Authenticity is Life. The Rest is Just Details.

How do you creat great content that is alluring to the general public and your potential clients? The simple answer would be keyword rich content and industry news. Oh yes, keyword rich writing. We all love it.

There is something deeper that tends to push one blog past the other in terms of the public attention deficit disorder: Authenticity.

Authenticity should be one of the driving focusing of your blog, your use of social networking tools, and your business. We are now in a customer centric world where people want to deal with… you guessed it… people.

Staying authentic with your content means you do not sound like the back of a brochure. It means you do not sound like the news anchor on the Fox Business Channel droning away about the pitfalls of capitalism.

It means..What does it mean?

Telling stories.

Creating visual memories of how you have helped clients. Telling the story of starting the business and being honest about the mistakes you made “growing up.” It means giving your personal opinion on activities happening in the market.

I think I speak for everyone when I say… we want to hear from YOU not your industry.

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The Most Valuable Commodity is Information

“The most valuable commodity in the world is information.” -Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in Wallstreet.

Oliver Stone understood the value of content and information while writing the movie Wallstreet in 1987. In the movie the concept of information is a little skewed because of the nature of the film but the idea still reigns true.

Gordon Gecko used information to learn about competition and his employees and the same goes for business owners across the globe. The global competitive landscape is demanding more from marketing and communication departments.

While I do not condone using information unethically… I am speaking more on developing thought leadership and trust behind your brand. It is important to create content that is valuable to your consumer… your demographic target… your niche as a company.

What are you creating that is helping your customer? What are you writing, sharing, and adopting that can change the way people view their daily routine?

Time Magazine Gets Owned by Social Media

And I thought I had seen it all… well… enough for my 24 years on this earth… apparently not.

I was reading an article at Mashable about the founder of a “legendary memebreeding forum” called 4Chan topping the Time’s 100 Most Influtential People Poll. I had to read the article twice. The person called “moot” is the founder of a website? A founder of a website beat out the likes of Rick Warren and Anwar Ibrahim? Say it ain’t so. 

What is hilarious is that the list was apparantly hacked by 4chan users in an attempt (successful attempt) to completely deface the Time 100 Poll. The surprising thing is not only did Moot win the poll but his followers also hacked away at the entire list. According to Mashable: 

“The vote is obviously hacked. Time’s attempts to fix the damage came too late, and the 4chan folks managed to put the encrypted message back into order (if you read the first letters of the first 21 names on the list, the message reads “Marblecake also the game”).”

The world is becoming smaller. One the most influential magazines in the world was infected by an anime/meme forum. Despite the fact that Time magazine built up defenses and put a captcha in place… it was too late to quell the amost 17 million votes for the 4chan founder. 

To be honest with you… the important lesson to be learned from all of this…

You can’t afford to ignore the Internet. It is NOW a part of life… our daily routine… for people, cultures, and clients. 

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15 Must Read Blogs for April

I have been skimming around the Internet lately trying to find some new reading material. As I was skimming I decided to quit the skim and start looking through Twitter to find new reading material.

After a couple of hours looking through Twitter… I have added 25 new blogs to my RSS feed. I loved their stuff and you should check them out as well.

1. Justin Williams and Social Media Vision

2. Winning Workplaces Team Blog

3. GAC Consultants

4. ZTA Photography

5. SEO Aly

6. David Spinks

7. Dario Fauri

8. In the Hand of Dante

9. Converstations

10. BlogSchmog

11. Publishing 2.0

12. GeekSugar

13. Social Media Snippets

14. KD Paine’s PR Measurement Blog

15. Tony Scelzo

Is Conversation or Content King on the Social Web?

I am currently doing some research for my presentation at the Hoosier Hospitality Conference and I ran across this quote by Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing:

“Content isn’t king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you would choose your friends…. If you chose your movies, we would call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.”

It made me think hard about my opinions on content and the use of such tools to drive leads to businesses using the Internet. Sometimes the point of conversation is missed by many Internet marketers. It is excellent if you are at the top of Google search for your keywords but what happens when the potential customer clicks through to your site?

Do you have the necessary tools and systems in place to create conversations with the users influenced by your search ranking? Is it even necessary?

Absolutely it is necessary. We are seeing an overwhelming demand for the marketers and businesses of the world to call consumers… PEOPLE… and not the other way around.

It is important to creat excellent content in order to push the conversation but…

Conversation leads to Relationships. Relationship leads to Aquisition.

What do you think? Is Content king or did Conversation just take the throne?

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Grow Your Biz Using Social Media Class

For those of you in the Indianapolis area.

I have completed some Rain University Classes the past couple of months and I have another class coming up on the 19th of March.

This class is not for beginners. We will not be covering basics. It will help if you have been through at least one of the introductory classes or are already blogging and engaged in several social media sites.

Social networking is a great way to promote your business and build your brand. With that said, how do you use it productively? How do you spend 30-60 mins a day and get the most out of social media?

What you will learn:

We will also be offering this class with a live online video stream. To find out more information follow the link to the Information Page.

Use Your Highlight Reel to Build Your Story

I should just start a blog called, “Seth Godin Strikes Again!” because he is constantly reminding me of GREAT concepts in marketing. He has a post called, Which parts are you skipping? The concept of the post is to remind marketers that it is important to build a foundation to your story, make the good parts of the story easy to find and the beauty of the entire process… not just a piece.

This is an important concept, especially for the small business owner who is looking to establish a strategy in social media marketing. It is extremely important to build out a strategy (a foundation) before you begin using the hundreds of tools at your fingertips in the world of social media.

Every tool you use, whether it is Facebook, Vimeo, or your personal blog, is a highlight of the overall picture: You and Your Business. Social media marketing is a small piece of the overall puzzle but it does help you develop small highlight reels that build brand development.

Remember to focus on the overall strategy and use your highlight reel to pull people into the story.

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Don’t Whore Yourself When Linking. That’s Dirty.

I am an avid reader and fan of Alexander Van Elsa’s blog on new media. He wrote a post yesterday about the failing “linking economy” on the web. The post entitled: The Linking Economy Fails because Social Currency Became Financial Currency is a great look into the concept of internal linking. There have been quite a few blog posts pertaining to the over-the-top linking strategy of some major blogs. In his post Alexander makes reference to some major blogs by saying:

It is also a system that breaks down easily, especially if you in some way or another monetize your site. That is why all of the big blogs seldomly link to external sites. TechChrunch, CNET, they all love to link to themselves. The motive is pure financial, and has nothing to do with content, trust, or any other factor.

I will be completely honest when I say, it is hard for me to care that much about TechCrunch and CNet. They have already positioned themselves as quasi-industry content leaders. Does it really matter that they are internally linking?

I think this is a lesson for all the smaller blog contingencies out there. When you are posting content about a specific topic try to link to sources that you find valuable. It is extremely apparent to everyone when the only links in a blog post are internal links. Get over yourself.

I am not going to sit her and say I have NEVER internally linked to a post that a reader may find valuable. There is a fine line to draw when internally linking and outwardly linking. If you have five links in your blog post and they ALL travel back to you…you are an internal link addict.

Go to an ILAA (internally linking addict anonymous) because you are ruining your credibility on the the open market. And if the only thing you care about is a greater google page or search ranking….pack up your crap skippy.

Take the train home because I firmly believe genuine content will always win.