Burning Out.. And Rekindling The Fire

January 19, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes 4 Comments

rekindlethefireWhen you’re passionate about your field, what you do, or create.. whether a web worker, entrepreneur, artist, or any other idea generator – sometimes, life throws you curveballs and can, for whatever reason, make you lose some of that spark.

I’ve seen it a lot, and it happened to me earlier in my career. You work for a long time, aspiring for a goal or “dream job,” only to find when you get there it’s a disappointment. It’s not just that it’s harder than expected – that’d be a challenge to be embraced in most generators’ eyes – it’s that the impact you were hoping you could have to change, to improve, to further yourself just didn’t materialize.

It can be demoralizing, spending months or years pursuing a goal that you found you didn’t want. I’ve come to believe that anyone who’s got an ounce of ambition has been there before.

What are ways to deal with it? Here’s a few I’ve found and I strongly encourage you to post yours in the comments.

1) Consult Your Mentor(s)

Who are your mentors? If they’re really your mentors, you can tell them the situation, and see what they would do to either remedy the situation, or to help you get your energy back. They’re your mentors for a reason, after all, and usually are glad to help. It can be hard – and sometimes feel like weakness, but we all go through periods of not feeling like we want to be our best.

2) Remember Why You Love (Loved) What You Do (Did)

Why did you love what you do? What was the real thing you were looking for in that dream job or assignment? Especially working in a field where you’ve got a lot of teaching and culture-shifting to do, it can wear on you. When moving forward to your next opportunity, what are the things you liked? What is the part of the dream you REALLY wanted, regardless of the organization?

3) What Is Your Passion Outside Of Work?

There’s so many things outside of work that can be inspiring. A pet, a lover, a piece of art, great music.. go experience it full-boar. For instance, if you like music and can spare it (or be a no-cover master and get on the guest list) go see the next show of one of your favorite bands. The key, to me, is getting the bounce back (but I’ve been described by quite a few as a “Tigger” in the personality spectrum (compared to Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Eyore from “Winnie the Pooh”).

So what are your tips? Leave’em in the comments.

Filed Under: Business, Tips

Blinders

January 14, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes 1 Comment

I don’t normally write my blog entries aimed for other social media professionals. After all, there’s a lot of knowledge out there – I aim to distill things to my audience, which I know is more executive and marketing related but not necessarily in the digital space. If a fellow SMP gets value, awesome, and I welcome you – but my reader base generally isn’t you.

But this post, I’m going to address you, fellow Social Media Professionals, and hopefully give value to my typical reader.

Take Off The Blinders.

horseblinders

I’m noticing some things falling through the cracks – people hyping different things as if it were the second coming of Steve Jobs, but at the end of the day, not producing desired results. It’s almost as if many SMPs out there have decided that social media can do no wrong, and that THE way to do it is the way they and their techno-elite friends do it (by the way, I’m one of those technophiles, for sure).

But your target market, unless you’re selling tech to early adopters, probably has no idea what FriendFeed is. I explain Foursquare at least once a week. The value isn’t evident. There’s a reason way more people use Farmville than Twitter.

Non-techies get the point of Farmville, even though it’s much more complicated of an interface.

Because it’s not about the interface, it’s about the value proposition.

More people see value in having a fake farm than Tweeting.

Think about this.

Done? Next.

It Seems The Internet and Social Marketing Pros Have A Problem.

I recently saw a post that was all about how “Lands’ End isn’t visible.” Blinders completely. As of this writing Land’s End has 250,000+ Facebook fans and quite honestly a different demographic than Zappos, with 29k or so. Yah. 29k. On Facebook, at least, Lands’ End has almost NINE TIMES more fans than Zappos.

It just isn’t the social media elite demographic, highlighted out of the valley, so it was missed. But it was still in the minds of people. It’s humming along selling stuff. It’s popular. Obviously, raw fan numbers are not your only metric of success, but a lot of people have been missing the boat.

Seem as if we as a group don’t use it or it’s not OUR work flow or in our frame of “cool” visibility, we (royal we) denigrate and talk about how others “don’t get it” or it’s a “poor choice.”

You know what? I know success on the oft-maligned MySpace in certain situations.

I’ve worked with blogs who get tens of thousands of unique visitors but few comments – but high conversions. Most of the time, readers in non-SM circles call blog posts “articles.” I’ve seen it time and time and time again.

I know people who get 5,000+ word diatribes from other “experts,” but, although their blog isn’t designed to my aesthetic taste, it works for them apparently and gets them business. Bravo to her. I’m not her target market anyway. If I were, it’d be designed differently.

One of the biggest indie musicians’ sites is the definition of basic – but because he covers so many bases contentwise that countless zoom-bang flash sites do not, including showcasing his awesome – it helped him get relatively huge and make a real career sans label.

Or the pervasive myth that content has to be short at all times – sure, short content is great – but why are the biggest podcasts around long-form, sometimes easily exceeding an hour long? Because they’re good. It takes skill to be good for a whole hour or longer, regularly. And that’s why the previous example is making millions of dollars and in this next linked case have plenty of listeners and a loyal following.

A Parting Thought

I’ve always been fascinated behind the real reasons and incentives why things happen, as opposed to the hype of them. Many times, while one hand is dealing the cards, the other is distracting you from the real “magic” that’s happening.

What are the non-sexy methods that you find that work? What about newer tools and techniques that you’ve found make it happen for your strategy?

Filed Under: Advertising, blogging, Business, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Rant, Social Media, Tips, Web Sites Tagged With: blinders, facebook, farmville, land's end, myspace, rss, rss is dead, Social Media, social media professionals, Twitter, zappos

One click, Two clicks, Three clicks, Foursquare!

January 8, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

fswebsotTwo musings or tips for today. Some others have mentioned them as rules very kindly online, others have said they like’em – I don’t like to say “rules” but here’s how I operate.

Foursquare is a social tool.

It’s a social tool. I know I’ve violated this rule of thumb, but I don’t check in unless I want you to know I’m there. That means I don’t check in at gas stations, I’m not gonna check in at the shopping market, unless of course, I’m open to you meeting me there. The other night, multiple people lit up my foursquare with notifications all night long – with mom’s house. Gas stations. Everything. I realized that if MY notifications went that crazy and got annoying, it must be for other people. It’s actually not the post to Twitter that’s overwhelming for me, as it’s a flood of things anyway. But notifications, they interrupt. And thing is, I don’t want to turn them off because sometimes it’s useful.

Yah, I’ve been an offender. My bad. Will try to do better next time. I just don’t think you should get a “crunked” badge for checking in at the coffeeshop. Or for buying eggs. I’ve not ever gotten smashed on eggs.

Three clicks, and you’re out.

Part deux of my missive is websites who feel they need to bury their stuff down a rathole 4, 5, or 8 clicks down. The most excellent Bobby Mercader had a tweet pointing to SEO roundtable – for SEO, don’t make users go more than 5 clicks down. Well, SEO is nice, but frankly, I’m very concerned with the user experience.

Three clicks is the charm – One click, two click, BUY (or take desired action).

If you don’t know what desired action you want people to do on your site, then let’s not even talk about social media and review your conversion process. It’s a real shame when someone’s built thousands of fans and not one buys because your basics aren’t covered. I see it every single week, it’s a real problem and businesses, get your fundamentals down. I know social media is new and shiny and important, but fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, or the rest won’t work. Did I say fundamentals? Yah, I’ll say it again. Fundamentals.

Filed Under: Business, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media, Tips, Web Sites