I’ve been too busy to write here on a consistent basis, certainly without the pace that I maintained in 2010. Several posts a week for an entire year, compared to a trickle for 2011.

So, what happened, hotshot? Yes, I was busy, but it was more than finding time (or sacrificing family time) to be able to sit and write. I changed some habits, and for the better. Here’s what I did.

Less is More

As someone tasked with figuring out how to cultivate an audience, there’s the notion that more is always better. Anyone who understands strategic communication realizes this isn’t the case. Simply put, I spent less time in public places on the web.

Last year at this time, I was part of an invitation-only private group on Facebook, all made up of accomplished communicators. It ballooned to a population of around 140 or so, with just a little trickle of in and out. The conversations there were liberating and stimulating and educational and addictive. They were just as uncensored, and it was a jolt of inspiration straight to the veins of the brain. The group started in the middle of November and everything was just cruising right along. It was like being at an amazing conference every day. I knew I needed to quit.

And not only did I need to quit, everyone else did, too.

Sowing the Seeds

The great thing about conferences is you meet so many great people, and you share incredible ideas and insights. The next best thing about conferences is you get to go home and apply what you’ve learned. You leave that amazing hive and return to the real world, where experience and application temper theory and expectation.

Imagine going to a conference, and never coming back.

Sounds like fun, except real work isn’t getting done… and after a while, those really cool people you were hanging out with start to show annoying tendencies and foibles. You want to learn from their best, without getting sucked into their drama. The claws and the negativity were starting to flash forward. Familiarity was breeding contempt.

Those Facebook Private Groups are very powerful and sticky devices. So I left.

The Offshoot

I ended up in a different group, one formed as a reaction to the negativity. Almost a year later, it is still strong, and has not succumbed to the same fate as the first one. Why?

I think it has everything to do with size. Instead of 140 people, there are only 40. The volume of the conversation is manageable enough that you can actually keep up with what’s happening. With 100 more people, you have a lot of opportunities for side-drama and cliques to form. (“Ninety percent of the world never leaves high school — they just leave adult supervision.“)

One failed as a community, and one succeeded. It could be as simple as that. Or maybe not.

I mentioned that I changed some habits. One was being more deliberate about what I wrote, and where I put it. I once had a nice sized audience for Occam’s Razr, but it was never going to blossom into the most awesome force of nature. I am too fractured. My interests aren’t focused enough to build a sustainable following, because after a while you’re just feeding the beast to keep content flowing to the inbox. And I certainly wasn’t going to write about one thing, and just one thing only.

I was going to be intentional.

• What am I writing?
• Who will be reading this?
• Will they really care, or just pretend to in order to humor me?
• Will this have lasting significance?

As a result, many of my pithier observations or short notes ended up elsewhere on the web, and much of it went into that private community.

Applied Lessons

That was a long way to go to get from there to here, but it was worth it. I was able to refine an idea and put it into practice.

Too much of our communication is unintended.

I’m not talking about the non-verbal communication of posture and gesture and tone. I’m talking about what we do for conveniences sake.

• We send an email right now because we needed to check off the to-do reminder… but did the recipient need to get it at that exact moment? Was there a better place to send it?
• We post pictures or links without a thought about who might need to know, or why.
• We tie our updates from Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, as though those very different audiences all cared about the same things.
• We re-share content from people that we haven’t even read as a gesture curry favor, but without any real awareness of what we have just endorsed.

There is already too much noise. We can either keep fighting the losing battle of trying to manage the streams that are foisted upon us, or we can do our part to stop junking up the streams of others. And I am not talking about “don’t post funny things on Facebook,” but rather “who are you posting that to?”

Let’s say you find a neat link with a story about a cancer survivor. Instead of sharing it blindly, tell people what moved you. Tag specific people in the note, flag them to the existence. Because now you’re communicating with intent, and also fulfilling a much needed role in personal networking: you’re curating people.

By tagging Jennifer with the story about the survivor, I might find out that Tom (who doesn’t know Jennifer) has his own connection to that story — and in the process Tom and Jennifer discover each other. The act of imparting additional people-centric information makes this something more than a broadcast message — it’s a personal communication that others may eavesdrop upon.

Intentional communication is being aware of the needs of your recipient. Not just their need to manage their information, or to have their time respected — but to be discovered. Organic discovery isn’t as easy as it used to be — and it needs our help to curate it and move it along.

The value of Intentional Communication comes from understanding yourself. The more mindful you are of your Purpose, the more focused you will be on accomplishing it.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

Clout is the ability to influence, and get things done.
Klout purports to be a measure of your online influence.

Presumably, the more Clout you have in real life, the more Klout you’ll have online. And just like in real life, it turns out that we’re all influential in different things.

(Post now updated to include video)

What Klout is trying to do is admirable, in a way. But at times the execution will be off.

Because of my online connections, Klout seems to think I have sway in the areas of communications and social media. As such, I qualify for the occasional “Perk,” a freebie that I can try out with no strings attached, with the hopes that I might write about it or review it favorably.

Klout is very careful to communicate the complete lack of a quid pro quo, so this isn’t a complaint about that. They are also very responsive. I got a defective Weather Channel umbrella in the mail, and within a week they sent a working one.

No, this is a cautionary tale about using Klout to promote.

Gadget Geek

If you know me at all, you know I love gadgets. And I have been particularly intrigued with what Microsoft has been up to with its new Windows Phone platform. It is stunning in its beauty, simplicity, and functionality. As far as I am concerned, you can keep your iPhones and Androids. I’ve even talked friends into trying Windows Phone out — one bought a unit off eBay and probably would still be using it, but his company IT department wanted everyone on iPhones.

I am a Windows Phone enthusiast.

That’s why I was excited when my friend Joe told me about what was on his Facebook wall:

Apparently, my influence in the realm of Technology and Gadgets was high enough to warrant a nice Perk. I was looking forward to checking out a new device, and either getting my wife onto a Windows Phone, or using it as a loaner to friends who want to try one out. I was excited to log into Klout, and after accepting the perk and entering in my home address, I saw this:

Then, the details for claiming it:

Notice that it says that my phone is on the way, and then to be sure to RSVP for the party.

(I blacked out the URL and the code, as I don’t want to cause problems.)

Wires Crossed

Well, a few days later I received this:

I can understand that.

But boy, the whole process seemed rather poorly-worded. They took all of my information, only to then determine that I was not eligible?

I can forgive that.

Dropped Connection

I do have a problem, though, with the way it was pitched to Joe. My friend Joe got a notice on his wall that said I had earned the Perk — they used my name and my reputation to make a pitch to a friend of mine. They never did their homework about residency requirements, either. (I mean, I know I live in Alabama and everything, but I have many hip and trendy friends in New York City who actually turn to me for advice about technology, communications and social media. Or at least I thought I influenced them…)

I certainly hope Klout learns its lessons — the notion of Online Influence is an important one as traditional advertising models assumptions continue their implosion. If Klout doesn’t get it right, someone else will. Klout’s first-mover advantage in the space can be spoiled if people get the idea that they aren’t people anymore, but instead are just an arbitrary computation of tweets, retweets and engagements.

Clout means being able to influence, to inspire.
Clout means having the assurance you can gather others to get the job done.
Clout means never having to say you’re sorry, but doing it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.

I have received the following from Klout:

• Weather Channel umbrella
• 6 bags of Pop Chips, with coupons
• A DVD of “Men of a Certain Age”
• A $10 card for Subway

Update:

The incredible Rich Becker referenced a video from the Wall Street Journal blogs. I present it below, for as long as they’ll host it.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

The History of Steve Jobs will forever be clouded by the Mystery of Steve Jobs.

He will go down as an irreplaceable force of creative vision, and years from now, people will still be wondering what would have happened if he’d just been given a few more years. In doing so, they will miss the truth about the man.

1. His professional achievements were a product of his desire to finish. He knew his health better than anyone, and has known for years that his days were few. He ought to be celebrated for maximizing that time, and bringing so many projects to completion.
2. His “secret sauce” is not unique. His Mystique was. Steve Jobs the Persona was bulletproof and undefeated, capable of turning imagination into reality like no one since Walt Disney. Steve Jobs the man was just like everyone else, with one exception: a gift for self-actualization — being able to squeeze the most out of the available resources, and not stopping until the cup was filled to overflowing. He made a lot of money through the merchandising of products and services, but what he really sold was The Illusion of Completeness. You bought from Apple because of your belief in him that nothing more could be done, that each parcel was a pinnacle. And next year, with cheaper parts and faster processors, that pinnacle was moving higher and you weren’t Complete until you had upgraded as well.

The biggest irony of his passing is the true vulnerability of Apple. The better he did at inculcating the above qualities in the rest of Apple culture, the more people there looked up to him. Which makes his passing even more acute in perception than it is in reality. “Apple” will be just fine, but it will never be Jobs’ Apple again. (Another pitfall of Personal Branding.)”

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

So imagine my feelings when I saw this pop up last night:

All 1.4 million of our customers are currently without power.

September 8, 2011 6:03 pm via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@SDGE

SDG&E

Heart. In. Throat.

I have to give @SDGE props, they were extremely informative throughout the crisis on Twitter. Just some samples of their good messaging:

We do not have an estimated restoration time. The power could be out through the night and into tomorrow.

September 8, 2011 6:29 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SDGE

SDG&E

The outage has affected street lights. Please drive safely and treat street signals as four way stops.

September 8, 2011 6:33 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SDGE

SDG&E

If you have a personal family emergency plan, please activate it now.

September 8, 2011 6:36 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SDGE

SDG&E

When I caught the stream, @SDGE was over 12,000 followers — just 45 minutes later, they had more than 14,000.

Let your friends and family know to follow us on Twitter for updates and information on restoration times. #sdoutage

September 8, 2011 7:42 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite

@SDGE

SDG&E

Why Twitter?

Back in the day, crisis and disaster protocol dictated that you did your best with local radio stations. They had generators, and were the best means of reaching people who could listen with battery operated radios.

Guess what?

People don’t have battery-operated radios anymore.

Seriously. They have iPods and Smartphones, and they only listen to the radio in the car.

In times of trouble, more people know they can get information from Twitter and Facebook — and Twitter has an advantage with its direct line to SMS.

Did you know you could follow Tweets without even having an account? With SMS?

Text “FOLLOW REDCROSS” to the number 40404, and @RedCross Tweets will come to your cellphone as long as you still have SMS service.

FOLLOW ALABAMAPOWER

FOLLOW SDGE

And when you’re done, just send LEAVE SDGE to 40404, and you’re unsubscribed.

Easy.

During our little storm here, we restored power to 237,000 customers in four days. We also gained 987 Twitter followers to the @Alabamapower account. Many of those accounts were created in the last few days.

Be smart — people are listening, and they will grope for whatever information they can find in an emergency. Help them find it.

I am an official spokesman for Alabama Power.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 Occam's RazR. All Rights Reserved.