Not Following Opposing Views; Good Or Bad?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 14, 2011
I’ve been thinking about this one a lot lately. I tend to have certain criteria that I employ when I’m deciding who I’m going to follow on Twitter or on Facebook. I wrote a little bit about it when I posted an article titled Why I Don’t Want To Follow Some Twitter Folks some time ago. I didn’t address some other things, though I easily could, and I may mention them as I write this post.
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See, what I recognize is that I refuse to follow anyone whose views I pretty much know I’m not going to support. So, being liberal, I don’t follow anyone I already know is conservative or Republican because they’ve put it in their profile. I also go back through a bunch of messages before I add anyone on both Twitter or Facebook, and if I see that they support a different political view than mine, I won’t even bother.
The same kind of thing goes for religion for the most part. If I see someone always quoting Bible verses or other religious quotes, or talking about their religion in some way all the time, I’m not following. I just don’t want to hear it. In this case I do have some friends who consider religion an important part of their lives, so that’s somewhat different. I can say that because I think I only have one friend that’s a Republican (I have 2 others who’s registered as Republicans, but they’re really not).
There’s always this 800-pound gorilla in the room that says if we can’t talk about our differences then we’ll never come together to get things done. I believe that can be true in many circumstances, but I think the past almost 3 years have proven that it’s not going to work anymore when it comes to politics. Let’s face it; the Republicans have shot down everything President Obama has put forward with the only intention to get him out of office in 2012. They would rather hurt everyone in America so they can call him a failed president; this isn’t just my opinion, as I could find quotes from some prominent Republican leaders to prove the point.
Government has always been about negotiation; almost no one got entirely what they wanted, but we got things passed without this much animosity. Now, with all the animosity, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are just some things people can’t talk about, and if that’s the case then I’m not the one who’s going to get into a shouting match with anyone. I’m the guy who wrote a post on de-stressing one’s life after all. There’s civil debate, and then there’s ranting and ignorance that I’m just not going to deal with. Yeah, I’m going to share some ignorance, stunned that this is in, of all places, Boston:
I’ve reached this point in my life where I believe in two separate things, and I’m not necessarily happy about it. Those two separate things, which actually blends into one, are that there are communications that are important enough to have, even if it breeds controversy, in a working environment, while in one’s personal life they should decide what level of peace they’d like in their life.
As someone who does leadership training I tend to believe that people need to learn how to communicate with each other at work, even having opposing views, because work is about the company and not individuals. That and I do have that book to the left side on leadership that I wrote after all.
But when it comes to your own time and your own peace of mind… well, let’s just say that I avoid people like in that video at all costs because there will never be a civil discussion with anyone who can’t accept any real facts. It’s kind of like the debate between favorite music, only much more vicious.
Still, I’m going to put it out here as a question or two. Do you find yourself hanging more with people you agree with? Do you try to bring peace into your life or find yourself always arguing with people because you enjoy it or feel it’s necessary? And are your criteria lax or tight when it comes to who you’ll follow in social media?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
When Your Cause Isn’t Worth The Fight
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 5, 2011
I found this interesting. I was reading a blog post by someone I interviewed for my business blog back in September, Angelique. Her post is titled Angelique Suspended from Google Plus. She was suspended because she doesn’t like to use her last name, feels it doesn’t support her brand, and of course Google+ expects people to use real names; they didn’t appreciate her last name being “Creativity”.
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I found it interesting, as well as her follow-up post, for a few reasons (and I didn’t comment there because it’s a Disqus blog, which y’all know I hate).
One, I had the same discussion with her when I did the interview on my blog. I had found her last name and added it to the post, and she was deeply shocked and implored me to remove it. I hesitated at first because I have a set format for doing interviews on that blog, as opposed to interviews I do on this blog, and I felt it would throw off the continuity in some fashion. In the end I relented because I felt I might have been making too big a deal of continuity for the blog, just because it’s a business blog. It didn’t hurt anything.
Two, I had this conversation on someone else’s blog earlier this year as that person was also complaining about it. Since it wasn’t a Disqus blog, I responded that I understood the issue because how would they determine to list people with names that everyone knows that aren’t real, such as Lady Gaga or Will.I.Am? If they came onto G+ and used their real names, no one would know who they were, and if they put up their real pictures G+ might think they were perpetrating a fraud in some fashion and ban those accounts anyway, if you know what I mean. To date I don’t know if that issue has been addressed.
Three, I thought about my own blog. I have a policy where I won’t accept keywords as a true name of a comment poster. I need a first name of some type, and it can even be a nickname (cue Sire), but I need something to call you if I’m expected to possibly respond to your comment. If I don’t have that then I delete the comment, no matter how good it might be; the policy is just above the comment box and if you miss it, then it’s on you.
And finally four, as soon as you start to gripe about it in some fashion you almost have to catch yourself and say “it’s their playpen, so it’s their rules“. This doesn’t mean you can’t complain to yourself, or in your blog, but if you decide to complain to someone else you’re wasting your time and energy.
I’ll go personal on this one. I don’t think it surprises anyone when I complain about a Facebook change that I don’t understand, when suddenly I can’t find something. I do that for two reasons. One, I know that if I’m complaining someone else is complaining as well. Two, I hope that someone can provide a fix or idea of how to get around in some fashion. For instance, I griped when they seemed to get rid of a way to get to pages that I had subscribed to, which meant people weren’t going to find my page either. Someone finally gave me some guidance in finding it, and it’s still in a ridiculous place, and I moved on, knowing that there wasn’t anything I could do to change it.
Last year Google decided this blog doesn’t qualify as an Adsense purveyor based on a post I wrote almost 2 years ago on the topic of cleavage, a very tongue in cheek post with no nudity and what I thought was a very interesting point, and one where even if I’d agreed to remove it they weren’t going to reinstate this blog. I didn’t bother with it, just as I didn’t bother responding to them when I lost my page rank on this blog (I did get it back earlier this year). Google never responds to anyone other than possibly sending an automated message, so what would have been the point?
In other words, we all have choices to make when it comes to dealing with someone else’s rules. We either follow them or we don’t. This means we either participate or we don’t. You don’t get freedom of choice when someone else is paying for it; you don’t get freedom of speech in someone else’s space. At least you don’t get either unlimited.
What Angelique is fighting is the same thing some Egyptian students tried to fight Facebook with when they were protesting the government and were worried that their names would get them in trouble. The rules are the rules; no exceptions. If Facebook wasn’t going to change for students whose lives were in potential danger, Google’s not going to change for her, even if she’d written lots of positive things about them. Goodness, Facebook banned Salman Rushdie for awhile (you might need to have a NY Times password to view this one) and he’s well known.
You want them to change? Work on your website and blog, get it ranked really high, participate a lot in social media so a lot of powerful people know who you are, then take your shot. Now there’s a goal worth reaching for. 
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Mitch Mitchell
Voicemails From Around The World
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 2, 2011
Talk about a very neat concept. How many people have ever thought how cool their life would be if they had theme music that popped up at different times of their lives? Have you ever thought about how a soundtrack of your life would sound and make you and others feel?
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A local friend of mine, Jared Brickman, through a website he calls One Hello World, has set out to help people do this exact thing, although not without looking for a reward in the end. He calls the project Voicemails From Around The World Set to Music, and what he’s basically done is put out a call to action, if you will, to people from all around the world to call a certain phone number and leave a message with a story that meant something in their lives. The story is supposed to be 3 minutes or less, but some people will call more than once to get their entire story told. What he then does is see how the story touches him and puts it to music.
I did mention that there was a secondary part to all of this. This project’s goal is to also raise money to get 20 of these missives recorded onto an album he plans on called “The Listener” by using live musicians, since all the songs are initially played by him on one instrument, although electronically he’s able to add other sounds into the mix. He’s hoping to raise $5,000 by December 31st, and if he doesn’t get there then the project goes away and any money’s pledged will be returned. Right now he’s at $1,394, so there’s a long way to go.
I listened to the sample he put up on one of the pages and it was pretty neat. It was a motivational story the person told and the music, melancholy and beautiful at the same time, was just perfect for the subject. If you follow the link I gave you above you’ll be able to watch and listen to a video example.
I decided to ask Jared some questions regarding the project, and in my mind it became a defacto short interview, so let’s share that with you here:
1. How are people finding out about this?
At first, people randomly started following along through Tumblr. Also, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been contacted by some wonderful people in the press who have kindly given the project coverage. But most importantly, there’s a social element to One Hello World: when people relate to a message or find a track to be particularly striking, they’ve been reblogging it to their own tumblogs, tweeting a link to it or sharing with their Facebook friends. It’s fascinating to read the commentary that listeners add along with their share, especially when they’ve had a similar experience. In this way, One Hello World is more a dialogue than a collection of monologues.
2. How long is their message allowed to be?
My voicemail cuts callers off at three minutes. But I’ve had several callers leave multiple messages to get it all in.
3. What are the rules for the message they leave?
None. Callers have left poems, stories, memoirs, rants, “drunk dials” etc. I welcome callers to speak their mind.
4. Was this your idea, multiple people’s idea, or did someone else do it first?
I was initially inspired by similar projects in other mediums, such as PostSecret. The idea came to me as I was composing a track one night: I wanted to capture voices over the top of the track. I posted a phone number to my Facebook and asked friends to call in and tell me how they defined happiness. I was thrilled to receive lots of material to work with.
5. Is all the instrumentation I heard in the sample from you?
I through-compose everything down to the last note. Each track is written specifically to the narrative.
6. How long does it take you to come up with the music you use?
An important characteristic of the project is that I limit myself to my initial musical reaction. I record my first improvisations and then rapidly build a track out from there. I’ve never spent more than four hours on a single track.
7. Why is the deadline date 12/31? I’m not even sure when you started the project.
The deadline for funding is Kickstarter‘s limit. They only allow you to raise funds for up to 60 days. If you can’t reach your goal by then, you don’t get any of the funding (pledges never get drawn from would-be contributors).
Jared’s also gotten a bit of press from this from Paste Magazine, which called the project “PostSecret for the ears” (I linked to PostSecret above if you’ve forgotten). I think it’s an interesting social media experiment and I’ll be giving a financial pledge to the project as well because I think this would be really cool. The minimum dollar amount accepted is $1, and of course you can always give more. I don’t often ask for help like this but whether you can contribute or not, please help get the word out on this. You can reach Jared by email here: hello@onehelloworld.com. And if you want to participate in the project by leaving a voicemail, here’s the number, U.S. of course: (316) 247-0421.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
So Much For My “Klout”
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 16, 2011
For me, another experiment has ended; I’ve given up Klout. I haven’t gone the route that many have and totally deleted my account, but I’ve done pretty much everything else. Now let’s see what happens.
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Klout, as you know, is a ranking system that supposedly tells people how influential you are online. I’ve written about it a few times and have to say that I haven’t always been a big fan; actually I never was a true fan of the site. I felt that its rankings were pretty arbitrary and somewhat hard to figure out.
It expected activity, yet it penalized certain types of activity. It expected you to engage with others and yet it would penalize you if you engaged with people whom it had ranked lower than you. And if you stepped away for even a few days, your ranking would fall; I mean, what the heck is that?
Anyway, I talked about this concept of influence versus wasting time and I mentioned them in that post. Subsequently I read two posts by other people on the idea of killing your Klout account. The first was by a guy named Rohn Jay Miller, who was pretty adamant about deleting your Klout account. I thought it was a bit extreme and harsh, though I understood his point. The one that pretty much convinced me was an article by a lady named Sharon Hayes titled 10 Reasons Why I Opted-Out of Klout. Of course I had problems commenting on both blogs because of their comment systems, which is why I wrote this post instead.
As I said, I’ve decided to check out, but I didn’t delete my account, mainly because both of these articles gave ways to do it but I never saw the links they talked about. Instead, I did it my way. I stopped allowing them access to my Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook accounts. Since they don’t do blogs I didn’t have to bother with that. Now they can’t track me “effectively” anymore; I’m not playing the game. I guess my name will still be on the site but without getting any help from me, their score will be even more capricious than before. If it drops 20 points in a day or rises 20 points in a day, I could care less. I’m giving up Klout for “clout“.
I also got rid of the Firefox plugin I was using that tracked Klout scores. I added it when I wrote my post on 21 Black Social Media Influencers, as I needed a tool to help me create this list and my second list. What will I use now? No clue; I’ll have to cross that bridge when I get to it.
I’ve shed another heavy cloak that’s been holding me down just a little bit; I wonder what’s next?
Update – If you look at the comments, you’ll see that Vernessa figured out how I could kill my account, so I did; now I’m totally out of it.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
Social Media Marketing Is Just Marketing
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 8, 2011
Last night I was at the top grocery store in my area and ran into someone that was at the conference I got to present at last week. We talked a little bit about some of the programs that were put on, and then we talked about his general opinion of the event.
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He mentioned that there was so much going on that he knew he’d be skipping some things here and there, like my presentation, because he wanted to take in as much as possible about things he didn’t know much about. He said that he talked to a lot of people who seemed confused at the end of the day, which I knew would happen because if you don’t know a lot about something going in and get inundated with lots of information there’s no way you can retain it all.
What he also said was that as he listened to a lot of the presentations he came to this conclusion; social media marketing shouldn’t be all that much different than traditional marketing, as it’s only a new platform and not a new way of marketing. His point was that the idea of marketing is to attract someone’s interest, get them to at least look at everything you have to offer, and then hopefully buy something before leaving. This takes research to figure out just what you have to offer a potential buyer and then figuring out how to make your message stand out to encourage that buyer to become a customer.
I couldn’t disagree with his general premise, yet I felt he was possibly missing the bigger picture. The reality is that social media marketing gives one the opportunity to branch out beyond their local area and reach a much larger audience in a lot shorter time. With the proper connections, I can talk about my latest project (which, by the way, is my editing a book of early newsletters from my primary business at the moment) and if I get the right audience to notice it the message can be seen by thousands is less than a day. Other than buying a commercial to show during a prime time TV event how many other ways are there to reach that many people? And the costs… forget about it!
Social media marketing also doesn’t have to be that direct to work. In the past I’ve mentioned that any major business not following their name or industry on Twitter is doing themselves a disservice because it’s not giving them the opportunity to either thank people that say nice things about them or correct something that a customer has complained about. These days it’s incumbent to address issues sooner than later because, though one can recover from bad press, it can be harder to do so. Just the other day I had someone comment on an old post of mine complaining about a particular affiliate that didn’t pay me; even when someone might think an issue is gone, online it’s never gone, especially if the company didn’t fix the issue (weasels; still never paid me).
Overall he’s correct; social media marketing is just marketing. But it’s also so much more, and anyone that doesn’t believe this will eventually run into the wall. On that day I hope they call me or someone else to help them get out of it, and then hope it’s not too late.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
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