Chris Brogan | Broadcasting Brain

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The best bloggers are world builders

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

All the best bloggers are world builders. So are science fiction/fantasy writers, politicians, entrepreneurs, architects religious leaders, non-profit organizers, teachers, and coaches. Oh, and movie directors/producers, too (George Lucas and James Cameron didn’t just make movies – they made entire worlds. Or even galaxies.)

What? You say that all they do is move pixels, letters, numbers, and the occasional image? How could bloggers possibly be world builders?

First of all, relax on one point: I’m not saying that bloggers are planet builders. I don’t know what your religious beliefs are (they are your business, after all) but I’m not implying that bloggers possess superhuman abilities to move and rearrange matter into organized clumps (although you could be forgiven for thinking that some of them might be under the delusion that they can do such things).

Worlds aren’t just planets. Worlds, going back to etymology and history for just a moment, are not limited to being orbs in space that orbit stars. World is a term that related to things like “turning chaos into order”. World can also be a self-contained, unique reality that exists separate to the “real world”.

A world can be an ideal place, one that represents certain characteristics, beliefs, or ideas.

Blogs have themes, rules, topics of interest, visions, and calls to action.

Here are a few examples:

Chris Brogan: a world of human, café shaped businesses

Beth Kanter: world of compassion where non-profit organizations can use social media to be successful

Rob Diana: world for better coding, design, and techonology

Robert Scoble: world of cool and useful technology

Fred Wilson: world where more people are educated in business fundamentals

Seth Godin: world where more people realize what incredible opportunities are available to us all and what we lose when we squander them

Darren Rowse: a world where individuals can improve their lives by making money online using blogs and social media

Michael Martine: a world where businesses make better use of blogs and social media to be more successful

Steven Hodson: a world where companies and individuals stop making stupid mistakes with technology (see also Justin Kownacki)

Hugh MacLeod: a world where people get off their asses, follow their passions, and do great work

Mitch Joel: a world where companies grasp the fact that media is changing and baby, you’d better run smartly with it

Introvert Zone: a world where introverts can have self-respect and live happy, productive lives

Ian M Rountree: a world where you can do cool stuff, get better, and do even more while growing as an individual

Bill Wren: a world where people can find tools to become better writers

Steve Spalding: a world where you turn things inside out, split the atoms apart, and find the goodness that no one else has been smart enough to find yet

Louis Gray: a world where everyone gets to see and benefit from all of the good technology that’s out there, especially the great stuff that gets overlooked at times

Dave Winer: a world where technology is used intelligently as part of an overall democratic, fair society (see also: Doc Searls, David Weinberger)

Alexander Van Elsas: a world where free technology, the rights of the individual, and commerce can coexist

Jessica Doyle: a loving world full of wonderful art

Merlin Mann: a world where people have the tools to do their best work, and then they go do it

Gary Vanynerchuk: a world where people appreciate the complexity and range of great wines in the world

Brian Solis: a world where companies use social media, public relations and communications effectively and thoughtfully (see also Adam Singer)

Naomi Dunford: a world where individuals can start thriving small businesses instead of working for “the corporation” (see also: Jonathan Fields)

Valeria Maltoni: a world where everyone recognizes the power of honest and significant conversation

Kelly Diels: a world where we better understand the importance of sex, money and meaning and how together they intersect and shape our lives

Dan Schawbel: a world where people realize the power of their personal brand and how it precedes them at every step of the way

Have you visited any cool worlds lately? Better still, have you made any?

Thought wrestling – the sport of different thinkers (broadcasting-brain.com)
How to start 2010 by doing better work (broadcasting-brain.com)
11 Characteristics of Highly Influential Blog(ger)s (techipedia.com)

Tags: 43folders.com, beth kanter, bill wren, brian solis, chris brogan, cleavage, conversation agent, crush it, dan schawbel, darren rowse, Dave Winer, doc searls, Fred Wilson, gaping void, gary vaynerchuk, how to split an atom, hugh macleod, ian m rountree, introvert zone, ittybiz, jessica doyle, kelly diels, louis gray, merlin mann, michael martine, mitch joel, naomi dunford, personal branding blog, pr 2.0, problogger, regular geek, remarkablogger, rob diana, robert scoble, scripting, seth godin, shooting at bubbles, six pixels of separation, steve spalding, steven hodson, valeria maltoni, van elsas, writelife
Posted in thinking differently | 12 Comments »

The role of the Twitter follower

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

What exactly does it mean when someone follows you on Twitter?

Answer: it depends.

Chris Brogan wrote a blog post – Is Engagement More Important – where he talked about Twitter followers. He described the following exchange he had on Twitter concerning the author Tom Peters:

I told my gang over on Twitter that they should follow the legendary Tom Peters, author of several books that impacted my life. Some of them wrote back, “why should I? He doesn’t follow many people back.”

Chris made two major points in his post:

1. Following someone on Twitter isn’t necessarily engagement (i.e. interaction with the person who is using Twitter):

When I choose to follow, it’s because I grant you the permission to send me a direct message. I will not likely see your standard every day tweets. At over 110,000 followed, it’s a technical and mathematical impossibility… So, when I follow you back, it means that I’ve given you one step up on the hurdle. But that’s not the whole game.

2. You can get a lot of value by following someone because of the knowledge that they share, even if it’s not directed specifically toward you:

But what if Tom Peters’ Twitter stream is full of useful nuggets and links to really useful stuff. Is it any less valuable? … But my point is: the information is more important in many cases.

I believe that Chris is absolutely correct with the second point.

I’m not so sure that I agree with the first point. While it may be valid for him, I don’t think it’s representative of all Twitter users and I don’t think it’s the way that some (or a lot of people) think.

Consider the following:

Chris has over 100,000 followers and he follows back almost everyone, so his ratio of following to followers is close to 1:1
In my case, I follow 2140 Twitter accounts and in turn I am followed by 3490 Twitter accounts at the moment; my ratio is not quite 2:3 but it’s close to that. There are plenty of people who follow and are followed by many more people than I am, but I’m kind of in a middle range in terms of size.
I would wager that the vast majority of Twitter users follow and are followed by less than 200 people (note: I have no research to substantiate this, but it seems reasonable to me)

I agree that Chris could not (and probably should not) try to follow every Tweet that is squirted out by each of the people that he follows. Even with my smaller set of followers, I know I can’t do it either. The third group of people just might be able to do that if the people they follow only publish a few Tweets each day.

I would argue, however, that there is still intent to at least try to follow some of the Tweets from some of the people that you are following. I don’t believe that most people will follow someone else for the sake of allowing them to DM you (put differently, for the sake of being able to receive private messages from the people that you follow). You follow someone because you might find their stuff interesting and with the hope of interaction. From a practical point of view, someone with Chris’s network of followers might be providing a courtesy by allowing the DM.

There’s still a problem with that, though:

How could anyone keep up with the DMs (the direct messages that Chris refers to in his post) when you are following 100,000 people? And trust me, a guy like Chris will be getting plenty of DMs because it’s a chance to ask something private that you might be embarrassed to do in public. Like, say, trying to get Chris to link to your junk or otherwise trying to do business via the DM. It’s like the classic “red phone”: the direct line to the president or the king, so to speak. Except, of course, the red phone rings constantly with DMs and, although it’s like having a voice mailbox with no size limit, how could you ever check them all without a massive amount of time and effort? Another case in point: check out Gary Vaynerchuk’s Twitter page. He very clearly states that he never checks DMs. Finally, try doing a Google search on Twitter DM spam: you’ll soon get the feeling that the direct message might not be the best way to try to contact someone, especially if they’re following tens of thousands of people.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that most people aren’t motivated to follow you so you can send direct messages to them. Maybe the likes of Tom Peters and various celebrities do follow people so they can be contacted directly via DM: I don’t know, but a lot of them don’t follow very many people. Twitter Lists are still a new phenomenon and not everyone uses an application to manage Twitter, so for many the best way to keep track of what’s happening with someone is to follow their Twitter account.

I think it’s still perfectly natural to assume that people are following you on Twitter because they want to see what you have to say (yes, I know, there’s at least one other GLARING exception to this rule: people who follow you with the hope that you’ll follow them back and help make their followers list much, much larger in some vulgar attempt to eventually make money off of it). I accept that other people will have different motivations (e.g. Chris Brogan or Tom Peters) for following people. Experienced Twitter users know how to follow you without following you, so they’ll do things differently. And so on.

But back to one final point: I can certain emphasize with people who wouldn’t follow someone like Tom Peters, who apparently follows a fraction of the people who follow him and interacts with very few. The prospect of engagement and interaction is pretty enticing and it’s natural to get a little thrill when you are followed back by someone that you started following first. If they don’t reciprocate, you then have to compare this to your goals for following and then decide what to do next. Again, I still agree with Chris’s second point: sometimes the information is valuable enough to outweigh a lack of interaction.

Now, over to you: what do you think? Do you follow people on Twitter just so they can send you DMs? Or do you follow people on Twitter in order to see what they are Tweeting? Or is there some other motivation? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Tags: @ambercadabra, altitude branding, Amber Naslund, chris brogan, followers, following, gary vaynerchuk, microblogging, tom peters, twitter
Posted in microblogging | 15 Comments »

10 Thoughts From Julien Smith

Monday, February 1st, 2010

The Thoughts From series of interviews are simple: I ask someone ten questions and they respond. It works very well and I hope that you’ll learn some new things from the people featured in these interviews.

Julien Smith is an author, consultant, and speaker who has been involved in online communities for over 15 years– from early BBSes and flashmobs to the social web as we know it today. He writes at inoveryourhead.net. He is also the co-author of the book Trust Agents with Chris Brogan.

Can you give us an example of one of the biggest surprises that you encountered when co-writing Trust Agents with Chris Brogan?

I discovered that the process of writing things down really helped me develop my own thoughts about something. I was really verbal at first– that’s why I thought podcasting was “for me” where as blogging was not. But it works for writing too.

So I read a book every week as you mention below. At the time it was usually related to the subjects of Trust Agents, so I spit out my own thoughts everyday on the subject after reading, and then turned that into the half I wrote.
Basically I created a process whereby I’m always having new thoughts on a subject through a consistent exposure to new ideas. I’m pretty sure that’s important to anyone on the web today that’s trying to build a presence.

You’ve mentioned previously that you have a goal of reading a book a week. If you could fit in more than one book a week, would you? In other words, is there enough interesting stuff out there in print (or in eBook versions of printed books) to warrant reading more than one book per week?

I do fit in more than a book a week, really. I read sections of other books to keep me interested. So in the past week I started Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, finished Pam Slim’s Escape From Cubicle Nation, and started The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton.

Marshall McLuhan said that the advent of the printing press made any human that wanted to the equivalent of any genius in history (that has written a book), so the value is obvious. And there’s of course tons of stuff to read and learn from all the time, so I doubt I’ll ever run out. I’ll read a few bad books along the way, of course, but I’m ok with that.

Given the dominance of Amazon.com and its country divisions (aka Amazon.ca), what can the online versions of Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Indigo/Chapters offer as a distinguishing, yet significant advantage in their online presence to make us choose them over Amazon.xxx?

Jesus, what a question. Amazon offers everything but immediacy, and even then you can get that in America if you are willing to go Prime. So basically retailers trim the fat from those whose nostalgia or impatience makes them hold onto the old way of doing things, which I’m not in favour of really.

There is something to be said for the experience I guess. But the experience is not worth paying 30% more for a book, even with immediacy added in, so I would say they’re screwed.

How would you describe the perfect blog post? What are its characteristics?

Connection to the audience… a strong editorial viewpoint that is different from what the blogosphere is regurgitating right now… a call to action at the end… good timing… a way to excite readers at the beginning… and an easy sound-bite way to understand it so that people can spread it via social tools. Sorry, I’m just thinking this out as I write it.

Some people say that you can’t make a piece of content go viral: the best you can do is spread combustible materials around, light lots of matches, and just hope that the whole thing will catch fire. Do you agree with this position? Why or why not?

I agree you cannot MAKE it go viral, but anyone that says that just isn’t very good at designing content, sorry. Don’t believe me? Look at TheOatmeal.com — I know it’s designed to go viral and I still can’t help myself from upvoting it on Reddit.

Is it feasible (not possible, feasible) to have a strong online presence without a strong offline presence?

Of course it’s feasible. Not all brands are personal brands– and when something has a strong enough online presence, through either a ton of frictionless spreading or lots of advertising or something, it doesn’t need an offline presence at all.

The reason offline is important is because it can provide leverage to get you past competition– being there in person is a Dip (a la Godin) that can get you past your competitors. That’s important for mindshare in a personal brand, but not so much for the other kinds– websites, companies, etc.

In your opinion, how important is it to be bilingual (French and English) as a Canadian citizen?

Not very important actually, but it is enriching. It also offsets senility to know more than 1 language so, you know.

Guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, vocals – which one would you play and why?

I’d have to say I’m a vocals guy. That’s so sad because they’re always the attention whores and the ones who end up on drugs, but what the hell.

Pretend that the Internet is completely destroyed overnight. What do you do when you wake up the next day?

I open a barbershop. People will always need to have places to gather where they feel comfortable, talk plainly, and get taken care of.

Any final thoughts for our readers?

Go big or go home.

Tags: chris brogan, inoveryourhead.net, interviews, julien smith, trust agents
Posted in interview | 5 Comments »

How to start 2010 by doing better work

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

The start of a new year is like the starting gun of a footrace: time to start running to make changes in our lives. The number one signifies a new start, a fresh beginning, and a chance to do things better. Thus, many of us swear to do better this year and set goals to:

have more fun
treat other people better
treat our own bodies, minds, and feelings with more respect
do better work

The great thing about goals is that they embody purpose and motivation. They provide a means to measure the success of our efforts. The bad thing about goals is that we sometimes fail to establish tactics, tips, steps, or instructions to get these things done. Therefore, we sometimes fail to achieve these goals because we don’t think about good ways to achieve them.

If you’re in the frame of mind to do better work this year, I’ve compiled some tips, advice, and insights from a number of people who do great work. You’ve probably heard of a few of these people. Some are friends or acquaintances who are not widely known. The important thing is that they’re all smart people with important things to say. And they’re all saying them here, especially for you, on this blog. Each person has contributed a tip or two for you, especially for this blog post.

I’ll let them have their say, in no particular order, and then I’ll give you my thoughts at the end.

@SavvyAuntie (Melanie Notkin)

(Website)

Read: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Twice.

Seth Godin

(website)

#1 thing: start a blog and write every day.

@SuzeMuse (Susan Murphy)

(Website)

Stop talking about doing work. Start DOING.

@gapingvoid (Hugh MacLeod)

(Website)

“Practice”.

@StevenHodson (Steven Hodson)

(Blog)

“To listen and learn from those you might not always agree with”

@robdiana (Rob Diana)

(Blog)

Be prepared to acknowledge you don’t know something and get help. Also pay more attention to (devil is in the) details.

@mathewi (Mathew Ingram)

(Website)

The best way to do good work is to be passionate about it (but passion is difficult to manufacture.)

@Digidave (David Cohn)

(Website)

Odd enough I’m going to say: “take breaks.” Unless a project has a deadline – treat it like a marathon, not a sprint. Tortoise and the Hare!

@MarketingProfs (Ann Handley)

(Website)

Tap into what you love doing, and make sure that’s a part of your job (if not the whole of it). The best work comes from love for what you do.

@MenwithPens (James Chartrand)

(Website)

Start understanding your client’s feelings and putting them before your own.

@lizstrauss (Liz Strauss)

(Website)

Better work comes from listening … to whom the work reaches.

@lksugarman (Lydia Sugarman)

(Website)

Believe in what you are doing so you can completely commit to doing the best you possibly can. If you don’t believe, find a new occupation.

@soniasimone (Sonia Simone)

(Website)

My best answer would be this: connect with one person.

@louisgray (Louis Gray)

(blog)

Prioritize a diversity in discovery and voices while focusing on that it is which makes you different and unique. Don’t follow the crowd.

@ColleenCoplick (Colleen Coplick)

(blog)

Give up on the excuses. Every single time someone thinks of some reason they can’t do something, they need to see or determine if they’re feeding themselves a reason or an excuse. If you’re not dead, have a broken bone or deathly ill, it’s an excuse. Stop making excuses and start DOING things.

@CozyCabbage (Michael Kozakewich)

Posts Tagged ‘chris brogan’

The best bloggers are world builders

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The role of the Twitter follower

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How I got the book:

Background:

The strengths:

The areas for improvement:

Other points of interest:

Recommended Podcast – J.C. Hutchins’ UltraCreatives

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