The Scribe SEO WordPress plugin appealed to me immediately. Let’s face it, optimizing copy for SEO has to be about as exciting as an episode of the Kardashian’s – painful, and excruciatingly boring.

I have a reasonably good handle on SEO copywriting, but, with a business hell bent on world domination, a 20 month old son, and great surf beaches just down the road from my house, and home office, when I finally do get some time to write the last thing I want to do is spend hours on SEO copywriting.

The Scribe SEO plugin turns the job into a five minute, easy, task. Seriously!

It took me while to find and settle on the Thesis Wordpress theme. Finally I had something stable, easily customized, that didn’t break every time there was an update, and that’s set up well for SEO optimization, at least as a platform.

The missing link, of course, is the SEO optimization of the content itself. That’s where the Scribe SEO WordPress plugin becomes a perfect companion to Thesis

How does it work?

Easy. First I write my post, with a general idea of keywords and subject matter but really quite freely and without regard to SEO.

Then, I make sure the Scribe Content Optimizer gives my Title Tag, Meta Description, and Content the green light, meaning simply that they’ve been done, then I click the analyze button.

The Scribe plugin then gives a report that looks something like…

…as you can see I did pretty well myself but with a couple of minor adjustments I get…

The Scribe SEO WordPress plugin also provides me with a set of tags I can simply cut and paste into my post and I’m done. All of this SEO Copywriting has taken me approximately ten minutes. How good is that?

If you’re like me and you know that SEO copywriting is something that has to be done, but you don’t want to spend half your life doing it, then the Scribe SEO WordPress plugin is something you should seriously consider. I’m glad I did.

UPDATE: I Googled the phrase “scribe SEO plugin” (without the quotations) at 9:30am the morning after I published the article (less than 12 hours) and found my post on the 1st page. I’m searching from Australia, if that makes a difference.

Affiliate links were used in this post.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell first interested me when I was considering what exactly it is that makes something “go viral” or what it is when society suddenly changes direction. Obviously viral marketing is something we are keenly interested in with our business where we specialise in making our Customers business opportunities become reality.

The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.
from The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

The book is obviously well researched but at the same time an easy read with interesting anecdotal evidence, studies and situations that are easily related to and, therefore, fascinating. I knocked it over in a couple of days.

The Tipping Point discusses trends in the same context as a virus or epidemic. We’re introduced to the world of Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, concepts like the Stickiness Factor, the power of 150 and the power of Context. We find out why, or more importantly how, crime waves that have rocked a city for a decade suddenly stop, how unfashionable shoes suddenly reemerge as hip, and why teenagers still smoke.

I’m not sure that I’ve come away from reading this with any defined or tangible course of action but, at CogentAds we often discuss what kind of people we need to be in order to succeed, and even more the kind of people we need to employ going forward. Looking at scenarios in the book I’m inspired by some of the personality types, behaviours and subtle approaches marketing people take to identifying niche trends and then, in sometimes unexpected ways, get these trends into the mainstream.

Ultimately the Tipping Point makes it clear that small things can, and do, make a big difference. It’s inspiring and thought provoking. Good for stimulating your business strategy thinking. I recommend reading it.

Affiliate links were used in this post.

Mark Hurd’s tenure as HP’s CEO continues to raise a passionate response. It’s almost one year since I wrote my original post about HP under Mark Hurd called HP Pay Cuts – an unfair act of economic opportunism and greed so with that, and approximately 1300 comments later, I think its fitting to round out the conversation with a look at HP’s SEC filing for 2009.

I have no intention of continuing to write about HP or Mark Hurd from this point on, all I’ve wanted to say has been said in previous articles, and I want to write about more interesting subjects. The HP, Mark Hurd situation is not an isolated issue, it’s symptomatic of a bigger problem with Corporations in general, and it will take a lot more than a few blogs from me to make any difference.

Lets have a look at the salient points of the SEC filing.

• Mark Hurd, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President (the guy that makes the decisions, approves them and, supposedly, keeps them honest, all rolled into one), earned total compensation of $32, 332, 527 in 2009. When you look at it further it’s interesting to note this includes over $400,000 for 401k company matching, personal use of HP’s corporate jet, and security. Update: Also check out
• Catherine Lesjak, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, earned total compensation of $7,585,775, including over $200,000 in 401k matching, security, and personal use of the HP Corporate Jet.
• Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President, HP Enterprise Business, took home $13,424,406 in including around $184,000 in 401k matching, security and personal use of the corporate jet.
• R. Todd Bradley, Executive Vice President, Personal Systems Group, $12,538,329 in his personal coffers including about $248,000 in 401k matching, relocation expenses, personal use of the company jet, and security.
• Vyomesh I. Joshi, Executive Vice President, Imaging and Printing Group, a package of $11,644,691 including $183,000 odd of 401k matching, security services and use of the corporate jet.

Update: Mark Hurd also cashed in aproximately $11m in share options during 2009, check out Yahoo Finance HPQ Insider Transactions for the specifics. (thanks to a comenter on this post).

There we have it, Mark Hurd and four other people in HP took home $75,525,728 in 2009. Admittedly it was significantly less than the previous year, but if you consider the circumstances, and what they stooped to to "earn" it, it’s still questionable, which ever way you slice and dice it.

I invite you to read the SEC filing, it makes interesting reading in terms of the executive compensation in HP’s peer group of companies, and the "performance" based compensation scheme.

When I look at it I can’t see any real top line "performance" at all, just, in my opinion, a company that’s exploiting it’s employees, compromising Customer service through its best shoring program, and that has sold out on it’s corporate values, all for the sake of putting shareholders first.

I think it’s only a matter of time before people more significant than me start asking Mark Hurd hard questions about real growth, rather than the illusion caused by acquiring and consuming other companies. In the meantime we, as consumers and/or employees can vote with the two most tangible things we have, our labor, and our chequebooks.

I have been kicking this around for some time and I think I have finally narrowed it down to an explanation intelligible to all. “An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets”

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.

By providing her customers’ freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS , ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics.

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The executives are granted multi-million dollar bonuses and celebrate with a company paid junket to Las Vegas.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers.

Now, do you understand?

I read an article in the Sydney Morning Hearld today, titled Climate war gets personal for Rudd which rankled me enough to write this post.

When did this become a War? What, do we have to add the war on climate change skeptics to the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the war on anyone else who chooses not to agree with your political agenda?

I’m a climate change pragmatist. You don’t have to spend long watching the National Geographic, History, or Discovery channels to know that the worlds climate has, is, and always will be changing. To suggest that the Earth somehow reached a magical equilibrium ideally suited to mankind, that it’s going to stay that way for ever, or we have much, or any influence over it, is pretty naive.

The way I’ve seen it up until now is that there’s an obvious benefit in efforts to combat “Climate Change” regardless of whether the science is proven or not. It’s an opportunity to clean up our act as far as the environment is concerned. I agree that we should wean ourselves off fossil fuels, adopt more sustainable agricultural practices, seek out more efficient ways of enabling developing countries to have the same advantages a we have, and to protect the planet from deforestation and the depletion of our natural resources.

I sincerely doubt that the answer to the problem, if it exists at all, is a Global Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme.

Think about it. Kevin Rudd, who has achieved nothing more than spending a massive surplus that was handed to him on a plate, is having a bout of petulance, not over Global Warming itself, but his ability to contribute to the creation of a Global Emissions Trading Scheme that allows the worlds polluters to trade permissions to pollute. It will monitored by some compromised, massively bureaucratic, and probably corrupt organization like the United Nations or G20, and we’re supposed to believe that it will be the solution to the problem? I doubt it. It’s nothing more than a tax, hence the political enthusiasm, and hence the resistance from people, now being ostracized as climate skeptics, to this approach.

You owe it to yourself to be informed on both sides of the debate. On the one hand you have the Al Gore camp, and on the other side you have the Not Evil, Just Wrong camp. Both equally persuasive, both using somewhat alarmist rhetoric to get their points across, and I would say neither completely correct or without political, or economic, agenda.

Mr Rudd, who is one of three world leaders charged with trying to generate momentum before the Copenhagen conference, which opens on December 7, said the ”legion of climate change skeptics are active across the world and they happily play with our children’s future”.

Sydney Morning Herald: PHILLIP COOREY AND MARIAN WILKINSON, November 7, 2009

This so called legion of “climate change skeptics” happen to be eminently qualified, experienced people, no doubt with families and just as much concern about the future of the planet as anyone else. Science by it’s very nature has argument, the challenging of norms and assumptions, and sound logical debate as it’s foundation, so does democracy. The participants have a right to their point of view without being ostracized or vilified. Kevin Rudd is not only demeaning himself by resorting to name calling and demonising people who dare to question his logic (or lack thereof) he is demeaning his role.

I’ll tell you this. I am a lot more concerned about my children growing up in a world where the rules are made by the G20 or some other global organization than I ever will be about the climate changing.

Mark Hurd, could he be America’s most toxic CEO?

I read a post titled The Campaign against Mark Hurd, a somewhat tongue in cheek article, with serious undertones, and I was thinking just that.

If you′ve read my previous two articles on HP Pay Cuts and HP′s contribution to the GFC, you′ll know I′m no fan of Mark Hurd, though you′d think there would be any number of CEOs who exhibited the worst kind of unbridled greed, a lack of compassion, or concern for others over the last year, who would qualify for the title.

I think that Mark Hurd, in all the noise associated with the Global Financial Crisis, has been flying under the radar. One of my main concerns with him is his seemingly deft application of spin (a careful and contrived manipulation of the truth), which probably comes hand and hand with the job, but it shouldn′t.

Why single out Mark Hurd? Why bother to write about this at all, and what gives us the right anyway?

It goes beyond HP, or any previous experience I had with the company, it′s actually an issue that seems endemic in corporate America today, the deliberate undermining of middle and working class standards of living and getting paid obscene amounts to do it. We could, and probably should be singling out more CEO′s for the same treatment. We have a powerful force for change in Social Media. For the first time in history, that I know of anyway, we have a two way means of communication that is independent of the news media, who are hopelessly compromised by their corporate owners (Mark Hurd is on the board of Directors at News Corp. what does that tell you?), giving us control of the message, at least for the time being. We should use it.

I am a Capitalist, but I don′t believe that capitalism implies the complete absence of altruism, there′s more than enough wealth to go around. Prosperity begets prosperity, especially when it comes to employees. As a business owner I believe I have a responsibility to contribute jobs, and the ensuing prosperity that comes with them, to our society. I think what we currently know as Capitalism, where it′s only about returning ever increasing profits to shareholders at all costs, is unsustainable, wrong, and is probably called something else.

The founding fathers of HP, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, from all accounts, had an altruistic view of Capitalism, which brings me to the point of the post. The HP way.

A full discussion of the HP Way is beyond the scope of this post, you can read all about it in the book titled; The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company, however it as been said that the pair′s greatest innovation was managerial, not technical ¹ , the HP Way was an egalitarian, decentralized, form of management that had, as it′s core foundation, the idea that employee′s brainpower was HP′s most important resource.

Hewlett and Packard backed up this philosophy with pioneering practices such as company wide productivity bonuses, profit sharing, share ownership plans, tuition assistance, flexible work hours and job sharing, matched contributions to 401k (superannuation) plans, and more. At the peak in early 2000 HP′s share price was almost $80, the company was regarded as one of the best places to work, and the company bonus plan was paying lucrative bonuses. Granted that was the end of the IT boom at the time, but the HP Way had seen the company through previous tough times without being discarded.

You don′t have to look far today to know that the HP of today is a disappointing contrast to the HP of Bill and Dave. See HP by HP Employees it′s a good place to start, and there′s plenty more to back that up.

The HP of today is characterized by;

• A centralized, autocratic management where Mark Hurd is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors, so he, for all intents and purposes, reports to himself.
• Ten′s of thousands of jobs lost (conservative estimate would be 40-60,000) or moved to developing countries, consequently undermining the very brainpower (and I′m talking about the accumulated skill and experience that these people had, not the capability of people in developing countries) that Hewlett and Packard valued so highly, not to mention completely compromising support quality by replacing skilled and experienced Customer facing people with Support personnel who know nothing more than to follow a flow chart, and who loose the plot the moment something doesn′t follow the script.
• An alleged environment of fear and intimidation – apparent in many of the comments from my previous post.
• Has disappeared completely off the Fortune Magazine top 100 companies to work for list.
• Savage slashing of wages and benefits at a time when the company is highly profitable and HP executive remuneration is not only excessive, but rising.
• Unpaid sales commissions due to an inaccurate tracking system, which raises doubts about other reported numbers.
• A vague and uninspiring strategy for the future that seems focused on competing for market share in niches that are already saturated and being undermined by emerging technologies not invented by HP.

What happened to the HP Way?

I′m not asking the question because I have some sentimental attachment to the "good old days" of Bill and Dave, I′m asking the question because it′s stated quite clearly here on the HP corporate website under Business Ethics;

The values that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard established nearly 70 years ago are as relevant today as they′ve ever been.

Are they?

It′s not an isolated statement. Mark Hurd stated, in his opening (and I presume sworn) remarks during the Congress′ investigation into the pretexting scandal at Hewlett–Packard in the early days of his tenure, and while the rest of the HP board was scurrying to assert their 5th amendment rights to silence;

Our culture, our core, which we call the H-P Way, remains strong and ethical

Does it?

A full .pdf transcript of his remarks is available here. ² The question is; can you take this Guy on his word?

HP overall product quality and service, meanwhile, are regularly leaving consumers infuriated. PCWorld magazine, after surveying 44,000 readers, earlier this month rated Hewlett–Packard dead last among 10 computer makers, on reliability and service for laptops, dead last for printers, and next to dead last for desktops.

How can HP revenues and profits be rising in the midst of so much consumer angst? Easy. To be "successful" in Corporate America today, a CEO doesn′t have to run a company that delivers quality at reasonable prices. Today’s most "successful" CEOs can take a far less demanding approach to "growing" their companies. They can simply gobble up other companies.

Contemporary top execs acquire these other enterprises, usually by taking on huge quantities of corporate debt, and then claim the revenues of these other enterprises as their own. Instant success.

To pay off the subsequent debt, and keep their bottom lines sweet, these CEOs then lop off "redundant" workers in their newly merged operations. This merge–and–purge cycle, predictably enough, creates chaos in the workplace, and more frustration for consumers.

As Hewlett Packard CEO, Mark Hurd has wheeled and dealed his way to 31 mergers in just 46 months on the job…

Too Much, Weekly, Jan. 26 2009

Does that sound familiar to you? Is that what′s become of the HP Way?

I think Mark Hurd has swapped "Invent" for "Illusion", he′s quoted somewhere as saying "vision without execution is fantasy" I would suggest that execution without vision, is short term thinking fueled by greed.

Intense Debate versus Disqus, wow, what a quandary that turned out to be, obviously if you′ve noticed, I ended up deciding to implement Disqus, it wasn′t an easy decision. Until the clincher.

In case you don′t know Disqus and Intense Debate are comment management systems that integrate into a number of popular blog applications, including stand alone Wordpress, the technology this site is built on.

I′ve never been that keen on the standard Wordpress comment system. The latest revision combined with the Thesis theme I use, and recommend, is a significant improvement, but I was looking for something that had more on, and off site integration with Social Media applications, and the ability to aggregate my comments from other sites into a single location. Both Disqus and Intense Debate do this.

I′m not going to go into a detailed comparison of the two systems, do a search for Discus versus Intense Debate and you′ll find plenty of information. Alex Popescu′s post called Commenting Services face to face… is a good place to start. But, what I found was that, although I got a sense that Disqus was edging out in front of Intense Debate in terms of overall take up, I never read anything that gave me a clear winner. I was undecided.

So I went ahead and installed Intense Debate.

Twenty four hours later I′m using Disqus, and I′m happy with it.

Here′s the thing…Intense Debate would not allow me to edit comments, nor could I edit my replies after they were submitted. That, folks, was a show stopper for me.

Ok, so you can get around it with a bit of maneuvering backwards and forwards in Wordpress but that defeats the purpose. On the Intense Debate blog they cite concerns about censorship in their rationale, I’m really not sure this holds up, after all we still get a delete button – if I want to censor something, I′ll delete it.

It′s not about censorship, healthy debate and opposing opinions make great conversation and a lively blog. It′s about editorial discretion and quality control. If I want to fix a typo, repair a broken link, remove content that might be subject to a company′s confidentiality from an otherwise good comment, or any other quality issue, I should be able to.

For a regular reader, or commenter – especially if you comment on a lot of blogs – I recommend that you get a Disqus profile. You can have one for a commenter, publisher, or both. It′s free and helps you keep track of your online activity. I hope you enjoy this feature on my site.

Affiliate Marketing is one of several revenue streams in our business, in fact it was the initial source of revenue that allowed us to get CogentAds off the ground, albeit with challenges, without seed capital.

It comes with the territory that every day I’m bombarded by offers for this or that product, promising amazing income (sometimes stated down to the exact cent) with little or no effort, no HTML skills or previous experience required, and the whole thing runs on autopilot funneling massive amounts of cash into your account while you get to give your old boss the bird, spend precious time with your family, and doing the things you love. You′ve seen this stuff haven′t you?

My opinion is that the vast majority of so called Affiliate Marketing "Gurus" are self proclaimed – in other words they are Gurus because they decide they are. That′s kinda contrary to how people have traditionally become Gurus isn′t it? The problem then becomes this: you have these self proclaimed Affiliate Marketing Gurus who′s primary business model is teaching prospective Affiliate Marketing Guru′s to become Gurus and then go on to do the same, which in turn can only, in my opinion, "White Ant" (Termite) the whole model, leading to the so called Gurus conjuring up all kinds of marketing angles, "secrets", supposed competitive intelligence solutions, and other ways of wrapping up the same old content and selling it to you by pulling all your emotional strings then convincing you that you can′t be successful without it.

So, it′s probably a good idea to get some perspective on the reality of the Affiliate Marketing business. It certainly is a viable business model, however you need to go into it with your eyes open.

I was drawn to the 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report mentioned in a post on Missy Ward′s blog. In this report over four-hundred and fifty affiliates were surveyed on their methods, preferences, and strategies. For me there are some particularly enlightening facts that help balance the hype .

• 46% of the Affiliates surveyed make between $0 – $500 gross (before cost) revenue per month.
• 21% of the Affiliates surveyed make between $1000 – $5000 per month.
• 8% of the Affiliates surveyed make between $5000 – $10,000 per month.
• 17% of the affiliates surveyed make $20,000 or more per month.

The smaller segments fall somewhere in between. The figures are sobering in one way, encouraging in another, but most of all realistic. If you combine this with (and some information in the report about traffic sources and their associated cost would have been good) my assumption that the majority of these affiliates are buying their traffic, or at least a significant portion of it, through PPC (Pay per click advertising), probably with a margin of about 30% (on a good day). That gives you something to consider when faced with the next "sounds too good to be true" offer and it′s promises. You can make good money in this business, but it′s not as easy as some people will have you believe.

It′s obviously necessary to educate yourself on how Internet commerce works, there is definitely a set of skills required to be successful. Seek out the real educators, and avoid falling for offers that seem too good to be true (I still get sucked in occasionally in odd moments of weakness or curiosity).

This week, in the context of a "how are you doing" email conversation with a friend I got the following reply (edited for obvious reasons)…

You are a lucky man. No more trips for me this year. Still no work but have had enough small jobs to pay the bills. … Tried my hand at an internet business. About 4k flushed down the drain. I really suck as a salesman. Don′t seem have that gift for bullshiting people. Got a nice laptop though. Now I can waste even more time looking a worthless shit Hope you guys have a great holiday. Wish I could be there.

I (now) know the circumstances behind my Friend′s frustration, they′re not directly related to my commentary, I think at some stage we all experience similar feelings. But, let′s use his comments, not to pass judgment, but as inspiration for further discussion.

I believe you have to see an opportunity in order to embrace it. You can′t throw up a web site and expect that everyone will come running with their checkbook out wanting to run advertising on your site, or that people will even visit your site. If you have thrown $4k at creating the site then you probably have a good site, but my opinion is that you should have spent the $4k educating yourself on how the business works. If you don′t understand the internet business model then failure is inevitable.

The first step in embracing a new opportunity is moving from a state of unconscious incompetence to a state of conscious incompetence. In other words seeing the new opportunity and then realizing what it will take in terms of time, effort, education, and cost (yes, it′s going to cost you money) to prepare your skills to embrace, and be successful, with the opportunity in front of you. There′s no luck involved in this, you have to make that commitment.

In my original post on this site I alluded to the fact that my primary motivation, like many, including my friend, is freedom. Freedom from the typical life of indentured servitude (wage slavery) we find ourselves in in the west. Think about that situation, how much would you be prepared to invest in an alternative?

I was prepared to invest everything I had. I did, and more.

I′m not there yet, but I have made some significant progress. I′ no longer tied to a 9 to 5 job (although I do work a lot), I can, and frequently do, work from anywhere in the world where I have a laptop and an internet connection, which was my original goal, I draw a six figure commercial salary, and I′m out from under the clutches of greedy, unscrupulous, corporate arseholes. That’s pretty good really don’t you think?

Do you think that would have happened if I′d thrown in the towel after spending the first $4k? Show me a successful internet marketer or businessman/woman and I′ll show you someone who has invested heavily (cold hard cash) in their success.

Do you think that a sales person has to have the “gift of bullshitting people”? Show me a successful Internet sales person and I′ll show you someone who knows how to solve a Customer′s problems, not a bullshit artist.

I could go on but the way I see it is, if you have a Laptop, which by today′s standards is thousands of times more powerful than the computer that put man on the moon all those years ago, you are equipped with a device, when connected to the internet, can change your life exponentially for the better. The question is, can you handle it?

As my Brother, and business partner, put so eloquently in his post titled Why You Are Broke…

We live in a world of abundant prosperity where opportunity abounds. If you don’t see this truth to be self-evident then you have some self development work to do.

The question is who are you willing to give up being to succeed?

…well?

Social Media, to me, is a nebulous subject, constantly on my mind because of the business I′m in, more importantly, how I choose to conduct my business and my life in general.

When I traveled to New York a couple of weeks ago to attend Affiliate Summit my mind was swimming with thoughts about the significance of this "new phenomenon" called Social Media in relation to our business, what is our strategy, what are people doing with it, how are they monetizing Social Media, and so forth.

I’ve always thought that Social Media is there to be embraced, it fits squarely into my ambition to be free from constraints, able to work, and communicate, from anywhere I have a connection to the internet. I certainly don′t think that it′s a fad. I think it will be quickly identified by what it facilitates rather than what it is.

Peter Shankman’s keynote address at the Affiliate Summit, apart from being really entertaining, put a lot of things into perspective, and reaffirmed a lot of my own thinking on the matter. I wont go into the detail of Peter′s address, you can view that yourself, but the key takeouts for me were;

• Social Media is a two way conversation, it′s about establishing trust, and your reputation.
• Social Media has heralded in the age of immediacy – traditional news media is no longer the primary source of ″news″ rather it has become a secondary source of supporting content and background information.
• Social Media, despite what might be apparent right now, is not Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other applications we use at this point in time, they are merely the applications that support it, for now.

Like all new developments (is it really that new?) on the Internet, I see attempts to pigeon hole, categorize, capitalize, monetize, specialize, and generally go around in ever decreasing circles of analysis paralysis until…well…you know what, then stick on the ″I′m a Social Media expert″ hat and proclaim some sort of insight into it′s future, what it is and what it isn′t, what it means in this that or another context, oh and you’d better buy the e-book before you miss your chance and the whole Social Media bandwagon up and leaves you in the dust.

I′m a Social Media user, and an advocate, I′m certainly not an expert. Contrary to emerging opinion I regard any application that puts me in touch with a broader community, that expands my neighborhood, my peer group, business contacts, or allows me to share my opinion and participate in conversation with people who, previously, I would never have met, as Social Media.

Like many I use a number of applications; Facebook for family, friends, acquaintances, and community. Where the activity is somewhat frivolous and lifestyle oriented. Linked In as some kind of quasi resume or record of my work history, business connections and probably a source of employees at some point in the future. This Blog (yes, I know there are people out there that differentiate blogging from Social Media, but I don’t) where I write and discuss topics I’m passionate about, and Twitter.

Twitter is like a seething mass of humanity all talking at once. To make matters more colorful we have to deal with the likes of the 15 Most Annoying Types of Twitter Users (thanks to JD Rucker for putting it so nicely) cluttering up the twitter space. It′s been likened to the junction between narcissism, ADHD, and stalking, and now we′re seeing a preponderance of people who need to understand the difference between please buy my product, or, click my affiliate link, and creating the kind of reputation where people trust you enough to be compelled to do business with you in the first place.

But, every so often a wave of congruence flows through the Twitter chatter, we’ve seen it with the rigged elections in Iran, the death of Michael Jackson, etc. and that′s where the real power of the medium lies. Those who once controlled the message now face the reality that they no longer can (unless they turn the Internet off, of course), or certainly not to the same extent. Twitter can get the message out faster than you can say “shit, I hope this doesn′t get out”. I like that.

Denver Business Strategies Examiner, Kevin Boulas wrote, in a particularly astute post titled Four key questions CEOs must ask about social media…

Another question a CEO is concerned with is "How do we control the message?" There is an internal aspect to this question – "how do I control internal communications and proprietary information?"; and an external aspect – "how do I manage my brand if I don’t control the message?"

…the post goes on to look at things, very articulately, from the CEO′s perspective, but, looking at it from a Social Media (ok, my) perspective I′d say guess what, dude, you don′t.

In as much as this is now a two way conversation, and it’s happening almost immediately, you can only control your side of the message, your brand will now, more than ever before, be intimately connected to your reputation, not some one way strategy devised in your marketing department, and your reputation will be determined by the extent to which you participate in the conversation, and should you choose not to participate in the conversation, well, we will have it without you.

Take my recent posts about HP and Mark Hurd (CEO, HP), triggered by nothing more than hearing "if you don′t like it there′s the door" one too many times and deciding, you know what, I′ll take the door, thanks for the golden handshake and, buy the way, I happen to think you′re (Mark Hurd) the living embodiment of everything that′s wrong with corporate America, you′ve never been known for innovation, made all your returns to shareholders by shafting employees, and you′re leading HP down the doom spiral that comes from competing for market share in already saturated markets. Oh, and I blog.

How do you control that message?

Social Media represents, to me, a fascinating blend of democracy, anarchy, and freedom of speech, it′s power is that it′s given us a voice outside of the established news media, and as far as I’m concerned it′s now my primary source of information.

When Rupert Murdoch (CEO, News Corp), a guy who’s probably reminiscing the good old days, when people used to buy newspapers, and the paperboy dropped one on your lawn each morning, decides to deal with the recent massive drop in the overall value, and revenues, from News Corp, a company that dishes up, in my opinion, a steady stream of comoditized, politically biased, dumbed down for the masses, garbage, by making me pay for online content, I just think…

…go ahead…make my day.

Recommended reading

I′m reading this book right now.

Chris Brogan and Julian Smith are Social Media veterans. In their book Trust Agents they discuss how today′s online influencers trade in trust, reputation, and relationships to build their businesses online.

This is fascinating stuff, the Internet has completely changed the paradigm of work and business for me and it′s become obvious, through experience, and emphasized in this book, that the more we participate in transparent, honest, and genuine relationships, the more our business grows.

The book discusses how social networks, and personal connections, have more influence than marketing messages ever will, how the most valuable commodity on the Internet is not cash, it′s trust, and it gives you strategies to use the power of the Internet to build your business through social networks, now, and with integrity.

I recommend it.

NOTE: I always give my local bookshop the first opportunity to sell me a book before I go to Amazon. It would be nice if you did too.