There’s a common misconception, especially among those interested in social media, about content and self-promotion. Some argue that people shouldn’t worry about self-promotion and shouldn’t attempt to promote their commercial activities.
This attitude has prompted some of the thoughtleaders of social media – those who share outstanding content day after day – to constantly defend their own activities that are, or could be perceived as, commercial in nature.
I was excited to see Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone launch Third Tribe yesterday (I joined). I was unhappy to see that Chris included a few paragraphs for the “naysayers” – explaining why he was launching this new venture. Here’s what Chris wrote:
Any time I talk about money, I get a bunch of emails telling me that I’ve jumped the shark or that I’m a sellout. I did when we published Trust Agents. I did when I took my first affiliate ad for Thesis. I’ll just say my part about this up front, and you can blog whatever about it elsewhere.
The reason for building a membership forum site is that we can share information that we use for our businesses. It’s not what we want to post on our blogs. It’s something people are paying to learn and hopefully use for their own business efforts, and because of that, we think it’s of value. Don’t want it? Don’t buy it. I do plenty for free, and that’s still useful, too.
It’s not for everyone. It’s for those who want to step up their online marketing game.
The attitude and rhetoric of the naysayers – especially directed towards people who legitimately share great resources and knowledge – is appalling. The rhetoric – often driven by ignorance and jealousy – has caused much damage. Trust in information from friends and peers has dropped significantly over the past year.
Much of this damage has been caused by confusion over, and misunderstanding of, self-promotion. Everyone, whether they intend to or not, self-promotes.
Let me repeat that: everyone self-promotes.
Whether or not your online (or offline) activities support or are supported by commercial interests, you self-promote. When Marc Cuban writes in his blog, he self-promotes. He may not always intend to do so, but he does self-promote. Every time. So do I, whether I intend so or not. Sharing IS self-promotion.
The book Tribes by Seth Godin is slightly larger than a CD jewel case. Yet the wisdom Godin shares in the book resonates on a MUCH bigger scale – and apparently with MANY people (the book has been the #1 bestselling leadership book on Amazon for nearly a year).
Godin suggests that anyone, anywhere can be a leader. The one thing holding most people back is the fear of failure.
Tribes isn’t a step-by-step manual about being a leader. Godin explains that:
Every tribe is different. Every leader is different. The very nature of leadership is that you’re not doing what’s been done before. If you were, you’d be following, not leading.
Tribes is about making a choice – to lead or not to lead. Using real world examples, Godin tells stories about how famous and not so famous people made the choice to lead and the amazing things they’ve accomplished.
The insights in Godin’s book are not profound – and maybe that’s the point. For example, Godin skillfully shows time and time again why management is not the same as leadership.
Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done … Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world, striving to make that process as fast and as cheap as possible. Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating a change that you believe in.
Godin writes that it takes only two things to turn any group into a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
So a leader can help increase the effectiveness of the tribe and its members by
- transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change;
- providing tools to allow members to tighten their communication; and
- leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members.
Most leaders focus only on the third tactic. A bigger tribe somehow equals a better tribe. In fact, the first two tactics almost always lead to more impact.
A few days ago, I watched an episode of The Simpsons.
In that episode, called “In the Name of the Grandfather”, the Simpson family travels to Ireland so that Grampa Simpson can visit a pub where he had the best night of his life. In one scene, the pub owner is watching a horse race and is screaming madly for one of the horses to go faster and win. When the horse loses, the pub owner takes a video tape out of the VCR and mumbles that the horse can’t win the darn race (which took place in 1979!).
I laughed. How could the horse win? The pub owner was watching a recording of a 30 year old race that the horse lost. But after laughing, I started thinking. We all think about the past. We hyper-analyze our decisions and the consequences of those decisions. We assess what would have happened if we took made different decisions. We dwell on our mistakes.
It’s both necessary and helpful to learn from mistakes. But some of us obsess about the past – just like the pub owner (I’ve certainly done that at times). And in our obsession with the past, we often lose sight of the fact that we cannot change the past. Ever.
But we can change the future. We should obsess about that instead.
image credit: fragmented
Most know the classic folk tale Cinderella. It’s a story about a young woman living in obscurity and neglect who unexpectedly finds love and happiness.
Cinderella’s story illustrates something that we often forget. There’s only one Cinderella.
Why should you care?
In our efforts to achieve success (in whatever we do), we often try to emulate people who are successful. Basketball players want to play like Michael Jordan, movie directors want to make movies like Steven Spielberg, authors want to write books like J.K. Rowling. But at the end of the day, there’s only one Michael Jordan, one Steven Spielberg and one J.K. Rowling.
Perhaps we are overly obsessed with emulating and understanding how/why others have succeeded?
Seth Godin was right that most people spend all their time on trying to understand tactics to get things done and to change minds. But in the search for that perfect strategy, we lose sight of our goals, we stop making good decisions, and we forget that ultimate success is measured by our ability to earn the trust and respect of people around us.
Each day, we have an opportunity to write our own unique story. What will you do today to earn the trust and respect of people around you?
image credit: Joe Penniston
Ross co-founded crowdSPRING - the world's #1 marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design, industrial design and copywriting services. crowdSPRING helps entrepreneurs, businesses and agencies who need custom logo design, web design, company naming and other writing services (100,000+ designers and writers). For 13 years before founding crowdSPRING, Ross was a successful trial attorney. Read more about Ross.
