the hurricane inside my brain

photo: orphan jones on Flickr

When I worked in advertising, my desk was always in disarray. And as aghast as I was about my own clear lack of organization, I’d be equally aghast when I went to an account persons office and saw their neat-as-a-pin desks. How could anyone work that way? Where is everything? Aren’t you *working?* I would wonder.

And then one day I read an article that told me the reason why my desk was messy.

It’s because, as a creative person, I’m constantly looking for two unrelated things to combine.

After all, most creative ideas are not 100% new, but are just ways of taking what’s already out there and combining stuff in new ways. But in order to do that “creatively”, you have to break sets. Combine things that are unexpected, because they are not ordinarily grouped together. It used to be putting a new ending on an old cliché. Then it was combining two unrelated images in Photoshop. Not too long ago, it was someone who forgot that a camera and a phone were two completely different objects.

A messy desk keeps the solution to ‘problem A’ right next to the solution to ‘problem B’. It doesn’t file things away into a drawer labeled “the way it’s always been done.”

The internet is the biggest, messiest desk there is. I like to use that to my advantage.

Do you?

I started blogging, tweeting and using other social networking/sharing/media sites not too long ago. The experience changed my life, in amazingly powerful ways, a comment that is still met with a great deal of skepticism almost everywhere I go.

But “Social Media” (a phrase that doesn’t even do what it’s really about justice, as most people equate the words “social media” with “getting on Facebook”) has given me the chance to meet brilliant, thoughtful people from all over the world, and talk to them as equals about things that are important to both of us. It’s helped me get involved in projects I never could have dreamed of on my own: producing a book and a movie, getting a cameo role in a movie; having crazy, impassioned conversations about the future of publishing, sexism, war, pornography; gave me a chance to help start not just one but three online publications; taught me how to shoot, edit and produce a hundred small videos; gotten me over my last final fears of technology. But most of all, I discovered the power in helping other people.

So why wouldn’t I want to blog about social media, if it brought about such profound and wonderful changes?

Because that would be like having a blog about email.

What I’d like to do here is to give you insights into the way technology is colliding with human interactions and communication, insights that will cause you to say “wow, I never saw the world that way.” And, at its best, will let you see the actions you can take next to create the profound changes I think we all can make.

I’m sure that sometimes I’ll slip up and talk about social media, because it still is such a passion of mine. But, on the whole, this blog is not a social media blog.

What is it instead?

It’s a “how the way we interact with each other affects the places we go together” blog.

It’s a “let’s think about creative ways to solve problems and then go out and solve them” blog.

It’s a “what if you didn’t think about technology and communication and marketing and friendship and business and art and change as separate things, but ONE thing” blog.

It’s a “where the heck is this all going to lead us 5, 10, 20, 100 years from now?” blog.

It’s a “wow, this is cool and here’s how it might translate into a business model” blog.

It’s a “Think. Do.” blog.

As always, comments are adored, opposing views are welcome, feedback is thoughtfully considered, and spammers are not tolerated.

You can do lots of stuff when you’re thinking of how to create content. Whether it’s for an individual blog or website, or a company one, or a facebook page, or what have you.

You can give people information. You can explain how to do something. You can report on news. You can share other peoples content. And, in fact, I recommend doing all of those things, and doing those with a high degree of journalistic integrity. Be factual, be logical, be true.

But art – art is your own unique view of the world. With art, truth is how you, and you alone, define it.

That’s why.

photo: foxtongue

Whenever I am writing something – email, blog post, proposal, tweet, love letter – I almost always do three drafts.

In the first draft, I try to make it logical.

The second draft I try to make it interesting.

The third draft I try to make it short.

Note: even in my longer writing pieces, I always use the third draft to make each individual thought as short as possible.

Hope this helps.

photo: jessicafm on Flickr

When cars were first invented, they didn’t have blinkers. It was only after the fact that people studying the effect that cars had on society said “hey, it looks like people keep crashing every time the person in front of them turns. Too bad we can’t figure out a way for the cars to signal their intention before they turn so that people can stop in time.”
And then they solved the problem.

What they didn’t say was: “what idiot invented the car and didn’t realize you’d crash every time you got out there and made a turn” or “the general public is too stupid to drive cars, they are never going to work” or “cars don’t work, it’s fine when there’s only a few people on the road but they are just not scalable.”

Yet that’s what I see people do when it comes to technology, or social media, or networking platforms. They blame the creators or they blame the people using them or they figure stuff will never be scalable.

Until someone else comes along and solves the problem.

Which just got me thinking that some day I would like to be the type of person that invents the blinker.

photo: eleanorhartwick

We are defined by what we share.

There’s a lot of talk these days about people being “curators”. Brand curators, journalistic curators, and, as I like to say, curators of the world.  We come across all this stuff in our day-to-day life, stuff we find helpful or interesting or entertaining and we share it with our friends. When I tell people who don’t know about Social Media that Social Media has changed my life they look at me like I’m a little insane (which is ok, ‘cuz that’s part of my brand.)  But the reason it’s changed my life so much is because I have learned to share. I give away everything I can – every idea, every bit of business advice, everything I learn, everything I find interesting. I’ve come to find that it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I just didn’t know how.

Here I share with you Damien Basile’s Tumbler Account, which he shares with the world.

photo laughlin

Blog the important stuff. Be really clear about what you’re asking people to do. Give them a reason to believe.

Related advice: The word “because” is the most motivating word in the English language.

photo: wetwebwork

I used to think that the word “value” was the most overused, least meaningful word in the English language. People kept telling me: “In social media, you need give people something of value.” But what was that? Information? News? A how-to guide? Entertainment? Just something random and bizarrely interesting? A beautiful sentence? Surely there could be value in ANY of those things.

But then I discovered a meaning that makes sense to me.

And in the end, it seemed so obvious, that I felt a little stupid for not getting it before. So with that said, I will share it with you. : )

People come together in a community because they share common values. It may be common interests (knitting, photography, golf). It may be shared ideas, such a political views or religion. It could be  excitement around a product, or even a shared sense of humor. But whatever it is – people come together because they realize they only have a limited amount of time in this world and they want to spend their time doing the things they think are most important. And it’s nice to have others who share those values – people who think the same things are interesting or equally important.

So when I think about what to give a group of people that *has* value, I think about what values they share that brought them together in the first place.

This leads me down the following paths when creating things of value:

> Advice, information, how-tos that help the group as a whole will have value.

> An idea that is relevant to your group but gets them to see things in a new light will have value.

> Things that are funny because only people who are in that group really understand what you’re saying will have value.

> Something random and bizarrely interesting will have value only to those people in your group who happen to find that particular thing also interesting. Another way to look at this is that if your group is large enough, everything will have value to *someone* in it.

> News about what’s going on out there in the world has value when either: a) it relates back to the group or b) you are one of the first to pass it on. (it’s truly NEW, and thus the newness itself connects people).

> Sometimes advertisers try to connect their product to a group of people by associating it with what’s happening in the world. They try to jump on trends as a way of connecting people to their product. It works when there truly is a connection between the product and the trend. It rings false when there isn’t.

> If something has value to my group, I have a public conversation about it. If something has value only to an individual, I have a private conversation.

> If you have created a community, or group, or following or whatever that was created randomly, haphazardly and does not share certain values, it will be *extremely* difficult to figure out what is valuable to them.

There are those of us (and some days, I admit to being one of them) who want to find the one thing that *everyone in the world* will find interesting. And there are some things that are universally appeally: stories of men landing on the moon, or a pilot landing a plane on the Hudson.

But it’s really really hard to send a man to the moon or land a plane on the Hudson river every day.

And if you want to get out there and talk to a group of people every day, in a way that has value to them, I’d try this: first, think about what their shared values are.

photo: mrbill

I’ve heard it said that you need to try a brand new food five times before you really like it. (Try this, it’s a fun experiment!).

And I’ve also heard it said that it takes five impressions for an individual to actually internalize an advertising message.

So I’m wondering if the idea of “5 times” is applicable to how we engage with people in Social Media. If it takes 5 times connecting with other someone else before we trust them, say. Or 5 encounters before we are truly engaged with them. Or 5 times hearing someone’s name before they are “on our radar”.

What do you think? Would that change anything for you if it were true?