According to klout.com/BillCammack, I’m a “Broadcaster”.. To them, that means “You broadcast great content that spreads like wildfire. You are an essential information source in your industry. You have a large and diverse audience that values your content.”

I mention that because I’m glad they changed my category from “Pundit”. Pundits get on my last nerve. :D

I didn’t have anything against pundits before a few months ago when I started following the Republican debates to see whether they were going to field a viable team to potentially defeat President Obama in 2012.

The problem I have with them now isn’t really their fault, but they have to deal with a new development in television broadcasting which I call “Internet Blog-Influenced News Cycles”.

When Hillary Is President

Back in the day… The day was exactly February 09, 2007, in fact, which I know because I posted this link => http://billcammack.com/2007/02/09/reelsolidtv-episode-39-when-hillary-is-president/, I recognized that this was going to be an issue for television stations.

At that time, my long-time friend and business associate Joseph Ruiz and I were videotaping events for politicians.

Also, at that time, I had never even heard of Barack Obama, which is why the post and the video are entitled “WHEN Hillary is President”! :D

Blip.TV Link => blip.tv/file/146156

I was filming with my MiniDV camera, but I saw several camerapeople with large cameras with stickers for television stations on the side.

I remember thinking to myself, I’m going to have this video live way before they are, because *MY* network is already in place, and waiting for media from me to go live.

The stations the camerapeople were shooting for only had news at 12 lunchtime and 6pm, and Hillary spoke around 10:30am. This meant that by the time I encoded my video, tagged and uploaded it, it would be going live around 2pm, whereas the camerapeople wouldn’t even be back to their offices before 12pm with the tapes, AND THEN they were going to have to give the tapes to producers, who were going to have to watch the whole thing for content and then write copy about it and decide which sound bites to use, AND THEN the producers were going to have to hand the tapes off to editors to make into the final product (which I know because that’s what I did for Bloomberg Television and Court TV for years), AND THEN it was going to be another hour before that video would be ready for air, AND THEN they were only going to play a few seconds’ worth of the video because they had so many other things to talk about during their 30 minutes (22 minutes, actually, when you subtract the time for commercials) of television news between 6pm and 6:30, and that’s exactly what happened.

My video went live around 2pm that day. I was watching the news at 12 on the stations that had sent cameras… nothing… When they finally announced the event at 6pm, they used probably about 7 seconds worth of footage, or the amount of time that Ronnie and Mike got to fight on Jersey Shore before the 300-pound bouncers that are always standing barely off-camera jumped in, and then they moved on.

Meanwhile, I showed the entire speech from beginning to end because I had had my camera rolling the entire time, and I have *ZERO* time constraints because I am my own internet network.

2011 – Rise Of The Pundits

Fast-Forward to 2011, and the television news has been fully affected by social media powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter.

They know that if they don’t report things immediately, they’re going to be LATE in the news cycle.

This calls for an entirely different approach from when people used to have to wait for 12pm, 6pm, and 11pm to roll around so we could find out what was going on in the world.

If something important happens at 1pm, 6pm is too late to report it as if it’s news.

This is also why a bunch of newspapers fell off, BTW. The time it takes to figure out the story, get it approved by executive producers, put it in print form, print the copies, and move the physical papers to the locations where people can buy them means that you’re AUTOMATICALLY going to be out-of-date way before your newspaper hits the stands.

The papers that didn’t migrate to an internet-based delivery format lost out.. BIG TIME!

This is why we’ve now experienced the rise of the pundits.

According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pundit_(expert):

A pundit is someone who offers to mass media his or her opinion or commentary on a particular subject area (most typically political analysis, the social sciences or sport) on which they are knowledgeable. The term has been increasingly applied to popular media personalities.[1] In certain cases, it may be used in a derogatory manner as well, as the political equivalent of “ideologue.”

Pundits are necessary because they’re expected to speak *BEFORE* facts are revealed instead of *AFTER* facts are revealed. o_O

This is simultaneously what makes them so annoying to me.

I agree with the first part of the definition: “Someone who offers to mass media his or her opinion or commentary”, but I disagree with the second part: “on which they are knowledgeable”.

Because you know something about politics doesn’t mean you know *ANYTHING* about a particular political situation.

For instance.. I know about music mixing. If you show me a video and then say “The mixer used Waves’ Renaissance Compressor instead of Waves’ PuigChild compressor.. Why did s/he do that? o_O” I’m going to tell you that you get two different sounds by using the two different compressors on a track, AND that RComp is transparent (to my hearing), while PuigChild colors the sound (makes it sound different than it originally did).

However.. If you were to play a song for me and then ask me the dumb-ass question “Do you think the mixer used RComp or PuigChild on this track? o_O”, I have no choice but to tell you a bunch of garbage, because I. DON’T. KNOW!

Either the track sounded the same before the compressor went on, in which case, I’d guess RComp, *OR* it sounded different before the compressor went on, in which case, I’d guess PuigChild, and that *ASSUMES* that the person asking me had some sort of advance knowledge that it HAD to be one of the two that was used.

What Do You THINK?

This is why pundits are so annoying.

The news cycle is now immediate. I find out things from Twitter and Facebook way faster than I do from television, even if I leave a news channel running live all day.

This is because if a bridge falls down or a plane lands in some water, Citizen Journalists don’t have to wait to decide whether they care about an event or not, and they don’t have to wait for EPs (Executive Producers) to approve their media. They just send it.

Granted, and to the credit of Mass Media, there’s way more fact-checking that goes on before they output their content all late and after-the-fact.

The new immediacy of the news cycle, which has been created by internet connectivity and Citizen Journalism, has made pundits necessary to fill the space between when a television station finds out about something and when they can actually report something substantial about it.

Meanwhile, it’s all garbage.

As soon as the Herman Cain, feel-a-chick-up-in-a-car allegations were dropped, all of a sudden, we were subjected to infinite opinions about Sexual Harassment and whether he did it or not.

Not only did we have to hear this ONCE, but CONSISTENTLY and PERSISTENTLY, until he finally had a press conference to deny the allegations.

Meanwhile, none of these people know jack-**** about jack-**** because they weren’t there (if she has ever been in a car with Cain at all), and they don’t know what happened, so they need to STFU.

BLAH BLAH BLAH Should he bow out of the race? o_O

BLAH BLAH BLAH Are women going to come out of the woodwork, accusing him of harassment? o_O

BLAH BLAH BLAH Is he going to lose a lot of support in the next poll? o_O

Meanwhile.. When the actual fact rolls around, he’s still at the top of the charts with Romney, and when he says the allegations are unfounded, he practically receives a standing ovation at the Republican Debate, so all this punditry was just a big waste of time, wasn’t it?

C’Mon, Sunn :/

To make matters worse, the television stations feel the need to discuss these things consistently, throughout their broadcast day, in order to appear “on top of the news”.

I wish there were a “How do you know that?” or “What facts are you basing your opinion on?” button that we could press and get these people to STFU when they’re just running their mouths about things they don’t know anything about.

In fact, their opinions don’t matter, and except for actual experts in certain things like health matters and monetary policy, there’s only a slight percentage chance that anything they say will turn out to be accurate at all.

The only reason the experts are accurate is because they’re giving their opinions based on a series of actual situations that panned out a certain way in the past.

What can you say for sure in the Cain situation?.. Nothing.

Their statements are diametrically opposed. Either he’s lying or she’s lying. There’s no statistical evidence supporting either guess. Sometimes guys are telling the truth in Sexual Harassment situations, and sometimes gals are. Sometimes, they both are, but they interpreted the situation differently or remember it differently, especially if alcohol is involved.

All you can do, honestly, is report the facts (or lack thereof) and then move on.

Since this isn’t acceptable entertainment, a whole bunch of know-nothings are booked to talk yang on television, for essentially ZERO educational value.

To make matters worse.. Depending on which station you tune in to, you get a totally different spin on the exact same content.

One channel says “Please don’t frack our water, so we can light it on fire and get sick from drinking it”, and then the next channel says “**** your health! :D .. We don’t want government telling us we can’t pollute your water”.

One channel says “The only way to stimulate the economy is to put more money in the hands of ‘Job Creators’ by not raising taxes against them and simplifying the tax code so they have confidence that the game’s not going to change on them next year after they hire a bunch of people” and the next channel says “We need to go into more debt and tax people more so we can put Americans to work right now”.

Meanwhile, nothing actually gets done, and people continue to starve and lose their homes, with no end in sight.

What I’m wondering is that if these pundits are supposed to be so knowledgeable about their specific areas of concentration, how come they’re not arriving at the exact same conclusions and providing viable and irrefutable solutions to this current American crisis? o_O
–
Follow Bill via Google+ | Facebook | Twitter | Email Subscription | RSS Feed

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One of the things I find laughable about Social Media is that it’s sold to people that don’t know anything about Social Media.

This makes it possible for people who are ABSOLUTE GARBAGE at creating and maintaining their own online presence to make money telling other people how THEY should represent themselves or their companies online.

I’m not the type of person to knock the next man’s hustle, but that’s exactly what it is.. A HUSTLE. Smoke & Mirrors.

There are LOTS of people who are legitimate and present great solutions to their clients, but some people are just embarrassingly horrible at Social Media and still they’re heralded as gurus amongst their fans.

Presence Management

I was walking with a friend the other day and we were across the street from a store. I pointed the store out to her and she read the name of it from the letters that spanned the top of the storefront. I balked when she said the name, because something sounded odd to me. I knew it wasn’t her accent, so I looked at the store again and told her what the real name was…

The reason I had to tell her the name was that I had seen the store when it first opened and she was seeing it now for the first time in life. Between now and then, A. LETTER. HAD. FALLEN. OFF. OF. THE. BUILDING. AND. THE. OWNER. DIDN’T. HAVE. THE. PRIDE. IN. HIS/HER. OWN. STORE. TO. REPLACE. IT.!!! :/

There was no way my friend could have correctly pronounced the name without the missing letter. There was also no way she could have known the letter was missing from that distance. This is someone’s STORE that they want you to ENTER and BUY items from. That letter has been missing from that sign FOR YEARS, and regardless of how much income the owner receives, he or she refuses to replace the letter and restore the sign to its original quality. The NAME of the store!… The owner doesn’t care about the public’s perception of the store that they’re hoping to make money from.

This is what I see when I go to certain so-called Social Media Experts’s sites. Garbage. Eyesores. They have the nerve to tell you that they’re going to help *YOU* with your internet presence when their own presence is entirely unacceptable.

Conversion Of Cred

What’s laughable about this is that people actually need a consultant to tell them which consultants are doing the right thing. Since I knew what the sign was SUPPOSED TO SAY, I was able to instruct my friend as to what the store was actually called. Similarly, people approach supposed SMEs for help, consulting and guidance and they don’t realize that the people they’re hiring aren’t any good, but just happen to suck a little less than they do. They would be better off asking someone who they TRUST to point them in the right direction instead of hiring someone based on their number of Twitter followers or some other useless statistic that’s held up as an indicator of proficiency in Social Media.

It’s supposed to be a big deal and SO GOOD for your company if you have a bunch of Twitter followers. SO GOOD for your company if you have a bunch of Facebook fans. As of this week, SO GOOD if you have a bunch of followers on Google Buzz. The problem is that a lot of these people don’t tell you what you’re supposed to DO with your bunch of followers.. because they don’t know themselves. O_o

These SMEs have all these people supposedly in their pocket, yet they can’t convert them into ANYTHING useful. They don’t convert into video views. They don’t convert into blog post hits (CPM). They don’t convert into live stream audiences. They don’t convert into click-throughs (CPC). They don’t convert into actions (CPA). They don’t convert into sales (CPS). They don’t even convert into people that might sit down and have a beer with you when you come to their town.

The reason they can’t convert is that they have no idea what they’re doing with Social Media because they spend all their time name-dropping, reading about new technology, reading other people’s OPINIONS about new technology, blabbering about nothing on microblogging sites and shilling for companies while spending No. Time. In. The. Trenches. None. The same sites they’re telling you to be a part of?.. They’re not on them themselves. They don’t have any time to USE the technology because they spend all their time trying to make money with Social Media by telling YOU to do what THEY’RE NOT EVEN DOING! O_o

Do As I Say…

That person that told you to get on Ustream or BlogTV or Qik or Livestream or Tinychat or Tokbox?.. When was the last time you saw THEM do a live show? Usually Never. That person that told you you needed to be on Blip or YouTube or Vimeo?.. What have you seen THEM do with internet video? Usually Nothing. That person that told you they were going to build a website for you?.. What does THEIR website look like? Their business site? Their personal site?

That person that told you to get on Facebook?.. How often do you see THEM on Facebook? Did you notice that everything you see with their name on it has been AUTOMATICALLY. REPOSTED. FROM. TWITTER. and that they’re not actually on Facebook at all, except as another repository for followers? Have you noticed that they never comment on or even click “LIKE” on anything you or anybody else you know ever wrote? Have you noticed that they never respond to any Facebook responses they received from their auto-posted material? How is that a Facebook presence? How is that helping THEM? What do they know about Facebook that they’re going to turn around and instruct YOU to create an account there?

That person that told you to get on Twitter or Jaiku or Pownce or Buzz? What are THEY contributing to their community when they post? Usually Nothing.. Regurgitating links to other people’s posts or other people’s ideas with no ORIGINAL CONTENT whatsoever. How is it humanly possible that they’re following hundreds of thousands of people when spending only one second per update would mean they can only read 3,600 posts in an hour, FORGET ABOUT thinking about that post and/or typing a response. Do these people spend an hour a day reading Twitter? Four hours? Eight? When do they do their actual work then?

What does the discussion look like that follows what they write? Who cares enough to chime in? Do the commenters know anything about the topic, or are they just fanbois going “ME TOO!.. ME TOO!”? Who’s even paying attention to their posts? How many of their “followers” represent currently active Twitter accounts? What’s been the tangible result of any “Call To Action” they’ve ever made on Twitter? How many people watched their video? How many people arrived to watch their live stream?

That person that told you you need a blog?.. What does THEIR blog look like? Original content? Paraphrasing stuff they just read on Mashable?

What do their comments look like? Is the blogger even PRESENT in his or her own comment stream? O_o Do they even READ the comments they get on their posts? Do they respond intelligently or AT ALL?

Do they even CARE whether anyone comments on their page, or are they just interested in getting the retweets, shares and reblogs?

How much time do they spend interacting with their own community?.. The people that cared enough to read their blog and then bless them by joining in the conversation?

Do they even bother to check whether the comments they’re getting are from real people? How many times have you gone to a blog and there are 13 comments on the thread and 11 of them are obvious spam? Do you have your system set up like mine, where I get an email every single time someone posts a comment on my blog? Are you getting the emails from your blog, or are you just not reading them? Do you care what your blog looks like? Are you planning to fix the sign on the front? If not, you’re not the right person for SOMEONE ELSE to hire for Social Media work, are you?

Also.. If you’re a blogger and happen to be illiterate, instead of hiring someone to make you a custom theme and incorporate fancy pictures of yourself, hire a proofreader. I know this is slightly problematic because if you don’t know the difference between “there”, “their”, and “they’re”, you can’t very well tell that you need HELP in order to know that you should hire someone to fix that for you before you announce your level of education to the world.

Educated Decisions

The first thing you want to do if someone wants you to pay them to do ANYTHING is see examples of their work. If they’re going to paint, you want to see something they painted that’s similar to the job you want done. Social Media offers you the double-opportunity to judge someone’s potential worth to your company by a) seeing what they’ve done for others and more importantly, b) what they’ve done for themselves.

If you’re telling me that your company creates websites and YOUR website is garbage, you’re a clown. If you’re telling me you’re a video editor and there’s no tangible evidence that you ever edited anything for anybody in this lifetime, you’re a clown. If you’re telling me that you can bring crowds to your clients’ shows and you can’t bring crowds to your own live streams, you’re a clown.

The second thing you want to do when someone offers you a Social Media strategy is ask them “WHY?”.

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? Keep asking them that until you’re satisfied with the answer. If you know you’re not smart enough to know what the answer should be, hire a consultant to help you find the right Social Media group to hire for your project. Too many people ask me uneducated or perhaps MISeducated questions like “How much traffic will I get when we make this site?” and “How many people can I count on to watch my video if I put it on YouTube?” because people are running around pumping it up like you win some kind of prize just for creating a presence in the space.

What should I do? Make a Twitter account. Why? So people can follow you. Why? So you can look popular and sought-after, speak to people and listen to what they say back to you. What people? Any people. Why would I want to talk to random people about my business? So you can make them aware of your business and then advertise your goods & services to them. How do I specifically advertise to Twitter people local to me who need my Elite Lawn Mowing Services? You have to advertise to everyone and hope word gets around. For that, why don’t I spend my money on flyers and hand them out around my town? Good idea.

Time, Money, Energy, Resources

Social Media is a vehicle. It’s an opportunity for you to express yourself to people that otherwise would never have heard of you or your ideas or your business.

What they don’t tell you is that HAVING a presence isn’t enough. You have to MAINTAIN your presence.

If you’re going to make a blog, you have to POST CONTENT on your blog. Photo set? Post photos. Social Media community (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Ning…)? Get involved.

You can spend as much money as you want on a car, and it won’t be too useful to you or your company without a driver. That driver has to be YOU or someone you hire to.. Oh… I forgot the ever-useful INTERN! :D

It’s another Social Media staple to get interns to do all the work for your supposedly-professional company. If you hire interns to do the work, your company will output intern-quality work. If you don’t hire video editors to edit video, you get what you pay for. If you don’t hire illustrators to customize your website, you get what you pay for.

Anyway… No. You’re not going to get any traffic just by having a website created for you. You’re not going to get any views just by uploading a video to YouTube. You have to create the presence, create the content, properly post the content, advertise the content, start the conversation and then maintain the conversation while simultaneously creating new content, beginning the cycle again before the first cycle ends.

Social Media is extremely time-consuming. It’s not “Set it and forget it”. SOMEBODY’S got to maintain it, keeping your internet presence fresh and relevant. A Social Media strategy doesn’t END with creation any more than the Indy 500 ends when a driver’s mechanics BUILD his car. Don’t let these people gas your head up that if you pay them to create accounts for you on Facebook, Ustream, Twitter and YouTube, your company’s going to be on the road to the riches.

Ask them WHY?… What’s going to happen AFTER you create your accounts? What’s necessary as far as time, money & resources to MAINTAIN your internet presence? If they can’t tell you that, either hire someone different to handle the Social Media for your company or get ready for the letters to fall off your store.

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Requests For Action

I’m not sure what I think about Requests For Action (RFA)… What I mean by that is that for instance, I’m about to take part for the second year in a row in a videoblogging series that a few of my friends and I do called “New in November” (newinnov.tumblr.com).

Personally, what I would do regarding the site/series is INFORM people that it’s going on or that it’s available. What I would NOT do is request for them to do something about it, such as follow it, reblog it, RT it and DEFINITELY NOT “Please rate my video 5 stars!” :/

To me, that defeats the purpose of the viewer watching your material and deciding that your video actually DESERVED 5 stars and clicking on the meter to indicate that. If you tell people what to do, many times, they’ll do it because you asked them to, not because they give a damn or actually think your show, product or service is any good. Also, lots of times, it’s not even because you asked them to, but rather because they don’t want to be perceived as “not down with the program”. It’s like how I originally dealt with Twitter, following back everyone that followed me… out of “courtesy”. That’s something I picked up from friends of mine who were on Twitter for a full year before I found out about it two years ago. That didn’t work for me, so I don’t do that anymore. I follow whom I follow and whomever follows me follows me. Period.

OTOH..… There’s a very good reason to tell people what to do about your media. A lot of people aren’t aware that they can do things like click “like” on a Facebook post or leave a comment at the bottom of a blog post. A lot of people aren’t aware that they can rate YouTube videos or click the heart on Vimeo videos. It makes sense that you want to inform the uninformed about what they can do. I use a plugin for my site called “What Would Seth Godin Do?” which places a note at the top of my posts for the first five times someone comes to my site that says something like “You might want to subscribe blah blah blah” for that very reason. People come to my site and have no idea they can subscribe and get my posts in their email boxes or get my posts via RSS instead of having to check my site to see if I posted something new.

I also have “Share” links on my posts. That’s an opportunity, not a request. That saves people from having to go to actual websites like stumbleupon to add a post of mine. They can do it right from that link. I could also put “HEY! MAKE SURE YOU SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS SO I CAN HAVE MORE TRAFFIC TO MY SITE!!! :D” on every single post, which I think would be incredibly obnoxious as well as ineffective.

Fishing For Compliments

I have the same issue with RFAs that I have with people that fish for compliments. When you fish for compliments, you look corny and desperate. People are more likely to tell you what you want to hear out of PITY than actually honestly feeling whatever they say. Also, people feel put on the spot when you fish for compliments. If you don’t deserve the compliment, you’ve put them between a rock and a hard place.

Do you look fat in that dress? HELLS YEAH YOU LOOK FAT IN THAT DRESS! but who’s actually going to say that? “Nooo… Nooo… Not at all. You look great. Have you been working out? :D”.. You’re forcing people to be fake with you by requesting that they tell you something that they weren’t offering. Maybe you’re going to look fat regardless of what you wear, and the dress isn’t actually the issue. Maybe you also look GOOD to the person you’re asking, regardless of whether you’re slim and trim or not. Did you think about THAT?…

Having said that, I’m the type of person that doesn’t naturally say what I’m thinking. The question “How do you like my outfit?” may very well elicit a flood of natural comments an compliments that I was THINKING but not SAYING. However, that’s an open-ended question.. “How do you like X?” or even “DO you like X?”. It offers the listener the opportunity to give an honest opinion or no opinion at all. “This jacket looks Funky-Fresh, RIGHT???” puts the other person on the spot if they had just been thinking about how WACK your jacket looks and that they’re embarrassed to be seen with you right now.

Open-Ended References

So I guess I’m a fan of open-ended references. “Here’s this thing that’s going on” or “Here’s this new video or post I created” as opposed to “Go to my video, scroll down the page and click the meter to rate my video 5 stars”. For that, people may as well not watch your video at all, since all you want is the rating so your video can LOOK popular and appreciated when in reality it’s a bunch of your friends clicking 5-stars because you asked them to.

There are no ethics to this game, so I’m not suggesting what people should or shouldn’t do. If that’s how you get your props, by telling people what you want them to do and hoping they do it, good for you. How’s that workin’ for ya? ;) I personally wouldn’t be satisfied with telling people how I want them to react to my media. You lose the ability to separate the real compliments from what’s written by people that are simply following orders. If you can’t tell when someone honestly enjoys and appreciates your media, what do you actually have?…..

Then again, I do Social Media for fun. I enjoy expressing myself. I realize that other people are attempting to build businesses with this stuff and it’s important for them to appear to be popular and for their media to appear well-received, often-watched and usually rated “5 stars” in order to try to get a sponsorship or some kind of revenue-sharing deal or put affiliate links all over their sites or Google Ads or whatever they’re trying to do. Social Media for them is a means to an end instead of just being THE END. This is it. This is the expression. Tell me what you think about it VS Tell other people that you agree that my video is excellent. RATE THIS! vs RATE THIS 5 STARS! or maybe just Rate it if you feel like it…

I like pitches that offer the viewer/listener some kind of “value added” if they click on a link, such as “Click Here to learn how to make a Masquerade Mask! :D”

That kind of pitch tells people WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO RECEIVE if they click on the link. That’s different from telling them WHAT THEY CAN DO FOR YOU by clicking the same link. In the video, Corinne says “make sure to show us some love by subscribing”. That makes perfect sense. If you love the show, SUBSCRIBE, so you get automatic updates. Also, their show, TheadBanger is a business, so their goal is to amass viewers and create, sustain and grow a community. I’m sure a lot of their clips get passed around in emails, etc so it’s likely that there are a lot of people that see it that wouldn’t be aware that it’s an ongoing series as opposed to a one-off, so it’s a good idea to make people aware that they CAN subscribe if they want to.

Still.. The draw is the content, the hosts and their generous utilization of UGC (User-Generated Content). Their fans can actually be ON the show with them if they send in videos/pictures of their personally-created fashion items. It’s like “Here’s more of what you enjoyed in the past” as opposed to “Here’s another opportunity for you to do me a favor and click on my ratings bar”. It’s still too early in the game to figure out whether directly telling people what to do is effective at all. It’s also too early to tell whether people’s personal reputations are being sullied by their constant shilling for whatever company they work for. Maybe none of this matters at all and I’m oversensitive to the issue because I know so many people that create media and I watch so much media online every day. \o/

The way I see it, RFAs and fishing for compliments are both signs of desperation and they’re not pretty. :) If people think your video’s worth 5 stars, they’ll rate it. If people want to say something, they’ll comment. If people want to share your posts with their friends, they will. Make it as easy for them to do that if they feel like it and even though your community will be smaller, it’ll be much more passionate, dedicated and interested in what you have to say.

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

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“Content is King” is a lie that’s been perpetuated in web video circles for a few years now. “Eye Candy” has always been.. Queen.. but I’ve recently noticed that the tables have turned and Content actually *has* overtaken EC..

I wrote about EC in March 2008 and mentioned “the formula”, which was that whatever actual content you had, the way to get views for your show was to have an attractive female as the ‘front’ or the ‘face’ of the show. She didn’t have to know or understand JACK about JACK so long as she could look good and read her lines. I probably noticed this formula in 2007, since I got started in online video in 2006.

Regardless of the content, the most popular shows were headlined by a female that was nice to look at. Period. (with the one obvious exception being Ze Frank’s “The Show”)

It was even worse on YouTube, because everybody knew that YT took the picture that represented your video from exactly 50% into your episode. If your video was 6 minutes long, the still YT would take was @ 3 minutes. So.. Regardless of what the actual content was, people would figure out the final length of their show and insert a few frames of a chick in a bikini exactly in the middle. They’d upload their show, YouTube would pull the image of the bikini chick, all the boys would click on it expecting to see some ass, the video would get popular and then eventually ‘featured’, where it could really take off and get more views.

This worked, BTW, with videos that didn’t even have a female IN THEM, because guys couldn’t figure that out without clicking on the bikini-chick, by which time your ‘view’ was already counted. Thanks, sucker! :D

“The Formula” was so pervasive that I was discussing doing a show for these guys’ company and one of them actually said to me (verbatim) “We’d love to do a show.. but we don’t have a girl.”

Having a female headlining your show that guys would enjoy imagining having sex with was certainly the key to success back in the day, but at this point, if you look at numbers of YouTube subscribers as well as episode views, Content has clearly come into its own as guys and gals who are actually talking about something intelligent or providing some kind of actual entertainment value to their viewers have vastly outpaced the “Look at me and my tits” chicks.

I mean, VASTLY, like left them in the dust. I didn’t think it would happen, but it has, and there’s no end in sight. I think what happened is that the early adopters enjoyed success at the time, because they were the only ones doing it. Now that everybody and their sister has a YouTube channel and is doing the exact same thing, it’s tough to gain new followers / subscribers. As a matter of fact, an annoying trend has developed, where people actually ASK YOU not only to subscribe to their channels, but to rate their episode “5 Stars”. :/ .. Um.. How are you going to TELL SOMEONE what to rate your episode? wow. “Please rate my episode” I can understand. “Please rate it 5 Stars” (Top Rating Available)? Come on. :/

So.. If you don’t have any girls (or, no *attractive* girls), do your show ANYWAY. *THIS* is your time! :D Eye Candy is OVER!

You have as much chance of your show becoming popular as anyone else. So long as you have a good topic that’s sustainable (you can consistently release episodes ad infinitum), the viewing public is willing to accept, watch, listen to, follow, friend, subscribe, rate and virally pass your show on to their friends & relatives.

If you don’t believe me, go check out the current Revision3 lineup, including my friend Anthony Carboni‘s show, “Bytejacker”.

Blog about what you’re passionate about in text, audio or video.. Be consistent, relevant, informative & entertaining and you have a shot at becoming popular in the ‘online video’ game.

Content, at this point, truly *IS* King, so the only things limiting you are your own imagination, creativity and determination.

Make It Happen! :D

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

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I’d love to hear from some of the ladies on this topic. What’s the deal with chicks selling T&A in internet videos? I don’t have to point any fingers, because y’all know who y’all are, and you know what you’re doing, but this video I just watched by TokenBlackChic hits the situation right on the head:

Future?

What I’d like to know from the ladies is “What, exactly, is your intended career path after amassing fans by selling T&A?” I mean, if you consider the fact that most guys watch your videos with the volume all the way OFF, what value are you building into your personal brand? Are you trying to become known for having a nice body? If so, what do you suspect you’ll be hired for other than “Booth Babe”? Is that your aspiration? The “Car Show” circuit?

What’s the track record for actual porno chicks making it to real movies? Other than rel=”nofollow”>Traci Lords, is there a single one? :) This is because pointing a camera at your body doesn’t count as acting talent. We all love it when you do it, make no mistake (until you fall off and then nobody wants to see that), but the rep you’re building isn’t going to land you that anchor spot on the evening television news… Weather?… Maybe.

Focus on Content

If showcasing T&A is your only win in life, at least balance it out with some actual content. Nobody will begrudge you looking good if you’re actually educating or entertaining them. At least play it off as if you have something important to say by taking the time to think up interesting and relevant material.

Will you be able to get paying gigs because of T&A? Most definitely. Are those the jobs you really want to do? Probably not. Most companies and shows want to hire people that make them look intelligent.. People that can deliver their material properly and add value to their presentations. If you’re using your looks to call people’s attention to your brilliant writing and magnetic personality, more power to ya! :D If you’re using your looks to get people to… look at your looks, then have fun and I hope it floats your boat, but you might want to do some research as far as how far doing that has ever gotten ANYONE, and in WHICH direction…

~ Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
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