Creative Blog - Rettew Creative

Who is really telling the story, your story? Thinking Outside Disclosure and WikiLeaks.

So the other day, I posted this one Twitter. I wish I could find the Tweet that prompted this response, but you can read above. Yes, I have been thinking. My brain does work sometimes outside the online world of mindless 140 characters…my synapses are in full brain activity.

So I have been thinking…there is definitely a difference between the one who is telling your story and the one who is capturing that story that is being told. Big difference. So my friend Gregg Morris (@greggvm) askes:

Good question Gregg! And I responded with this Tweet:

We are just proxies…we are displaying what we see, hear, feel, smell, understand, and comprehend through our point of views!

Thanks Mike (Mike Bell @ProformaGuy)! You are talking about delivery and how people view those who are delivering.

So here is my real thought to this little Tweet and Blog combo explanation. Coming from a journalist background, I always felt that our views were skewed. Even though we were supposed to tell a story with an unbiased position, they are always going to be skewed. There was only hope that we could get closer and closer to the purest position in the way we tell stories, with each piece we produced or story we told. We were always looking through the lens, a bias based on news of the week, the politics of the organization, the financial potential from ratings/readership. So who can really tell our story from an unbiased position.

Storytellers are proxies, delivery mechanisms for the story we are telling…those we are trying to re-create for others to view. Now I am staying away from the advertising world, becuase here we can create the realities we want audiences to view. This is more of a PR position or even a journalistic/documentary position.

Each time I pick-up the camera and work with a client, I try to maintain the message of the story and organization. When I write a story, I stay away from supposition and try to stay as close to fact as I can…or interpretation of fact. So why should we care who is telling our story? Because it is important to understand the lens they are looking through. You have to see how they might perceive the story, even your story before they even begin the project. Do you want them to create a reality that does not properly represent your message…ultimately divesting time spent in a message.

These biases can be considered conflicts of interest. But is storytelling one of Fiction or Non-Fiction, and can we create that dichotomy so simply? And if we are paid to tell stories, document those stories, provide a proxy view-point of those stories…how should handle and disclose our view-point.

Now that Social Media has entered the picture…more and more individuals are providing view-points, telling stories, and using these outlets as means to reach audiences. As proxies of these stories, we should disclose our pre-dispositions, our conflicts, our view-points that are statement of fact.

In October of 2009, “FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials” where “Changes Affect Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers, Celebrity Endorsements.” FTC states, “Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect.”

Should we as storytellers be subject to these guidelines? Yes, I say. But to what capacity? Everytime I work with an organization to help tell a story, I should disclose to the organization my viewpoints and conflicts. Everytime I finish producing a story for an organization and post the link to my Facebook wall or even Tweet about it, I should have to disclose my relationship to the organization.

In an article by NPR, Laura Syndell looks at bloggers and disclosure of paid endorsements. Laura writes, “Kelly McBride, of the nonprofit Poynter Institute for journalism, says this is an important step: While many consumers can tell a commercial from a program on television, she says they can be naive when their Facebook friends say they’re a fan of McDonald’s.”

This is why when I work with organizations to create and establish a Social Media or New Media plan/strategy…it is my position that I do not Tweet, update a status, or communicate on behalf of the organization. I talked about this in a recent post. I typically do not follow those who are Tweeting, Blogging, Facebook”ing” on behalf of an organization without disclosure.

Social Media is such a progressive new area of digital publishing, should it held to the same professional standards as traditional marketing/pr/news outlets? Why, because it is “Social Media.” It is place for people to speak freely socially, to interact, and to build relationships. Why is this an issue, because organizations have been abusing this idea, acting on behalf of “a brand’s message” to influence a decision. Thus, de-socializing “Social Media(s)”.

So is the WikiLeaks idea/site privy to these types of ethics? The whole concept is that they are publishing information that typically not disclosed to the public in an open-source mentality. Many of the individuals providing information for WikiLeaks are not disclosing who they are and there relationships.

The Poynter Institute recently posted a link to their website that “Stars and Stripes Journalists are barred from viewing WikiLeaks documents.” In the article, Mark Prendergrast from Stars and Stripes writes, “Journalists are supposed to report before they write. That means gathering as much information as they can – in breadth and depth – and consulting primary sources whenever feasible. That might mean an editor clicking on Wikileaks to verify information in a wire story. Or an art director doing a screen grab to illustrate that story. Or a reporter reading a document in full for context in assessing a statement about it.”

Bottom-line, journalists need to know where the information came from, the source of the information. How do they know in this “public domain”? How do they know where the information has come from and if it is truly accurate. This primal thought process should be the same as the we work we as “marketers do” for our clients everyday…we should disclose relationships, our predispositions, and why we are working with an organization when telling our stories.

I have recently joined WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Organization and been reading through lots of the resources offered not only to it’s membership but also to the public. I find this information a great guide for people like myself when navigating this world of client based work that leads us to tell stories on their behalf.

So where do we go from here? Well…I know that we must question our intentions each time we “Write” or “Produce” a story on behalf of a “client” or organization. We must also question or intentions when we distribute these “stories” and what message we are sending when we distribute. The intention of distribution is just as much a part of the storytelling process as is the actual story itself.

5 Links of the Week | December 19, 2010

Hello friends, here are my links for the week. As you can see…they include storytelling, Medicaid budget cuts, Facebook, Yahoo, and Del.icio.us. I hope you enjoy and let me know your thoughts about any of these articles!

Storytelling is not a Conversation
Nathan Ford
“Markets are Conversations.” Ten years after the Cluetrain left the station spouting these words, many advertisers are still left behind, desperately clinging to the romantic notion that they are storytellers. On the net, though, such ideas are fast becoming anachronisms. For the last fifty years or so, there were a few ways for a person to be influenced by the outside world (radio, television, printed materials, actually leaving the house) and advertisers had every base covered with their brand-related stories: a billboard with a smile, a commercial alluding to Orwell’s 1984, an ad that talked about cars like normal people do… each expertly tuned to play on our emotions. CLICK HERE to read more.

Budget: Medicaid, DSS, prisons hope to run deficits
$264 million-in-the-red proposals to be discussed today by board
December 14, 2010 | GINA SMITH
Three state agencies will ask a state budget panel today to run deficits totaling $264 million. With the state facing a mountain of unprecedented financial woes, Gov.-elect Nikki Haley and the state’s congressional delegation met behind closed doors Monday and discussed some of those urgent budget needs, including shortfalls for education and the state’s exploding Medicaid program. CLICK HERE to read more.

The 2011 Listening Platform Landscape
December 15, 2010 | Zach Hofer-Shall
After an entire month without any acquisitions in the social media data space, there is no excuse but to get back to normal blogging. I assume I’ll be back to posting on M&A again soon, but in the meantime I’ve been busy working on some big research and now it’s finally ready to show off. Today we’ve published “The 2011 Listening Platform Landscape,” a report aimed at helping Marketing and Customer Intelligence professionals navigate a crowded and fragmented array of social media data tools and technologies. CLICK HERE to read more.

New Facebook Features Exposed in Accidental Update

December 16, 2010 | Jennifer Van Grove
Facebook accidentally went live with a handful of prototype features earlier today, including a site-wide yet short-lived overhaul of Pages. Roughly 45 minutes after the mistaken update, Facebook disabled the site, reverted back to its previous state and then tweeted apologetically about the downtime. But that brief span of time was enough for Facebook members and Page admins to get a sneak peak at new features in the works. CLICK HERE to read more.

Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes]

December 16, 2010 | Alexia Tsotsis
For a couple of days now, we’ve been hearing rumors that the Yahoo layoffs included the entire Delicious team. Now Former Yahoo employee and Upcoming founder Andy Baio has tweeted out the above Yahoo! product team meeting slide that seems to show that Yahoo! is either closing or merging the social bookmarking service as well as Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog and others. CLICK HERE to read more.

Why do you blog? Why do you write? Who inspires you?

What inspired you to start blogging? What was it? What made you that one day, sit down and set-up your first blog. Can you remember. I sure can!

It was my wife…and maybe I am a little bit biased. But what inspired me about her that made me start a blog. For starters, I had nothing to say. Really, nothing at all. She…on the other hand. It is September 2006 and Sarah had just accepted a new job here in the area. We were living in Charlotte both with good jobs. We were starting to find ourselves professionally when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. So, we felt this pull to get closer to home. She was the first to find a job and was hired as a strategic buyer at a large manufacturing group. Life was getting ready to flip upside down.

We had been living the high life for the first three years of marriage, fresh out of graduate school. We wanted to move back home, closer to family and pay off debt. So we sold our house, sold our expensive cars, moved into a crappy apartment, and used those good jobs to pay off debt. At the same time, Sarah’s mom was fighting breast cancer. That new job she started, well she hated it…but it was a good paying job. So, she started a journal. It was in a Word Document that started as a stream of consciousness. After a while, the document got so long, she moved it to a blog on Blogger.com. In 2006, she started blogging…journaling about life. Life with her mother fighting breast cancer, paying off debt, working a shitty job, living in a town that did not feel like home.

Over the next year, her mother got sicker and she wrote more. In the Fall of 2007, her mother lost her battle to Triple Negative Metastatic Breast Cancer…her blog was her coping mechanism. Her writing was raw and honest. This whole time we had been trying to get pregnant with little success. A year after her mother died, we got pregnant and life was great. Then we had our first miscarriage. After three miscarriages, she wrote plenty. She wrote about research, her experiences, doctors she found, and the list goes on. Sarah’s blog is our families journal.

We have family dinners and someone asks what happened last year and we know we can go to her blog to find the answer. Her focus of her blog has been her life struggles and life’s passions. She writes about her family, her mother, infertility, and cause marketing. She is not a big fan of those who benefit financially by exploiting those fighting breast cancer. She writes with passion.

A year after her mother passed away, she quit her job. She was tired of working for something she did not believe in…now works for a daycare taking care of two year olds. She loves it. The people in the daycare have no idea she has a Masters Degree, graduate top of her class in both undergraduate and graduate school, was homecoming queen in undergrad, and was her high-school’s valedictorian. She is one smart cookie and one hell of a writer.

She has yet to spend any money on her blog using the free platform of WordPress. She does all the design work. She does not use social media and other outlets to promote her blog. She does not have it professionally optimized with targeted SEO. She does not Tweet or Facebook her blog posts. She writes passionately…and people read! She has a few notable children’s book authors reading her blog on a regular basis. How does she know, well she password protects some of her posts. She does this because she knows family members read her blog, and she writes like it is her journal. So she only let’s certain people read password protected blog posts. Those author’s make a request for the password. Trust me, she gets lots of requests for the password.

Her blog is semi-private…meaning she does not use her last name on her blog yet has our picture posted. Some knows that it is her, but some have no idea who “Sarah” is right here in Anderson, SC.

She has a tremendous community. She calls them her “Bloggy Friends” and they all read each others’ blogs like clockwork. Each of them have come together because of a circumstance in their lives. One may write about breast cancer, one may write about her infertility story, or some just find each other because they are just funny. Regardless, they have found each other and they share with each other on their blogs. They write with each other…and they check on each other. If one has not posted in a while, they drop an email to check on each other. Sarah’s blog is her community and she always feels the need to write not only for her creative enterprise but to keep her “Bloggy Friends” in the loop.

Sarah’s blogging is an extension of her life, she is writing her story as she lives it. She writes straight from the heart. She writes with passion. Her blog has caused many family disputes, where she will write about a situation and someone will read her interpretation of the situation. They sometimes are not happy, but what they do not realize…her writing is her coping mechanism. She has thought about taking it down or going totally anonymous, but I have told her I support her writing 100%. The only thing I ask is that she not write about our personal marriage topics and also refrain from discussing the private part of my business.

Sarah is also a reader. She likes to read others’ blogs because she is genuinely interested. She treats this like and in-person conversation. She reads to learn and this reading turns into reciprocation. She is passionate about the blogs she reads and believes in her community.

Sarah is my inspiration. Her writing has inspired others. People read her blog when dealing with breast cancer, infertility, paying off debt, or just to read. She has had more people thank her for her writing…helping them deal/cope with a particular life situation. She is not writing for a mass market…she is writing to write. Her focus is her life and her passion is her family.

There is not perfect formula for blogging. You can read all the “experts” about blogging, SEO, neccessary technology…BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! But I do know this…you do not need a beautiful layout design, you do not need the best SEO expert, you do not need to pay for a blog! What you need is to write passionately. You have something in your heart that you are most passionate about…write about it. Sarah writes on a consistent basis, uses pictures, and puts her whole heart into each and every post.

Each time I start working with a client, I do not even allow them to set-up a blog until a few things have happened. First, they have a focus for their writing. I ask them to write a mission statement for the blog. Second, I ask them to write ten posts on a Word document based on this mission statement. Then I ask them, who do you think will read your blog…who are you writing for in every post. Blogging is not about the platform, the SEO, the distribution…it is about the writing, and the technology is just the platform to present your writing. Write passionately! BTW…I used Sarah as an example with each corporate client I work with. The example I explain…write passionately.

Here are some of the blogs I have helped start:
South Carolina Hospital Association’s President & CEO Thornton Kirby’s Blog: http://scha.org/thornton-blog/

South Carolina Hospital Association’s Advocacy Group Blog: http://www.scha.org/blog/

Greenville Hospital System CEO Mike Riordan: http://totransformhealthcare.com/

Free Real Estate Education Blog by Rising Sun Capital Group CFO Marty Boardman: http://freerealestateeducation.com/

Sarah’s Blog: http://stillthinkingagain.wordpress.com/ (BTW – she is not going to give you the password :D)

Another Facebook Change To Come – They control the platform!

It is certain, that if you want to have control over your web presence, then you cannot depend on Facebook. Why, because it will always be changing and it has complete control over the interface, look, and user interaction. With the recent Facebook Personal Profile update, this gave business a first hand look at what is to come with their Pages for business.

Today, I noticed a Tweet come across citing that Facebook made an “accidental” update that allowed business to see what their Pages will look like with this new integration. Mashable.com has a complete write-up about the temporary release, and from this article…this is what I gather. The first thing I noticed, just like the new personal profiles, no Tabs. Yes, the tabs are gone moving the navigation to the left hand column. So those of you using the FBML application, it is definitely noticed with the FBML icon next to the Tab name. BLAH. Many organizations have spent tons of time and money working on the creation of their Tabs and the interface that is revealed once you click a Tab.

It also looks like you can “Login” to the Page which brings the questions about how Administrators will manage the page. Along with this, it looks like a “Lightbox” feature will be added to the photos area for a slick way to flip through pictures in a “Slide Show” mode.

Regardless of these updates, that either enhance the experience or change the design for businesses, it is proof that business do not have control over the platform. The platform was built to provide a place for people to connect and share with an interactive experience. But with this comes the same experience as a new update from Microsoft Windows, Office, or any of their other products. You receive the update and the whole interface changes. But the difference, you pay for those Microsoft updates where Facebook is a free, online experience for individuals and businesses to engage in a single platform.

Would businesses be willing to pay for an more “Enterprise” level experience with their Facebook presence? Considering how much they spend in other areas of their online marketing message, I would assume they would consider paying…given the audiences that are interacting within the platform. Imagine the opportunity to have control of some of the rich code to create a more interactive experience within the framework. The same idea as WordPress and Joomla yet inside a platform where audience already exist. But this “Enterprise” level system could swing the balance away from the community driven roots of Facebook. This could give marketing engines a more controlling atmosphere where the experience is more about the marketing message and not the community experience.

So bottom-line…if you are an organization and you want to have “control” over the platform that contains your brand and your message, Facebook should not be your only outlet. But, really…Facebook is not really a “Website” for a company. Facebook is a community driven platform and if used correctly, can engage and connect people of like minds. So who cares if they keep on changing it…the people will stay hang out as long as they can connect; and business will just have to deal with it.

All of this is hypothetical, because the real release has not been made yet!

Read more by CLICKING HERE about what might be the “New” look of Facebook Pages on Mashable.com.

Communicating Passionately and Methodically

How do we make information for our communities creative, usable, and easy to access? Thinking back to my academic days of User-Centered Design and Usability Testing Methodologies…it is all about AUDIENCE.

We have to find a focus! Seriously, we have to have a mission statement for the information we are trying to communicate. It takes a some time to sit down and write out a mission statement. The one thing that helps me frame this initiative is to identify three points.

1 – Who is the audience
2 – What is the purpose of this communication effort?
3 – How are we trying to reach this audience with this piece(s) of communication?

Not hard, but sit down and do this simple analysis. Take time to break down the audiences, list them all. Then, write out the purpose of the effort/initiative when communicating to these audience(s). next, how are you going to get this information to the audience. Take a few moments and see how each of these are inter-dependent. The method of distribution might differ from audience to audience and might even change your purpose.

Now use this research to write a mission statement for your overall initiative. Explain it to yourself and say it out loud, imagine if you have to pitch this to your client.

OK…to make it usable, you have to know your audience. You have to live, breath, eat, sleep, smell, taste, etc…just like your audience. You have to know their pre-dispositions before your can communicate with them .So, take that little analysis above and list out each audience. Then for each one, write a complete description for each audience. Describe them in a way that you can paint a picture for your mother who knows nothing about these people. You want to paint that picture so you can almost see everything through their eyes.

Once you have done this little exercise, you should have a better understanding of your audience. Now, begin creating your piece of communication. Go through the creative process iteratively. Create static drafts of the design, rough drafts of the copy, story boards of the video, etc. Put together the first look.

Now, pull out that audience analysis you created previously, and ask yourself if you think they can see/understand this information. Use this as a litmus test. Then, conduct a simple usability test, invite individuals that represent each audience and let them interact with these “static” designs. You think of this as a focus group, but to me you are conducting a simple usability test. Let them play, ask questions, but do not predispose them .Do this on a global basis, looking at the overall communication initiative; and also do this very micro with a small part of the communication piece. RECORD THIER THOUGHTS. DO this either with note taking, audio recording, or video recording. Then…make changes based on the mission statement.

Now…create the piece of communication in a dynamic form. This means make the website, the Facebook page, the Blog, the Video, etc. Pull out the mission statement and audience analysis and compare the final dynamic piece and with this initial research. Find another group of individuals to come to review. Let them watch, interact, etc. with the dynamic piece of communication. Watch them as the interact. See where they engage and disengage. What their faces, their eyes, and their body language.

Does this make any sense. Is it too methodical. Well, you can make this as big or as small a process as you want. But ultimately, it is the purpose to come up with a creative idea, understand the audience, test with the audience, adapt, and launch. This empowers a community of creatives and audiences to engage in a process to learn and come up with a wonderful piece of creative!

Be passionate…communicate passionately…engage with your audience(s) passionately!

What can we learn from teenagers in this social life?

I recently read an article from a 16 year old about why teenagers choose Facebook over Twitter. The article is titled “Why Teenagers Don’t And Won’t Tweet.” It was rather fascinating to hear this teenager’s perspective. The one thing that I took away from this article is this…teenagers are social creatures and picky about their online friends. Facebook gives them the opportunity to interact exclusively with their friends. They can manage who sees what, who reads what, and how they interact with others. Teenagers are finicky little creatures. But what they want is real relationships. Twitter is so nebulous to their world, it is hard for them to grasp the mass audience of Twitter.

I know that each time I start a new semester at Clemson, I ask my new students…”What social networks do you use?” All use Facebook, and at a most two students per class (of 20) say they are using Twitter. The same amount that use Twitter have a blog. Teenagers just have a hard time with talking with a mass audience. They want to feel connected. They also have a limited attention span, thus not wanting to invest in another social network that does not bring immediate results. Facebook to them is easy, because they meet someone new, look them up on Facebook, look at their pictures, make an assessment, then decide whether to ask to become friends. They can keep in touch with friends when they move away or when everyone splits up to go to college.

Teenagers are picky. They do not want to share with lots of random people, they enjoy their networks. They enjoy interacting people that they have met in person and regularly interact with in physical space and not just a digital space. They understand the power of human contact. They look at relationships based on some level of trust, trust that begins in-person and extends to the digital space.

Lately, I have been feeling the need to trim down my list of people I “Follow” on Twitter and who I consider “Friends” on Facebook. I talked about this in my post “Fall cleaning, raking leaves, and cleaning-up the social space.” I think a lot of the social complexity and anxiety has come from the Twitter platform. I know I opened my account in the Fall of 2008. I had no idea how to get started? The Twitter “handles” or usernames were so weird to me. It was hard to find people you knew because people were creating weird usernames. I just used my real name @BobbyRettew. So, you started following people based on who your “New” friends were following. You would find someone, then go through the list of who they were following, and clicked “Follow”, “Follow”, and “Follow”.

The terminology of Twitter led to this whole idea of “Thought Leadership.” I will “Follow” you and what you say. Then terms like “Social Media Rockstars” started emerging, placing significance on those who had the most followers. So the natural thought was to go out, follow as many people as possible in the hopes they would follow you back. No real relationship building, just choosing to run through a huge mass of people like walking through the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport during the holidays. You could pass someone, but had no idea if you were following them. Why would a teenager want to sign up for something like this? I challenge each of you to go into a room of 20 plus teenagers and convince them that they need a Twitter account. It is like talking to a room of crickets…and fingers clicking as they tune-out and look at Facebook.

I have also been noticing many people mentioning that they are trimming back who they “Follow” and see as “Friends” online. We are not finding the “relationships” but rather noise. Why did we fall for the idea of friending and following people we did not know, all in the hopes to be followed back. Were we trying to build a sphere of influence or real relationships? Or are we just “push” marketers at heart spraying our information? Regardless…we have lots to learn from teenagers and why they choose Facebook…engaging with exclusive relationships.

Image credit: Los Angeles Times & Washington Post

Disclaimer – A Social Media “Strategy?” Disclaimer

For those out there writing Social Media and New Media “Strategy” for clients…AND…for those who are looking for help with finding your way through this Social/New Media madness, I do not do the following:

1) Manage YOUR social media and new media accounts for you or your organization.
2) Update or communicate your message via Social Media outlets for you.

I believe in empowering the community within the organization with the tools and technology, and help you use these tools to become the true brand ambassadors. It does not make sense for me to deliver YOUR message, you know your message best. Now, I am not a full service agency with tons of AE’s, a big creative department, and tons of interns…I am a small business. The logistics of this business model does not make sense for me.

What makes sense, help organizations understand the the technology, how it works, where the audiences are interacting, and help/let you build your community around your message. I work with people that know their message best. I just help organizations look through a different lens and see how these technologies can benefit your current strategy and help create and measure the social strategy.

It does not make sense to me to convince a large organization that I can and want to Tweet, Update, Check-In, Message, and Blog on your behalf. I want to be a part of your team and work with your community to create best practices and communicate your message. I want to work with people who want to build a community of people around a message…OR…build the message around the community.

These technologies are only technologies…that is it. I makes no sense for me to take over your message…I just want to empower you with the right tools and knowledge to utilize these tools. It is about building a community, connecting with people. How are you going to connect with people when I am the one doing the connecting. OH…YEAH, that gives me control and allows me hold the purse strings of the client. No! I work with my clients as colleagues.

Now…it may seem I am bit of an idealist, but how can I…and outsider of an organization…really speak on your behalf. Maybe this post is a bit brash or sometimes screaming…but I seeing more and more noise. I can work with you to create messages, deliver these messages, but not speak in real time via these channels for you. It just does not make sense to me.

The reason I wrote this…I am noticing more and more agencies/representatives speaking on behalf of organizations without being transparent via social/new media channels.

Final Disclaimer…the only time I do speak on behalf of the organization is only when it is absolutely necessary because of staffing or an “emergent” situation.

Maybe I am crazy…if so, let me know.

What is your passion? How do you find the zone?

The creative zone can sometimes be so hard to find. It does not matter when we need to create, but if inspiration has not eclipsed to the point of transferring the epiphany to our actionable finger tips, then we have not crossed the creative chasm.

The other day, I was speaking to my class about writing passionately. It is hard to grasp this idea…to write passionately. To sit down and bring theatre to the fingertips…orchestrating what is singing in our heads as true articulation. We have a hard time jumping over that creative chasm…finding the happy place, the place where we call the zone. That is why so many creatives have writer’s block or dead periods. We sometimes take days to begin a project…mainly because it has not come to full understanding in our heads…in our hearts. We have to believe passionately about the message, the project. We have to feel it to articulate it verbally, contextually, visually, audibly .

How do we find the passion…well we have to look within ourselves and decide what makes us tick. What makes us peek up from the normal hustle and bustle of life? We have to focus in on the things that take us away from the status-quo and invigorate the juices in our heart, the passion inside us. What makes us smell the breathe of life?

How do we communicate our passion? We have to find a way to focus the energy…and be able to articualte it so others can see it through our eyes. Some of us write, some of us take pictures, some of us draw. What ever the medium may be…we have to allow it to connect with our inner thoughts as an instrument to translate, so others can see our point-of-view. The other day I watched a very successful entrepreneur articulate a vision, not through words, not through a powerpoint, but by drawing a graph, his medium…he crossed the creative chasm. No other way made sense, until he found a piece of white paper and a Sharpe.

What is the one place where you can go…the one place you know you can find the zone. You know, when you are fully in-touch with your passion? Athletes have it when they get on a hot streak, hit the next 5 three pointers back, to back, to back…without even hesitating. That is the zone…the happy place. The place where we are fully in-touch with our abilities to articulate our passion for others to see. Mine is when I am driving with the windows down and the music blasting. I go to my creative place, the place where I am in-touch with my ability to see things clearly.

Where is this place for you? Where is the zone? How do you find it to release your inner passion for others to clearly see the world through your senses…that is when we tell our story. It helps us lead!

Crossroads: Building a Community or Distribution Mechanism – A Self Examination

It is my humble opinion that there are two types of use of Social Media outlets, those who use it to connect with a community and those who use it as a distribution mechanism.

Building a Community
Wiki defines: “The word “community” is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, “with/together” + munus, “gift”), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.” We are human creatures and we feel the need to connect with other like minded individuals. We use technology as a means to connect with this community. This technology to socialize with a community is what I define as Social Media. They use these technologies as facilitators to exchange language, common discourse.

Distribution Mechanism
Using “Social” Media outlets to only push information as mass communication. No interactivity, just one direction flow of information. Open an account, and broadcast…no reciprocation. This can be on a global basis where a account is used specifically to broadcast information, or even on a very local situation where a campaign only delivers information over Social Media accounts, information one way for a finite period of time.

Can you do both and still be social…and it still be considered Social Media. Why should we define this? Well, because we are users of this media…we should think about how we use it when interacting with a community. Think about it, do you get annoyed when someone continually updates their “Status” yet when you try to communicate…there is no response? Some even consider that Spam?

Wiki defines: “Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.” Do we spam the community each time we send out links, content, etc. without engaging in conversation within the community. Or is it when we broadcast over and over again, in bulk?

Marketers each day are beginning to include “Social Media(s)” as a distribution mechanism, another place to increase the SEO for their sites…is it all about SEO? Is it all about the massive homogenous linkage system we call the web to make Google happy on our behalf. Noise?

Now, I realize (that if anything) this is a self reflection to better understand an rationalize this medium. To better understand how we can use it more for the community engagement and less for the marketing, one-way pushing of information.

Social Networking Spam
Wiki also defines: “Social Networking Spam is spam directed at users of internet social networking services such as MySpace, FaceBook or LinkedIn. Users of social networking services can send notes, that may include embedded links to other social network locations or even outside sites, to one another. This is where the social network spammer comes in. Utilizing the social network’s search tools, he/she can target a certain demographic segment of the users, or use common fan pages or groups to send notes to them from an account disguised as that of a real person. Such notes may include embedded links to pornographic or other product sites designed to sell something.”

Do we Spam our friends everyday with our latest blog posts, our marketing links, our causes, our clients messages? It really does not feel like a conversation. I do it…write a blog post like this, and update my status so that I can share it with the world. I do it in bulk…because I update my status(s) multiple times in a week with a link. Do I create the noise that I am trying to resist?

Do we encourage our clients to use it as a distribution mechanism? Or do we eloquently phrase it so they feel like it is another touch point. Is this community really opting in to conversations when they freely click “Follow” or “Like”?

Sometimes I think we have to define and self examine our practices so that we better serve our clients and our community we so generously cherish. We are humans you know.

Blogging is about K.I.S.S – Keep It Simple Stupid…and do it Passionately

Blogging…what an interesting topic to write about. There are so many people out there who have better things to say about this platform…but I cannot hold back anymore. I am hearing and reading so many people struggling with this idea. I have so many clients who want to blog, or have tackled the idea…and they are struggling. So what is blogging? Well, if I could define it in one post…then something is wrong. Blogging is a personal experience. Blogging is about community. Blogging is about writing with passion. Blogging is about letting the technology give us a platform to articulate our thoughts for public consumption, then connecting with those who share in that passion. Yes…passion.

Over four years ago, my wife started a blog as a journal. She kept it semi-private without sharing her full name and her location. It was her journal. It was her place to write about her mother fighting breast cancer and loosing that battle. Her writing was candid and raw. Her blog was also about infertility. You see, we have experienced three miscarriages. This was her tool to write and greave. She has pissed people off by writing candidly about family and personal experiences during this time of grief. She has thought about moving the blog and going completely anonymous. But, she has stuck to her guns, wrote with passion, and built a community of people who share the same thoughts. We could not have paid for a better therapist than WordPress.

She writes with passion and she writes with focus. She shares her inner most thoughts, experiences, and ideas. She did not spend money designing some beautiful blog. She did not spend time paying someone optimizing for the SEO. She writes with passion. She also reads with passion. She seeks out other bloggers to learn about them. When she sees someone new commenting, she goes to their blog to learn more about them. She uses her blog as her social space to build friendships all over the country…and she knows more about them than some of our friends right around the corner. She does all of this for free on WordPress.

We marketers spend so much time thinking about the number of clicks, whether this logo should be bigger or smaller, the right web URL, commenting system, etc. What we forget…write with passion. Find a focus for your blog and write with passion. Then, go out and find similar people and read what they are writing. Use commenting as an opportunity to take a genuine interest in people. If we are business bloggers, find that business focus and write with passion. Show something personal about you so people have something to connect.

Sarah also does something very interesting. She password protects certain posts, only allowing certain people to read certain posts. Talk about generating interest…she has more people asking for the password than I have hits in a day for my business blog.

We think way to much. We also think if we just set-up a blog on WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous, etc…that people will just come and money will start flowing. UHH…HELL NO. Blogging is about writing…articulating thoughts, your thoughts. Blogging is that editorial place to share opinions, facts, information….through our eyes. What is your passion…write about it! Write about it consistently! Then, go out and find others that interest you…read their blog. Comment with passion and be authentic. Do not worry about technology, let the technology be the provide the platform to allow your writing flow freely.

Fall cleaning, raking leaves, and cleaning-up the social space.

Today…it was a day of cleaning. After a good weekend of social gatherings, thanks givings, and reflection…I spent time with family and less time with my online, social relationships. So, after the Christmas tree was picked…it was time to go outside and tidy up the yard for the winter season. I have three big oak trees around my house and a beautiful Japanese Cherry in my front year…boy do they shed some leaves. Time to pull out the rake and find the beautiful centipede underneath all those leaves. Thinking, raking, comtemplating…time to clean-up other areas as I move into the winter months, preparing for the New Year.

Social Media is just plain out getting noisy. It is about as noisy and overwhelming as those layers of leaves that needed to be raked. It is starting, well has become like a corporate minefield of noise. As more and more people, business, and applications dive into this new competitive playing field…it is becoming just as much like a machine as that corporate job I used to have.

Piles of leaves and a lots of raking to go…

Logging onto TweetDeck used to be fun. You could reach out to any person, anyone and more than likely get a response. Now, so many celebrities, corporate brands, big name CEO’s and people thinking they are celebrities have created noise and created the silos that these Social Media platforms were built to break down.

Now…the beating of the “man-chest” is about how many followers you have. These followers are not really followers, just people that have the opportunity to listen but not necessarily engage. They are like those piles of leaves just hanging out and covering what is green, what is fruitful.

The past year has experienced a tremendous amount of discussion on measurement and ROI…whatever the hell that means. We have lost the social…and yet implemented the business aspect of Social Media(s). Those who argue for the social, community aspect have sold out and are just as guilty as those they criticize…they are making a premium off speaking engagements and hefty social media retainers.

Disclaimer: Yes…I have a retainer with an organization to help with management of Social Media platforms. Yes, I get paid monthly. No, I do not Tweet and update Facebook on their behalf. It is their community and I just advise them on the best approaches and platforms to use to connect their communities. So, do I add to the problem…maybe, but trying to stay as pure as possible (whatever that means).

I need some water…and a new set of gloves.

I have totally locked down my personal Facebook account to people that I consider personal friends. I have un-followed one-third of the people I follow on Twitter a few weeks ago. I will do a cut list again. I am getting back to community. I am searching for a core community of people that want to grow both socially and professionally.

There are people on these platforms that used to answer questions, reply to mentions, and even carry a conversation…now they will not even answer a thought even when I ask with overly-nice tones. I used to tell my students that these Social Media platforms were a place that at anytime, you could have a conversation with a big corporate CEO…I barely believe that anymore. Reaching out in this space has turned into the same blackhole as trying to call them on the phone and getting an assistant or even talking to multiple customer service representatives at AT&T.

Social Media platforms are turning into true marketing platforms, another place to push information and less engagement. This is a rant, but I also think it is a sign in my mind that it is time to re-define why I use these platforms and who that I really want to connect with daily.

I DO NOT BELIEVE WE SHOULD DELETE OUR ACCOUNTS.

A few months ago, I found tons of merit in Spike Jones approach to get rid of the noise; close his Twitter account for two weeks, then re-open and start over. I like this so much…this was his way of getting through the noise. There is a lot of it. A lot of leaves. See…these leaves used to be green. On some of the trees that had beautiful blooms. Now, after they have changed so many colors…they pile up in my yard. They have piled up in my Facebook account, my Twitter account, my LinkedIn account, and even in my contact lists. Raking is a good thing, pushing them to the street for the city to pick-up.

So how do we get through the noise? How do we rake-up for the winter and get ready for new relationships?

1 – Write a mission statement for each Social Media account. What do I mean, write out how you want to use each account. How you will communicate with each account; who you want to allow or engage with using these accounts; if you will use it for business, personal, passion, cause, or all the above; and how often you want to use these accounts.

2 – Apply this mission statement to the people you follow and who follow you. Seriously, who do want to connect with daily? Use this as a barometer when you follow and also when you clean out your account.

3 – Clean-up your followers and who you follow. Go through an CLICK DELETE, UNFOLLOW, or BLOCK. Have that mission statement beside you when you clean-up, clean-out, block, and add back in.

4 – Clean-out all those many applications that connect through your social media accounts. We have so many different applications that connect and re-connect through out platforms from TweetDeck, Hootsuite, TwitPic, Seesmic, TwitVite, Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc., etc. Clean out those you do not use…these are platforms you have granted access to your accounts. This is the same as allowing tons of different people and companies having access to your email and bank accounts.

5 – Pick the right platform for you. It is not necessary to use all the platforms if it brings noise to your life. By us creating and starting an account, barley use this account, and leave it live without closing and not using it…we bring noise.

6 – Find and engage like minded people. Treat this online, social experience the same as an in-person social experience.

To be quite honest, I wrote this for myself. I needed to articulate for myself what was necessary for me to continue using and engaging with these platforms.

Cramming too much into a story?

Sometimes we just want to tell too much! We do…we want to cram so much into one little story. If we have to create a 30 second video/tv spot, we cram as many words into the voice over as possible. Why…because we do not know how to keep it simple and put in terms of the audience. We are so worried we are not going to say everything we need to say, and our audience is going to miss the point. Oh yeah…maybe we are missing the point?

Storytelling is a craft…it is an art…it is stepping inside of the audience’s mind and seeing their perceptions and realities.

Let’s take a resume for just a quick second. How long is your resume? Is it one, two…three, five pages? We cram every little accolade, honor, and simple nothings that do not mean a hill of beans…except we can beat our chest and feel a little more closer to our ego. What is a resume? I think it is just a guide, and reference tool. I have yet to get a job based on my resume…seriously! You know why, because every resume looks just a like. Hell, there are people inflating that resume just a bit….pushing the limits to make ourselves seem special.

That resume is really a document that allows us to organize our thoughts and prepare us for an interview. It is a conversation piece, a study guide for the interview. Heck, it really is just a reference document when filling out a job application. But, why do we cram it full of stuff that means nothing.

We have a chance to tell a story…a real story.

Let’s take this little video from Apple. The new MacBook Air. By the way, my wife is dying to get one!

After watching this tv spot just one time, she understood everything she needed to know to make a purchasing decision. It is thin, sleek, and powerful. Did you see Apple craming a bunch of information about this little computer into 30 seconds? NO! They could have told you the dimensions, the processing power, the fact it has a solid state hard drive, or even abut that Intel processor inside. Nope…just a happy little tune and these two fingers pinching it and holding it up in the air. Enough said. Apple told a story…well actually a teaser. They told us enough to make the wife and I to get into the car, drive 40 miles to the Apple store so we could see if it was real.

It is not about cramming all the information into one piece of communication…it is about telling a story that engages the audience to see the message through your eyes. My students always ask me…how long should my paper be for this assignment? I tell them…it is not about length, it is about you telling me your story in way that I can see the whole argument (beginning, middle, and end) through your eyes. Whether it is one paragraph or a hundred paragraphs, as long as you tell the story.

If you write it…will they come? Monetize this thought?

Blogging is just a place to really express thoughts, ideas, passions…it is editorial and can be a place of free flowing ideas and thought streams. But monetizing a blog is very entrepreneurial. During a Sunday night #BlogChat on Twitter, Mack Collier’s (@MackCollier) weekly discussion group around blogging on Twitter, Daren Rowse (@problogger) moderated the topic focused on monetizing your blog. As I was sitting back and watching the discussion, I posed the question to Daren…”At what point did you begin monetizing your blog, what was your tipping point?” Daren posed this response:

At first I took as a simple smart ass response to avoid a longer discussion amidst this fast past, Sunday night chat. Pfft. But, I sat back and thought for a few minutes. I realized his quick response had merit…spoken from a true entrepreneur. Now, he knew there was a big need out there for great content, but he knew that he needed to pay for his passion instead of letting the expense of the blog not provide a return.

Monetizing a blog is VERY entrepreneurial and *can* have a very small return on investment, maybe??? But let’s think about that for a second, how do you measure return? What is the basic business question…what need is out there that we/you can provide a solution and bring it to market and bear a “profit”? What do you deem as a profit? Monetary profit, web traffic, PR, exposure to services, expressions of thought/ideas???

Think about this for a second: Did You Know…
According to WordPress, “There are over 27 million WordPress publishers as of September 2010: 13.9 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 13.8 million active installations of the WordPress.org software.”

According to The Future Buzz in January 2009, ” The number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002 are 133,000,000 and the number of people who globally read blogs are 346,000,000.”

According to Technorati on November 3, 2010, “After Hobbyists, Self-Employeds make up the largest cohort, representing 21% of bloggers. Such bloggers say they ‘blog full time or occasionally for their own company or organization.’ 57% say they own a company and have a blog related to their business, while 19% report that their blog is their company. 65% say they manage their blog by themselves. Reflecting their professional nature, Self-Employeds are the most likely to blog about business, with 62% saying they have much greater visibility in their industry because of their blog.”

Point being…there are a lot of people blogging and a lot of people reading. Lots of competition, you better have a tremendous business plan behind your blog if you intend to “monetize” those very words you so carefully craft. Yep…monetize your thoughts, your passion, your eloquence. You think you can just sit down and write and expect they will come…sounds like the pipe-dream of a business that cannot make it past year two with an SBA loan. The ole “Field of Dreams,” if you build it…they will come!

In the movie…it nearly bankrupt the family. They were not waiting for the players to come out of the corn fields, they were waiting for those people with $20.00 bills to see those ghostly players take the diamond, to enjoy America’s past time. Risk…lots of risk.

But what do we really risk by putting a blog out there. I mean, you probably are only spending a monthly hosting fee, design time, maybe paying someone to build it for you? Maybe the most hard costs incurred is at most $600 in a year. Then you are talking about that creative time, that creative tension…that passion that you so eloquently craft with each word in the hopes you will connect with your audience. But at some point, after the confidence has been built and your realize your investment…it is time to make some cash! Yes, you are an entrepreneur…take that little bit of hard costs and lots of that sweat equity and turn into a monthly little bonus. And, if you can work hard…you begin focusing your writing (according to audiences), take part in some adwords and other paid ad campaigns, and you really generate traffic, clicks, and cash. But did you set out to make cash or did you set out to be heard? Or did you set-out to generate interest for your business as a small business owner?

In 2006, my wife set-out to write a journal. Overtime it turned into a full scale blog that tackled topics like breast cancer and infertility. Slowly over time, she gained an audience and built some online relationships. It became her support group…her place to release her thoughts and connect with like minded individuals. She shared her joys, pains, laughs, and cries as she wrote openly and honestly about loosing her best friend, her mother to breast cancer. She revealed to all her struggles with infertility. She had not built a community…she found her voice. But wait…she was not looking to generate any money. She did not set-up those pay for click campaigns…but how is she monetizing her blog? Her value came from the community…her place to share open discourse. Is she any less of an entrepreneur? No…she is more of a social entrepreneur.

I think it is up to us to find what we want to monetize in a blog. With so many audiences and so many spaces to fill with the free flowing words that come from our hearts…we must have a focus in our writing. We put ourselves out there, and for the first time in this world of publishing, we have a platform to feel somewhat equal to those journalists and accomplish authors who make money from their published/broadcasted voices. It is still about community and we as entrepreneurs still have to find a need, a reason to write…because ultimately we want someone to read. Thanks Daren for making me think a bit! Monetize this!

It is all about growing professionally!

I am coming up on the one year anniversary of officially being out on my own. Yes…it is going to be a big day for me. Little context, in January 2007, I entered the world of start-ups joining a technology company. Great group of people, but it ended up being an evolution of previous technology companies rolling over debt from one to the next. They closed the doors the day after I closed on our house. Me and few of my co-workers decided to negotiate the purchase of that business (client list and assets), and off I was jumping into another start-up with new partners. What a learning experience.

What did I learn? Well, choose partners wisely and have a good agreement in-place. I also learned that I had the personality and the drive to venture out on my own…and do what I am passionate about, telling stories. My former partners are now running a successful business and pushing forward with their vision and I am excited for their success. So here I am, less than a month from starting Bobby Rettew, llc.

So now as I am in planning stages for year two…I am putting together my strategic plan for the next few years. I am excited about the opportunities, some cool projects on the horizon, and thinking through how I want to grow my business. This is the fun part…planning the dream and putting a plan in place to make it happen.

I am also excited about my teaching career and growing academically. It is my humble opinion that teaching at a major university has given me credibility and opened doors that normally would take years to open. I began teaching at Clemson University with the Advanced Writing Program, teaching Business Writing in the Department of English. I was able to leverage that opportunity to create a student led networking event called NetworkBash. These events have been great over the last two years. Now I am joining the Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurship to begin teaching Hybrid Entrepreneurship this coming spring. This growth academically has taught me how to manage my business, my clients, my classes, and serve my passion…to tell stories.

So how do we meet our goals, how do we push forward? How? Well, I am not perfect but this is what I am thinking.

1. Have a focus! Yes, know who you are and where you are going. What is the mission statement for your business? Seriously think about what problem(s) are you trying to solve and can you generate revenue by servicing this need? Balance your passion with how you can generate revenue. We are in business to make money…right?

2. Have a plan! Not only a simple business plan…but a short term and long term business plan that maps out goals; covers all aspects of your business. What happens if you hit a recession, what happens during a time of growth, where do you want to grow and how will you get there? This plan should be re-evaluated on a quarterly basis for goal setting, then yearly for revisions and re-focus.

3. Have a mentor! Find someone that you can talk to outside of your business. This person should be someone you can trust and provide perspective while building and growing your business.

4. Grow professionally! Have a place to step outside of the business, a place to stretch the brain and grow. This could be conferences, continuing education, workshops, etc. Plan to take time off for this growth, and plan financially for this expense. I just joined WOMMA and this is a huge investment for me and my business. Not only financially but also when it comes to time commitment. I want to leverage this knowledge for my business growth.

5. Grow your network! Continue to grow your sphere and be willing to remove people from your sphere if they are not helping you grow. Continually evaluate and re-evaluate where you spend your time networking and where you can find like-minded people.

6. Retain professional help! Have a good accountant and attorney. They will not only provide professional advice but will help you grow your business and protect your interests. I have both and THEY ROCK! TJ Way of Nason Way Accounting, LLC and Andy Arnold of W. Andrew Law Firm make my life easy!

7. Make time for family! Work hard and play hard. I take three vacations a year with a minimum of a week each. This lets me get away from business and re-energize. Also…know when to turn off business when you are home with the ones you love. I am always learning to make this distinction…it can be tough!

8. Have the desire to grow! Seek ways to become a better person and know that you have faults. Be willing to grow from each decision you make!

9. Treat your customers/clients like family! It is all about relationships. You want to be on the speed dial so that you can be their expert.

10. Love your business! Keep the passion alive so people can feel that passion when you walk in the door.

Where am I taking this business, well that is for me to know and you to find out. No big secrets…just working on my year two plan. But I do know this…my failures over the last 20 plus years have taught me so much. From starting as a broadcast journalist, through graduate school, multiple start-ups…and now my own deal. I am so fortunate to be where I am today. I just want to have some fun! Year two…here I come! Also…my CFO (my wife) has given the ultimate support needed to be successful, thanks beautiful!

Hybrid Entrepreneurship at Clemson – What?

So I have been asked to join the Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurship at Clemson University as a lecturer. I have been teaching Business Writing in the Department of English for the past two years…so this is going to be a fun challenge. It is funny how things happen, people you meet, and how planets align. After meeting with Dave Wyman this morning, he is the Interim Director of the Spiro Institute…we have a great plan for this class.

If you are interested in the curriculim of the Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurship, CLICK HERE and you will see the class I am teaching: ELE 499 – Executive Leadership and Entrepreneurship III provides an opportunity for high-potential students to participate in an entrepreneurial field experience such as starting their own businesses or participating in a special project.

So what is Hybrid Entrepreneurship? Hmm…well this will be part of the introduction to this class. But, let’s try to define.

If you look at the triangle above, you will see the three points entitled Entrepreneurship, Cause/Passion, and Profit/Discipline. If you look at Wikipedia, it defines the word “entrepreneur” as a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. Bottomline, the person(s) see a need, take a calculated risk to bring this idea to market with the sole purpose of gaining a return or profit. The other point of the triangle is “Cause/Passion” where someone has the desire and the passion for a “cause” and solves a social problem. And the “Profit/Discipline” point is where a person(s) gains some return from this idea using some defined discipline. Hybrid Entrepreneurship falls right in the center of this triangle.

Some would say that this sounds like Social Entrepreneurship? Hmm, well one again Wikipedia does a good job! Social Entrepreneurship is defined as someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas business entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit and return, social entrepreneurs assess their success in terms of the impact they have on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.

Social Entrepreneurs tyically have the goal to take the “profit” that is generated from the venture and re-invest back into the cause. Making a profit is not the ultimate goal but a byproduct of the greater good for the cause.

Some people think that Hybrid Entrepreneurship to be similar, if not the same, as Social Entrepreneurship. Hybrid Entrepreneurs are ones that have the same social responsibility yet have no problem with making a profit, and are willing to disclose this part of the purpose.

So…what is the purpose of the class? Well, to teach students about Hybrid Entrepreneurship and find opportunities/projects in the community to help solve problems and create business ideas to solve these problems.

Here is the fun part about this class…we will be using video and social media to document and track the projects in this class. The class will be structured to achieve a couple of goals:

1) We will be taking requests from community organizations that have some “problem” that needs to be solved…they have a need. These organizations will submit a request and the class will pick 5 to 6 different problems/issues to analyze. We will invite these organizations to the class to make a 10 to 15 minute presentation and the class will make an assessment then recommendations. Then the presenting organization will select the best recommendations during the class session. We will do this over a four week period.

2) The next part of this class will be dedicated to finding a social problem and solving this issue. The natural part of the first section of this class. The students will be exposed to local organizations and their problems through the above presentations. This will create a natural dialogue…to look for other similar ideas to solve. OR, they can pick from one of the presentations. This project will be to find, research, and solve a problem…then present in s a final presentation using video and presentation slides. The students will have to document this process using video (probably flip cams) and online properties like Twitter and Blogs.

The goal of this class, to explore the idea of Hyrbid Entrepreneurship through research and praxis. I LOVE IT!

I would love to hear from you? Have any examples of Hybrid and/or Social Entrepreneurship? Please share!

Much of this blog was based on information from Will Marre, check out his site by CLICKING HERE.

organize this digital life…the digital divide

Hi my name is Bobby and according to my wife, I am gadget freak. Yes, I have an iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, PS3, AppleTV and on and on and on. I love gadgets. I love the accessories that go with these gadgets.

I love bags. No…I am not a guy with tons on man bags. I have tons of camera equipment, lighting equipment, cords, gizmos, and gadgets to do my job. Oh yeah…I have other bags for my laptop, iPad, books, etc. So I love the idea of finding the best bag possible to organize these things and make them quickly assessable. My life…my entrepreneurial life…my small business life…quickly assessable.

Digital Dependancy
Everyday, I use these things that we depend on so much in this new digital life. Google Calendar, Google Docs, MS Word, iCal, BaseCamp, Quickbooks, Mobile Me, iMail, etc, etc, etc. I use these everyday to organize and execute my life to serve my clients. OK…are you annoyed? Yes…I am. My head is spinning.

Think about your day. If you are a technology person or live in this Corporate Americano…we are influenced to use so many digital tools. We check our email, update our calendar, take notes, use the CRM, pull out the iPad, take notes on paper, save our contacts in three places…we try so hard. This is a true digital divide…dividing us between all the devices/software and efficiency.

Have you tallied up your communication and online communication costs? How about the time invested in creating the best tool from a piece of open source code? Oh yeah, how much time do you spend sifting through emails or even multiple email accounts? How many newsletters are you getting each day? How many different passwords do you have to remember for each login between all of those technologies?

So…I put my foot down.
I spent more time stressing out about what I am doing next and where to find what I am doing next. Notice the last sentence was in past tense! Yes…I have an assistant, but using the “digital” to find the “digital” is creating a huge digital dependancy. Why do think we text, Tweet, and consistently review our digital device while driving…because we can and we hope we can stay in-tune with our information. We do not have a clear plan.

So I went old school!
Yep…I did it and I have a planner again. Yes, you know that organizer that is a day timer? Yep, it is about the size of my graduate school classical rhetoric book. Guess…what, it is WORKING. Also…It has me thinking about all this digital dependancy.

WHY DO WE DO IT?
Because if you are surrounded by the crowd I am around (offline and online), then you are always hearing about the next big tool, next big CRM, next gadget, next organizational “do-dad”…and we try it. We are entrepreneurs, small business owners, and we want the edge…the edge to get ahead. We live technology and we are conditioned to believe that killing trees is not the answer…just a better gadget.

Back to basics.
Yes…I have moved to the planner full of paper, a calendar, organizational tools, place to take notes, place to journal. Oh, I still use my iPhone and iPad with the calendar so my assistant can keep up with what I am doing. I am getting rid of all the stupid newsletters and blog posts delivered. I am also using my hand to write. It is amazing how much this helps me clear my head and articulate my thoughts. Plus…if I can add 30 minutes of time back to my life each day, then that is more time with the things I love…my family.

Insights