses will rate you lower, like it or not.
• Falling for the Hyper-Consumption Trap. Looking at Twitter and Facebook as paradigms of choice, make it quite easy to come to the conclusion that you need to crank out content at a high frequency to keep up with the feed stream of social media, but, it’s also short sighted. Social Media “experts” often forget that social media includes longer form content like forums and blogs, that the feed stream is dependent upon. These pieces have a longer shelf life  and steer larger returns than the bumper sticker tweets,  but that doesn’t stop people from trying to define their social media strategy exclusively on these paradigms. Throughout the night, the group could not escape the conversational confines of the twitter paradigm, and I didn’t dare disrupt the meeting with the notion that twitter is over-saturated with people selling each other in a global circle jerk. Like a video game, the points/metrics are all about rewarding fast motion and velocity. It’s addictive but doesn’t bring much satisfaction into the real/rest of business and most aren’t using it in a way that actually adds value.
• A Lack of Critical Thought.For a group that is focused on conversation, there sure was a lack of insight and questions. The purpose of the discussion is to drive to conclusions, new thoughts, best practices and bright ideas, yet every attempt to do this was met with firm opposition. Those who didn’t cringe at confronting ideas were those that we spoke with after the panel as they demonstrated clear integrity to face challenges and realities.

Twitter Reality Check

Since most of the conversation revolved around Twitter, here are some key points I brought up that are worth reading.

The audience is constantly evolving and unless you are regularly reaching out to cultivate strategic business wisdom about social media, they know what you know. You have the same education. They are keenly aware that a majority of tweets generated are spam, canned and scheduled messages and they have a keen interest in filtering it. If they don’t know this now, they will soon.  I’d be happy to tell them-because I’m sick of the spam as well.

As the crowd continues to evolve and the desire to combat information overload increases, the desire to save time and filter out the noise also increases. Why? The audience you likely want to reach is participating actively, while you are participating passively(scheduling tweets, pre-fab etc.). 80/20 Rule-If your audience can filter out 80% of the spam while sacrificing 20% of genuine business interactions, do you think they’d hesitate to pull the trigger?

I raised this question to the group and framed it under the notion that HootSuite fits the bill here. Most marketing types are aware of the tool and many on Twitter are aware that marketers use this. In each tweet, you can see just how a user is posting a tweet, e.g. posted via Android/iPhone/Twitter. You can also quickly identify and thus ignore tweets with owl.ly links (HootSuite link shortener). Thus you have just identified 80% of the spam, in a split second decision, and you know what to ignore.

The response to this was less than positive. This is the truly concerning part as far as Sacramento is Concerned. I heard every excuse that is completely self-centered, personal and irrelevant to the customer/audience experience. Here are some examples:

“I’m too busy to tweet in real time. I have to do billable work. I can’t participate and actively tweet all day.” And the person reading the tweet cares about this little tidbit about your life because?

“If it’s authentic message, it will be appreciated.” This may be true, but where do you think the wave is pushing? Do you practice to react or conduct business in away that allows you to plan to respond?

“I take tweets less seriously if they aren’t on such a tool (HootSuite)” This is a classic example of a marketer, who has failed to realize that a majority of her following are other marketers and not the active audience she wants to reach for her business.

The looks I got from these people, especially from a few women were particularly stunning. The women in the room were far more personally offended by my assertions than the men, judging by the dirty looks. I find that interesting because women are more active in social media than men in terms of numbers. Judging from the response in the room, this may be because women identify and attach to the notion of metrics that validate emotions. Take “likes” for example; a number and measurement of perceived emotional investment. Men are attracted to numbers and novelty, and women care too about emotion. Social media provides an addictive experience for both, emotive value  and instant gratification/action. Whatever the reasons driving the crowd, they felt personally insulted – which is unfortunate and a clear indicator that they define their business identities on a single tool and are out of touch with business goals. It’s a harsh reality, but one that businesses who wish to succeed have to face. Just as Google changes their ranking formula to weed out those trying to hack the numbers rather than generate authentic content, Twitter and the rest of the social media community are doing the same throughout the experience- through platform and product design, 3rd party tools and consumption practices alike. Why make your job harder by trying to swim upstream? Focus on authenticity and your efforts and life will not only be easier but more fruitful. I said authenticity not just authenticity in message. It’s not just about what you say but how you say it and how you are participating.

Bottom Line for Twitter: It’s over saturated, customers are hard to reach and are learning how to filter. Twitter is should be an icing for your social media strategy not the platform or foundation for it. You can save a lot of TEE (Time, Effort and Energy) by developing a more inclusive, robust strategy that involves longer form content creation.

2. Sober Up-Sobering Realities of Social Media

Social Media Metrics within the tools/networks themselves are poor measurements that rarely translate to meaningful numbers and the bottom line. The rush and high of the numbers is false and temporary if it cannot transcend to the rest of the business model in a lasting way.

Twits and Retwits- Believing that a retweet is a validating metric is short sighted at best. It’s like looking to get street cred in the fastest and laziest way possible. Don’t confuse fast and lazy with efficient or productive.

The person who benefits most from having a link shared and re-tweeted is the person who created the content you are linking to. Street cred is not transferred by riding coat tails.

The point of diminishing return for posting  a link  from a source is 2. It’s a 1:1 ratio, 1 source, one link. If you repeatedly link to the same source, increased credit is given to the source, not to you.

Your ability to regurgitate a URL or syndicate the works of others is of little to no value.  This can be automated. Acting as a personal filter adds value but is hard to monetize or translate to ROI, so be careful.

Authentic is as authentic does. Canned is canned. When it comes to social media, there is no amount of artificial flavoring that will make junk content taste as good as the real thing. The crowd is smarter than you think and constantly evolving. If you cannot operate on this knowledge, find another line of work.

If you truly care about your customer and having a social connection, here’s a revolutionary thought, how about sharing your thoughts on a particular subject/source/piece of content in a way that invites real conversation. Passing a link along via  a tweet does not achieve this. I don’t care how many people re-tweet an NY Times article. The people who care about the user mentioned in the retweet are usually other marketers seeking desparately to believe in these twitter metrics.

3. A Better Way- Opportunity for Success

You want to share content that you believe is interesting and relevant to your customer. To get the most credit for doing this, simply ask yourself, why do I feel compelled to share this content? Create a foundation from which you can share your ideas (longer than a bumper sticker) and start writing to answer this question with everything you find compelling. If you believe in the principles of connecting with your customers using authentic messaging, you should already be doing this.

Social media provides you a megaphone and some intuitive practices to make it helpful. Stop fighting necessary work. Stop substituting what needs to be done for what makes you look active and seem authentic. It’s amazing how busy you are and how little you’re accomplishing when you work so hard to fake it. People notice, especially when you cut every corner you can to get there.

The solutions are simple, but that doesn’t mean they are easy. A social effort has a foundation on the web that you control independent of other networks. Don’t create a new island. Integrate social into your web presence. This notion has specific best practices that I won’t give away here, but the ROI is far better when you build in the social elements into your business model. It’s integrated with the rest of your web presence and connected to the networks and communities you don’t necessarily control. You want to bring a focused audience to your camp fire so that they listen attentively and maybe, just maybe, you get them to buy in. At the very least they spread the good word about a good time and great discussion they had with you.

The good news or at least sad but true is 95% will ignore this and continue to spam and tweet away into mediocrity and bankruptcy, making it easier for the more serious, hard working firms to rise like cream to the top.