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You are not going to be good at every aspect of social media. Accepting that will actually make you much more productive. - Cris
A few years ago Zynga was the next big thing, getting amazing numbers for games like FarmVille. It seems those were just followers, not fans. According to Fast Company magazine, "The gaming company reported a $47 million loss in Q4 and continues to hemorrhage daily active users, reporting a 24% year-over-year decline in players."
Congratulations to clients Time for Three. Their special "Time for Three in concert" aired on PBS last night in 187 markets. You can also now watch it online at http://www.pbs.org/show/time-three-concert/  Last year I flew out to Denver to watch clients Big Head Todd and the Monsters perform at Red Rocks Amphitheater. During sound check they were rehearsing Led Zeppelin's “Misty Mountain Hop”, which they were going to open the show with. For some reason they just couldn't get the beginning of the song to work. Things were not quite syncing up right between the four of them. What was interesting is that they didn't keep at it. After going through it several times, they just said never mind and called sound check done. Later that night when they kicked off the show, they nailed it. Not an issue. Afterward I asked Todd about that. He said sometimes you just get stuck in a bad cycle and the best thing you can do is step away from it for a bit. - Cris  People are obsessed with automating everything. If you are making widgets, that's fine. If you are trying to communicate and connect with people, the results are going to be sad. - Cris
Backstage yesterday with clients Time for Three. Watch one of their concerts on PBS this Friday!  The goal is to get to the point where people search for you, your business, your band. When Google was making its initial ascendancy, people set the goal of being at the top of a category. They wanted to be the number one result when people searched for sales software or shoes. But particularly with the rise of social media, you really need people to search for you. You want people typing your name into Facebook, Twitter, or Google. It may not be the same volume of people who search for a generic category, but they will be a dedicated audience, an audience others will have trouble stealing from you. They will be people who want what you bring to the table. They may not be able to describe it, but they know that you, your band, your company embody it. - Cris
My super power is kind of dull. Some people are amazing musicians. Some are visual artists. Others can create fantastic technology. That's not me. I track down, organize, edit, and publish information – quotes, facts, descriptions of interesting moments in time – and use them to tell stories in the virtual world. Both the accumulation and publishing of this information is slow, methodical work. You can't race through it and get it over with. You won't find everything at once and your audience won't want to hear it all at once. And it is never really finished. The stories continue to evolve. It is building a castle by hand one brick at a time. And the bricks are hidden. So every day you have to search for more. I know a number of talented people who would be driven insane by this work, who would consider it an absolute punishment. It doesn't bother me. In fact, I like it. This is my super power.  Everyone is trying to figure out the magic formula for social media. If all you care about are the number of followers, then that formula is (click bait headline) + (trending hashtag) + (cat video or fail video). However, if you want genuine fans, customers, people who will spend money on you, then this formula will not work. If you want followers of substance, you need to create content of substance. To acquire genuine fans, I think the formula is (quality content) + (patience) + (persistence). - Cris  Somewhat ironically people need more focus in social media. I say “ironically” because social media is made for distraction, for Attention Deficit Disorder. But you can tell when someone took the time to do a post well, thought about their words, tried to get the picture right, spent a few extra minutes editing the video. And I find that those are the posts you are more likely to spend some time with, comment on, and share with others. You can tell when someone just spit out a post without any thought. As a reader, I give those the same amount of time and thought... almost none. And maybe that is one of the great contradictions to social media: It invites and encourages short attention spans, but it you really want to connect with people, you are going to need to focus. - Cris  |
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