Maybe writing this will get me kicked off the island. I don’t really care. I registered a LiveJournal account in 1999 and posted my first blog post. I joined Twitter when it was still full of early adopters and techies. I remember signing up for Facebook the day it became, “available to all outside of colleges” and I was one of the first 50 people in the world to strap a camera to my head and live stream my life 24/7 and take advice, tasks and have conversations with people via SMS as my phone number was posted on the website of my stream. I moved to SF in 2008 to hang out with people like me. I didn’t move there to learn more, attend panels and become an expert. I just didn’t have anyone who knew about tech in Florida to hang out with. That’s really the simplistic reason for moving to SF.
I’ve been at this for a very long time. It wasn’t called “social media”. I think my parents called it, “dicking around on the internet.” Either way, none of this is new to me. I made my first dollar from social media at the age of 15 upon selling my first banner ad on a tech blog. It was a laptop bag company in SF and I’m still great friends with the owner.
I hope readers of this blog will forgive me for uttering the words “social media” in this space. This is a rare occurrence. Hell, my most commonly used categories are life, ideas and rants. No where in this blog do you see a tag or category for Twitter, Facebook or social media and I like it that way.
I’m too busy doing it to talk about it.
I am not an expert despite being called that all of the time. I am not a master of social media. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing but what I do know, I apply. I apply it each and every day. The ideas I propose and execute on don’t always work out but, since 2007, I’ve been making a full-time living from social media. I’ve started a Twitter on-demand community management service that is still in operation working with startups. I work full time for a global navigation company leading and being involved in many of our online community initiatives. I’ve “coached” quite a few startups and entrepreneurs and have had great results.
What I haven’t done is sell myself to anyone. I’ve never called someone up or talked about it on my blog so I can achieve SEO for “social media” and be discovered by a company needing my services. Each client I’ve had was referred to me by a friend and the only clients I ever lost were companies that went under after failing to secure more funding.
A blog post like this really pisses me off. Of course, that blog is linking to this book which can be had for $16.95 on Amazon. Be sure to pick up the author’s book *sarcasm*.
Someone took time to write a post explaining how we should behave, act and conduct ourselves in social media. I get it. Some of these made sense to me but they really just reminded me why I stopped being involved in social media officially on my blog and on Twitter and in day to day conversations. The one thing I attend each year is Blogworld and I do that to hang out with my friends. I learn things but I’ve never been a fan of listening to what someone else learned while doing social media. I like forging my own path and don’t have the time or patience to teach you these lessons. Learn them for yourself. Why are you listening to me blabber on about it?
That’s the issue. Why aren’t we doing?
I’m a hypocrite. I did try to do the whole preachy thing, the whole instructor thing and sell myself to conferences as a speaker. I tried it but realized that I was scratching my own back with “tactics and principles” instead of actually contributing and disseminating knowledge to a group. They should have saved their $500 + airfare and spent those 3 days at home trying and failing on their own.
There was a viral stealth startup that popped up in SF. The name of that startup was “pheltup” There were stickers, tweets, blog posts and rumors of funding and talk of what this company could be about. They even had a fake launch party and a fake “beta signup”. It was never a real company but the persons behind this made us all believe it.
I have a task for you. If you don’t have any clients, do that. Start a fake company and market the hell out of it. I want you to get a post on Mashable about this amazing new company and, when you do that, you’ve made it. You sold the Internet on a company that doesn’t exist. Congrats. Now we can talk business. Now you can do this social media thing.
Don’t pay to listen to us talk about social media. Don’t read books. Don’t read mashable. Just do it! Just go out and do it.
Anyone that really knows me would say one of two things:
A) Adam is a freaking genius and is leading the way in social media and strategy. TomTom is lucky to have him.
B) Adam is a total fake who just hangs out in social media to drink with the cool kids. He has some basic skills from doing it for so long but he’s selling stuff a freshman college communications drop out could show you for $50 or a large pizza from Domino’s
Heh.
I’ll admit there was a time when I got caught up in my own bullshit. SF & social media & tech rubbed off on me. There are folks who do what I do who aren’t full of themselves. They’re out there but most of them aren’t at conferences and most of them aren’t writing books. Most of them are doing it. A few people I know commented on that blog post I wrote above. Sorry but I was too busy doing social media to find and comment on that post. I only found it after someone emailed it to me.
There are others like me who do attend events and speak and hang out with other marketing people but they mostly hang out just to have fun and then they go home and actually do something with what they learned. They leverage the business cards, they execute and they grow.
If you think reading Seth’s or Chris’ or Brian’s or Pete’s or any other expert’s blog will help you, it won’t. These are talented guys. They’re doing something right and they know their shit.
This doesn’t apply to the guys I listed above but if you’re reading someone’s blog who makes over 50% of their yearly income on talking about social media, I wouldn’t trust them. I want YOU to make a majority of your salary doing it before I’ll care what you have to say. I think this is fair. “Yeah, I have a welding company but don’t actually weld anymore. I did it for 2 years and now I travel the world talking about it. Buy my book.”
This isn’t plumbing. This is social media and it changes every week.
Every week you spend talking about tactics you used last year is another week your tactics become obsolete.
If someone has questions for me, I’ll answer those questions but constantly express how guilty I feel talking about stuff that worked for one client in one industry with a very specific set of users. This formula won’t work for you.
Hollywood and Silicon Valley are both ignoring the fact that they’re both playing the same game. Nor-cal & So-cal, PHP & Botox, Zuckerberg & Spielberg. They’re exact mirrors of each other. So, if you’re offended by this post and you’re in social media or tech, I’ll give you the example as it pertains to Hollywood.
There are directors who make hits and there are directors who don’t. There are men who talk about this screenplay that sucked and there’s the man who took it and made it into a top grossing film. There are agents who drive a Porsche and those that drive a beater but get things done for their clients and there are diets that work and ones that don’t. That’s Hollywood. Silicon Valley has the same problem.
I wouldn’t say it’s a problem entirely. I’d simply say that we really need to stop talking about it. Can we please just call SXSW and Blogworld a networking opportunity? Can we please stop justifying tech events as learning experiences? Is it possible for us to simply do our jobs, grow, learn, evolve and create and save the day for the companies we work with and then hang out with people who do the same thing? I just wanna have a beer with the guy who tweets for AT&T and talk about random things. We can share stories perhaps but paying $500 to hear him talk to me on a panel or buying his $19.95 digital download called, “all about Twitter” is just ludicrous.
I’m going to file this one under rant and then I’m going to read a few tech blogs, drink some beer and wake up tomorrow as someone who lives social media and not someone that spends all day on blogs and on Twitter complaining about fakes and phonies and assholes. I’m just going to make my boss happy. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?
Don’t forget why we’re here. We all share a common goal. Stop focusing on everyone else, look in a mirror and make yourself better. I’m tired of the finger pointing. I’m tired of the fighting.
Thanks, as always, for reading. Have a great day!
I’m sorry you took my post as adding to the fight. It certainly was a rant, but from what you’ve written here, mine seems to have came from a similar place as yours. I *am* frustrated with a fair amount of what I see in social media, particularly from those who *do* claim to be experts, or at least who are held up as such by the majority. I do not call myself a social media expert — by any means — nor am I one. (The book you noted on my site is that of my co-author, Amber.)
Despite the ranting tone, it was my intention to pair my observations with options for change — to avoid, quite frankly, an additional contribution to the culture of complaint. My intention was to model how one could disagree, vent, and yes, even judge (since that’s human nature, after all), in a way that could still move a conversation forward: by suggesting alternatives for the things I was calling out. You’ve done the same, though your suggestions for change are different than mine — and I’m sure plenty of folks would prefer yours to mine.
There’s always a danger, as you note, in such a post being taken as prescriptive, as a list of the way things should be. I tried to make clear, however, my firm belief that my way isn’t the only way. That there are different sets of rules, different paths (indeed, you’ve articulated one here). Clearly I wasn’t as successful on that front as I had hoped.
But all of us who choose to publish our thoughts and opinions face another danger: that any post we write will be taken out of context, that people will read it having not read any of my other or previous writings. I imagine that my post was likely the first of mine you read, as this was the first of yours for me. It’s a fact of life, and not terribly changeable, but it does sadden me that the takeaway for you was that the post, and perhaps even I, was combative simply for the sake of being combative, which was never my intention.
Agreed. Thanks Tamsen for stopping by and leaving a great comment like this. You raised valid points. Any one of them on their own I agreed with but, together, they turned into more of the same but that’s just how I read it.
I get frustrated sometimes and am often pulled into things which is why I just took a step back from all of it and focused on work over the past 2 years. Either way, it means a lot to me that you’d leave a comment and even read the post.
Enjoy your day.