A reader recently asked me something to the effect of what my source of Confidence is.

Vision

I always envision the WIN. I always see myself winning before I do something.. Unless it’s something that springs up on the spur of the moment and I didn’t have time to plan for it.

My definition of a WIN might not be the same as yours, but I definitely envision my own, and then I gauge myself “backwards” from that outcome… I already know where I’m going, and then I judge how far along that path I am while the event’s occurring.

This also comes in handy during work situations, because I can feel when I’m running out of the amount of time that I definitely need to accomplish something. Say, for instance, a producer’s taking too long, fiddling with variations on a video we’re creating. I know that I need a certain amount of time to do titles, a certain amount of time to render the video, a certain amount of time to view the video for potential flaws and last-second changes, a certain amount of time to transfer the video to whatever media it’s going to be delivered on (DVD, tape, online viewing format..), and a certain amount of time to deliver the finished product wherever it has to go in order for it to air.

When I feel myself running out of time, it’s time for me to shut down the producer and start wrapping up the project. No more fiddling. We’re finished now. You will have your video on time, just like I agreed when I accepted the job.

So, knowing that I’m well on my way to my envisioned WIN gives me even more confidence as time goes on. When I start feeling like I’m encroaching on that LOSE period, I start getting nervous and respond differently… I don’t exactly lose confidence, because I know I can still accomplish my goal(s), but things get more frantic and I become hypersensitive to being so close to the edge, which rattles me but also gives me extra adrenaline which assures me that I can and WILL do whatever I have to do to make this happen the way I wanted it to.

History

When I was in elementary school, my gym teacher cheated me out of not one, but TWO class records I should have had. One of them was for running all the way around the block that my school was on.

He cheated me because a) he was the one with the stopwatch in his hand, so he got to say what our times were without anyone questioning him, and b) by letting the kid he wanted to have the records compete AGAIN, after I had already beaten his time in both events.

I could have elected to get mad about this, but I did like we do in New York City, and I said “Bet”.

“Bet” means “ok.. I see how you’re gonna carry this… NOW, watch what I do to you next time! >:D”

Eventually, ALLLLLL of us were on a field day and had to run at exactly the same time. All the kids were there, including the kid that had been handed the class record. The gym teacher was there, but the decision was out of his hands, because we were all starting at the same time, and everybody was going to see this. On top of that, all of our fathers were there as well, watching from the start/finish line.

I made sure I was in the front, so I had a clean shot at the start, and when the gun went off, I took off sprinting, while everybody else was jogging and pacing themselves for the end of the race.

1/4 of the way through the race, when I was twice as far away from the starting line as everyone else, a couple of my friends realized I had no intention of stopping or slowing down, and they started sprinting…

It was way too late for them by then, because a) they hadn’t trained to sprint 3/4 of the way, when I *KNEW* I could sprint 100% of the way, and b) they weren’t faster than me anyway, so all they were doing was maintaining my lead while they pulled away from the rest of the pack.

I’m sure I looked right at my gym teacher like “**** you” when I crossed the line, WELL in front of everyone else, and then waited there to greet my one homeboy that was only about 1/8th of the race distance behind me, and then waited for the pack of stragglers to eventually arrive.

This happened because I knew my HISTORY of running. I knew that the race distance was nothing for me, and I wasn’t even going to give the other kids the confidence that they had a chance by jogging with them and then breaking out later.

When I left, I took their hearts with me.

Everybody saw it. No stopwatches. No cheating gym teachers. No excuses. I won. Everybody else lost. BOOYAH!!! >:D

History is what gives me confidence in other areas as well, for the exact same reason.

Before I do something, I already know damned well that I can do it. I also know that I can do it well, or that I can do it better than other people.

I’m not guessing. It’s not pot luck. It’s practically guaranteed that as long as things go the way I think they will, I’ll be as successful as I planned to be.

This saves me a lot of energy and thought processing time that other people waste, wondering if they’re going to succeed or not. I don’t think about these things. All I’m thinking about while the action’s occurring is whether I feel I’m on track to achieve my pre-envisioned WIN or not.

Chances

Success Breeds Confidence. The more you WIN, the more you consider yourself A WINNER, and the more you EXPECT TO WIN. (assuming that you did the requisite preparation that normally leads to your success)

The only way to increase the level of your successes is to take chances. Otherwise, you’re repeating the same wins, ad infinitum. You’re doing what you already know you can do, instead of stepping outside of the box into uncharted territory.

The chances you’re taking, however, aren’t, let’s say “equal chances”. It’s not like you’re going to win or you’re going to lose. You’re either going to win BIG or win a little. History has already shown you that even failures on your part add up to greater successes than lots of other people achieve on their best days, so you may as well go for it and see if you can make something new and exciting happen.

The willingness to take chances gives you yet another mental edge over your competition.

A while back, I met this chick at a party and I failed to get contact information for her, which didn’t matter, because I knew that we had several mutual friends, all of whom were at the party where I met her and we were all hanging out together.

A day or two later, I contact one of the guys and tell him to give her my contact information and tell her to get in contact with me…. Dude was scared to ******* death. :/

Dude starts suggesting alternative ways that I could get in contact with her on my own, without his having to be involved.

I’m like “You ******* *****! :D haha What the **** are you so ******* SCARED OF? :D”

Now.. Like I said.. I didn’t need this dude to hook me up, because a) I had already met her IRL and had intended to “book her”, but I lost track of her before I left the party, and b) I know several dudes that know her that would have *IMMEDIATELY* put me in contact with her, so I was just testing him to see what he’d do.

The point, however, is that if he’s scared to death to tell some chick that SOME OTHER DUDE wants to talk to her, what’s he willing to say for himself? o_O … NOTHING.

Not a damned thing. Nothing. He’s going to stay quiet and shiver his timbers and quake in his boots while someone else kicks it to her, gets the rap and enjoys her company while he dreams about it.

If you’re not willing to take any chances in your life, you’re going to continue to get the same thing you’ve BEEN GETTING, which, in some cases is NOTHING AT ALL, so it’s a much better idea to formulate a plan, envision the win and GO FOR IT!

Originality

I’m a Content Creator. That means that I actually make stuff up. I did it. It’s a product of MY. MIND. Without me, it wouldn’t exist at all.

This is different from being an online news reporter or regurgitator or someone that only posts links to content that OTHER PEOPLE CREATED. If you’re that type of person, when that stream of links run out, your usefulness expires with it.

People like that are only as good as the links they can find on any given day.

I’m as good as whatever I elect to think about, write about, and/or create a video about on any given day.

I’m my own source of interesting and relevant material.

You’ve never read these words before because I just wrote them. I wrote them as they came to my mind.. Today.. Right now. I can do this all day, every day.

Originality is another source of Confidence. You’re not worried about which external factors are going to determine how interesting you’re going to be today. You’re not worried about what you’re going to say to this chick you’re meeting for the first time in your life. You’re not worried about how much they jack up the economy, because you occupy an unique place in your professional niche and you aren’t expendable… In fact.. The more people get fired, the more *YOU* get hired.

If the market dries up in NYC, you can get work in New Jersey. If the market dries up in Jersey, you can get work online, from your friends overseas in France, England & Israel.

If nobody needs videos, you can do social media. If nobody needs social media, you can mix records for bands. If bands don’t have budgets, you can teach kids how to successfully navigate the online world…

Originality allows you to freestyle in situations where other people are quaking in their boots and scared to death to act. It allows you to bring added value to anybody’s projects in fields you’re knowledgeable in. It allows you to enter situations CONFIDENT that even if you don’t know what’s going on right now, you’re going to be able to figure it out and achieve the best outcome for yourself before the event concludes.

So it’s a cycle. You have to have confidence to achieve success. You have to have success to achieve confidence.

The only way to kick-start that cycle is by TAKING CHANCES and jumping in where you’re not sure you’re going to succeed.

Sometimes, you’re going to win. Sometimes, you’re going to lose. Either way, it’s a learning experience that will help you the next time you attempt to advance your position.

So long as you focus on what you’ve learned about yourself instead of what other people try to tell you you can do or achieve, you’ll be aiiite. ;)
–
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Please keep your eye on the ball, people. Wake up. Stop letting people tell you gibberish that clouds your minds to the facts, if you’re going to hire them to work for you or even associate them with your brand.

Some people in this space are always “Talkin’ LOUD, and Sayin’ NOTHIN’!”. The funny thing about this is that since for the most part, there aren’t real professionals in ANYTHING strewn across the Social Meda Expert world, the only thing that businesses have to make their hiring decisions on is what people tell them who know only marginally more than they do to begin with.

As an example, let’s look at the video aspect of Social Media. Basically, video on the net is an extension of the fad of emailing jokes to people in the mornings. You would come to work and turn on your computer and there would be several jokes emailed to you from people that thought the jokes were funny. Eventually, this style of passing an email from person to person was termed “viral”, and the goal became to make “viral videos”.

Once YouTube came around and other online video hosts, the natural extension of email jokes was videos of kids falling off of skateboards and breaking their faces or some other kind of goofy, talentless video snippet that caused people to go “Oh wow. That was interesting. I’m going to make sure all my friends see this”.

This garbage became the state of the art in viral videos. People began scrambling and falling all over themselves to duplicate the “popularity” of viral videos, because the more people that saw these things, the more hits they got, and the more hits they got, the more people could sell ads on the pages. The bottom line, therefore, has always been profit.

The other benefit turned out to be “visibility”. People began to incorrectly associate the number of hits a video would get with how “popular” the content creator was. This is obviously ridiculous, because someone could get a million hits for an unedited video of a dog on a skateboard and someone else could get 50 hits for an uploaded news piece that could very well have ran on broadcast television. Once again, “the bottom line” wins out, and the person who can deliver the million garbage hits is seen as more useful, because they might be able to duplicate that on your project.

A couple of problems with this is that a) a lot of the comments on YouTube are negative, so the number of hits isn’t an indication of fans in the first place, and b) a lot of people were “juking their stats” and clicking on their own videos to make it look like a lot of people were watching them when they really weren’t. By juking stats on YouTube, they were able to catch the eye of the people in charge of “featuring” videos (placing them in a list which indicated that these videos were worth watching), which got them even more views. The cycle continued as people would subscribe to the jukers, making it easy for the same people to get featured over and over.

Eventually, people started wanting to use video for business. They didn’t know what they wanted to do, but they knew they wanted to be involved. This led to the question of how to find people that knew how to do videos and the only parameter they had to go on was number of hits or supposed “popularity”. Aiding them in figuring out who was a “good” videomaker was the presence each person had on Social Media apps & sites. Thousands of people cannot be wrong… right? :/

So now, you have several ways to tell who should be doing videos for your company and who should not… Except all of your parameters are based on NOTHING that indicates skill AT. ALL. Since you don’t have any video professionals in the field, there’s nobody that can EP (Executive Produce) your videos. Therefore, the people doing the hiring of content creators are ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS about what a good or even a DECENT video is, the people in charge of signing the checks are similarly clueless, and nobody in your company knows that you’re hiring a CLOWN to supposedly enhance your site with video.

Here’s the problem. Even though you can trick people into visiting your site with one or two boring, poorly shot and barely-edited videos, people get the picture after that and stop watching. Unless you got your ROI from those brief visits, your money went down the drain. On top of that, the videos that were created for your site were NOT viral. They failed even to meet the bottom-line business reasons why you commissioned the work in the first place.

Another problem is that just because someone has a bunch of friends & followers, that doesn’t mean they can convert. If you have 20,000 Twitter followers and you post that you’re doing a live show and 19 people show up……. If you have 60,000 Twitter followers and feel the need to hide your view counts on your show because they were steadily maxing out in the double digits before you hid the stats……..

On top of that, you’ve now put someone who knows NOTHING about entertainment or immersion in charge of an aspect of your brand that’s supposed to be entertaining AND immersive.

Also, who is it really that’s coming to your site to see the work that this person did? Most likely, it’s the people that were already following them. It’s not anybody new, because new people would be attracted by VALUE and QUALITY. Since neither exists in your show, it’s clearly only the fanboys that are showing up, so you’re preaching to the choir. “The choir” isn’t very likely to buy whatever your sponsor’s selling, because they already own it because they already heard the content creator’s opinions about what to buy on some other site.

How to get around this? Let it go. Just let it go. If you’re no good at doing video, do audio. Remember radio? That’s for you. Sit down in your house, turn on your microphone and run your mouth. Don’t try to do shows you don’t know how to edit. Don’t try to do live shows unless it’s time-sensitive information and you’re sure that people actually care about what you or your guest have to say RIGHT NOW. Set up an audio stream on your website, add a text chat and go for it.

From the company’s side, do some research for a change. Look at some SAMPLES of people’s work before you hire them. If you can’t FIND any samples, they probably don’t exist. If you can’t FIND anyone who’s willing to admit they did business with a supposed video producer, those clients probably don’t exist either.

Also, make sure you find someone who knows the difference between a good video and garbage. Don’t just put the person who’s the least retarded in Social Media in charge of hiring a content creator. There’s a reason why that person’s videos were garbage in the past. If they bring the same sensibilities and crew to your company, look forward to more of the same garbage, except on YOUR dime this time.

If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all. Save your company the money, spare the public the time it took them to figure out that your show wasn’t worth watching, and spare your BRAND the embarrassment of people wondering why the lunatics are running the asylum.

~Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
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My friend Chris Brogan has inadvertently caused a stir. :D

From the little I’ve read about the situation, (you can read about it yourself, on Chris’ site) basically, he accepted a $500 gift card from Kmart to write a blog post about Kmart. He was completely transparent that he was writing a sponsored blog post. As part of the deal, he also received the opportunity to give away a second $500 Kmart gift card. Here’s what Chris says he did with the money:

“I realized really quickly that I could do two good things while satisfying the project request: I could give someone else a $500 gift card for the holidays, and I could use my shopping experience to buy toys for the Toys for Tots program. (My kids kept the jackets and my boy kept some pants.)”

This kind of thing was discussed AT LENGTH exactly one year ago, when Cheryl Colan made a post questioning Steve Woolf & Zadi Diaz‘s sponsorship & advertising practices with regard to their show Epic-FU in her post “What Up, New Media?”. Cheryl posted a video on that page speaking about her issues if you want the background on that 99-coment-long saga.

The point in both cases was whether bloggers or content creators can GET PAID and talk about products with integrity at the same time.

While I personally don’t see anything wrong with Chris getting paid to blog about something, I see the problems that some people are going to have with the situation.

First of all, people are not going to believe that a company would pay someone to make negative comments about their establishment or product. When was the last time you heard of someone getting PAID to make a post about a product and then they said it was trash? For me, the answer is NEVER. So, off the bat, whether you announce transparently that you received money or not, the perception is that you are now RESTRICTED from making a NEGATIVE post. Obviously, that’s 1/3 of your objectivity that you have to give away in order to get some money. You can now either say “eeh… it was alright” or “yay! it was great!”. This means that the company has effectively BOUGHT your endorsement.

Second, in this particular case, Chris is on the advisory board of the company who got the deal with Kmart. Again, this is going to give the appearance of a restriction against negative comments.

Now, I wasn’t even aware that Chris had a blog called Dadomatic until I started reading about this situation this morning, so I’m not sure whether he shops at Kmart at all, but that brings up a third issue, which is would he have blogged about Kmart at all if he hadn’t been paid for it? Similarly… Now that “the door has been opened”, how many more sponsored posts can the readers of Dadomatic look forward to? What frequency? What’s the going rate?

The fourth issue is probably the one people are discussing the most. AFAIK, Chris has posted, twittered, blogged tons of information about Social Media every single day since I can’t even remember when. He’s positioned himself as one of the go-to people when it comes to companies or individuals getting opinions about what to do as far as Social Media. The question some people have now, (fair or unfair makes no difference, because we have no control over people’s perceptions of what we float out into the echo chamber of Social Media) is that if Chris can be paid to blog about Kmart, how do we know that his other blog suggestions haven’t been “bought” or at least influenced?

This is the same argument Cheryl was making about Steve & Zadi. Since they had sponsors who PAID to put advertisements on their show (via their Next New Networks agreement that was in place at the time) and those advertisements were CLEARLY IDENTIFIED by the show host, how did the viewers know whether other products shown or websites mentioned in Epic-FU were there because S&Z had been paid for that as well.

Unfortunately, in both cases, “I told you up front that this was sponsored” isn’t accepted as “You can trust that every time I’m getting paid to tell you something, I’ll be transparent about it”, and this is the main problem people are going to have.

So how does a blogger or content creator get paid without the perception of being influenced / selling out?

One way would be to mention sponsors without giving opinions about their goods & services. Sarah Austin has five sponsors for her show “Pop17″. Their logos are on her site, she thanks her sponsors during the show and keeps it moving. Her content doesn’t have anything to do with her sponsors, so she’s not in the position of having to endorse any of them. If her show had been about rating airlines or public relations firms, there would be a clear conflict of interest.

Of course, that’s the problem with doing sponsored posts. You’re being paid SPECIFICALLY to talk about goods & services, so to some degree, you’re going to be seen as an agent of that company or at least influenced by them.

Another way would be to make it clear that you were doing a commercial and not a heartfelt, public service announcement post. This is one of the problems with the intimacy of blogging. Since you don’t “know” actors on television, you’re perfectly aware that they’re playing a role that they were paid to play in order to convince you to buy something. Subscribing to and reading someone’s blog, you get to feel that you have a personal relationship to them. That’s why sponsored posts feel like someone taking advantage of that relationship and “sneaking in” an advertisement.

For example… If I show up to the bar and ask Charles what he’s drinking, and he tells me the name and recommends that I buy one, I accept that as a heartfelt, honest endorsement of a brew he’s currently enjoying. I do NOT expect to see Charles receiving payment from a representative of that beer company for steering people towards their product. That would DEFINITELY change my perception as far as what Charles’ motivations are when I ask him for his opinion on something or read his blog posts. My perception would ALSO be altered if he told me ahead of time that he was being paid by McVicar Beer to recommend their product. And I use “recommend” to mean the same thing I said above, which is that companies don’t pay people to trash-talk their products. So talking about the product AT ALL, while being restricted to neutral or positive comments = recommendation or endorsement.

Interestingly enough, these perceptions occur in the opposite direction as well. I drink a lot of Foster’s beer. A LOT of it. :D People who know me know I drink Foster’s any chance I get. :D If I were to drink Foster’s in my videos or have cans in sight or talk about Foster’s, people would assume that they were paying me to do that.

So, the point is, as content creators and bloggers, we’re building our own brands. The question is “How much does it cost to borrow your brand?”. What’s your brand worth to you? What perceptions are you willing to accept? Are you willing to do sponsored posts? Are you willing to have google ads on your site? Are you willing to have pre-roll ads or overlays on your blip.tv videos? Are you willing to get involved with affiliate marketing? Are you willing to sell advertising squares to companies? What kinds of companies? Are you willing to wear companies’ shirts? Show up to companies’ parties? Be in people’s videos?

The Shirtless Apprentice #27

Editing Tips: FCP – Indy Mogul “4 Minute Film School”

Another interesting aspect of this situation is that Chris’ props are based on TRUST whereas mine are based on FACTS. The only thing people need to trust about ME is that I know what I’m doing when it comes to video editing. Nobody’s looking to me as an unbiased source of information. I can sell Foster’s beer or McVicar beer or Burger King or anything else I want all day and all night, at the level of transparency that I see fit, because my reputation’s built on technical skill, not the gathering of information and the formulation of corporate strategies. I put that two-year-old picture of us in the beginning of this post because I felt like it… not because I have ANY disclosure requirements that I require myself to adhere to. That’s a luxury that I have since I’m not viewed in the same “Social Media Thought Leader / Guru” light that Chris is.

So, do I think Chris should have done it? Sure. He was handed control over $1,000 worth of merchandise for GOING SHOPPING and writing a few words about that. Is he going to lose favor in the eyes of some people for this? Certainly. Does this situation mean anything TO ME in regards to Chris’ integrity? Of course not. :D I’ve talked with Chris about WAY MORE IMPORTANT things than getting paid to write a blog post. Still, this has brought up an important question for bloggers and content creators. Are you willing to accept sponsorship or ad dollars from just WHOMEVER decides to offer it to you?

How Much Does It Cost To Borrow *YOUR* Brand?

~Bill

Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
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