I confess: I do not know the 5 secrets to instant entrepreneurial profit and eternal success…

… and neither do they. 

There aren't 7 SEO techniques you can implement in your website to ensure you 10 new customers every 30 days. There are not 3 lessons you can learn from General Patton that will guarantee you will exude leadership skills that inspire your employees to sell for you in their sleep. Google+ will not make your business the next Google, and neither will Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. There is not one white paper you can download that will change your life as soon as you read it.

I have a very short romance cycle with buzzwords. About the same amount of time a pear is good. The first time I hear one, I don't know it's a buzzword yet. It's still a word that sounds really smart because a small group of people use it in a specific way. For a little while, I feel cool if I know one before everyone else does. I seem really smart and on-trend if I use it while describing something to a client. But that's it. That is the peak after which the buzzword gets more popular and starts being compulsively spewed out of the mouths of the masses. At that point, it's lost its value to me and becomes merely another common word. It's over.

For some reason the rest of the world doesn't realize this.. Instead, for years, if anyone just says one of these buzzwords, they are looked upon as an expert. It doesn't even have to be used in a sentence! They don't even have to know what it means or where it came from! It just has to be uttered. While the majority of the population is being wowed by these experts, I'm itching all over from the merciless assault of buzzword overuse out there. Make it stop!

In the past 24 hours these headlines came straight to my inbox/feed/stream:

•  5 ways to succeed as a startup in an industry awash with competitors
• The 1 Question That Inspires Innovation
• 4 ways to harness the power of co-creativity
• 5 Ways The Kardashian Family Built A $65 Million Brand
• How to manage a team of robot workers
• PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, on the 5 C's of leadership
• 3 ways for CEOs to avoid overconfidence
• The best apps for building a business
• 6 Google+ Myths Debunked
• 25 Questions To Ask Before You Outsource HR
• Five Things Hollywood Teaches us About Product Design
• 4 social media case studies from the tourism industry
• 5 key questions to ask about your social campaigns
• 6 Creative iPad Uses For Small Retailers
• Top 5 Legal Issues Of A New Company
• 100 Websites You Should Know and Use

I know, I know, you're wanting the link to a couple of these because they just might contain THE answer. Well I'm not providing them. These headlines are just to illustrate the weight of the world that is on my shoulders. Realize that the reason all of these came to me is because I actually subscribe to the sources. They really do have something smart to say, even if it isn't going to change my life. I have to keep up with trends and technology because it's what I do for a living. Besides, some of these articles might have the next buzzword in them, before it becomes an overused and sales-pitch-ish.

I confess: I have better taste than you

No, not YOU! You have great taste! You're reading my blog! Don't be silly.

I'm speaking to those other people, the ones who smell like Old Spice. The ones who can't discriminate between a great story and its shallow, more expensive sequel. Yeah you guys. (No, not YOU dear blog reader. You know who I mean by now, right?).

Yes, I have better taste than you. I like independent, cerebrally thrilling and ironically funny movies. The movies you like will never become cult classics and you don't even know why that sucks. I like design where form follows function and melts your soul with beauty. You think the name of your company is a headline and and that nothing stands out if it's not bolded, in quotes or in a starburst. You don't even know that quotation marks aren't "attention-getters."

It's not just me that has better taste than you, the reader of this blog has better taste than you, too. Lots of people do! Alas, there are more of you than us, which is why mainstream stuff, by definition, isn't very deep. It has to please the masses and go with the flow. For the most part. Thank God, once in a while someone breaks out of that mainstream mold.

For example and more evidence of my fabulous taste, I love the Old Spice campaign starring Isaiah Mustafa. He is stunning to behold and plays the role perfectly. Hilarious concept, great filming, groundbreakingly communicative and social, that campaign actually got me to almost buy some Old Spice for my son. Almost. Until I smelled it. Oh well. Still, I'm a huge fan of the ads now and their sales have gone way up because of people like you, which is cool for them. 

Maybe it had run its course already. Maybe Weiden + Kennedy hadn't thought past the year's brilliant campaign. Maybe people like you were disappointed that they didn't get chicks any easier while wearing Old Spice. 

I don't know the reasoning, but Fabio happened.

I finally clicked the "New Old Spice Guy Fabio" ad tonight because it's stalking me. They've spared no expense with the Facebook ads, apparently. I was hesitant because I'm neutral at best in my opinion of Fabio. He doesn't do it for me but I thought maybe they could really dig into the cheese factor. So I watched some of the commercials. They're like a bad mix of Sprockets and Hans and Fronz skits on Saturday Night Live. Are you kidding me? *Sigh. They sort of, brought the concept of Isaiah's ads along but Fabio can't carry it. He's dropping it left and right. Choppy. Confusing. Cheap. What is happening in this one??:

I wish everyone out there had great taste like me and you (yes, YOU this time!!) – then we wouldn't have to waste our time on sub-par stuff unless being sub-par made it cool.

I confess: If I see one more social media expert advice headline I'm going to ...

A. Unsubscribe from whomever sent it to me.

B. Throw up a little bit in my mouth.

C. Re-tweet it because it seems like good information even though I only skimmed it.

D. Click the link only to realize that I've been "Rick Rolled."

E. Read it despite myself and get distracted from what I was doing, get most of the way through it and feel empty inside because it wasn't worth my time.

F.  Read it and actually learn something, click a link about the writer, like their Facebook page, and never notice their posts in my over-crowded stream ever again.

G. Click the link and WISH I'd been "Rick Rolled" once I see the boring page, get distracted by thinking about how "Rick Rolling" is actually one of the more brilliant viral-marketing-social-media-campaigns out there because it isn't marketing at all.

It's annoying to see so many experts dishing out fast-food advice as if you can follow a formula and *poof* your business will explode like a viral disease with no vaccine. The truth about it all is much more simple than all of the mountains of advice out there make it seem. 

Social media isn't really new. Yes, there's new equipment, new delivery methods, new technology and yes, it offers the potential of getting up close and personal with a few billion people. But the concept is as old as we are. Humans have been practicing social media since before the written word. We've always had a voice (just maybe not as strong as Rick Astley's).

Whether or not your message goes "viral" hinges on good old fashioned principals like communication skills, creativity and hard work. I would go into more details on that, but then this would be a social media advice blog post and I really don't want to read or write another one of those for at least a day or two. 

3 examples of excellence in social media + advertising

In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. ~Andy Warhol

Do you think social media is cutting-edge? Think it hasn't gone mainstream yet? Think again. Three brands that are making positively brilliant use of social media in their advertising strategies happen to be three of the most white-bread, mainstream, non-exciting brands ever. These brands might make you think of childhood in middle-class middle-America, but they wouldn't make you think of cutting-edge social media campaigns, would they? Think again, again.

The beauty of social media is the conversation. Twitter turned five last week. Five years ago, there was no way these middle-weight giants would be taking consumers' chatter and turning it into national commercials AND publicly mentioning these consumers by name. These middle-of-the-road brands are playing the game perfectly and running a great race. Most importantly, it's real. 

Take a look at some of these commercials, and then go tweet something about your favorite brands. You never know, you might get your 15 minutes of fame thanks to a Twitter mention via a television commercial that plays on YouTube and goes viral internationally. It could happen. 

Wheat Thins. Surprising tweeters in their real life, bringing the brand to them.

Agency: The Escape Pod

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Making a commercial out of a tweet, as artfully as possible with a lightning-fast turnaround.

Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Old Spice. Holding conversation with real tweeters with "The Old Spice Guy's" surreal machismo.

Agency: Weiden + Kennedy

#Fail #Learn #Succeed

I started 2011 out with a self-imposed assignment to blog every day. I had been pretty irregular with my own blogging, which completely goes against my own advice. I figured if I blogged every single day for a year, the habit would become well-formed and I could then back down to once or twice a week without even breaking a sweat. To the people who said, "How will you ever do it? You don't have that much time, Jessi," I answered that I would be able to post quickies some days. I wouldn't have to take time for every single post, thoughtfully writing insights and creating original illustrations. 

I made note of my analytics before I began so that I could track my progress, weighing-in my blogging muscles periodically. On average, during the month of January, my blog visits doubled. Comments began to appear where there had been none. Daily blogging was definitely boosting buzz. 

There was just one problem, though. I wasn't actually doing it every day. Right from the starting line, I had trouble with it. I hadn't done work ahead of time and created a lot of posts - I wanted to do it as honestly and real-time as possible. Some days it was no problem, but other days found me wrapped up in life and work more than allowed for the hour or two it sometimes took to blog. I missed days. My Klout score actually went up and down, reflecting this. 

The main flaw in my thinking lied with the "quickie" posts. When it came right to it, I couldn't do it. A quick sentence or two or three seemed no different than a tweet to me. Why would I waste a good blog page and readers' valuable time on a quick albeit insightful post? Why make someone click a link just to read what could be said in a status or a tweet? It didn't sit right with me, so I never did it. 

For a while I thought I would catch up but before I knew it, I wasn't just skipping a day here and there. The idea that I was behind stopped me from posting out-of-time, creating a growing snowball of white blog space.

It's February 19 and my experiment is failing so I'm stopping it before it becomes #epicfailure. I'm not about to wait until December to admit that I'm not going to blog every day in 2011. It's not worth my time and it's not worth my readers' time. So, I'm going back to thoughtful posts without quickies, but with a strategy change. This time I am going to be my own client. Once a week, more if something timely happens that needs commentary, my blogs will consistently appear. Oh, and I've added an email subscription button, to make life even easier for you, dear reader.

Now, go fail at something. It's fun!

Watch where you're going! : New [to me] Media Sunday • 18/365 •

When you walk, where are you looking? Do you watch the ground, kick pebbles and avoid stepping on cracks? Do you look all around and take in the scenery? Is your gaze in the clouds, trees or building tops, so you almost bump into light posts? Or are you texting into your phone and missing all of it?

At some point in my childhood someone must have told me that I was wasting life by looking down as I walked. Some kind of "stop and smell the flowers" advice that has stuck with me enough to make me wonder whether I should be looking up or down when strolling along. It's a dilema. 

Take the beach for example. The scenery is beautiful, but there are treasures in the sand, too. Imagine all the shells that would never be found if everyone was only looking up. I took this picture on Daytona Beach today. There were bazillions of these washed-up jelly fish. There's no way I was going to be texting while I walked around there, or even looking up and around, because I might step on one of those slimy suckers!

Necessity is the mother of invention. This weekend I learned about an app that eases the burden of deciding one over the other, texting or talking. Now you can text into your phone while seeing where you're walking all at once. I downloaded "At Once" and tried it. Kind of funny. Worth the free download to try it out. You can tweet, Facebook, email, LinkedIn and Google Buzz, all while seeing where you are going. 

It doesn't offer any solution for if you are chewing gum at the same time, though. If you download and play with it, let me know what you think? Is it really useful, or just a funny gimmick? 

New [to me] Media Sunday: Measuring Influence • 13/365 •

There are a handful of companies that help measure your social media influence. They work pretty well using Twitter and Facebook as the main gauges, then blogs, flickr, LinkedIn, etc. I don't think they are a complete measure, but it's a darned good start. If you were hiring someone who is a social media expert, for example, I would definitely look them up on Klout.com. 

My Klout score is 35. That's today. It has been as high as 41 when I'm looking, it changes day to day. They call me an "explorer" - and have this to say about that level: You're exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you "get it", we predict you'll be moving up. It's not as high as it could be, but I've looked up some experts that are lower. It's a matter of practicing what we preach. It's also not the only true indicator of a social media expert's worth, it's only numbers after all, not personal. 

Peer Index is a little more business-like than Klout. They bring LinkedIn into the equation. 

Empire Avenue brings a gaming twist to the topic. You can buy and sell stock in people, thereby raising or lowering their worth, which is based on a real-life score that includes more input locations than the other Klout or Peer Index. Looks fun to me, I've only just signed up and none of my friends are there. That will definitely affect its success as far as I'm concerned. If people don't join, it's not very social, is it? Still, great concept. Come buy a piece of me! 

New (to me) Media Sunday • 9/365 •

Sometimes I play games for work. Really, for work! New technology, new trends, news and events – are all twists and turns along the professional and personal roads we navigate. I can't be an expert in everything, but It is my job to be aware. 

Beginning today and henceforth, on Sundays, I'll share a new (at least to me) thing or two that I'm dipping my toes into. I would love your feedback if you're using these. How are they affecting you, how do you see them affecting the world?

Social media has brought us all together. Facebook is King right now, and as I mentioned in "Nostalgia at the speed of technology," we are becoming less expressive because of how close together we are. It's kind of like the population in general – once upon a time we lived far apart in farms or houses or shacks. We would visit our neighbors and we knew all about them. Then as population exploded and we moved into apartment buildings, sharing the same walls, we stopped even speaking to our neighbors much less getting to know them. 

That kind of separation is against our nature, though. We are social creatures. So the next logical step after the great migration to Facebook is segmentation. We'll see more and more subcultures crop up again, where people feel safe to express themselves in a certain way. 


This Sunday's two medias are a product of that segmentation. 

Path

Path is an iPhone app. It's a social network that runs only on pictures. You are only allowed 50 friends, so they will most likely actually be your friends, and you are only allowed to post pictures, so they will see what you're up to. You tell your story with pictures. Fun! Drawback is your friends all have to have iPhones, too. Because of that, I haven't used it enough to judge it well. 

Quora

Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.

It's a wiki for q+a. Where it gets segmented is that you "follow" questions and categorize them and each question can become a story. You'll see questions ranging from, "What are the best running snowshoes?" and "Do the majority of founders of tech start-ups come from wealthy families?" to "If I'm not happy with life, should I commit suicide?" 

Quora makes it easy for you to follow your friends from other places, so right away you're in a group that you recognize. Jury is still out for me as to how useful it is, or whether it's just a very interesting way to spend time.

Are you using either of these? If so, what are your thoughts?

Honorary Masked Crusader: Benjamin Franklin • 8/365 •

Masked crusaders have existed throughout time, championing their causes and changing the world. I like to remember and pay tribute to my heroes, whom I wish I lived amongst today. They inspire me from their resting places.

For example, we can learn a lot about Benjamin Franklin and how relevant he still is today from some of his quotations:

"Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason."

He was in advertising.

"Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man."

He was an optimist.

"All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones."

He was an activist for peace.

"Games lubricate the body and the mind."

He was a gamer.

"All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move."

He was an observant mover and shaker.

"Honesty is the best policy." 

He was in social media.

Social [Media] Statement Haiku • 6/365 •

Last night Blogspot broke.

Helplessly I realized,

Google made me mute.

The lighter side of marketing • 4/365 •

After yesterday's emergency blog, I thought I would lighten things up a bit. It was fun coming up with these ... please share yours if you have some good ones!

How many graphic designers does it take to change a lightbulb?

White space signifies a working lightbulb best, so how about just the word "change" in 14 pt Helvetica Light Compressed, just right of center? 

How many social media experts does it take to change a lightbulb?

You can't expect the lightbulb to change just because you're there, you've got to have a conversation with it and develop a relationship. Then change can be allowed to happen organically.

How many Facebook users does it take to change a lightbulb?

That depends if you're talking about a lightbulb on the wall of a "fan" page, a "profile" page, or a "business" page, and you may or may not know it even needs changing, depending on your notification settings and number of friends.

How many creatives does it take to change a lightbulb?

Why does it have to be a lightbulb?

How many artists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Ooh, it's all smokey! Wait, don't change it, that's really cool. Let me photograph/paint/draw it first! 

How many art historians does it take to change a lightbulb?

Eleven: One to change the lightbulb,

five to show earlier versions that influenced it, 

and five to say the changing was actually done by the changers' apprentice.

How many SEO experts does it take to change a lightbulb?

First you have to fix the directions. They aren't labeled, tagged, coded and prioritized properly. A burned-out lightbulb in the dark will never be found otherwise.

How many PR reps does it take to change a lightbulb?

The "Sparkle in the Dark" event will be sponsored by a dozen businesses who donate their time and tools to the effort, and part of the proceeds from recycling the old bulb go to charity.

Nostalgia at the speed of technology • 1/365 •

Star date: January first, two thousand and eleven. I begin my 365 days of blogging today. New Year's Day is a good day to gain perspective through reflective and resolute vision, to re-evaluate and adjust course towards goals and dreams. I have a process for this that I try to do every January. Today, though, it seems glaringly obvious to me that it needs to happen more often than yearly. As Bob Dylan says: 

"If your time to you is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'."

• ch-ch-ch-ch-changes • 

In 1982 "Tron" broke special-effects and conceptual ground. Twenty-eight years later in the sequel, "Tron: Legacy," an aged Alan tells Flynn's son Sam that he has received a page from a number at Flynn's old arcade. Sam's response is, "You still carry a pager?"

My 10-year old son turned to me and asked, "Mommy, what's a pager?"

"It's this thing we had back in the 80's - like a phone that you couldn't call from. You would call it and put a number in. Then the person who gets it finds a pay phone, puts a quarter in and calls you back. It's like one-way texting without the text. Just numbers. It was really handy!"

Looking back, my technological and cultural renaissance started with MTV. I can't imagine what I would have thought back then if someone would have told me about today's smartphones. I could only relate it to something on Star Trek. We didn't have the internet yet, and mobile phones were only in wealthy people's cars. Videos were on tape, photos were on film, music was in the store, research was done in the library and I used to call a radio station when I couldn't think of who sang a song.

Back then, the year 2000 sounded futuristic, as if we would all be 100 years old, wearing enormous shoulder pads and piloting our cars through space. I thought it would never arrive. Conversely, I knew things like virtual reality holographic video were coming, but I never dreamed it would be so fast! 

We're gaining momentum so quickly it makes my head spin. Anatomically modern-appearing humans originated about 200,000 years ago. The wheel and agriculture came 10,000 years ago. Written history, 6,000 years ago. Transportation via chariot, 4,000 years ago. Automobiles, 240 years ago. Airplanes, 120 years ago. Radio, television, computers, remote controls, internet, gps, iPads and so on, all in the past 100 years.  

My MTV was followed by an Atari home video game system in 1982, a Tandy keyboard that used BASIC language in 1984, a pager in the early 1990's, the internet, a cell phone, a laptop, then a short lull before the social media flurry hit civilization as we knew it.  

• a golden age • 

There was a period of time after the social media flurry hit and before Facebook at MySpace for dinner, which was kind of a golden age. Maybe it was the eye of the storm as it passed over us. I look back on that time like "the good old days" of social media expressionism. Blogs were fresh and most anyone who had one was actually a thinker, an artist, a journalist, had something to say. MySpace was cool and expressive, people were uploading art, music, poetry, writing and deep thoughts. It was a supportive community of like-minded strangers and friends. If you blogged on MySpace during its golden age, people not only read it, they commented. Thoughtfully. Sometimes the string of comments was more interesting than the blog itself. You were only allowed 12 photographs, but It was a philosopher's paradise.

The internet was relatively uncluttered. Your creative, charitable or political message stood some chance of being seen at random. Twitter started up and had few enough members that it showed you a visual of your connections in a giant, interactive grid-like map. Your tweets were not lost in a stream of voices. 

It's all a blur now. How long ago was it? It was something like 2004 - 2007, give or take a year. I look back on it with nostalgia, knowing we will never get it back. I love Facebook and the fact that I can find just about anyone on it, but along with everyone's old friends from high school there are parents, bosses, clients, exes and children. Facebook hasn't just broken down the walls between us by linking us together, it has also built walls up around creative, free-spirited expression. I love having my wall written on, though, so please do so!

• chasing that high • 

We might never have that golden age back, but my bet is that there will be other ages with even greater potential for creative expression and change. I'm always looking for the next wave because I don't like something as much once everyone likes it. It ruins the spirit of that thing somehow. I look around every corner for new technology and trends that give that feeling of having climbed to another level and arriving at the edge of a cliff. A cliff where paradoxically, if you step off you don't fall down, rather you find yourself on another higher level where the world is just a little bit different and new things are possible. Magic. Like a video game. It's an addiction.

Blog as I say, not as I do.

It's easy to to teach, preach, explain and blog about best practices. But just like the cobbler whose children have no shoes, often the blogger and social marketer isn't being very consistent with their own content. 

I've been busy, busy enough that somehow blogging has gone undone for ... omg! Seven weeks? Can it be? How embarrassing. Good people, do not do try this at home. Do not wait seven weeks to pick up a barely-weekly blog again. It's just not done. You'll lose readers' interest, they expect consistency. Keep their trust, blog onward, blog faithfully.

I know this very well, yet I slipped. I have failed to do as I say. Getting back on track, I will employ a method that I preach. For consistent blogging, rain or shine, one word: stockpile. Constantly make notes and compile topics. When you think of something new to blog about, write down as much of it as possible as soon as you get a chance. Where ever you are, send yourself a note on your phone, or keep a notebook within reach at all times.

On those weeks when you're short on time or when current news is not worth commenting on, draw from your arsenal. Have blogs ready to post within minutes. Review and update to make sure they are current, and post. Clickitty-split.

Blog to you next week, over and out!

('’)

Buzz on Google Buzz Getz Big Buzzer

If you had a cruise ship with no passengers, it wouldn't matter how decked out with luxurious and useful amenities, fantastic movies, art and music it was, or if it had a great cruise director to organize the guests and activities. With social media, just like with like parties, having the ship all to yourself is not a good thing. 

For two days now the buzzers have been buzzing about Google Buzz. The Google gaggle clammered, "Google's got a Facebook. It's Google's new Twitter. It's got update streams, comments and media sharing, right in your email!" My first reaction was, "Oh, like Yahoo?" 

Note the "buzz up" button at the bottom of this blog. It's not for Google Buzz, it's for Y! buzz. That's Yahoo. Yahoo has had it's own social network for years now, since Facebook was an infant. The Yahoo 360 Beta, which was great like MySpace in the beginning, finally closed in 2009 because not enough people were on it. Yahoo integrated much of the 360 info right into their regular profiles. I can blog, update, comment, connect to other people, media sites, apps, get feeds and news, and so on right from my Yahoo email or home page.

Here's a look at my barely populated Yahoo stuff...

... and here's a look at my barely populated Google Buzz stuff:

Underwhelming.

I know Google is big, I know they're everywhere, they even ran my favorite Super Bowl commercial. But sober up techies, another social network is just another social network, no matter who owns it and this is sort of a knock off of Yahoo anyway. So it's not benefits we're comparing, it's location. Where do you spend your time? Do you feel like relocating everyone you know and all of your information? If you already use gmail as your hub, it will be great for you. If not, it's just another added feature that lives there. I don't see all the bees buzzing away from Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter or whatever hive they've already built, I see it as simply a benefit to gmail users.

PS: click the "buzz up" & Digg buttons, please and thank you!

('’)