In this time of social media, we have a lot of ways to communicate with each other.

Each one can be considered a level, or a gate, with one requiring more of a person’s time, energy, and focus than another.

Admission to the higher levels of interaction requires that you first prove yourself on one or more of the lower levels.

For example.. I’m a content creator. That means that I have things to do with my time. It means I have things to think about when I’m not actually DOING other things.

Because of this, I’m not going to interrupt my day because YOU feel like talking to me on the phone. It hasn’t happened for years and it will never happen again. I don’t have time for that.

Email

What I tell people to do is email me.

This is because when I *DO* make time for extraneous stuff, I check my email to see if there’s anything worth responding to in it.

That’s your opportunity to contact me.

It’s 100% on my terms, because I couldn’t possibly care any less whether YOUR project gets done or not. I’m concerned with MY projects and MY current clients’ projects.

I never have “nothing” to do. I never reach “inbox zero”. I’m never sitting around waiting.. HOPING for someone to call me on the phone.

If you decide to call anyway, you get the answering machine, which I don’t check, so you’re better off emailing, like I told you. That’s really your only chance.

Some people mistake Facebook and Twitter for email.

Pay attention. All three of them happen to be electronic forms of communication, but “Email me about it” doesn’t mean to PM me on Facebook or to DM me on Twitter.

If you’re not smart enough to figure that out, you’re probably not smart enough to put together a proper business proposal either, so thanks for saving me the time of not having to read your email that you never sent.

Email is not an answering machine.

If you email me with the message “Call me”, you will not receive a call.

If you email me about a business project you’re trying to do, and there are no $,$$$ signs included, you’re going to receive a reply that says “What’s your budget?”, and that’s probably just about ALL it’s going to say.

If your budget’s too low, I can recommend you to someone else that I know that does good work for less money in less time that I would waste brainstorming your project with you and then not being able to work on it because you can’t afford it.

These are the gates I was talking about earlier.

Gates

If you’re not viable on the email level, I’m not going to invest even more of my time, energy, and focus into, say, real-time text chatting with you.

If I’m not going to real-time text chat with you, I’m not going to video chat with you.

If I’m not going to video chat with you, I’m not going to talk to you on the phone.

If I’m not going to talk to you on the phone, I’m not going to meet up with you in person.

A lot of people are stuck in the olden days, back with the horses and buggies and covered wagons, and they want to “get together” to discuss things.

That’s over now, and it’s been over for years.

I’m in contact every single day with people that live hundreds of miles away from me, in different cities, different states, and even different countries.

If you live on the same island I live on (The center of the Universe, Manhattan, New York City!!! >:D) and you can’t figure out how to share ideas with me other than getting together IRL, you’re not up to speed. That’s YOUR problem, not mine.

Unless I’m on the clock, I have zero incentive to stop my entire day’s activities so I can travel somewhere and hang out with you in person to receive the same information that I could have read out of an email.

zero.

On top of that, when you communicate by email, you have DOCUMENTATION of the project and budget parameters so everyone involved can browse the history of the project and you don’t have to rely on he said / she said, or lose good ideas that you chatted about over brews because nobody wrote them down at the time.

Another reason IRL doesn’t work for me is that my time isn’t routinely scheduled. At any point during the day or night, I could be working on a project for a client, working on my own social media projects, mixing music, blogging, having brews with chicks, sleeping, or whatever else, and I’m not going to interrupt my non-routine by having to appear somewhere to discuss something with you for YOUR benefit.

This is why email is the default. I read it when I feel like it, which works for my personal system of doing things. The reason I can do so much in a single day is because I know how my system works and I maximize my efficiency.

When people become viable on the email level, they might be promoted to real-time text chat status, then video chat status, then IRL status.

*might*

Value

At this point in time, I think it’s imperative for people to understand that the playing field has been divided and that if you attempt to communicate in the wrong division, you won’t get your ideas in front of the right people to bring you from concept to reality.

It’s like if someone gives you their telephone number, but doesn’t include the area code. It’s practically worthless, unless you have a general idea of where they live, and you’re willing to call that number in every single area code until you reach the right person.

If someone lives their life on Twitter, you want to “@reply” them. They will always see when people mention them, but depending on the Twitter client they’re using, they might never see DMs (direct messages). Also.. Someone being on Twitter all day and happening to have a Facebook account doesn’t mean they’re monitoring their FB account at all.

Someone having an email address on their website doesn’t mean that they’re monitoring their email more than once a day or once a week, if ever.

Someone having a telephone number on their website doesn’t mean you’ll ever get anything other than an answering machine.

It’s up to YOU, as the person that wants the work done, to figure out the best way to contact the people you want to work with. It’s not up to THEM to make themselves available in whatever medium you’re used to, because if y’all never connect and nothing gets done on your project, YOU lose and THEY don’t.
–
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On Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 3:02 pm, I made a post about a client who didn’t pay me the money he owed me. Here is the Recent Visitor Map for just that one article, ~38 hours later (approximately a day and a half):

Click here to view 1048 x 857 image

This is Social Media in Action. “Reach” is now determined by how much time and effort you’re willing to put in to maintain your internet presence.

When it comes to determining “Reach”, the days of “who lives next to that person?” are OVER. The days of “Is he a radio personality or performer or some other type of celebrity?” are *OVER*. Connections are made and maintained virtually.

People are aligning themselves by values, aptitude & beliefs now, instead of by local territory and “Accident of Birth”. The “lines” are being re-drawn as people get to sample other people’s mentalities through reading their blogs, listening to their podcasts, watching their videos and selecting to find out more about people they feel in-tune with.

Jeff Pulver called it his “Social Media Living Room”. He was absolutely right. The people that you know live wherever they live, but we all come together, in various locations… virtual locations.

Sometimes, we meet up IRL, like @ PodCamps or BarCamps or SXSW or TweetUps or meetup.com or Gary’s Guide events. In the meantime, in between time, we’re reading each other’s blogs and communicating with other through social media sites like Twitter, Ning, Facebook, MySpace, etc etc etc.

Here’s an example. One day, a crane fell down in Manhattan, NYC, New York, USA and crushed a couple of buildings and killed a few people. I found out about that on Twitter, because of someone that doesn’t even LIVE in NYC. Twitter beat the local news, beat phone calls, beat EVERYTHING, because as soon as one person found out about it and posted, everyone on their followers list was notified and “ReTweeted” (RT) so that everyone on THEIR followers list could find out as well. Depending on how quickly you set your polling, you could be informed THIRD-HAND in about three minutes. :D

Similarly, a bridge fell down in Minnesota or something. Local NYC news would NEEEEEEVER have covered that, and if so, it would have been way late and way disinterested, such as “look what happened to those people way over there…. in other news…”. I found out about that way before local coverage because of Twitter. There were people that I follow who were directly affected by it and sent the information out. People that I follow went to the scene and filmed the event.

This is why integrity is the order of the day. You’d rather have people spread around the world… literally… that you’re a stand-up person and that you do the right thing, whether that’s business-wise or socially. If you’re the type of person that likes to stiff people on invoices… Trust & Believe, it gets around. If you’re the type of guy that likes to say the same rap lines to several chicks that all know each other….. Trust & Believe, it gets around. If you’re the type of female that hooks up with a new guy every other week, and they all know each other… Trust & Believe, it gets around.

Don’t feel all spiffy because nobody tells you the real deal to your face. The Back-Channel is alive and thriving. Don’t think that Australia doesn’t know what happened in NYC. Don’t think that NYC doesn’t know what happened in Minnesota. Think that you need to carry yourself with integrity & CLASS, because you never know who’s paying attention to your shenanigans and putting you ON BLAST to the entire universe.

~Bill Cammack, January 03, 2009

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