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.

Related Posts

• Haiti Earthquake + Social Media = HaitiXchange.com
• Conversion of “Cred”
• Google Your Date?
• Content is King, *NOW* (Eye Candy is Over)
• Why Social Media?

Throwing a party in the year 2010 isn’t what it used to be. We’re all virtually connected now, through Social Media.

Back in the day, it was all about “Come to my party!!! :D” and since nobody knew anybody else online, it was pot luck what happened when you arrived.

That’s over now.

With Facebook, eVite, and a bunch of other sites, you now have access to *ALL* of the information you need in order to determine whether you’re going to a party or not. You know when it is, where it is, how much it costs and who it is that claims they’re going to go. If you need more information than that, you can look up the website to the venue and see the menu, who’s DJing, etc.

Besides the obvious reasons, this is important information because as our Social Media networks expand, we get more invites and there are more overlapping events. As of today, I have 1,905 Facebook friends, which means that if they were evenly spread out throughout the year, it would be FIVE PEOPLE’S BIRTHDAYS, EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR.

Not every weekend. Each one of 365 days, it would be FIVE PEOPLE’S birthdays and if they all decided to throw parties ON their birthday, probably three out of those five people are getting bumped… ASSUMING that I wanted to party every single day of my life.

To be fair.. I only know 475 people that live in Manhattan, NYC, 101 that live in Brooklyn, and a few more scattered around the Tri-State Area, so let’s call it 600 people that might throw a party in Manhattan any day of the week… Except… Nobody throws parties on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday is a maybe, with Friday and Saturday being definites, so mostly what happens is that the 10 people who celebrated birthdays this week *ALL* want to have their parties on either Friday night or Saturday night between 7pm and 4am.

That’s also not counting *ANY* of the networking parties that companies like to throw on a regular basis, holiday parties, housewarming parties, graduation parties, engagement parties, or even small get-togethers that you plan with friends. When you know a lot of people, there’s a tremendous overlap of Social Engagements.

There are a couple of ways that people deal with this:

Be Everywhere

The solution to this for some people is to attend EVERY party they’re invited to. I had seen this on television, but had never experienced it until a couple of years ago.

A homegirl of mine invited me to hang out with her and some of her friends at an apartment party, so I was like “cool”. We got to the party, everybody’s socializing and ‘getting they DRANK on’, and suddenly someone announces that we’re moving to a different party. I’m thinking “We already have chicks and brews. Why are we going somewhere else?”, but I was rollin’ wit da homies, so we geared up and rolled out.

We show up at some apartment building blocks away and the doorman doesn’t want to let 12 already-drunk people into the building, so we had to wait for someone to call upstairs and have one of the hosts ‘ok’ us. We go upstairs and it’s a MUCH nicer apartment than where we started, with MORE alcohol and HOTTER chicks, so I’m like “nice move, y’all! :D”. The entire group we showed up with dispersed into the crowd and we socialized for maybe an hour, then it was like “We’re going to the next party” and I’m like WHAAAAT? :/

We ended up going to either four or five parties in one evening, with the point being that the people I was hanging out with would be talked about by the people that saw them at each of the parties. It was like a public relations tour. The point wasn’t to socialize, but to Be Seen so their names could be on the tips of everyone’s tongues at the water cooler on Monday.

This is because in that society, name-dropping is where it’s at. First you want to say WHERE the party was or who the host was and then you want to say WHO was there, even if that person didn’t say a single word to you or notice that you were at the party.

Let’s Not, And Say We Did

For most people, that’s neither fun nor interesting. Well, actually, I guess for *MOST* people, they’re lucky if someone they know is throwing a party AT ALL.

I’m saying that for most people that get invited to a ton of stuff, more parties thrown = more parties *MISSED*, not ALL PARTIES ATTENDED for a fraction of the time so other people could say they were at a party with you. :/

It’s YOUR JOB to make your event as attractive to your target audience as possible, as early as possible and as transparently as possible so you end up with the Voltron effect of a buzz starting on the back-channel and multiple people encouraging multiple people that your party is going to be ‘the place to be’ and that everyone should converge in that place and time to REALLY get their party on! :D

Here are some tips on how to maximize attendance at your parties:

1. Make sure your guest list is available on the net

In the movie “Ronin”, De Niro says “I never walk into a place I don’t know how to walk out of”. The same holds true for parties. If you can’t see at least who CLAIMS they’re going to attend a party, you have to assume the worst. You have to assume that nobody you want to see is going to be there and that the party will be populated with people you DON’T want to see. That event automatically drops to the bottom of the list. Seeya!

2. Do not select a venue with a “cover”

If there’s a cover charge to get into the place where you’re throwing a party, ASSUME that your party drops to the bottom of the list. There are too many places in Manhattan that I can walk into for free. I’m not interested in handing someone money to enter a bar. I’m way more likely to take my money 20 steps to the left and walk into a different bar for free and spend my money buying food & drinks. It’s just the principle of the thing.

3. Make sure the bar doesn’t discriminate against guys

Girls wouldn’t know this because they receive special privileges when they go places, such as not having to stand in line “because it’s cold outside”, but there are lots of places in Manhattan that will not allow guys to enter without girls on their arms. I understand why they do this, because they don’t want their bar to become a pick-up joint with guys hovering around the chicks all night, causing the chicks to select a different venue, causing the guys to select a venue with better chicks, causing the bar to shut down entirely.

If I suspect that a) there’s going to be a line to get into a place, and b) that even if I stand on the line, I might get jerked by the doorman because you invited me to a party at a place that doesn’t want to let “single” guys in, I’m not coming.

4. Make sure there’s no line to get in

Speaking of lines.. Nobody that’s been getting their drink on before your party wants to stand in a line for 30 minutes, sobering up. **** that. If you just HAVE to throw your party there, make sure there are provisions for your guests to skip the line by informing the doorman that they’re there for your party. Other than that, you can expect people to follow the path of least resistance and break north instead of waiting on a line in the middle of the night feeling their alcohol wearing off.

5. Sponsor the right things

A lot of companies throw parties and they get “sponsors” to give them money in order to attach their name to the event. If you throw a party that’s sponsored, be intelligent about what you’re allocating your money towards.

I went to one specifically notorious party about a year ago that had claimed to be sponsored and when I got there, the chicken wings were free and the small-ass bottles of beer were NINE ******* DOLLARS!!! >:/

As soon as I found that out, my friend and I rolled *IMMEDIATELY* to a different party that had advertised an open vodka bar for a full hour after we arrived there.

The difference between the two was that you knew you were going to pay for drinks at the second party AFTER the free drinks were over, yet the first party had advertised itself as “sponsored” and not informed you that the free stuff wasn’t anything you actually cared about. Obviously, the hosts of the second party received all the forward-extending feelings of goodwill and the hosts of the first party were never believed again when they advertises a party. Bottom of the list! Seeya! :D

6. Noise

If you’re throwing a dance party, fine.. Make sure the music is loud so people can enjoy themselves. Other than that, make sure that the venue is as quiet as possible (without trying to be a library… shhhhhhhh! :D) so that the people that show up can meet and greet each other and get to know each other without having to shout over the din.

7. Crowd

If you’re planning on having more than five (5) people attend an event, make sure you don’t select a popular location that’s going to be crowded. There are three problems with this. There’s noise, like I just talked about.. There’s the ability for your entire group to get and retain seating, and there’s the ability for your group to re-up with drinks.

Too many people in a bar means that the waitresses are going to be overextended. They’re not going to come around often, and when they do, they won’t be coming back with your drinks soon. There’s also a good chance they’ll get your order wrong, trying to serve so many people.. ESPECIALLY if the people that ordered drinks are now located in different places because you didn’t properly lock down your seating arrangements.

If there’s no waitress, too many people means that the bartenders are overextended or that you can’t even GET to the bar because there’s such a backlog of people that are clamoring to get drinks. Either way, the net result is that the alcohol isn’t flowing the way it’s supposed to and it’s going to put a damper on your party if not cause people to leave early to head to a better-functioning party.

8. Tab

Speaking of people leaving early, coughstevecough, Do *NOT* start group tabs unless you’re willing to eat the entire bill.

When people are partying, they’re not keeping tabs of who came and went or who ordered what, but the waitress is. Do NOT expect people to kick in their share before they walk out the door, because sometimes, they have to leave quickly and forget. Sometimes, they’re too drunk to remember. Sometimes, they’re just like “Let someone else pay for my drinks.. PAYCE!!! :D”.

If you don’t have a “sponsor” picking up the tab, or it’s not a house party where you’re providing the liquor yourself or suggesting that people bring what they’d like to drink, let people know on the invite that you’re getting together at a specific place and that they need to bring cash or their own cards to deal separately with the food and drinks they order.

9. Timing

Plan your parties when other parties aren’t happening. Plan your parties when people aren’t normally partying. Stop feeling yourself that people are going to select your event over all the others. Having your party at 7pm and making sure that the venue sells good and inexpensive food might get a lot of people to show up that would have written you off in the 9pm slot or the 11pm slot or the 1am slot, due to more compelling engagements.

10. Location

Make sure your parties are centrally located within the group of people you’re inviting. If you live in Jersey and your guest list lives mostly in Manhattan, throw your party in Manhattan. If you live uptown, throw your party in the Lower East Side.

Do NOT expect people to come to you if you live somewhere out-of-the-way. When the party’s over, your guests will either have to spend an hour or two in the subway, waiting for and riding the train, or they have a $20 cab bill to look forward to. Not cool. Lots of people would LIKE to attend parties, but because of the location and travel issues, skip it for the path of least resistance.

11. Expense

Do NOT throw parties in expensive places, unless you’re “Ballin’, Shot Callin’” and you’re planning to pay for other people to drink.

When people have to pay $15 for drinks that should cost $5, they don’t spend three times as much.. they become only 1/3 as drunk. That’s no good for your party because people drink more slowly, have less of a good time, bring less energy to your event and are quietly scheming on LEAVING so they can go somewhere with affordable alcohol… Including HOME! :D

On top of that, if people know ahead of time that your venue is expensive, they’re liable to stay longer at the dive bar with the cheap alcohol where they started the evening. The longer they stay there, the more chance they’ll meet someone they want to hang out with for the rest of the night and suddenly, your party takes a dive into the dead pool.

12. Be Reliable

Make sure that when you host an event, what actually happens is congruent with what you advertised in the invitation. Do not have people show up to one bar, only to find out that nobody there has heard of your group because you changed venues and didn’t use your Social Media reach to announce that. Do not advertise that there are going to be a bunch of girls at your event and then there are a bunch of dudes. Do not advertise that it’s free and then there’s a cover. Do not say “Meet me inside” and then the doorman doesn’t want to let guys in without female accompaniment. Do not run up a group tab and then ask the people that are left at the end of the night to chip in for the extra amount from people that left early without paying their share. Do not say you’re sponsored when the alcohol isn’t free. Do not ambush people with hidden guest lists. If you’re charging for the party, make sure your guests know exactly what they’re going to receive for their money.

Nobody’s the only host or ‘draw’ of their parties anymore. Party attendance is viral. Groups of people come to a place to hang out with groups of other people. The number of individual groups you attract to your event determines the overall size of the party.

You might have the free alcohol, but someone else has a visible guest list where others are willing to pay for their own drinks to enjoy those particular people’s company. You might have the fancier venue but your guest isn’t willing to dress up. You might have the trendier venue, but a guy isn’t willing to shell out $30/round for him and his companion for the evening to drink, when it should be $12/round. You might have a party during the exact same time slot, but the other party’s much easier/faster for your guests to get home from…

There are really too many variables in today’s hypernetworked society to assume that YOUR event is the top draw of the evening. It’s in your best interest to make your party transparently as attractive as possible as soon as possible so the buzz gets out there on the back-channel between people checking with other people what they’re doing on that particular evening. Your guests are as important in publicizing your party as you are, if not more so.

The days of “One event per evening” are OVER. You’re not only in competition with the weather, but events going on the same evening, the night before AND the night after, depending on how much time out of the week a person has allocated towards publicly socializing. It’s on you to do the right things so you can maximize your event attendance, expand your sphere of influence and build your rep as a party promoter or connector.

If you have your own party tips, post them in the comments, below. :)

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• Target Assessment (Dating)
• Guilt By Association / Social Media Connections
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Yesterday, there was an horrible earthquake in Haiti that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale‎. We won’t know until the sun comes up how horrible it was, because electricity AND telephone service was knocked out.

My long time friend and college homeboy, Pascal Antoine is Haitian. He founded and has been maintaining a website called HaitiXchange.com for a lot of years now.

I normally don’t watch the news at all, but I’ve been fascinated by the recent trend of channels showing 3% news and 97% punditry (people giving their OPINIONS about what the news means instead of showing us a bunch more news stories). So I turn on the television around 8pm and flip to CNN, where the slot says “Campbell Brown”, so I’m like “*yawn* Here we go!”, and she has a different look on her face and the marquis below her reads something like “Hospital Collapses In Haiti”.

The fact that I randomly flipped to a channel and they were DELIVERING news instead of GIVING THEIR OPINIONS about the news told me this was something serious.. On top of the fact that there are only three news stories that any of the channels are talking about at any given time. ‘Matter of fact, they just brought back the White House party crashers! :/

So anyway, I was like “I need to make sure my homeboy Pascal heard about this! :O”. So I punch up his number on the cell, and he’s like “Hello?”. I’m like “Yo. It’s Bill”. He goes “My friend Bill just called me…” and I’m like WTF is he talking about??? :D

So I’m like “Listen man. I’m watching CNN and they said a hospital collapsed in Haiti..” and then I’m listening to what he’s saying and I realize he’s got to be broadcasting on the air, live. hahaha I thought I was offering him a SCOOP and here he was already broadcasting the latest information to his HaitiXchange viewers! :D

Realizing what time it was, I hustled off the phone with him and pulled up his site on my computer where he was using Livestream (formerly Mogulus) to embed live video & audio on his homepage like I do on http://billcammack.com/live/. I was like “SWEET!!!”….. until the embed informed me that he had already reached the maximum number of viewers on his stream…..

When I saw this, I first thought it was some kind of Fail Whale, like Twitter loves to do, so I refreshed the page and it gave me the exact same message. Now, I was like WHAT. THE. ****?!?!?!?!?!?! I couldn’t believe it. What the hell is a maximum amount of viewers to a ******* live stream? :/

I found the answer in the Livestream FAQ:

“My channel is limited to 50 viewers, why is this?”
When you create a new Livestream Free channel, it is by default unverified,which means that you can stream to a maximum of 50 concurrent viewers at a time, and that your channel is not listed in the Livestream Channel Guide. Verification is designed to give all of our best producers maximum exposure, and to ensure consistent quality and compliance, throughout the Livestream Network.
To apply for verification first, make sure your content complies with the Livestream Terms of Use
Next, log into the Livestream Account Center. In the channels tab you will see the Verification status of each of your Livestream Free channels. To Verify a channel, click on the link and fill out the Livestream Free Channel Verification Application.

So, at least this was Pascal’s fault and not an imposed limitation by Livestream (disclosure: I have friends that work for Livestream). I used to use the service lightly when it was called Mogulus, but I pretty much stick to Ustream because it’s simple, reliable, I can broadcast to it live from my g1 (google phone) at any time, and relevant to this topic, I’ve seen HUNDREDS of people able to simultaneously watch a stream.

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So anyway, I kept hitting ‘refresh’ until someone’s connection dropped and I got in. Pascal was sitting there on camera, laptop open, cell phone in hand, taking calls from people who had LITERALLY the latest information. A friend of his, Francois, I believe, was there in Pascal’s studio speaking to his sister in Haiti who suddenly reported that another aftershock was just starting. Another guy was calling from Peru, I believe, and he was in touch with ham radio operators who were broadcasting information from Haiti. I put in my two cents by typing hyperlinks into the meebo chat that was embedded under Pascal’s live video and letting people know via Twitter & Facebook that we were getting up-to-the-minute info over @ HaitiXchange.

I stayed tuned in because this was really fascinating. This was FOR the people, BY the people. No spin. No Executive Producers. Purely people that were concerned about the situation and trying to do whatever they could to get a handle on the situation. Telephone service was basically nonexistent. Some people were able to communicate because they were down @ the Red Cross where they were able to share an internet connection with potentially THOUSANDS of people looking for refuge or aid. The chat room was buzzing. People were calling in from all over the place with the exact same story that they weren’t able to contact their families in Haiti. Rumors went around that Hotel Montana had been destroyed and that a rapper associated with Wyclef Jean named “Jimmy O” had died in the earthquake. People were concerned about their friends from the HaitiXchange forums that currently live in Haiti and that they hadn’t heard from since the earthquake hit. Pascal’s pops called his cell phone to make sure he was ok and see whether Pascal was in Haiti or in the USA…

This was international community coming together, communicating, brainstorming & consoling each other when it really counts. Instead of people being absolutely alone wherever they were, they had a site where they could get information they didn’t have and share information they did have. To Me, that’s one of the best things about Social Media. Yeah, it’s all cute that people get to shill for their businesses and try to make some money *yawn* but way more importantly, you don’t have to sit around watching some television channel that has zero interest in a situation other than the fact that it’s “breaking news” and they know they’re going to get ratings by talking about it. You get to be there when the people that are being affected reach out to each other and come together for the common good.

The sun still isn’t up yet, so we’ll know more in a few hours about the extent of the devastation. Good Luck to everyone that has friends, family & loved ones in Haiti and especially in Port-au-Prince that they’re safe but just without the ability to communicate. I’m sure that cell phones were left inside houses when people fled, phones and computers have run out of batteries, electricity’s failed to modems & routers… Keep the faith that they may be minus some material possessions, but they’re hopefully alive and as well as they possibly could be in this extreme situation.

Good Luck to the people of Haiti…

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

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I wrote a bunch of articles about branding a bunch of months ago. I recently started thinking about branding again now that Dave & I been brainstorming projects over @ TribeNineCreative.com.

My position towards the middle of 2009 was that I had several personal brands, none of which are equal in popularity based on number of hits to my sites and the frequency that each brand would come up in IRL conversations. At the time, I wasn’t sure why, for instance, my “socializing” brand was so much stronger than my “video editing” brand. Pretty much the LAST thing I started advertising about myself, chronologically, became what I was most known for by people I had never met before.

People love to toss around the term “Organic” these days when it comes to Social Media. I checked out about eight different articles and received about eight different ideas of what “Organic Marketing” or “Organic Social Media” or “Organic Branding” is. According to Webster’s, the closest definition of “Organic” that might possibly be relevant to any of this is “Developing in the manner of a living plant or animal”. This is why I decided to call this particular article:

Organic Branding

Back in the day, when I was trying to decide what I was going to blog about, I asked Penelope Trunk (far right in the pic) for her opinion and she told me something pivotally important, which was essentially “Blog about what you WANT to blog about and not about what you think is going to be popular or lucrative”.

This turned out to be INCREDIBLY GOOD ADVICE!!! :D and I kept it in mind as I started writing about things I THOUGHT I was interested in, but it turned out that I wasn’t. For instance, I was going to do a blog about my favorite television shows, like 24, Prison Break, eventually Sons Of Anarchy and now Jersey Shore, but paying attention to how I *FELT* about writing a blog about that, I realized I completely wasn’t interested enough to make a blog about that topic sustainable.

I was also interested in video on the internet and compression and which hosts to use, etc, but eventually I learned enough about that and talking about that became a chore as well. What never became a chore and probably never will is my dating blog. :D I’ve written hundreds of posts between 2006 and 2010, have about six halfway-written posts waiting to be finished & published, started compiling my first of several eBooks and I have a bunch of concepts that I’ve been thinking about that I didn’t bother to type out yet. It’s virtually an endless stream of content.

True to what Penelope told me, the only thing that’s made my blog sustainable is that it NATURALLY occurs to me to think about these topics, write about them and discuss them with my readers. That, according to Webster’s definition, is what I feel “Organic Branding” actually is. I think it’s whatever you’re naturally compelled to express. I think it’s what people get if they read between your lines. It’s what you don’t necessarily mean to say, but you say it anyway.. without actually saying it. :D

Brand Hierarchy

This is how my personal brand hierarchy got built without my understanding what I was building. I thought that by putting links in my sidebar (which aren’t there anymore) to my resume that people who came to my site looking for other stuff would look at it and realize what I do business-wise. Six months into hanging out with friends IRL on a regular basis, I was hearing “I didn’t know you were a video editor! :O”. That’s because people don’t come to my site looking for information about ME. They come here looking for whatever the topic was that they clicked through on from google or Facebook or Tumblr or Twitter or their feed reader or wherever I happened to have distributed my content.

As I turned my focus to “What am I broadcasting?”, that’s where my concept of Organic Branding became clear to me. Whatever it was that I *THOUGHT* I was expressing, all people were getting is that I like women and I like alcoholic beverages. :D I don’t talk about video editing when I’m hanging out, except with Flo, because she’s an editor also and we often have parallel experiences and I get a lot out of “Talking Shop” with her. Since I’m a freelancer and I don’t work with random people, I’m not inclined to bring up video editing at parties because I don’t go there to network, I go there to socialize.

So, similar to how my dating blog rose to the top of my content output, the brand that I was organically expressing rose to the top as well. I didn’t set out to become a “Connector”, but I am. I DID set out to advertise myself as a video editor, but I stopped. I didn’t set out to become a dating blogger or author, but that’s what’s happening. I think that if more focused more on what they were REALLY interested in, they’d be happier, way more prolific and way more prominent within their chosen topic.

Politickin’, Beggin’ & Shillin’

I’ve personally been affected by other people’s Organic Branding. There are certain things you can count on people for, all the time. There are topics that they just LOVE and can’t get enough of.

Some people like my friends Charles & Dan LOOOOOOVE politics. Politics, Politics, Politics, all day and all night. Doesn’t matter WHERE the politics are going on.. Foreign countries… Alabama… Doesn’t matter.. As long as there’s something to debate, they’re both IN THERE for hours and hours and hours with gleeful smiles on their faces because they’re talking about POLITICS!!! :D

Other people have become shills for their companies. They’ve handed over every vehicle they own for personal expression to try to get people to buy something from their current employer. Their videos are about business. Their Twitter and Facebook posts are about business. They respond to status updates that could possibly get them more business. Their Organic Branding is “I don’t really care about you OR myself.. I just want to bring in business so I can keep my job as Social Media Director or whatever and get some money”.

I’m not going to knock their hustle, but let’s see what they have to talk about when they stop working for that company. O_o I’ll bet you never hear another PEEP about whatever products or services they were hawking to you all day and all night as soon as they’re no longer getting PAID to tell you about them.

Then you have the people that every time they open their mouths, you have to hear about their favorite social cause or how they got out their CSI kit and searched every nook and cranny of the internet for their daily post about racism or sexism or whatever kind of ism rules their minds and lives. It’s like watching a television channel that only shows commercials.

Eventually, in all the cases I mentioned, you absorb that individual’s Organic Brand and you begin to naturally filter them based on what you feel like or don’t feel like hearing about at that particular time. If the company shill sends out an email or posts somewhere that they’re throwing a party, you never get that communication because you weren’t in the mood for hearing about their business that day and skipped right over their media, as usual, if you haven’t blocked their updates already with social media site privacy controls.

Business Applications

HA!!! I almost forgot! :D .. When someone declares themselves a Social Media Expert and then their website *SUCKS*, they’re organically communicating that they’re a fraud and just trying to get paid before people figure out they don’t know what they’re talking about. When people try to tell you that you should utilize live streaming, for instance, and every time THEY try to do it for themselves there are glaring technical difficulties, you’re absorbing the fact that they’re Snake Oil Salesmen.

I overheard a conversation this guy was having while I was waiting at a restaurant for a homegirl of mine to arrive for lunch. The guy’s explaining WHY the person on the other end of the phone should spend $600 to get a website done, and amongst the incentives, this guy says “OH… YOU’LL *DEFINITELY* GET MORE TRAFFIC!”. I minded my own business, but I wanted to yell at him “YOU ******* LIAR! GETTING A WEBSITE CREATED DOESN’T *GUARANTEE* YOU MORE TRAFFIC!!!”. That’s how a lot of people are living these days, tryin’na jump on the Social Media bandwagon and bilk people out of money while it’s still a hot term.

Businesses do the same thing, although you kind of EXPECT them to, since they’re businesses and not individuals EMPLOYED by businesses.

Pepsi went out like suckers a few months ago with their “Amp up before you score” iPhone app. :D

I mean, really… I’ve been doing a dating blog for around four years where I call chicks “chicks” every single week and even *I* would have been the first one to raise my hand and go “This isn’t going to go over well with the female population”.

Ahhh to be a fly on the wall at the meetings where some BRAINIAC came up with this and the drones sat there and didn’t dare to say how bad an idea this was. Does Pepsi even EMPLOY women? :D Were none of them ASKED for their opinions about this app before it went into development, GOT developed, was TESTED and finally RELEASED?

So.. Yes.. When I was thinking about this months ago, I was like “How did this happen?” Now, it’s clear to me that what people read between the lines is just as important as the lines themselves, if not even more so. While the lines deviate slightly from each other, what you’re organically communicating is consistently building people’s perceptions of you in pretty much the same direction.

How’s that workin’ for ya?

I had briefly entertained the concept of “turning my branding around” at the time, but I was too busy and disinterested to think about it. At this point, I realize that changing my branding style or focus would be the same mistake as forcing a television blog at the expense of cultivating my dating blog.

Whatever it is that we enjoy (or at least focus or HARP on, if it’s not something enjoyable) is going to have an ever-present influence over our content creation. I don’t have any problems getting girls, so it’s not natural for me to blog about problems getting girls. I don’t live in Arkansas, so it’s not natural for me to blog about life in Arkansas.

I drink alcoholic beverages and I hang out with my friends. If I didn’t tell you that, you’d see my drinks and my friends in the pictures I post to the internet. Most of the stories I have are from parties or bars, so friends and drinks are going to be mentioned in my blog posts. If I check in on Foursquare or @reply people on Twitter, it’s going to be clear that I was hanging out.. again.. as usual.

Is “I like to enjoy myself” a good Personal or Organic Brand to have? For me, it is. I have great conversations with people that read my blog when I run into them IRL. There are lots of people that told me they enjoyed the Harry Potter video. There are lots of people that recognize me from the over 1,000 pictures I’ve posted from my hangouts over the last few years. I would MUCH RATHER have people chat with me about stuff like that than business, video editing, compression, data rates & monetization. *YAWN*

So the questions for *YOU*, I suppose.. are “What are you branding about yourself without meaning to?” and “How’s that workin’ for ya?”. If you don’t know what you’re projecting or you know what it is and it’s not in line with your goals for 2010, it might be time to rethink your strategies and take your brand in a totally new direction.

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

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As we move forward into 2010, Guilt By Association is going to become a major issue. This year, the civilians found out about Twitter and flooded it with new connections. Sites like Facebook have seen dramatic increases in membership, bringing increases in connections and shared media. If you’re involved in “the game”, sooner or later, you’re going to be associated with someone controversial either on a local scale or an international scale. When/if that time comes, you’re going to have to decide how you’re going to deal with people’s new perception of you based on something you had nothing to do with, whatsoever.

I Wasn’t Even There! :/

TMZ reports that Tiger Woods’ caddie caught beef from his wife behind this 10-chick fiasco, even though the caddie hasn’t even been MENTIONED this whole time since the car crash. This could be for several reasons. It could be “Birds of a feather flock together” reasoning, where she feels that only people who agree with Tiger’s behavior spend time together. It could be that she feels he enabled Tiger to get raps behind his wife’s back. It could be that she feels he was receiving benefits from the trickle-down chicks that didn’t get to hook up with Tiger. It could be that she thought he knew about all the extra chicks and didn’t share that information with her [which, a) he's saying he didn't know about because he doesn't hang out with Tiger other than when he's competing, and b) it's none of her *GOT*-DAMNED business anyway, which is something Larry David should have learned like three seasons ago! hahaha]. It could be that she’s getting pressure from HER friends to exert some sort of influence over her husband to get back at Tiger…… Whatever it is, because he happened to be “the man next to the man”, dude caught grief from his wife due to Guilt By Association.

Cliques & “Transparency”

I spoke about this issue a little over a year ago, when I was experiencing fallout from some NYC Social Media community infighting. I know so many people that invariably, I’m going to know people that consider themselves rivals or enemies. I also know people who were friends or even DATING when I met them and now they’re either not speaking to each other or they’re “Frenemies” at best. That’s not my problem.. However, it seeps in every now and then, when I interact IRL with someone that knows I’m a friend of their enemy and decides to bring that sourness to our personal relationship.

The same thing happens with ideas. This is why transparency is mostly a farce, as I was discussing with my friends Peter & Michele one evening. Everybody knows what the accepted opinions are, so they either say they agree with those opinions or they keep their ideas to themselves. That’s NOT transparency. :) That’s being as transparent as you can AFFORD to be. So even writing my blog, I get people catchin’ feelin’s and feeling like The Kid’s a controversial character merely for telling more of the truth than most people will tell you. It’s not A LOT of people, as evidenced by my 1,776 Facebook Friends and 991 pictures on Facebook, which are probably 90% of me with AT LEAST one other person, but every once in a blue, I get that “There goes that guy that calls chicks ‘CHICKS’ :/” vibe! :D

Bad For Business

I had a couple of Guilt By Association situations this year, myself..

One friend of mine supposedly said some stuff she shouldn’t have said (I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what actually happened in order to form an opinion of the situation).

Another friend of mine made this raunchy, corny, unfunny video with some dude that she got TOTALLY TRASHED for in her comment section before she took the video down entirely.

The first response to situations like this is “EEK!!! :O”. The next response is “whatchagonnado? \o/”. I’m not going to enact REVISIONIST HISTORY (a.k.a. Historical Revisionism or Negationism) and try to act *NOW* like I wasn’t friends with them IN THE PAST. It was definitely suggested to me “for business reasons”, but, sorry.. It’s all in the game. I do business to get money. I hang out with my friends to enjoy the one life I’m going to have. I’m not going to systematically remove and erase friends of mine as they get caught up in situations or do stupid or ill-advised things. If I have to drive a truck, that’s what I’m gonna do (not that that could ever happen.. I’m just sayin’! :D hahaha).

On top of that, you look like an IDIOT because everybody already knows who you hang out with. By the time someone screws up, it’s already too late. You can try to sweep them under the rug, but you’re still going to be standing there with the broom and dustpan in your hands.

Lots of people don’t have the same luxury that I have of being a freelancer and not beholding to any one client, thus needing to hide my opinions from people lest I lose my job. They also don’t have the luxury that every time I lose one Facebook friend I gain at least twenty. Therefore, they have to minimize their Guilt By Association in order to assure that they continue forward progression in the rat race.

If that’s the case for you, you might want to carefully consider your Social Media connections for this new year. You might decide to craft your connections for ease of Damage Control instead of openness to the community. You might decide to make your friends list on Facebook look like your business list on Linkedin. You might decide to only friend people you know and trust IRL (in real life). You might decide to do a fan page instead of a regular page and act like everyone has a connection to you, but you have no connection to them.

Regardless of what you select, I just saw an ad about how the new iPod Nano records video. Add this to the fact that my gPhone not only records video but will stream live to the internet via Qik and that iPhones will stream live to the internet via Ustream and there are all other sorts of photo and video options and in a minute, EVERYONE will be making media whether you’re aware of it or not. This means that your actual ACTIONS are going to have to be congruent with what you’d like to project to the world. If you don’t want people to think that you curse (which I *do* IRL, but don’t in print, unless I need to in order to make my point), then don’t curse in public while some fool’s live-streaming the conference you’re at from his iPhone. :D If you don’t want people to think you hang out with a lot of chicks, don’t hang out with a lot of chicks.

Welcome To The Show! :D

What Tiger Woods found out this year, you will find out next year. It’s becoming increasingly tough to craft your own image with zero input from outside sources. Back in the day, you could leave voice messages for your side-piece and they’d never see the light of day. NOW?.. That same gal’s using your message as a ringtone on her cell phone. Back in the day, there WAS no such thing as text messaging or Facebook pictures or Twitter… haha All you need is for someone to type “Hangin’ at the bar with @BillCammack” when I called in sick that day (Ah-CHOO!, Ah-CHOO!) :D I *just* watched a video where some kid got in trouble for posting a picture on the internet of himself with a beer can in his hand when he wasn’t supposed to be drinking. :)

On a separate but related topic, because of things like Google Profiles, it’s becoming increasingly obvious who said what. The days of screen names like Jazzy0123 instead of “Bill Cammack” or at least “BillCammack” are over. Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Disqus and OpenID are being used more and more, to the point that eventually, if you want to run your mouth about something, you’re going to have to own your words. Everything you type is going to be added to your Online Presence resume. Google’s even indexing real-time status updates from Twitter at this point….

So what’s your 2010 plan as far as Social Media connections? I’m already too far gone with thousands of “Friends” on several sites. I’m gonna have to continue to hide in plain sight, with my excuse being “I know literally HUNDREDS of people.. *SOMEBODY’S* gonna do something stupid now and then. \o/” There’s nothing much I can do about that. If you’re just starting out with Social Media, however, you have the opportunity to select how you build your roster. You can build it for business, build it from people you already know personally, build it of people that you want to be fans of yours because you’re a musician or an actor…

Just be prepared! :D because sooner or later, *YOU’RE* gonna be “the man (or woman) next to the man”, and YOU’RE gonna get pressured by someone over something someone associated to you has been accused of doing, and then you’re gonna have to decide for yourself whether to fold to that pressure and disassociate yourself from the accused or stand on your own two and tell the nosey party to MIND. THEIR. *******. BUSINESS!!! :D

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

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